Why you should say ‘yes’ to Proposition 19

Seventy-eight years ago this November, Californians overwhelmingly voted to repeal a morally, socially, and economically failed public policy — alcohol prohibition. Voters did not wait for the federal government to act; they took matters into their own hands.

On Nov. 2, California voters have an opportunity to repeat history and repeal an equally bankrupt public policy — marijuana prohibition.

California lawmakers criminalized the possession and cultivation of marijuana in 1913, some 24 years before Congress enacted similar prohibitions federally. Yet today some 3.3 million Californians acknowledge using pot regularly, and the Golden State stands alone as the largest domestic producer of the crop. Self-evidently, marijuana is here to stay. The question is: What is the most pragmatic and effective way to deal with this reality?

Proposition 19 — which legalizes the adult possession of limited quantities of marijuana in private, and allows local governments to regulate its commercial production and retail distribution — offers voters a sound alternative to the inflexible and failed strategies of the past. The measure acknowledges that adults should not be legally punished for their private use of a substance that is objectively safer than alcohol or tobacco, while simultaneously enacting common sense controls regarding who can legally consume it, distribute it, and produce it.

Critics of Prop. 19 … express concerns that passage of this initiative will lead to increased marijuana use and send a mixed message to children. Both arguments are specious at best.

Virtually any Californian who wishes to obtain or consume marijuana can already do so, and it is unlikely that adults who presently abstain from pot will cease doing so simply because certain restrictions on its prohibition are lifted. Further, it must be acknowledged that unlike alcohol, marijuana is incapable of causing lethal overdose, is relatively nontoxic to healthy cells and organs, and its use is not typically associated with violent, aggressive, or reckless behavior. Why then are we so worried about adults consuming it in the privacy of their own home?

Critics’ concerns regarding marijuana and youth are also not persuasive. Young people already report that they have easier access to illicit marijuana than they do legal beer or cigarettes. Why? It is because the production and sale of these latter products are regulated and legally limited to a specific age group. As a result teen use of cigarettes, for example, has fallen to its lowest levels in decades while, conversely, young people’s use of cannabis is rising. In short, it’s legalization, regulation, and public education — coupled with the enforcement of age restrictions — that most effectively keep mind-altering substances out of the hands of children.

Further, a regulated system of cannabis legalization will make it easier, not harder, for parents and educators to rationally and persuasively discuss this subject with young people. Many parents who may have tried pot during their youth (or who continue to use it occasionally) will no longer perceive societal pressures to lie to their children about their own behaviors. Rather, just as many parents presently speak to their children openly about their use of alcohol — instructing them that booze may be appropriate for adults in moderation, but that it remains inappropriate for young people — legalization will empower adults to talk objectively and rationally to their kids about marijuana.

The Bottom line? For nearly 100 years in California the criminal prohibition of marijuana has fueled an underground, unregulated, black market economy that empowers criminal entrepreneurs while having no tangible effect on the public’s access to pot or their use of it. A “yes” vote on Prop. 19 is a first step toward allowing lawmakers and regulators to seize control of this illegal commercial market and turn it over to licensed business. A “no” vote continues to abdicate command of this market to criminal gangs and drug traffickers.

The choice is up to us.

In a society awash in alcohol, he dares to ask the pivotal question:

Why do our laws embrace and celebrate the use of alcohol, an intoxicant that directly contributes to tens of thousands of deaths annually and countless social problems, while stigmatizing and criminalizing the use of cannabis, a substance that is incapable of causing lethal overdose and is associated with far fewer societal costs?

Driven to drink by marijuana laws?
via Reuters: The Great Debate

Tough marijuana laws are driving millions of Americans to a more dangerous mood-altering substance, alcohol. The unintended consequence: violence and thousands of unnecessary deaths. It’s time, therefore, for a serious public debate of the case for marijuana versus alcohol.

That’s the message groups advocating the legalization of marijuana are beginning to press, against a background of shifting attitudes which have already prompted 13 states to relax draconian laws dating back to the 1930s, when the government ended alcohol prohibition and began a determined but futile effort to stamp out marijuana.

Of course, I can’t help but blush when Bernd highlights my forthcoming book, Marijuana Is Safer, as the inspiration behind his astute analysis.

The case for adding a compare-and-contrast dimension to the debate is laid out in a statistics-laden book to be published next month entitled “Marijuana is Safer, So why are we driving people to drink?” The authors are prominent legalization advocates – Steve Fox of the Marijuana Policy Project, Paul Armentano of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and Mason Tvert, co-founder of SAFER (Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation).

“The plain and simple truth is that alcohol fuels violent behaviour and marijuana does not,” Norm Stamper, [Editor's note: Stamper is on NORML's advisory board] a former Seattle police chief, writes in the foreword of the book. “Alcohol … contributes to literally millions of acts of violence in the United States each year. It is a major contributing factor to crimes like domestic violence, sexual assault and homicide. Marijuana use … is absent in that regard from both crime reports and the scientific literature. There is simply no causal link to be found.”

I’ll be providing folks with further information regarding Marijuana Is Safer in the coming days and weeks. (The book is expected to hit stores by mid-August). But for now, why not join the vibrant discussion taking place on Reuters.com on whether pot prohibition is driving America to drink?

As for the absurdly titled Office of National Drug Control Policy, what on Earth do they think they’re controlling? Certainly not the domestic production of pot, which has increased ten-fold in the past 25 years from 1,000 metric tons (2.2 million pounds) to 10,000 metric tons (22 million pounds). Not the importation of pot, a mere 10 percent of which is likely interdicted by law enforcement annually. And most certainly not the use of pot, which has been tried by almost 100 million Americans — many of whom, according to the Drug Czar’s own rhetoric, are supposedly starting at younger and younger ages.

It’s drug law reformers — not prohibitionists — that wish to bring regulation and control to what is now an unregulated, illicit black market commodity. It is NORML, not the Drug Czar, that has testified in favor of taxing and regulating cannabis in a manner similar to alcohol — with the drug’s sale and use restricted to specific markets and consumers.

While such an alternative may not entirely eliminate the black market demand for pot, it would certainly be preferable to today’s blanket, though thoroughly ineffective, expensive and impotent criminal prohibition.

Advocacy group seeks pot regulation, education
via CBS News

(UWIRE.com) The response of marijuana advocacy groups concerning the steady increase of the drug’s potency has revealed an underground debate over whether marijuana is a harmful narcotic or a recreational drug, and the groups involved vary from the U.S. federal government and local law enforcement organizations to college students and scientists.

Founded in 1970, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws has provided a voice in the public policy debate for those Americans who oppose marijuana prohibition and favor an end to the practice of arresting marijuana smokers, the NORML Web site said.

NORML claims to represent the interests of millions of Americans who smoke marijuana responsibly, the Web site said.

“Even by the University of Mississippi’s own admission, the average THC in domestically grown marijuana — which comprises the bulk of the US market — is less than five percent, a figure that’s remained unchanged for nearly a decade,” NORML deputy director Paul Armentano wrote in a letter sent to the editorial staff in the Tuesday issue of The Daily Mississippian.

The deputy director did not address the alleged connection between mental illness and marijuana use in his letter, but did later in a phone interview.”Nobody really knows the answer,” Armentano said. “We know those who suffer from depression and anxiety sometimes abuse substances like alcohol and cigarettes.”

Armentano said although he has not seen any research directly linking marijuana use and mental illness, he would not advise those with mental illness or a family history of mental illness to use marijuana.

“Use of any intoxicant has a risk,” Armentano said.

NORML supports regulation and education, he said.

A “targeted education campaign” similar to that of the recent alcohol campaigns would allow the general public to be educated about marijuana and its effects; regulation would ensure the product being sold was taxed and safe for the public to consume, he said.

The argument for regulation is that the government currently has no control over the drug market, Armentano said.Regulation could end the “anarchy” that exists within the system, he said.

The following interview took place this past April, just prior to my presentation at the Fifth National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics.

Outrageous Anti-Pot Lies: Media Uses Disgraceful Cancer Scare Tactics

via Alternet.org

[T]he media chose to selectively highlight data implicating cannabis’s dangers while ignoring data implicating its relative safety. In this case, the study’s authors (and, by default, the worldwide press) chose only to emphasize one small subgroup of marijuana smokers (those who reported smoking at least one joint per day for more than ten years). These subjects did in fact, experience an elevated risk of lung cancer compared to non-using controls. (Although contrary to what the press reported, even the study’s heaviest pot smokers never experienced an elevated comparable to those subjects who reported having “ever used” tobacco.) By contrast, cannabis consumers in the study who reported light or moderate pot use actually experienced a decreased cancer risk compared to non-using controls.

Read the full article here.