[Editor's note: This post is excerpted from this week's forthcoming NORML weekly media advisory. To have NORML's media advisories delivered straight to your in-box, sign up for NORML's free e-zine here.]

Health-related costs per user are eight times higher for drinkers than they are for those who use cannabis, and are more than 40 times higher for tobacco smokers, according to a report published in the British Columbia Mental Health and Addictions Journal.

According to the report, “In terms of [health-related] costs per user: tobacco-related health costs are over $800 per user, alcohol-related health costs are much lower at $165 per user, and cannabis-related health costs are the lowest at $20 per user.”

The review, authored by researchers from the Centre for Addictions Research of British Columbia at the University of Victoria and the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse at the University of Ottawa, stated: “Alcohol is used by a very large number of people with the vast majority of these using in low- or moderate-risk ways. Conversely, cannabis and tobacco are used by far fewer people. The majority of cannabis use is low- and moderate-risk, however, while the majority of tobacco is high-risk.”

The study reported that social costs applicable to marijuana are primarily “enforcement-related.”

The authors concluded: “The harms, risks and social costs of alcohol, cannabis and tobacco vary greatly. A lot has to do with how the substances are handled legally. Alcohol and tobacco are legal substances, which explains their low enforcement costs relative to cannabis. On the other hand, the health costs per user of tobacco and alcohol are much higher than for cannabis. This may indicate that cannabis use involves fewer health risks than alcohol or tobacco.

“These variations in risk, harms and cost need to be taken into account as we think about further efforts to deal with the use of these three substances. … Efforts to reduce social costs related to cannabis, for example, will likely involve shifting its legal status by decriminalizing casual use, to reduce the high enforcement costs. Such a shift may be warranted given the apparent lower health risk associated with most cannabis use.”

According to a recent Rasmussen national poll of 1,000 likely voters, Americans believe by more than two to one that alcohol is “more dangerous” than marijuana.

I’ve written previously about the mainstream media’s propensity to under report and distort stories that challenge marijuana prohibition.

Apparently my latest missive has hit a nerve — as it has quickly risen to become the most read story on Alternet.

5 Things the Corporate Media Don’t Want You to Know About Cannabis
via Alternet.org

1. Marijuana Use Is Not Associated With a Rise in Incidences of Schizophrenia

2. Marijuana Smoke Doesn’t Damage the Lungs Like Tobacco

3. Cannabis Use Potentially Protects, Rather Than Harms, the Brain

4. Marijuana Is a Terminus, Not a ‘Gateway,’ to Hard Drug Use

5. Government’s Anti-Pot Ads Encourage, Rather Than Discourage, Marijuana Use

Read the full text of the story here.

To follow up on yesterday’s blog post, here are the findings of yet another just published study that the mainstream media will undoubtedly ignore.

Effects of cannabis on lung function: a population-based cohort study
via nih.gov

The effects of cannabis on lung function remain unclear and may be different to tobacco. We compared the associations between use of these substances and lung function in a population-based cohort (n=1037). … Cumulative cannabis use was associated with higher forced vital capacity, total lung capacity, functional residual capacity, and residual volume. Cannabis was also associated with higher airways resistance but not with forced expiratory volume in 1 second, forced expiratory ratio, or transfer factor. These findings were similar amongst those who did not smoke tobacco.

By contrast, tobacco use was associated with lower forced expiratory volume in 1 second, lower forced expiratory ratio, lower transfer factor, and higher static lung volumes, but not with airways resistance. Cannabis appears to have different effects on lung function to those of tobacco.

Just in case you think that this is the first time that researchers have failed to document a decline in lung function in marijuana users, well, think again. And again. And again.

Many years ago the former head of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Alan Leshner made this statement when forced to confront the fact that tens of thousands of patients were successfully using cannabis as a medicine:

“The plural of anecdote is not evidence.”

Someone ought to pass on Lesnher’s cop out to ABC News, whose recent feature, “Reefer Madness Redux: Is Pot Addictive?“, is little more than a series of anecdotes from folks claiming that it’s becoming harder and harder for some individuals to quit weed.

Here’s a typical example:

The biggest hurdle in treating these patients is that marijuana “still has a positive spin to it,” he said. “People don’t believe it’s a problem.”

“Plenty believe that they can’t get addicted or hold on to the idea that it’s only psychologically addictive and ‘I can think my way out of it,’”said Massella. “But once you develop a dependency, there is always a dependency.”

Naturally, John Massella, like many of the so-called experts quoted in the ABC story, has a financial incentive to promote the “marijuana is seriously addictive” claim. After all, he runs a drug rehabilitation center. Claiming that many of his clients are “pot addicts” is far more socially acceptable than admitting that most of his so-called ‘marijuana treatment admissions’ are really just young people who were busted for pot possession and ordered there by the court as a condition of probation.

But putting the anecdotes aside, what does the science actually say about pot and dependence?

Well, according to the nonpartisan National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine — which published a multiyear, million-dollar federal study assessing marijuana and health in 1999 — “millions of Americans have tried marijuana, but most are not regular users [and] few marijuana users become dependent on it.” The agency added, “[A]though [some] marijuana users develop dependence, they appear to be less likely to do so than users of other drugs (including alcohol and nicotine), and marijuana dependence appears to be less severe than dependence on other drugs.” (In fact, more recent research indicates that marijuana use may actually help some people kick their hard drug habits!)

Just how less likely? According to the IOM’s 267-page report, fewer than 10 percent of those who try cannabis ever meet the clinical criteria for a diagnosis of “drug dependence” (based on DSM-III-R criteria). By contrast, the IOM reported that 32 percent of tobacco users, 23 percent of heroin users, 17 percent of cocaine users and 15 percent of alcohol users meet the criteria for “drug dependence.” In short, it’s the legal drugs that have Americans hooked — not pot.

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The Global Cannabis Commission of the respected United Kingdom charity Beckley Foundation released a report today stating that cannabis is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco, and that there needs to be serious reconsideration of current prohibition policies.

Report highlights:

-The differences between the annual deaths caused by cannabis and alcohol/tobacco products are stark: Two cannabis deaths worldwide, contrasted with an estimated 150,000 people in Britain alone die prematurely because of alcohol and tobacco consumption.

-Many of the harms associated with cannabis use are the results of prohibition itself, particularly the social harms arising from arrest and imprisonment.

-It is only through a regulated market that we can better protect young people from the even more potent forms of dope.

In what is passing for one of the first public debates ever between the government’s ‘anti-drug’ office (Office of National Drug Control Policy, aka ONDCP) and the world’s most famous pro-cannabis reform organization (NORML), check out my rebuttal to the ONDCP’s attempts to discredit the nearly 40 year effort to end cannabis prohibition.

To date, this unofficial debate between NORML and ONDCP has been one of the most popular public discussions ever at The Hill’s blog, which informs their editors (as well as other major publications’ and broadcast editors) that the issue of cannabis law reform is of great public concern and ripe for ongoing public policy debates about the future of cannabis prohibition.

Preview: In advance of you reading, and hopefully weighing in on The Hill’s blog, rather than engage in what I describe as the ‘flash card’ game–where every misapplication of science or anti-pot myth needs to be addressed–in my reply to the ONDCP’s rebuttal of NORML’s pro-reform advocacy efforts I try to focus on the larger issues at hand regarding personal freedom, autonomy, the proper role of the government in the private lives of it’s citizens and the obvious juxtaposition of the legal ‘drug’ industries (alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceuticals) to the failed 70-year old prohibition of cannabis.

And How It Informs About Who Supports Cannabis Prohibition…

“Supporting marijuana use is an example of domestic terrorism—it puts the public at great risk and threatens the very fabric of our society.” -Ron Brooks, President of National Narcotics Officers’ Association, 4/11/08

In my many annual public appearances and media interviews advocating for cannabis law reforms, the question will often arise ‘if NORML and the other drug policy reform groups are right that there are safe and viable alternatives to cannabis prohibition laws, who then opposes you in trying to amend current state and federal laws?’

The recent political endorsement given to former Republican congressman and ardent drug warrior Doug Ose by the National Narcotics Officers’ Association (NNOA) provides a handy opportunity that helps reveal exactly who are America’s prohibitionists and what are their motivations against ending cannabis prohibition.

Who Actually Supports (Or Profits From) Cannabis Prohibition?
At this juncture having worked over 17 years at NORML/NORML Foundation, my standard reply, without achieving doctoral dissertation length is 1.) There are five basic subgroups of Americans who strongly oppose any reforms in cannabis laws, and 2.) These subgroups constantly seek to deepen and enhance prohibition laws, i.e., politically and culturally oppose citizens and organizations who don’t favor prohibition laws; advocate for greater criminal sanctions and fewer civil liberties (more penalties, longer prison sentences, higher fines, and more of the ‘Big Three Ps’: police/prosecutors/prisons) and civil penalties (forfeiture, drivers license suspension, loss of child custody for parents who consume cannabis, denial of college loans to students busted for pot, removal from public-assisted living housing, etc…).

The Five Pillars Of Pot Prohibition
For all intent and purposes, in my opinion, educators, religious leaders, health organizations, military leadership, business and insurance institutions, and economists are not rabid supporters of cannabis prohibition per se. However, the five subgroups of Americans who do support rigorous cannabis prohibition laws and penalties are:

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President Ulysses S. Grant’s timeless observations on:

* An “unjust war”
* Smuggling across our border with Mexico
* “Possession of the weed” and ineffectiveness of prohibition

by George Rohrbacher, NORML Board Member

April 27th is Ulysses S. Grant’s 186th birthday. The man buried in Grant’s Tomb still has insights to share with today’s candidates hoping to serve in the White House, and for all of us who would vote for them.

Grant won an appointment to West Point so he might further his education. He detested the work at his father’s tannery. His aspirations were to become a college mathematics professor. He had no designs on the military as a profession. But as fate would have it, Grant became one of American history’s great generals, commander of all Federal forces the last year of Civil War and, at the age of 46, President of the United States.

While in excruciating pain, broke, and dying from throat cancer, Grant wrote his memoirs in an attempt to leave an income for his widow. His good friend, Mark Twain, published them after his death. They were a huge commercial and critical success, ranking today among the best military autobiographies ever written.

In September of 1845, arriving with the invading United States Army at the Mexican boarder on the Nueces River, Grant reported on the very active business of smuggling. Illegal trade was the town of Corpus Christi’s primary reason for existence. But unlike today, the flow of the 19th century smuggling was from the United States into Mexico, not the other way around! Grant says, “The price was enormously high, and made successful smuggling very profitable. The trade in tobacco was enormous considering the population supplied.” The Mexican government maintained a tax monopoly on tobacco sales, which created a huge black market economic opportunity for those who would take the initiative, break the law, and supply the demand.

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According to a February 4 Reuters News Wire headline, “Marijuana withdrawal rivals that of nicotine.”   Oh really?  

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