Posted on 04/26/2004 2:22:46 PM PDT by neverdem
Starting in the fall, pharmacies in British Columbia will sell marijuana for medicinal purposes, without a prescription, under a pilot project devised by Canada's national health service. The plan follows a 2002 report by a Canadian Senate committee that found there were "clear, though not definitive" benefits for using marijuana in the treatment of chronic pain, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy and other ailments. Both Prime Minister Paul Martin and Stephen Harper, leader of the opposition conservatives, support the decriminalization of marijuana.
Oddly, the strongest criticism of the Canadian proposal has come from patients already using medical marijuana who think the government, which charges about $110 an ounce, supplies lousy pot. "It is of incredibly poor quality," said one patient. Another said, "It tastes like lumber." A spokesman for Health Canada promised the agency would try to offer a better grade of product.
Needless to say, this is a far cry from the situation in the United States, where marijuana remains a Schedule I controlled substance, a drug that the government says has a high potential for abuse, no accepted medical uses and no safe level of use.
Under federal law it is illegal to possess any amount of marijuana anywhere in the United States. Penalties for a first marijuana offense range from probation to life without parole. Although 11 states have decriminalized marijuana, most still have tough laws against the drug. In Louisiana, selling one ounce can lead to a 20-year prison sentence. In Washington State, supplying any amount of marijuana brings a recommended prison sentence of five years.
About 700,000 people were arrested in the United States for violating marijuana laws in 2002 (the most recent year for which statistics are available) — more than were arrested for heroin or cocaine. Almost 90 percent of these marijuana arrests were for simple possession, a crime that in most cases is a misdemeanor. But even a misdemeanor conviction can easily lead to time in jail, the suspension of a driver's license, the loss of a job. And in many states possession of an ounce is a felony. Those convicted of a marijuana felony, even if they are disabled, can be prohibited from receiving federal welfare payments or food stamps. Convicted murderers and rapists, however, are still eligible for those benefits.
The Bush administration has escalated the war on marijuana, raiding clinics that offer medical marijuana and staging a nationwide roundup of manufacturers of drug paraphernalia. In November 2002 the Office of National Drug Control Policy circulated an "open letter to America's prosecutors" spelling out the administration's views. "Marijuana is addictive," the letter asserted. "Marijuana and violence are linked . . . no drug matches the threat posed by marijuana."
This tough new stand has generated little protest in Congress. Even though the war on marijuana was begun by President Ronald Reagan in 1982, it has always received strong bipartisan support. Some of the toughest drug war legislation has been backed by liberals, and the number of annual marijuana arrests more than doubled during the Clinton years. In fact, some of the strongest opposition to the arrest and imprisonment of marijuana users has come from conservatives like William F. Buckley, the economist Milton Friedman and Gary Johnson, the former Republican governor of New Mexico.
This year the White House's national antidrug media campaign will spend $170 million, working closely with the nonprofit Partnership for a Drug-Free America. The idea of a "drug-free America" may seem appealing. But it's hard to believe that anyone seriously hopes to achieve that goal in a nation where millions of children are routinely given Ritalin, antidepressants are prescribed to cure shyness, and the pharmaceutical industry aggressively promotes pills to help middle-aged men have sex.
Clearly, some recreational drugs are thought to be O.K. Thus it isn't surprising that the Partnership for a Drug-Free America originally received much of its financing from cigarette, alcohol and pharmaceutical companies like Hoffmann-La Roche, Philip Morris, R. J. Reynolds and Anheuser-Busch.
More than 16,000 Americans die every year after taking nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like aspirin and ibuprofen. No one in Congress, however, has called for an all-out war on Advil. Perhaps the most dangerous drug widely consumed in the United States is the one that I use three or four times a week: alcohol. It is literally poisonous; you can die after drinking too much. It is directly linked to about one-quarter of the suicides in the United States, almost half the violent crime and two-thirds of domestic abuse. And the level of alcohol use among the young far exceeds the use of marijuana. According to the Justice Department, American children aged 11 to 13 are four times more likely to drink alcohol than to smoke pot.
None of this should play down the seriousness of marijuana use. It is a powerful, mind-altering drug. It should not be smoked by young people, schizophrenics, pregnant women and people with heart conditions. But it is remarkably nontoxic. In more than 5,000 years of recorded use, there is no verified case of anybody dying of an overdose. Indeed, no fatal dose has ever been established.
Over the past two decades billions of dollars have been spent fighting the war on marijuana, millions of Americans have been arrested and tens of thousands have been imprisoned. Has it been worth it? According to the government's National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, in 1982 about 54 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 had smoked marijuana. In 2002 the proportion was . . . about 54 percent.
We seem to pay no attention to what other governments are doing. Spain, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium have decriminalized marijuana. This year Britain reduced the penalty for having small amounts. Legislation is pending in Canada to decriminalize possession of about half an ounce (the Bush administration is applying strong pressure on the Canadian government to block that bill). In Ohio, possession of up to three ounces has been decriminalized for years — and yet liberal marijuana laws have not transformed Ohio into a hippy-dippy paradise; conservative Republican governors have been running the state since 1991.
Here's an idea: people who smoke too much marijuana should be treated the same way as people who drink too much alcohol. They need help, not the threat of arrest, imprisonment and unemployment.
More important, denying a relatively safe, potentially useful medicine to patients is irrational and cruel. In 1972 a commission appointed by President Richard Nixon concluded that marijuana should be decriminalized in the United States. The commission's aim was not to encourage the use of marijuana, but to "demythologize it." Although Nixon rejected the commission's findings, they remain no less valid today: "For the vast majority of recreational users," the 2002 Canadian Senate committee found, "cannabis use presents no harmful consequences for physical, psychological or social well-being in either the short or long term."
The current war on marijuana is a monumental waste of money and a source of pointless misery. America's drug warriors, much like its marijuana smokers, seem under the spell of a powerful intoxicant. They are not thinking clearly.
Eric Schlosser is the author of "Fast Food Nation" and "Reefer Madness."
I usually prefer not to defile myself by reposting your quotes, but this was necessary.
In reference to the above, you need to brush up on the Civil War and World War Two. Were anyone's rights revoked because of some emergency declaration during those two conflicts? And don't ask me for help this time.
That would be 375.
More to the story ...
"Schlosser says the '60s marked the birth of our national addiction to consumption, whether of pornography, drugs or Happy Meals. "It's a complex legacy. A lot of what is best in our culture did spring from that time, from the environmental movement to women's rights and civil rights," he says. "But the darker side would be the drug culture and the spread of this culture. Even though I really believe that the marijuana laws are absurd, the culture surrounding drug taking is a very unhealthy one. I think a lot of the social causes of the '60s petered out into drugs and the drug culture."
God? Or the federal government? If the federal government, is included in "state", as "state" in this context means any political division of a nation.
If God, of course, God does as He wills, and it is always perfect. The state will is rarely perfect. 
Don't you believe in revoking a murderers right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and the right to bear arms?
My, what a complex question you have there.
Right to life...if the person is convicted of murder I believe their life, not their right to life, is forfeit. Their right to life is inherent. They may receive the death penalty or imprisonment for their crime. That decision, however, is up to the jury sitting the case to decide.
Right to liberty...As to a murderer's liberty, see above. Their right to liberty is reinstated the moment they complete their sentence or are paroled as long as they have no additional qualifications upon their release, such as extended parole past incarceration.
The pursuit of happiness regards private property and if the murderer receives the death penalty then it should go to the victim's family, to a compensable degree, and to the murderer's family if there is any left over afterwards. A civil award as compensation is OK in my book if the sentence is a period of incarceration. You can't impoverish the murderer's family else you send them out for government assistance/welfare which I don't agree with.
As to bearing arms...they should be able to bear arms again if they are released as they have already paid the price for their crime. Doing anything less simply makes a them a potential victim to the deprevations and lawlessness of others. If they were to commit any additional crimes then they would go through the whole process again.
Wow!
So you approve of taking away their right to bear arms and being a victim to prison rape?
I would think that if you take their life, you have taken away their right to live ...
Since the value of life is usually defined to be greater than a million bucks and few murderers have this, then, in effect, your civil award impoverishes the murderer's family putting them on the dole.
When you said "a higher authority than the state", you could have only meant God. Or the federal government as opposed to the absolute value of the word "state". I think I covered both, didn't I?
I didn't question it. I merely stated that your link was to "unattributed prose" and that did nothing to enhance your argument. If there was a source identified, please post link it as you should have in your initial link.
You said it.
Uh, I am at a loss to which statements you are referring to.
I know that you will never post a link verifying your claim that the MLDA in Florida was 18 in the sixties.
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