Make Peace With Pot

NY Times ^ | April 26, 2004 | ERIC SCHLOSSER

[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."

[P_A_I]

To: William Terrell

That is some pretty interesting stuff there Bill. I went back to the other threads where you've got this up. Very interesting indeed.
932 posted on 04/28/2004 7:01:03 PM PDT by philman_36

Seems to be a sort of '9 to 5' posting pattern, which seems to be typical of certain overly conformist types around here.

Perhaps its indicative of the bureaucratic mind at work.

[cinFLA]

Hey tkd, I realize you're new around here,

He's the Version 4 of the MrLeroy pro-drug propaganda, forum interface software package.

[cinFLA]

Seems to be a sort of '9 to 5' posting pattern, which seems to be typical of certain overly conformist types around here. Perhaps its indicative of the bureaucratic mind at work.

You nailed 'the kings dead' right on the head! Along with a few of the other pro-drug spammers that only post from their workdesk.

[cinFLA]

Seems to be a sort of '9 to 5' posting pattern,

Provide a basis for you claim.

[tacticalogic]

P_A_I, I believe you've hit a nerve.

[jmc813]

You missed my point completely. You were arguing from a "majority of people favor the drug war" angle. We live in a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy.

[jmc813]

He's the Version 4 of the MrLeroy pro-drug propaganda, forum interface software package.

I have no idea what you're talking aboot.

[tdadams]

the public by and large still wants nothing to do with legalizing illegal drugs. The issue when brought to the polls is defeated time and time again.

You can resort to saying "the people don't want it" when the ONDCP propaganda office is closed down and the Nixon-commissioned report concluding that marijuana should be decriminalized is released to the public.

Otherwise this is as irrelevant to what is truly in the best interest of the country as when the Democrats make the perennial claim that Republicans are going to take away grandma's Social Security.

[The kings dead]

the dude lecturing you on being a liberal was one of (R)nold's biggest supporters here on FR during the recall. He also believes in a "resonable amount" of gun control.

I thought I smelled a phony "conservative."

[AxelPaulsenJr]

So our elected representatives are pulling the wool over our eyes? How does that cause the public when they go to the polls on illegal drug issues, to vote those issues down time after time?

[William Terrell]

You were interested in Roscoe.

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[AxelPaulsenJr]

I suppose that you have a program that keeps track on this sort of information. But man, even with a computer keeping track of this for you, I have got to wonder if you really have a life?

[tacticalogic]

So our elected representatives are pulling the wool over our eyes? How does that cause the public when they go to the polls on illegal drug issues, to vote those issues down time after time?

What caused the public when they went to the polls to elect Bill Clinton twice? Did they really want Bill Clinton, or did they want the image of who and what they'd been told Bill Clinton was?

[robertpaulsen]

"First. It is unnecessary to repeat what has frequently been said by this court with respect to the complete and paramount character of the power confided to Congress to regulate commerce among the several states. It is of the essence of this power that, where it exists, it dominates. Interstate trade was not left to be destroyed or impeded by the rivalries of local government. The purpose was to make impossible the recurrence of the evils which had overwhelmed the Confederation, and to provide the necessary basis of national unity by insuring 'uniformity of regulation against conflicting and discriminating state legislation.'

"It is for Congress to supply the needed correction where the relation between intrastate and interstate rates presents the evil to be corrected, and this it may do completely, by reason of its control over the interstate carrier in all matters having such a close and substantial relation to interstate commerce that it is necessary or appropriate to exercise the control for the effective government of that commerce."
-- Mr. Justice Hughes, the Shreveport Rate Case, 20 years before FDR's "New Deal Commerce Clause".

[AxelPaulsenJr]

What caused the public when they went to the polls to elect Bill Clinton twice? Did they really want Bill Clinton, or did they want the image of who and what they'd been told Bill Clinton was?

I am not sure they wanted either. Bush the first would have won be it not for Ross Perot.

[neverdem]

PING

[tdadams]

So our elected representatives are pulling the wool over our eyes? How does that cause the public when they go to the polls on illegal drug issues, to vote those issues down time after time?

How does walking blind through a pitch black room cause one to stub their toe or trip and fall?

[AxelPaulsenJr]

The WOD has not been challenged in the USSC on violation of Commerce Clause grounds.....

If you oppose the wod on federal grounds, what is your opinion of states' rights to make and enact laws regulating illegal drugs?

[AxelPaulsenJr]

How does walking blind through a pitch black room cause one to stub their toe or trip and fall?

If the public voted in laws legalizing all illegal drugs, would you accept their judgement?

[tacticalogic]

This is a case dealing with actual commerce and regulation of rail rates. This is entirely consistent with the original intent of the Commerce Clause, in that it deals with regulation required to establish an efficient infrastructure necessary for the process of commerce to take place. Find a case where Congress seeks to regulate something that is neither being bought or sold, on the grounds that it is "potentially interstate commerce" prior to the New Deal, and you'll have a case.