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."
It probably wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen.
Ideally, this should be decided state by state. The states are the marketplace of ideas. If California and Massachussetts wants to legalize it all, let them do it and we'll all sit back in the comfort of our prohibitionist states and see how it all works out.
That is well within the pervue of the states' authority.
Entirely possible, but not an answer to the question.
That is good, because I don't want to live next door to a crack house, legal or illegal. I want someone to be able to do something about the crack house next door.
You seem to have a very narrow scope on this topic.
Eleven states, I believe, have voted to legalize medical marijuana. Yet, the federal government says that doesn't matter at all. The federal law says it's still illegal, no matter what.
That's not letting the people decide. That's imposing central, national tyranny.
Maybe not the answer that you consider to be the correct one.
Perhaps so, but medical mj notwithstanding, no state has voted to date to legalize all illegal drugs. And I argue that the reason why, is that the public does not want those said same drugs to be legalized.
Recent state referrendums have resulted in wins for both the loserdopians as well as the JBT's.
Interesting. But I must confess that the state referendums I am most worried about presently is that of W's chances at re-election. I am most worried.
After the debacle in PA the other night, I'm taking a week or so off from worrying about elections.
So if it is actual intrastate commerce, like drugs, you're saying that it could be regulated if it has a substantial effect on interstate commerce?
Not a matter of "correctness", but rather of being respondent to the context of the question.
Sorry, but your trying to sneak the aggregation principle in under the table. Won't work.
The federal law says it's illegal because it has no medical use. If marijuana were a Schedule II drug, I don't believe the feds could stop California.
They could be prescribed better for sure and I do think over time views sometimes change as time reveals their best application and dose.
I think I see less of a distinction between legal and illegal drugs. Marijuana, a cheap and long used substance with mind altering and medicinal properties can give you twenty years in prison for possesion of a small amount. Prozac, an expensive relatively new lab-created chemical with mind altering and medicinal properties is perfectly fine, legally. Both alter brain chemistry to improve a person's mood.
I don't see much difference religiously or morally. There are desperate psychotic patients who are prescribed Prozac, but I believe the millions of users generating millions in drug company profits are mostly people looking to be happier, similar to the marijuana users. I believe in the rule of law, and don't advocate breaking drug laws, but I think there is a huge moral problem when the alcohol, Prozac, and Ritalin crowd is locking up the marijuana crowd. Sometimes I wonder if marijuana were a patented drug instead of a ubiquitous weed if we wouldn't be seeing TV ads for Marinol.
How else is Congress to regulate interstate commerce? Unless, of corse, you're saying Congress shouldn't have that power.
It has no medical use according to the fedgov itself! Many doctors disagree.
If marijuana were a Schedule II drug, I don't believe the feds could stop California.
And who determines which drug classification it falls under... again, the fedgov.
"Regulate" - to keep in good working order. Wickard v. Filburn did not result from a conservative reading of the Constitution. Pretending that decision was self-evidently correct will not make it so.
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