Marijuana advocates hope to rise from 'prohibition'
cnn.com
cnn.com
Especially once you factor in all the costs of prohibition, it makes no sense. If marijuana were legal today, it wouldn't be worth prohibiting; at most it might be worth requiring standard disclosures of THC percentages and maybe restricting to 18+, and specific driving or other professional restrictions.
Because it's banned, the whole issue gets attention way out of proportion to the actual importance.
These agencies have a strong incentives to keep the charade going. Especially now with all of the overseas military operations ending and a ton of technology and government workers needing employment.
I'm comfortable telling you what isn't the reason for criminalization (government brainwashing), but less comfortable positing reasons for it. But if I had to guess, I'd say this:
People are inherently loss-averse; it's a fundamental part of our psychology. Most people (I think correctly, but I understand that reasonable people disagree) judge that making cannabis use as widespread as alcohol and tobacco would be a net negative. They worry about that, and it clouds their judgement about the ongoing costs of enforcement, especially because most people never come into contact with the direct costs of enforcement.
(I think 80-90% of people have no real direct opinion on the drug war either way, except from what they're told by the prohibitionists. "It will harm our children, keep your kids away from drugs" is a powerful message. Racism was a powerful tool in getting prohibition enacted in the first place.)
This is why I think LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) is one of the most important anti-prohibition organizations out there.
Corrections officers, maybe, but I dispute that ordinary Americans pay attention to the interests and positions of corrections officers the way they do police.
In California, the corrections officers are one of the 3 strongest unions (actually, MORE influential than the police, second only to teachers I think). It's pretty insane. No one really cares about them, except that they have enough money and votes to be a major political force.
I think the drug war as a whole will be ended in 10-20 years, with prohibition at the level of stopping illegal/untaxed cigarettes today, and starting by removing marijuana from the schedules and moving a fair number of schedule I to schedule II (MDMA, in particular). But it's interesting to know why and how we got to where we are.
It's obvious and banal to point out that there are government actors who oppose legalization. Of course there are. There would have to be, or marijuana would already be legal. But it is not true to suggest that law enforcement uniformly opposes legalization. The law enforcement bodies that tend to actually matter in policy decisions --- state and large urban police forces --- are caving on this issue. They can't afford enforcement anymore.
For what it's worth, I do not believe that MDMA and LSD and opiates will be decriminalized. At best, they'll obtain the status fentanyl has today: drugs that are prescribable, but only under close scrutiny.
The screwed up thing is that the opiate war is actually contributing to losing in Afghanistan (i.e. a real war).
I get the idea of having the freedom to do what you wish with your health and body but it just seems inevitable that there will be more people abusing it, using it as a gateway drug and causing negative affects on society. I can't really think of anything positive society as a whole would gain from this except maybe tax money?
[Edit] Then again, a lot of this can be said about alcohol. I'm not sure which one is easier to abuse.
Already, we're seeing research into using meth against the flu [1] and ectacy used to fight PTSD.
[1] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KDIzE_...
Oh no! Research!?! Oh, the humanity!
Citation?
The biggest effect this will have on our society is the dismantling of the Mexican drug cartels and the ending of the War on Drugs. This will obviate the need for hundreds of deaths and hundreds of thousands of arrests each year. A large percentage of the US population will no longer be criminals for recreationally using an intoxicant less harmful than any legal intoxicant, including alcohol.
Driving stoned?
Oh, you meant driving while impaired/distracted? Yes, that is always a bad idea. Which is why it is of course illegal.
If anyone reading this is in the habit of driving around stoned, please stop before you kill or seriously injure yourself, someone important to you, or some random stranger. It's just not worth the risk.
I support legalization, but these fabrications do not help anyone. DWI should remain illegal.
In the states that are considering legalization, the vast majority of possession arrests end up with the charges dismissed or a civil fine anyway. So from a purely logical perspective, spending a ton of money on arrests that will only result in the charges getting dropped anyway makes no sense.
(It is easier in Chicago for teenagers to get alcohol than weed; you just pay people on the street to get it for you. No, you cannot walk up to a random street person in Chicago and buy weed.)
Just because you don't know how you'd acquire an 8th, doesn't mean that it isn't easy to acquire.
If you're the type of person to smoke, then you'd know where to go to get it. Or you can just ask someone and they'd tell you.
You're discarding the context of the thread here. Everybody agrees that the "type of person to smoke" --- that is, people who are driven to smoke --- can readily acquire marijuana. But it does not follow from that that everybody can readily acquire marijuana.
Marijuana is stigmatized. Its distribution is cliquish and sometimes confined to subcultures (we may be blinded to that because demographically we tend to adhere to some of those subcultures). It's also illegal.
The point here is: marijuana would be much easier to get --- so much easier that it is likely that way more people would try it --- if it was legalized or completely decriminalized.
(I oppose criminalization).
It's another to be able to find any random stranger, walk to a gas station and get alcohol.
They're both "easy" in a sense, but there's a semantic difference about whether it's easy for YOU to get cannabis or if it's easy for ANYONE to get alcohol.
I suspect tptacek is right at least about trying it. The debate about a longer-term trend of overall use is almost pointless until we wait and see. Many, many people I know claim that they haven't tried it because: they don't know where to/how to, they don't trust that they wouldn't get something tainted, it's illegal.
Yes, there are some that repeat the "it makes you a loser", etc, and they're not going to try it either way, but I certainly think that it will be more accessible to people who would have never pursued it but may be curious. (edit, sorry, there are also plenty of people who simply don't want to do it or don't want to be mentally impaired, or are worried about provoking an underlying mental issue, etc, I don't mean to criticize them.
Gateway drug to what? Just because one drug have been used before another doesn't mean that the first drug automatically will make you want the second drug.
Cannabis tends to be less addictive than alcohol, it's pretty much impossible to kill yourself with an overdose, and people intoxicated with it tend to overestimate how impaired they are rather than underestimate it like with alcohol.
I've seen a bunch of different studies using different methodologies to come up with various rankings of drugs by degree of harm [1][2][3], but every one of them rates cannabis as safer than alcohol.
EDIT: I expect that the "gateway drug" effect is due to people finding out that pot is much less dangerous than they are led to believe. People have always heard that using illegal drugs would kill them, then find that their friends are using it safely and assume that all illegal drugs are similarly safe.
[1]http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/drug-ranking.htm [2]http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/4/e000774.full [3]http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourc...
Unless you're saying that because cannabis is legal I'm going to think that a cop is more likely to let me go, or be less likely to check me or what? The legality of cannabis use doesn't change the likelihood of me getting pulled over, no?
Or am I misunderstanding where you're coming from?
The legality of cannabis does not affect the likelihood of me getting pulled over so I don't understand. Or are you saying "keeping your job and not getting a felony = getting away with it"?
I mean, how many people are you imagining are cool with a DUI conviction and not a, I don't know, whatever it is if you get pulled over with weed in the car, possession+DUI?
Stipulate a fixed likelihood of being pulled over at all. You're pulled over for making the kind of mistake anyone could make, or pulled over because a traffic cop is bored or has a quota. But once you're pulled over, the likelihood of an officer detecting marijuana anywhere in the car including its passengers is far higher than the likelihood of an officer detecting alcohol intoxication in the driver.
These observations are so straightforward that I feel like we might be getting argumentative just for the sake of it. For what it's worth, I'm in favor of decriminalization.
huh? I'm not trying to argue with you. I know that you think cannabis is a net-negative and I have no desire to argue with you about that. I respect your position and know that you're in favor of decriminalization.
I still do not understand what you're getting at. If I were to smoke a bowl, drink two beers and get in my car and got pulled over, I guarantee you I would be asked if I had been drinking because that would be far more present on my breath. Even if I had some weed in a grinder in my glove box.
>detecting marijuana anywhere in the car including its passengers is far higher than the likelihood of an officer detecting alcohol intoxication in the driver.
I have no idea how you come to this conclusion or find it obvious.
Besides, I think we're just going to disagree at the core of this. I like to think that there is more keeping people from recklessly drunk-driving than a "felony" on their record or losing their job.
But if I'm pulled over and my car reeks of weed, a bunch of things are probably going to happen. The cop is going to shine his flashlight throughout the car looking for sources of the smell. He's going to ask me to get out of the car and will probably then frisk me for his own safety. He'll ask to search the car. He'll question everyone in the car. In many states, he is likely to call for a drug dog to effect probable cause for a search of the car.
My impression is that these things not only happen but happen routinely at traffic stops where cannabis is implicated; the state police have a whole infrastructure ready to go to make cannabis arrests happen, and they are higher-value stops (arrests) than traffic stops. None of these things happen during ordinary traffic stops, and unless you've been driving erratically or spilled high-proof alcohol on your clothes or have an open container, nothing else does either.
The problem is that cannabis stinks (literally); it has a sticky, lingering, resinous smell. Alcohol simply doesn't generate the same evidence.
In the big operations they actually have a mobile police station in a truck, and if you register over the limit in the portable device, you are taken into the 'station' and booked immediately.
Since the introduction of this probably 20 years ago, the DUI rates have plummeted. Last year, over 12 million drivers were tested, which resulted in about 100,000 convictions, a rate of 0.8%. Since the introduction in the 1980s, there has been a reduction in the single vehicle, nighttime fatal accident rate of 26%, as well as an overall reduction in accidents across the board. Before the program started, fatal road accidents testing showed that the driver of the vehicle recorded a blood alcohol content of 50mg or higher (0.05) in 49% of accidents. This has been reduced to around 20% now, along with a nearly halving of fatal accidents (fatality rates are also reduced with mandatory seatbelts, increased speed limit enforcement and improvements in vehicle design).
There is no argument that increased enforcement lowers the chance that a road user will be involved in a fatal accident. In any case of decriminalization, this information must be used to design an enforcement program for driving that goes along with it.
There's no doubt plenty of people are driving around stoned right now - so arguably any random testing should include alcohol, marijuana, amphetamines, cocaine and other drugs all in one simple test. Perhaps the technology isn't there yet, but it's one of the most effective harm minimisation strategies available.
And anecdotally, the one time I ate a pot brownie I was convinced that I must be swaying back and forth until my friends convinced me I wasn't. The experience started with 20 minutes of horrid vertigo which I gather was a pretty idiosyncratic reaction, so take that with a grain of salt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium#Recreational_use_in_Chin...
Do you have a shred of evidence to support this claim?
He's just expecting usage to rise if it's legal.
The misinformed FUD is disappointing. DARE won't even try to demonize cannabis like that anymore.
>it just seems inevitable that there will be more people abusing it
Sigh, "it just seems inevitable" == "I am just repeating the same thing I've heard and believed forever without looking into it". See, Portugal.
edit, If the anti-drug people who have no context want to judge and downvote based on inaccurate out-dated stereotypes, so be it. Surely downvoting me will make me realize just how much of a loser I am.
Also there's the pleasure of smoking weed for those who are into it. What's the positive affect french fries have on society?
It legalization in some states is to be enacted, I would think that an accompanying set of regulations about where and how much can be used. The first problem is driving under influence, but then there is also the need for employers to be able to enforce drag-free workplaces ( current drug tests measure any usage, not just a current level of intoxication). then there's acceptable places of use - like cigarettes, most people won't want to eat a meal with someone taking up at the table next to them.
Finally, on the issue of taxation and importation - if you want to get the economic benefits then you need to get all protective and prevent imports,a nd you need to have a framework of regulating the strength so that people can get a consistent dose, in the same way you know how much two beers is going to affect you.
Ultimately prohibition isn't really working, but lurching to the other extreme quickly could have a lot of issues as well, which would be more likely to bring back the regulations? A gradual decriminlisation, accompanied with regulations on consumption and funding of education and health programs from the taxation revenue would be the best way to go.
Again, that has not been the case when decriminalization of drugs has happened in other places.
Also, at least in the case of Washington, all of these issues are already accounted for (due to medical use laws, or new legislation) or are going to be accounted for by the board setup to oversee cannabis sales. (For brevity, instead of me listing them, just check the Wikipedia page and the bill itself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Initiative_502#Provi...
>you need to have a framework of regulating the strength so that people can get a consistent dose, in the same way you know how much two beers is going to affect you.
Heh, I think the customers and providers will be wanting that as much as the government does. Ultimately though, I think it will vary because it's not like alcohol. Various types of alcohols have slightly different buzzes, but cannabis has a lot more components that vary more from type to type.
I doubt this to be true. Illegality has some effect on the amount and number of users. Personally, I don't touch the stuff for a variety of reasons, of which one is illegality which leads to having to deal with drug dealers. If it were legal (or decriminalised), it would increase the chances of me coming across it at a party or similar. At the margin this would have some effect on usage.
The problem with trying to do before/after studies is the patchy data, usually filled in by statistical sampling which leads to error margins. It's pretty easy to determine how much alcohol is consumed per year, because of the status of the industry you can work it out from the sales (the amount of home-brewed hooch wouldn't even been a rounding error).
In any case like this, with very large data sizes (ie, a big chunk of the adult population), any change in the legal status will have an effect at the margins. Hard-core and even regular users will not be affected by the legal status - but on the margin there will be plenty of people who might be inclined to take the occasional puff but don't because of constricted supply and the fact that it is illegal. Remove this and usage will go up - the degree is unknown and probably unknowable - but it will be there.
Any change in the law changes the future, and especially so in this case.
I'm not really arguing for or against here, just pointing out that usage will go up, and nobody knows exactly what that will mean.
History has shown us repeatedly that attempting to "legislate morality", attempting to run people's lives "for their own good" leads to far worse outcomes than simply letting the original "undesired" behavior alone. We should only use the power of the state to control people's behavior in so far as, and precisely when, it harms others. And we should use social and cultural pressure (not guns, violence, and imprisonment) to try to improve our society in regards to negative or self-destructive behaviors.
- ending our massively expensive "war on drugs"
- ending massive spending on incarceration
- decreasing the U.S. incarceration rate, which is the highest in the world
- stop penalizing citizens who are using a drug which is scientifically proven to be harmless (and is also much less dangerous than alcohol)
- raise U.S. tax revenue from drug sales, instead of sending the money to Mexican drug lords
- spend some of this new tax revenue on actually rehabilitating drug users, instead of sending them to prisons, where they often come out worse than they went in.
I could go on. Drug legalization was tried in Portugal, which had a massive drug problem, and it solved most of their problems. See: http://www.economist.com/node/14309861 .
I suppose that is one way to reduce incarceration rates: reduce the number of laws.
I seriously doubt the majority of incarcerations involve a regular person just smoking a few joints. Most are hardcore drug users that committed other crimes or dealers (which will still be illegal).
"raise U.S. tax revenue from drug sales, instead of sending the money to Mexican drug lords"
If drug users really cared about the violence in Mexico, they would boycott any drugs grown in Mexico. I haven't even seen this as a suggestion. Why?
"spend some of this new tax revenue on actually rehabilitating drug users, instead of sending them to prisons, where they often come out worse than they went in."
I thought drugs were okay? Why do we need to spend the money we get from drug revenue to rehabilitate addicts? There are plenty of other things that could use that money..like paying down the national debt.
"I could go on. Drug legalization was tried in Portugal, which had a massive drug problem, and it solved most of their problems."
I would really like to see some pros and cons. The problem is that all of the pro-drug users only want to talk about the great things (and deny any of the bad ones).
Until we can have an open and honest discussion, there won't be any progress.
Yes, and legalizing drugs would be one way of doing that.
"I thought drugs were okay?"
Marijuana was found to be non-harmful by medical researchers. Certainly other drugs are not.
"If drug users really cared about the violence in Mexico, they would boycott any drugs grown in Mexico. I haven't even seen this as a suggestion. Why?"
The point I'm making is legalization would raise revenues here and have a positive side effect on Mexico. How would it be a bad thing to help Mexico return to normalcy?
"Why do we need to spend the money we get from drug revenue to rehabilitate addicts? There are plenty of other things that could use that money..like paying down the national debt."
Regardless of what we do with the funds, it's additional revenue. Whether or not we spend it on rehabilitating drug addicts or not is a different discussion.
"I would really like to see some pros and cons. The problem is that all of the pro-drug users only want to talk about the great things (and deny any of the bad ones)."
Pros:
- increased revenue
- less spending on enforcement
- lower incarceration rate, less spending on prisons
Cons:
- greater access, though access isn't difficult right now.
- may result in more drug users (Decriminalization in Portugal did not result in more drug users, but full legalization could have a different effect.)
Criminalizing popular drugs like Marijuana is no different than alcohol prohibiton in the 20's, and we all know how that turned out.
I am not an illegal drug user myself. Read some more on the topic and you will likely be swayed to the side of legalization, which I and many others believe to be the side of reason.
I think many people have a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of decriminalizing or legalizing drugs. It sounds bad on its face, but the actual results are the opposite of what you'd expect.
As a consequence of using it, with enforcement and penalties varying very widely based on socioeconomic status, a great many people have their lives compromised by legal, not medical or addictive, properties of the substance.
The United States tried prohibition with alcohol. As you may recall, it didn't work.
My own view is that a legal regime in which the use of drugs is decriminalized, the negative consequences of use and/or sale are not (e.g.: if you as a dealer / corporate vendor are liable / responsible / deliberately causing harm, illness, or seeking to create addictions particularly among children or others unable to provide valid legal consent to use), and terms and condition of sale are legal but highly regulated, we'd be far better off than we are today.
If there are abusers of marijuana or other drugs whose use is causing a problem, then that use should be treated as a medical problem, without legal sanction. If use/abuse of a drug leads to other criminal activity (theft/robbery, assault, sexual crimes, etc.), then those activities should receive legal sanction. Possibly (though I'm not fully convinced and inclined against) with an additional penalty for deliberate intoxication.
I learned the following from observation and having frank conversations with them (before that I expected recreational marijuana use to be like alcohol use):
* Weed is addictive, probably on the level of cigarettes. Sure plenty of people have tried tobacco and don't have the habit, but for people who develop it may be pretty hard to quit.
* People high on weed seem more pleasant and predictable than drunk people.
* Withdrawal seems to be unpleasant. Paranoia and restlessness.
* Decreasing returns - its harder to get high after a while, making you smoke more.
* They all admitted they feel damaged from continuous use - their thinking ability diminished after a few years and the habit costs them plenty of money. One girl smoked every day, even though she has reduced her use significantly and doesn't get high any more.
I really want a balanced approach to this. While not like heroin or cocaine, cannabis is definitely a drug. While banning its use is counterproductive, legalization shouldn't be done in a way encouraging use or minimizing the real dangers. People should be in the least informed before making a responsible choice. Maybe putting warning labels, banning use in public and banning advertisements in a good complement to a legalization.
Like you, I have firsthand experience with friends who have had this problem. I also know enough people who have had this experience with their friends to be fairly confident that this is a common problem.
I don't believe mental illness in the general population to be underdiagnosed, rather the opposite. I believe most people are narcissistic enough that treatment has an effect somewhere between the Hawthorne Effect and Munchhausen Syndrome. Attention and approval are highly addictive, more than caffeine, sometimes more than even heroin -- look at how well interventions work. I believe most psychology and psychiatry academics studied those fields to understand their personal problems, which leads people in those fields to hold a perception bias about the rest of the people on the planet.
Some illnesses are overdiagnosed some are severely underdiagnosed.
Yes, among those who are previously disposed.
http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/blog/time-to-end-the-w...
"Ten years ago the Portuguese Government responded to widespread public concern over drugs by rejecting a 'war on drugs' approach and instead decriminalized drug possession and use. It further rebuffed convention by placing the responsibility for decreasing drug demand as well as managing dependency under the Ministry of Health rather than the Ministry of Justice. With this, the official response towards drug-dependent persons shifted from viewing them as criminals to treating them as patients."
I found this interesting, because the factual outcome that Branson reports for this policy change is "Now with a decade of experience Portugal provides a valuable case study of how decriminalization coupled with evidence-based strategies can reduce drug consumption, dependence, recidivism and HIV infection and create safer communities for all."
I would like to see a policy change that reduces drug use, especially by young people whose brain structures are still forming. I have seen too many people in my generation, and in the generation of my children, who appear to have used "only" marijuana among the drugs that are currently illegal in the United States, and who yet "burned out" and have basically become losers. A mind is a terrible thing to waste. There are a lot of interesting trade-offs involved in attempting to ban selling and using a substance that is relatively easy to produce and to trade, just as we found when the United States tried Prohibition of alcohol in years after World War I. The current system of drug regulation in the United States does not appear to be working to achieve its stated goals. If an approach like that now found in Portugal--correctly characterized as "decriminalization" rather than as "legalization"--can both reduce burden on the law-enforcement system and reduce use of drugs, I think that approach would be worth trying in the United States.
AFTER EDIT: To reply to the first comment posted below, asking for study citations, one study,
Fu, Q., Heath, A. C., & Bucholz, K. K. (2008). A twin-family study of suicidality and illicit drug use in young people. Samuel B. Guze Symposium on Alcoholism.
http://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...
is particularly interesting for having a "genetically sensitive design" (it is a study of the offspring of co-twin parents). Marijuana use increases suicide risk for young people, controlling for other factors that raise suicide risk.
More generally, cannabis use increases risk for psychotic symptoms.
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=10228...
The review article
Bava, S., & Tapert, S. F. (2010). Adolescent brain development and the risk for alcohol and other drug problems. Neuropsychology review, 20(4), 398-413.
doi: 10.1007/s11065-010-9146-6
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2988999/
provides a good overview of current research on adolescent brain development and abnormalities observed during neurological studies of marijuana users.
Legalization does that:
http://blog.norml.org/2009/08/28/study-says-its-easier-for-t...
The reward of smoking pot is pretty limited for a young person. The risk of permanently affecting their cognitive abilities for the remainder of their lives may be small, but the costs are large if this is the case.
Most people are able to identify someone who is now a stoner loser and who was once a bright young thing. The same applies for alcohol and other drugs. There does need to be a concerted effort to prevent young people from developing a pattern of usage for any drugs.
This contributes to the unfair characterization that it is the drugs themselves that are the primary problem.
I uh, guess it's anecdotal... I watched several hours of TV while at home with my parents over the holiday. I honestly think every show they were watching on CBS had a pot reference in it and it was light hearted and didn't even put it in a bad light. It's a long running joke on shows. Late night TV is inundated with guests who talk and joke about using it.