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."
Your defense of alcohol and criticism of pot smokers (I'm limiting this to pot, since that's what this article is about) is so selective and biased as to be pure propaganda.
You would have us ignore those who endanger society by drinking to excess and have us only think of those who drink responsibly and in moderation. At the same time, you would have us believe there is no such thing as a responsible pot smoker who might use in moderation and infrequently.
Many people drink to get drunk and those people are far more dangerous to themselves and the rest of society than pot smokers are, by far. If you won't acknowledge that, your input in this debate is completely worthy of dismissal.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Tell that to all the alcoholics and their families. Did you know that In 2002, 17,419 people were killed in crashes involving alcohol, representing 41 percent of the 42,815 people killed in all traffic crashes, according to NHTSA data.
Did ya? Tell their families that alcohol can be used "responsibly".
The only purpose of drug alcohol use is to get high drunk and getting high drunk is a negligent act that endangers innocent people.
Sounds about right. I refer you to the above statistic.
Decriminalizing marijuana in other left-wing nations like the Netherlands has resulted in all drug use dramatically increasing as well as an increase in crime and the loss of innocent lives.
I got news for you. Most of the crime in U.S. is related to drug trafficing and dealing.
Only left-wingers and drug-using drunks libertarians want to legalize drugs alcohol.
Check the following and see if you want to stand by your claim--
"The number of addicts in the Netherlands has been stable - at 25,000 - for many years. Expressed as a percentage of the population, this number is approximately the same as in Germany, Sweden and Belgium. There are very few young heroin addicts in the Netherlands, largely thanks to the policy of separating the users markets for hard and soft drugs. The average age of heroin addicts is now 36."
Source: Netherlands Ministry of Justice, Fact Sheet: Dutch Drugs Policy, (Utrecht: Trimbos Institute, Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction, 1999), from the Netherlands Justice Ministry website at http://www.minjust.nl:8080/a_beleid/fact/cfact7.htm.
There were an estimated 980,000 hardcore heroin addicts in the United States in 1999, 50 percent more than the estimated 630,000 hardcore addicts in 1992.
www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/heroin.htm
This works out to about double the rate of heroin addiction in the US as in the Netherlands.
"The prevalence figures for cocaine use in the Netherlands do not differ greatly from those for other European countries. However, the discrepancy with the United States is very large. The percentage of the general population who have used cocaine at some point is 10.5% in the US, five times higher than in the Netherlands. The percentage who have used cocaine in the past month is 0.7% in the US, compared with 0.2% in the Netherlands.*"
Source: Netherlands Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, Drug Policy in the Netherlands: Progress Report September 1997-September 1999, (The Hague: Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, November 1999), p. 6. The report notes "*The figures quoted in this paragraph for drug use in the US are taken from the National Household Survey 1997, SAMHSA, Office of Applied Studies, Washington, DC".
Now check out he figures for Singapore--
"According to the Straits Times, Singapore is treating 7,700 addicts (up from 5,700 in 190). Assuming improbably, that these are the only ones, Singapore still has an addiction rate 12% higher than the U.S."
www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/50/098.html
Looks like Singapore has over twice the heroin addiction rate as the Netherlands.
Note-- those are for 1995, the latest year's figures I could find.
Also, the "up from 5,700 in 190" must mean 1990. No other year makes sense. It is also consistent with the rise in US figures over a similar period 1992-1999.
NOW we know the author's REAL agenda has nothing to do with marijana.
I agree. Pot is much more fun when it is illegal.
Oh, so I guess you think terrorists wouldn't engage in anything so immoral as illegal drug trade to obtain funding for their operations. Think again.
ROFL!
Oh, so I guess you think terrorists wouldn't engage in anything so immoral as illegal drug trade to obtain funding for their operations. Think again.
I don't have the numbers, but isn't the MJ consumed in the US primarily grown in North America?
No doubt the Islamists are getting some of their funding from the opium/heroin trade, but are you sure MJ is a significant source of money?
In the case of the Netherlands, doesn't most of the money from the MJ trade go to the small, regulated retailers and the government? Can't imagine there's much of a black market there for pot.
A black market provides an opportunity for terrorists and other unsavory types to make money.
I don't doubt pot is big business (I know it's easier to get and more widely used than opium/herion) so I wouldn't be surprised if terrorist organizations were in on the action.
Of course. Without question.
I hope I don't sound insensitive, but what are you trying to convey to your average pot smoker, that you too could end up dismembered by Colombian coke dealers? That's a little silly.
That can't be true as a general rule, since the number of people who have used pot is vastly greater than the number who have used all other illegal drugs combined.
Yes and I also saw this story posted this morning, on the effects of excessive pot smoking.
Hey, our goobermint leaders are too busy busting bong suppliers to mess with illegal aliens. After all, those glass pipes are far more dangerous than the criminal illegals that account for 90+ percent of LA's most wanted list.
The WOsD is utterly stupid.
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