Our Failing Marijuana Policies Need Reform
by Allen St. Pierre
Cannabis prohibition, in 2009, is an abject failure as a public policy fostered and created by the federal government in 1937. In a country where alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical products are lawful, controlled and taxed commerce for adult use - despite the addicting, dangerous and deadly nature of them; annually killing an approximate 25,000, 400,000 and 100,000 Ameri
More..cans respectively - it makes no sense at all to criminalize the responsible use of the non-lethal cannabis plant by adults.
Cannabis is not harmless; no drug is, including aspirin. However, with no measured “lethal dose” and no fatalities on record, cannabis, as compared to alcohol, pharmacologically speaking, is a remarkably safe and non-toxic recreant.
Federal bureaucracies maintaining the status quo regarding the war on cannabis consumers, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration ( DEA ) and the Office of National Drug Control Policy, when confronted by the tens of millions of Americans who seek logical and effective alternatives to cannabis prohibition laws, claim that they are “winning the war against marijuana.” However, when asked to provide any credible proof that 70 years of cannabis prohibition has yielded any stated government goals to justify the policy, they put forth seven criteria as measure of their “successes.”
1 ) Driving cannabis use rates down; 2 ) increasing risk perception of cannabis use by high school seniors; 3 ) decreasing availability of cannabis among high school seniors; 4 ) deterring new users; reducing the number of cannabis admissions to treatment; 5 ) reducing emergency room mentions for cannabis; 6 ) reducing the potency of cannabis; and 7 ) increasing the price of cannabis.
But, guess what? Few will be surprised to discover that the government’s policy is a total failure on all fronts and in every single category. In fact, the federal government’s own management watchdog agency, the Office of Management and Budget ( OMB ), recently presented the DEA with a grade of “F” for its inability to achieve any of its stated goals, and by extension, any real rationale for the continuance of cannabis prohibition for responsible adult use.
Too often, proponents of cannabis prohibition, who almost exclusively come from five distinctly self-interested subgroups of Americans ( law enforcement; so-called anti-drug government agencies like DEA, ONDCP or NIDA; companies that make legal “drugs” like alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical products; the drug “rehab” industry and drug testing companies ) insist that their main justification for continuing with cannabis prohibition is, in effect, “to save the children.”
If this is truly the case, why will they not take heed from the years of government reports indicating that youth in America admit on drug use surveys that they have access to cannabis more than they do to taxed and regulated products like alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical products?
Why won’t American prohibitionists accept the success of the Netherlands’ 35-year-old, quasi-legal cannabis distribution system as proof positive that separating cannabis sales and uses from so-called hard drugs ( i.e., heroin, cocaine, meth, etc. ) removes any discernable “gateway effect”?
During these tough, recessionary economic times shouldn’t we discuss whether arresting more than 20 million citizens since 1965 for cannabis, 90 percent for possession only, has been an effective public policy? Does continuing the arrest of 900,000 citizens this year on cannabis charges make any sense? Why should taxpayers be paying for the incarceration of approximately 85,000 cannabis-only offenders? Why should our international borders, with Mexico for example, rife with illegal trafficking channels created by cannabis prohibition, compromise the general public’s safety in America, notably from foreign terrorists and violence-prone criminal syndicates?
Ultimately, why are adult cannabis consumers discriminated against and relegated to second-class citizen status when they, as rational consumers, are in fact making a safer choice to consume cannabis rather than alcohol ( or tobacco ) products?
Since my birth in 1965, the first year public health professionals started aggressively warning the public about the serious health concerns associated with long-term tobacco use, society has seen a 50 percent reduction in tobacco use. How did the government and society achieve the laudable public health goal of a substantial reduction in the consumption of tobacco products?
Did we threaten workers’ employment based on invasive urine tests? Did we pass mandatory minimum sentencing? Did we deny students college loans or evict them from their dorms, or take away their drivers licenses? Did we retard the banking system and the free flow of commerce? Did we de-stabilize our crucial international borders with Canada and Mexico? Did government create rank propaganda campaigns like the public school’s ineffective DARE program or the Partnership For a Drug-Free America’s ubiquitous and unpersuasive multimedia ad campaign?
The simple answer is “no,” and that we achieved the stated and important public health goal of reducing tobacco consumption in America by employing verifiable and credible health-related information to deter use - along with “progressive” taxation that has kept the black market in check - not the expensive and ineffective criminal justice system. Further, and maybe most importantly, we did not have to bend the Constitution into a pretzel to reduce tobacco smoking or deter the masses from driving while under the influence of alcohol.
Counter-intuitive as it may sound to some, especially to some of our elected policymakers, if the federal government ( or for that matter, Colorado’s government ) were really serious about actually reducing cannabis use in the country, we should employ society’s ever-evolving mores and values for tobacco and alcohol products - not criminal sanctions and prohibition laws - as the commonsense, moral and constitutional way to move forward with a rational cannabis policy. Yes we cannabis.
Allen St. Pierre is executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws ( NORML ) in Washington, D.C.
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Added: Apr 22 2009 In: news_politics,yoursay
Recorded on: Apr 22 2009
By: Teahupoo 
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