mar1juana Reform Approaches the Tipping Point

Just like with tobacco and alcohol, a regulated market would allow all manner of products. There would be mass market products analogous to cigarettes or beer, midlevel products like wine and cigars, and specialty offerings like pipe tobacco and spirits.

The key is that it would all be regulated, properly labeled as to its content, and most importantly, taxed.

 

What would that be? Can you give any good reason why mar1juana should be illegal? I can't think of even one.

 

Continue to do research on the issue. I particularly like the newsletter put out by stopthedrugwar.com every Friday. The editor covers a wide range of topics related to the drug war.

 

Because prohibition does not work. We have proven that conclusively at two different times in our country's history. Alcohol prohibition was an unmitigated disaster and the War on Drugs has not been any better. IMO, we should not try to ban bad habits, I think it is more effective to tax them heavily and use the proceeds to offset the societal costs.

I would highly encourage you to do some research on the subject. The "gateway theory" reasoning is just as specious as the Simpson's "Bear Patrol."

Myth: mar1juana is a Gateway Drug. Even if mar1juana itself causes minimal harm, it is a dangerous substance because it leads to the use of "harder drugs" like heroin, LSD, and cocaine.

Fact: mar1juana does not cause people to use hard drugs. What the gateway theory presents as a causal explanation is a statistic association between common and uncommon drugs, an association that changes over time as different drugs increase and decrease in prevalence. mar1juana is the most popular illegal drug in the United States today. Therefore, people who have used less popular drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and LSD, are likely to have also used mar1juana. Most mar1juana users never use any other illegal drug. Indeed, for the large majority of people, mar1juana is a terminus rather than a gateway drug.

* Morral, Andrew R.; McCaffrey, Daniel F. and Susan M. Paddock. “Reassessing the mar1juana gateway effect.” Addiction 97.12 (2002): 1493-504.

* United States. National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Population Estimates 1994. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1995.

* ---. National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Main Findings 1994. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1996.

* D.B. Kandel and M. Davies, “Progression to Regular mar1juana Involvement: Phenomenology and Risk Factors for Near-Daily Use,” Vulnerability to Drug Abuse, Eds. M. Glantz and R. Pickens. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 1992: 211-253.

At least with cocaine, the danger of addiction and problem behavior stemming from that addiction is real, so the reasoning for a ban is sound (mar1juana is not as addictive or as damaging). I personally believe that if cocaine were regulated and allowed to be sold in energy drinks like the original Coca-Cola or Vin Mariani (wine with cocaine mixed in), we would have far fewer problems with it and crack cocaine would go away virtually overnight.

Not at all. The government could easily tax mar1juana just like they do alcohol, tobacco, or any other product that is regulated and sold in stores. Some people would grow their own, but most would purchase it in the store, just like they do with alcohol and tobacco.

You hit them with the DUI laws that already exist.

Because mar1juana is FAR safer than alcohol. I would rather people smoke pot than drink alcohol. If we could take a dangerous drug (alcohol) and completely replace it with a safer one (mar1juana), I would take that as a good thing. If mar1juana sales reduced alcohol consumption, that would be a newt positive to our society.

mar1juana would not "make a bad situation worse," it would make a worse situation (illegal manufacture, distribution, and sales of mar1juana) better.

 

I don't know that you can use "better" to describe alcohol, but today's spirits are far safer than the bathtub gin they made during prohibition.

 

Half of our young people have used it before they leave high school and that number goes up even more when you expand the age range through college age. I'm not sure that it is possible for "more people" to try it.

In addition, the "Gateway Theory" is a bunch of hooey. If you believe that reasoning, I have a rock I could sell you that keeps tigers away.

 

Corporations get insurance breaks for having drug testing programs.

 

Actually, the number of companies that do drug testing has been dropping steadily since the late '80s.

 

Exactly. The only reason that pot is a gateway drug is because the only people who sell it would rather you were using cocaine or heroin, which carry a much higher profit margin.

 

The Air Force gives methamphetamines to its pilots.

 

It does save lives on the medical side, but do you actually believe we are doing the right thing arresting nearly 800,000 people per year for pot?

Please do some research.

Myth: mar1juana's Harms Have Been Proved Scientifically. In the 1960s and 1970s, many people believed that mar1juana was harmless. Today we know that mar1juana is much more dangerous than previously believed.

Fact: In 1972, after reviewing the scientific evidence, the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse concluded that while mar1juana was not entirely safe, its dangers had been grossly overstated. Since then, researchers have conducted thousands of studies of humans, animals, and cell cultures. None reveal any findings dramatically different from those described by the National Commission in 1972. In 1995, based on thirty years of scientific research editors of the British medical journal Lancet concluded that "the smoking of cannabis, even long term, is not harmful to health."

* United States. National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse. Marihuana: A signal of misunderstanding. Shafer Commission Report. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972.

* “Deglamorising Cannabis.” Editorial. The Lancet 356:11(1995): 1241.


Myth: mar1juana Causes an Amotivational Syndrome. mar1juana makes users passive, apathetic, and uninterested in the future. Students who use mar1juana become underachievers and workers who use mar1juana become unproductive.

Fact: For twenty-five years, researchers have searched for a mar1juana-induced amotivational syndrome and have failed to find it. People who are intoxicated constantly, regardless of the drug, are unlikely to be productive members of society. There is nothing about mar1juana specifically that causes people to lose their drive and ambition. In laboratory studies, subjects given high doses of mar1juana for several days or even several weeks exhibit no decrease in work motivation or productivity. Among working adults, mar1juana users tend to earn higher wages than non-users. College students who use mar1juana have the same grades as nonusers. Among high school students, heavy use is associated with school failure, but school failure usually comes first.

* Himmelstein, J.L. The Strange Career of Marihuana: Politics and Ideology of Drug Control in America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983.

* Mellinger, G.D. et al. “Drug Use, Academic Performance, and Career Indecision: Longitudinal Data in Search of a Model.” Longitudinal Research on Drug Use: Empirical Findings and Methodological Issues. Ed. D.B. Kandel. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1978. 157-177.

* Pope, H.G. et al., “Drug Use and Life Style Among College Undergraduates in 1989: A Comparison With 1969 and 1978,” American Journal of Psychiatry 147 (1990): 998-1001.