CRAZY 'POT WILL MAKE YOU SELL YOUR CHILDREN'

Warning From Otherwise Sane Senator

Here at NORML we are used to seeing some hysterical, unfounded claims
made about the ills of cannabis. However, even we were shocked when a
supporter from Iowa sent us Senator Tom Harkin's (D, IA) raging,
reefer madness-esque reply to his note asking him to justify why
medicinal cannabis is still illegal after the second largest medical
association in the country, the American College of Physicians,
publicly backed rescheduling of cannabis and the protection of
patients who use it for medicinal purposes. Here's the highlights of
the reply he received:

Dear XXXX:

Thank you for contacting me. I am always glad to hear from
you.

Marijuana is often the drug singled out for legalization. However,
marijuana is not the recreational drug that many believe it to be. In
a study completed by the Drug Abuse Warning Network, the number of
marijuana related emergencies has nearly reached the level of cocaine
related emergencies. As this statistic indicates, marijuana use often
has fatal consequences.

I was deeply troubled when I learned of another recent study which
found that nearly one-third of all eighth graders had tried marijuana.
As the father of two daughters, it greatly disturbs me that children
are exposed to drugs at such a young age. I am concerned that
legalization of this drug will only increase the number of children
who gain access to its harmful effects.

The victims of the drug war are many -- the small child whose parents
are so addicted to illegal drugs that they sell everything including
perhaps their own children to obtain a fix; the police officer's
family which must now learn to cope with the loss of their loved one
as a result of a violent drug bust gone awry. These are the people I
think of when I say that drugs pose a significant threat to the
security of this nation.

Legalizing drugs is equivalent to declaring surrender in the war on
drugs. However we may differ in tactics, I am hopeful that we can work
together to fight drugs in our communities and to make Iowa drug free.

Again, thanks for sharing your views with me. Please don't hesitate to
let me know how you feel on any issue that concerns you.

Sincerely,

Tom Harkin

United States Senator

Okay, so setting aside the fact that Senator Harkin's response
pertains to legalization of marijuana, and not medical cannabis as the
constituent asked about, let's deconstruct some of the myths
propagated in this letter.

1. "The number of marijuana related emergencies has nearly reached the
level of cocaine related emergencies. As this statistic indicates,
marijuana use often has fatal consequences."

This is an untruth propagated by the drug czar's minions. The Drug
Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) collects its data on 'marijuana related
emergencies' by noting every single time someone tells their doctor
that they use marijuana. So if I were to accidentally break my leg and
go to the ER, and my doctor asked if I use any drugs and I say I
occasionally smoke marijuana (as I should, as we should all be honest
with our physicians), then this would be a 'marijuana related
emergency,' even if I hadn't smoked in weeks.

And fatal? Please! As Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Harvard
Medical School Lester Grinspoon wrote in the Journal of the American
Medical Association, "There is no known case of a lethal overdose; on
the basis of animal models, the ratio of lethal to effective dose is
estimated as 40,000 to 1. By comparision, the ratio is.between 4 and
10 to 1 for ethanol (alcohol)." Additionally, a 1994 report by the
Australian National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre found that "There
are no recorded cases of fatalities attributable to cannabis, and the
extrapolated lethal dose from animal studies cannot be achieved by
recreational users."

2. "I was deeply troubled when I learned of another recent study which
found that nearly one-third of all eighth graders had tried marijuana."

I do not doubt that marijuana is easier to obtain for minors than
alcohol, which troubles NORML as well. But this problem is precisely
why prohibition is a terrible policy-there is no incentive at all for
suppliers to keep their product out of the hands of children. This is
in stark contrast to alcohol, whose vendors must protect their
valuable liquor licenses (often costing around $100,000) by ensuring
they do not sell to minors. You didn't think they did it out of the
kindness of their own heart, did you? In a regulated market,
government can incentivize suppliers in this way. On the black market,
we leave kids out in the cold-and the prohibitionists point to us and
say, "What about the children?" Which brings us to.

3. "The victims of the drug war are many - the small child whose
parents are so addicted to illegal drugs that they sell everything
including perhaps their own children to obtain a fix; the police
officer's family which must now learn to cope with the loss of their
loved one as a result of a violent drug bust gone awry."

Classic drug war rhetoric-let's avoid serious policy discussion and
instead flee to hyperbolic appeals to emotion, without serious
examination of how these nightmare scenarios are facilitated by
current policy. First, marijuana is less addictive than current legal
drugs, according to the Institute of Medicine, let alone illicit drugs
one might associate with the type of dependency described above.

While marijuana generally is not associated with the same level of
violence that other illicit drugs are, there is no doubt that there
have been fatal incidents (some involving law enforcement) involving
marijuana. The tragic aspect of this fact is that given marijuana's
proven relative safety and lower addiction rates compared with legal
drugs, the prohibitionist policy towards it-sustained by the same kind
of rhetoric that Senator Harkin uses-has contributed more to the
violence than any other factor. Indeed, when one looks at the alcohol
industry today, there is no violent crime in the production and
shipment of their goods; yet were one to see the same industry in the
1920s during alcohol prohibition, one might have seen other Senators
making the same empty arguments about alcohol.