EFFECTS OF MARIJUANA-USE NOT AS HARMFUL AS ALCOHOL

He's often demonized as existentially lazy, obtuse and prone to erratic
fits of violence. He might look just like one of us - and indeed is a
great number of us, many with families and stable jobs.

He was recently described by John P. Walters as a "vicious criminal
terrorist," and he and his forsaken friends litter our penal system,
their lives and careers forever ruined on account of their victimless
pastime. What could an honest, tax-paying, otherwise law-abiding
citizen possibly do in this country to earn such a fate?

He need do nothing more than be an occasional user of
marijuana.

Immediately after his appointment as the Director of the Office of
National Drug Control Policy in late 2001, Walters began his fanatical
campaign against marijuana, declaring it to be "America's most
dangerous drug" and spreading sensational folklore like the notion
modern marijuana is twice as potent as it used to be and has no more
medical value than crack cocaine.

He proceeded to spend the next two years touring the United States,
encouraging more draconian penalties and stifling any measure which
might serve to reallocate money from punishment to rehabilitation. But
though, by the ONCDP's own admission, $1 trillion has thus far been
wasted on all of this disgraceful propaganda, after half a century of
acquiescence the rhetoric is losing its luster. How could this be?
Because despite the moral panic the disingenuous Drug Czar and his
cohorts wish to foment, the empirical facts are demonstrably different.

In almost every controlled clinical study, marijuana doesn't actually
cause mental or physical illness, long-term memory loss, sterility or
any other impairment of the immune system, nor does it seem to cause
lung cancer or emphysema without concurrent tobacco use.

It hasn't been proven to contribute to crime - other than marijuana
possession, of course - and users don't even seem to be more likely to
be involved in automobile fatalities. (This is, of course, in stark
contrast to the havoc alcohol wreaks on our faculties of common sense
and our bodies, and its own considerable contribution to the
commission of crime.)

Marijuana doesn't appear to be a gateway to hard drugs to a greater
extent than any of its legal counterparts. It doesn't cause the
average college student any academic trouble, and wages among working
adult users are, on average, actually higher than those of nonusers.

As to whether or not cannabis has any practical application, the
answer is clearly a resounding "yes;" clinical studies have repeatedly
demonstrated that THC could serve a valuable role in therapeutic
medicine as a nausea-reliever, analgesic and antidepressant.

All of the above - which has been conveniently aggregated and cited on
drugpolicy.org, by the way -; is more than one needs to prove the
constitutional case anyway. Since when have such things been a
constitutionally sufficient condition for prohibition? (To that end,
one cannot help but wonder how many tireless opponents of marijuana
have given testimony on the subject only with the aid of a certain
addictive stimulant percolated in almost every American household.)

What kind of democracy is this anyway? Is it not the very point of our
elegant Constitution to protect the interests of the minority from the
tyranny of the majority? The War on Drugs has been perhaps the most
embarrassing failure in the history of modern American public policy -
Reuters reported back in 2006 that marijuana was officially the
nation's largest cash crop.

Obviously prohibition is not the answer, and as always, this is merely
an aside to a more profound conversation; rather than "How do we lower
drug usage?" it seems we actually ought to be asking, "Why is it so
high in the first place?"