MARIJUANA'S ONLY PROBLEM

It's Illegal, While More Dangerous Drugs and Meds Are Legal and Often Abused

It is time to re-evaluate our attitudes about alcohol and other drugs.

In purely objective terms, beverage alcohol is a recreational hard
drug: mind-numbing, easy to misuse and intimately connected with
aggression, carelessness, and despair. When a drugged individual is
involved in a violent crime or an accident, the drug is most often
alcohol. In America, alcohol is responsible for 65 percent of
murders, 55 percent of college rapes (that's 70,000 per year), 39
percent of traffic fatalities, 33 percent of all trauma injuries, 33
percent of drownings and other accidental deaths, and 25 percent of
teen suicides. About 150,000 Americans die from chronic
alcohol-related illnesses each year, and another 3,000 from
accidental overdoses.

Alcohol is not without merit. With moderate use (one or two drinks a
day) alcohol acts like a soft drug, providing pleasant short-term
effects (enhanced sociability and relaxation) and favorable long-term
effects (lower blood pressure and cholesterol, lower risk of stroke
and heart disease and longer life).

A similar scenario exists among pharmaceutical drugs, with
substantial risks accompanying their benefits. For pain,
over-the-counter painkillers including aspirin and Tylenol are
indispensable, yet they kill 15,000 people annually. The
antidepressant Paxil raises the risk of suicide. Xanax (for anxiety)
is highly addictive. Ambien (for insomnia) causes sleepwalking and
sleep-driving. Humira (for arthritis) triples the risk of cancer.
Advair (for asthma) may cause pneumonia. Ketek (for infections) is
linked to liver damage. Thalidomide (newly approved for treating skin
cancer) causes horrendous birth defects. Children are put on ADHD
drugs (Ritalin, Strattera) even though each year thousands end up in
the hospital from bad reactions, hundreds of children taking the
drugs report having suicidal thoughts, and a few end up dead from
complications. Oregon physicians can administer intentionally lethal
"medicines" to terminal patients.

A legal stimulant - caffeine - is so pervasive and accepted that most
of the population (including children) consume it daily via coffee,
soda or energy drinks, even though moderate consumption raises the
risk of a heart attack, and five grams of caffeine (33 cups of
coffee) will kill you.

So, we clearly allow people to ingest hazardous drugs. We just have
to give them enough information about the drugs so they can choose
and use them safely and responsibly. Against that backdrop, we must
evaluate another drug being used by tens of millions of Americans,
albeit one that must be used covertly despite its remarkable safety: marijuana.

First, police across the nation readily admit that, unlike alcohol,
marijuana doesn't make users violent or reckless. If anything, it
makes them peaceful and introspective.

Second, a comprehensive 1999 study commissioned by the federal drug
czar at the time, Barry McCaffery concluded marijuana was a "viable
and effective medicine ... moderately well-suited for
chemotherapy-induced nausea, AIDS wasting, severe pain, and other
conditions." A 2004 study showed it blocks gamma herpes; a 2005 study
showed it slows hardening of the arteries; a 2006 UCLA study
concluded marijuana isn't linked to lung cancer and may inhibit tumor
growth. A 2006 Ohio State University study indicated it may stave off
Alzheimer's. Other pharmaceutical medicines may be more effective
than marijuana in certain applications, but marijuana has an inherent
advantage: It's nontoxic.

The Drug Enforcement Administration itself conceded in 1988 that
there are no reported deaths from marijuana in recorded medical history.

Third, regarding recreational use, an independent RAND Corp. study in
2002 concluded that marijuana does not act as a gateway drug or lead
teenagers to experiment with hard drugs. According to the drugmaker
Merck, marijuana's active ingredient, THC, unlike alcohol and
nicotine, doesn't cause physical dependence. Merck's researchers
concluded that opposition to the drug "rests on a moral and
political, and not a toxicologic, foundation.

Common sense is slowly taking hold, as many states now allow
marijuana at least for medical use. Federal lawmakers, however, want
to continue to subject marijuana users to arrest and punishment,
without scientific or moral basis. There is no aspect of marijuana in
a private setting that warrants federal agents breaking down doors
and treating as thugs people who have not harmed anyone, arresting
them or seizing their property.

Over the 70 years of marijuana prohibition, American citizens have
suffered cruel and unusual punishment, as well as unequal protection
under the law. Imprisonment should be restricted to those we fear:
murderers, rapists, batterers, thieves and people driving under the
influence - whether alcohol, marijuana or sleeping pills.

To add insult to injury, the United Nations this fall proclaimed that
a quintupling of marijuana's strength over the past 30 years through
cultivation advances has made it dangerous, warranting more intrusive
global enforcement efforts. Nonsense. Whiskey is eight times stronger
than beer, but people simply adjust their "dosage" to get the desired
result and aren't arrested for it.

If governments truly wanted to solve the marijuana problem, they
could allow the tobacco farmers to grow it, the government to tax it,
the FDA to inspect it, the liquor companies to sell it, the police to
control it, and the adults to use it. The only problem with marijuana
is that it's illegal.

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