THE CASE FOR DECRIMINALIZING MARIJUANA

I'm on the phone getting a recipe for hashish butter. Not from my
dealer but from Lester Grinspoon, a physician and emeritus professor
of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. And not for a party but for
my 9-year-old son, who has autism, anxiety and digestive problems,
all of which are helped by the analgesic and psychoactive properties
of marijuana. I wouldn't be giving it to my child if I didn't think
it was safe.

I came to marijuana while searching for a safer alternative to the
powerful antipsychotic drugs, such as Risperdal, that are typically
prescribed for children with autism and other behavioral disorders.
There have been few studies on the long-term effects of these drugs
on a growing child's brain, and in particular autism, a disorder
whose biochemical mechanisms are poorly understood. But there is much
documentation of the risks, which has caused the Food and Drug
Administration to require the highest-level "black box" warnings of
possible side effects that include permanent Parkinson's disease-like
tremors, metabolic disorders and death. A panel of federal drug
experts in 2008 urged physicians to use caution when prescribing
these medicines to children, as they are the most susceptible to side effects.

We live in Rhode Island, one of more than a dozen states with medical
marijuana laws. That makes giving our son cannabis for a medical
condition legal. But we are limited in its use. We cannot take it on
a plane on a visit to his grandmother in Minnesota.

Even though we are not breaking the law, I still wonder what my
neighbors would think if they knew we were giving our son what most
people think of only as an illegal "recreational" drug. Marijuana
always has carried that illicit tang of danger -- "reefer madness"
and foreign drug cartels. But in 1988, Drug Enforcement
Administration Judge Francis L. Young, after two years of hearings,
deemed marijuana "one of the safest therapeutically active substances
known to man. .. In strict medical terms, marijuana is far safer than
many foods we commonly consume."

Beyond helping people like my son, the reasons to legalize cannabis
on a federal level are manifold. Anecdotal evidence from patients
attests to its pain-relieving properties, and the benefits in
quelling chemotherapy-induced nausea and wasting syndrome are well
documented. Future studies might find even more important medical uses.

Including marijuana in the war on drugs has proved foolhardy -- and
costly. By keeping marijuana illegal and prices high, illicit drug
money from the U.S. sustains the murderous narco-traffickers in
Mexico and elsewhere. In fact, after seeing how proximity to
marijuana growers affected the small Mexican village of Alamos, where
my husband spent much of his childhood, I was adamant about never
entering into that economy of violence.

Because Rhode Island has no California-like medical marijuana
dispensaries, the patient must apply for a medical marijuana license
and then find a way to procure the cannabis. We floundered on our own
until we connected with a local horticultural school graduate who
agreed to provide our son's organic marijuana. But given the seedy
underbelly of the illegal drug trade, combined with the current
economic collapse, even our grower has to be mindful of not exposing
himself to robbery.

Legalizing marijuana not only removes the incentives for this
underground economy but would allow for regulation and taxation of
the product, just like cigarettes and alcohol. The potential for
abuse is there, as it is with any substance, but toxicology studies
have not even been able to establish a lethal dose at typical-use levels.

Nor is it physically addicting, unlike your daily Starbucks, as
anyone who has suffered from a caffeine withdrawal headache can attest.

Although it has been demonized for years, marijuana hasn't been
illegal in the U.S. for that long. The cannabis plant became
criminalized on a federal level in 1937, largely because of the
efforts of one man, Harry Anslinger, commissioner of the then newly
formed Bureau of Narcotics, largely through sensationalistic stories
of murder and mayhem conducted supposedly under the influence of
cannabis. Cannabis was still listed in the U.S. Pharmacopeia, or USP,
until 1941 as a household drug useful for treating headaches,
depression, menstrual cramps and toothaches, and drug companies
worked to develop a stronger strain.

In 1938, Fiorello LaGuardia, mayor of New York, appointed a committee
to conduct the first in-depth study of marijuana's actual effects. It
found that, despite the government's fervent claims, marijuana did
not cause insanity or act as a gateway drug. It also found no
scientific reason for its criminalization. In 1972, President Richard
Nixon's Shafer Commission similarly concluded that cannabis should be
re-legalized.

Both recommendations were ignored, and since then billions of dollars
have been spent enforcing the ban. Public policy analyst Jon Gettman,
author of the 2007 report, "Lost Revenues and Other Costs of
Marijuana Laws," estimated marijuana-related annual costs of law
enforcement at $10.7 billion.

I was heartened to hear California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's
recent call for the U.S. to at least look at other nations'
experiences with legalizing marijuana -- and to open a debate. And
given the real security threats the nation faces, U.S. Attorney
General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s announcement that the federal government
no longer would conduct raids on legal medicinal marijuana
dispensaries was a prudent move. Decriminalizing marijuana is the
logical next step.