FIRST, DO NO HARM

Many arguments for ending marijuana prohibition are familiar,
including the potential tax windfall, freedom of personal choice and
the financial and societal costs of a policy that's a failure as a
practical matter.

Now, a new book uses documented scientific and medical evidence to
make a less familiar argument: that punishing adults for using
marijuana is senseless because, compared with legal and widely
accepted alcohol, it's far less harmful.

Steve Fox, director of state campaigns for the Marijuana Policy
Project, visited the Trib to discuss "Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are
We Driving People to Drink?" (Chelsea Green). Following are excerpts
from Fox's discussion of the book, which he co-authored with Paul
Armentano, deputy director of NORML (National Organization for the
Reform of Marijuana Laws), and Mason Tvert, co-founder and executive
director of SAFER (Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation).

Q: What is the basic message that you and your co-authors are trying
to get across?

A: It's a pretty straightforward message, which is that marijuana is
a less harmful recreational alternative to alcohol and that we have
irrational laws right now that steer people toward the more harmful
of the two substances. The American people have basically been
conditioned to think that marijuana is bad and people should avoid it
and not use it, whereas alcohol, while it may have been prohibited 75
years ago, it's part of our culture and accepted ... and the point
we're making is that is actually undermining public safety.

There are a couple of different levels to the book. At one level,
it's purely educational. We know from surveys that maybe only a third
of the American public considers marijuana to be less harmful than
alcohol, when we show through a lot of evidence ... that it is
clearly less harmful.

You may disagree with the use of it for certain reasons, whatever
that may be, but there's no denying that it's less harmful, both to
the user and in terms of effects on society, in terms of
associational violence and so on.

We're (also) trying to help people who care about changing the laws
understand that framing the discussion in this way will actually make
it easier for us to change the laws. ... There's been an ongoing
argument for 40 years with people on one side saying "marijuana's
bad" and people on the other side saying "it's not as bad as you
say." But for most people, that's not enough.

They still think that it's bad, that it causes all kinds of problems,
and by ... using alcohol basically as a marker or a threshold and
saying, "Look, it is far less harmful than a substance that people
use widely already," that there's no reason for people to be punished
and arrested and even put in prison for using a less harmful substance.

Q: It seems like bits and pieces of your argument had been out there
for years but nobody had really put them together the way you and
your co-authors have. Why do you think that is?

A: The irony is -- and we touch on this a little bit in the book, and
this still exists in certain segments of the movement to reform
marijuana laws -- there's actually a hesitation to talk about alcohol
because they realize that alcohol has many problems associated with
it, and they don't want marijuana linked to alcohol.

They don't want to create that association. There's probably a
smaller segment that fears that in making the case like this ...
you're promoting marijuana use. Some people feel like that is not
necessarily the best approach.

Where we come from is that if you're going to be defensive about
marijuana use and act as if it is a bad thing, then you're never
going to change the laws. And there's just no reason.

It isn't a bad thing. If you want to say that getting inebriated in
any way is a bad thing, which certain segments of the population do,
and I fully accept that -- that's OK. But you can't be in a position
where you're accepting the use of alcohol and creating the impression
that marijuana use is bad. That's how the laws will never change.

So whether some people want to say this is pro-marijuana, we prefer
to call it "pro-choice" -- and not in a polarizing way, in the abortion sense.

But we use that statement more when people accuse us of being
anti-alcohol, because we're not anti-alcohol, either.

We simply say: If marijuana is less harmful than alcohol in all of
these ways, why should we punish adults who use it? And we can't make
that comparison without pointing out all of the statistics that are
in there, whether it's 35,000 deaths annually, according to the
Centers for Disease Control, from alcohol and zero for marijuana; 3
million violent acts associated with alcohol every year, according to
the Department of Justice, and essentially no correlation for
marijuana -- it's not even something they track, because it really
doesn't exist. There's obviously violence associated with marijuana
prohibition, but people typically don't smoke and then end up beating
up a girlfriend or something like that.

Q: Since the '60s, there's been sort of a perception that it's people
on the left who want reform and it's people on the right who are the
law-and-order types who say "no way." If you think about it in
traditional, basic, conservative/libertarian terms, it seems more an
issue of personal choice.

How might the argument you're presenting cut across some of those
ideological/partisan boundaries, given that it is so based in
objective medical data and studies?

A: I think it's going to help across the board.

I have no doubt about that -- that it undermines every argument
that's out there.

It's just that when you push people to really explain why they think
adults should be punished for using marijuana instead of alcohol,
it's hard to defend. ... I can't quite express whether it's going to
bridge any sort of ideological divide, but ... what we're concerned
about is the middle of the ideological spectrum ... because it's true
that people on the left are generally more supportive and there are
libertarians, certainly, who are supportive, but we need to get the middle.

And I think that's where this is really going to help -- people just
being willing to talk about this and say, "Look, this is what I do,
it's not as harmful," and then leaders will follow.

I mean, Blue Dog Democrats have no idea how many "NASCAR dads" are
smoking marijuana. They think they don't, because it's not talked
about and they live in their little electoral/political bubble where
people don't tell them what's happening, but people everywhere are
smoking and it's just not talked about.

Q: The collateral damage of marijuana prohibition, in itself, ought
to be a pretty strong argument but it doesn't seem to have done it.
So your argument is sort of another arrow in the quiver?

A: In my mind, it's not another arrow; it is the key that unlocks the
box. We set it out logically -- we do devote an entire chapter to the
traditional arguments against marijuana prohibition ... and we
certainly admit that these are great arguments. ... They make
rational sense and there's no reason we should have marijuana
prohibition. But then you hit a wall, where people say, "Yeah, but we
don't want to add another vice." And that's what the marijuana
prohibitionists are harping on right now. ... It's not adding another
vice. It's giving adults a less harmful alternative.