LEGAL MARIJUANA: PROFITS OVER HEALTH

Let's abandon all efforts against smog, legalize any source of air
pollution from either vehicles or industry, and just tax the
pollution. Think of all the money we would raise to reduce
California's budget deficit!

Or, how about this:

Suppose the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a drug that
would make a billion dollars a year in profits for a drug company,
but the drug causes brain damage in some and leaves many users
unmotivated to earn a productive living. What would we think of the
company - or the government - that put profits ahead of health?

Why these analogies?

The drug lobby has placed an initiative to legalize marijuana in
California on the Nov. 2 ballot, Proposition 19. The above analogies
are like the positions of the pro-marijuana people who claim it would
raise a billion dollars in taxes - never mind the health and safety
effects, or calculating who pays to support heavy marijuana users who
do not hold jobs - and they are hoping that marijuana users will be
helpful enough to buy it from the government and not grow it
themselves - which the initiative allows.

The 2010 RAND Corporation study reported that if Prop. 19 passes, the
pre-tax price of marijuana will likely drop 80 percent - from $375 an
ounce to $38 an ounce. They predict that marijuana use in California
will increase - perhaps more than double. The report mentions that
the initiative could result in legal marijuana without added tax
revenue - the initiative lets counties set their own marijuana tax
rates, and marijuana production would likely shift to counties that
do not tax it or that tax it minimally.

What are the effects of marijuana use?

Teenagers who smoke marijuana have double the risk of dropping out of
high school, and teens who smoke it 20 or more times - that's just
once a week for five months - have much less likelihood of being
employed when they are age 32 or 33.

Schizophrenia is a lifelong illness in which individuals hear voices
or have delusions. It costs the U.S. $62 billion a year, the majority
of patients with it cannot hold jobs, and one in 20 persons with
schizophrenia commits suicide. The respected British medical journal
Lancet reviewed 35 longitudinal studies and reported marijuana use
correlated with a 40 percent increased risk of schizophrenia, up to
200 percent increased risk in the heaviest users.

Studying heavy marijuana users, Australian research with MRI brain
scans showed damage - cell loss - in the amygdala and hippocampus,
areas of the brain crucial to maintaining emotional stability and in
forming memory.

Drug legalization advocates claim legalizing drugs will reduce crime,
but Amsterdam has found the opposite is true: Amsterdam authorities
say they are trying to cut the number of marijuana-selling coffee
shops because they "generate criminality," so that the city will not
be a "free zone for criminals."

This should give pause to California voters who value their safety
and property.