REPORT TRACKS "CLEAR FAILURE" OF CANNABIS PROHIBITION

The International Centre for Science in Drug Policy (ICSDP) last month
released a research report co-authored by SFU health scientist
Benedikt Fischer demonstrating "the clear failure of U.S. marijuana
prohibition" and supporting evidence-based models for cannabis
legalization and regulation.

Entitled Tools for Debate: U.S. federal government data on cannabis
prohibition, the report uses 20 years of data collected by
surveillance systems funded by the U.S. government to highlight the
failure of cannabis prohibition in America.

The report finds that while increased funding for cannabis prohibition
has increased cannabis seizures and arrests, the U.S. government's own
surveillance data shows that it has not led to reduced cannabis
potency, increased prices or meaningfully reduced availability.

"On the contrary," it notes, "the falling prices imply that supply is
increasing faster than demand. Given that cannabis prohibition has
clearly failed to achieve its stated objectives and has also resulted
in a range of serious unintended harms, regulatory models should be
given urgent consideration, both in the United States and in other
settings."

Given the widespread, often free availability of cannabis despite
aggressive criminal justice measures, the report also casts doubt on
the notion that legalizing and regulating it will lead to increased
cannabis use or an overall increase in harm from the drug.

"Successfully reducing rates of cannabis-related harm," the report
concludes, "will likely require the implementation of strict
regulatory mechanisms. associated with reducing the harms of other
legal substances (that) are too commonly underutilized in the areas of
tobacco and alcohol control."

A British Medical Journal (BMJ) editorial on the report observed: "The
evidence from Tools for Debate is not only that the prohibition system
is not achieving its aims, but that more efforts in the same direction
only worsen the results."

For a copy of the report (PDF) visit http://at.sfu.ca/EsWfwS to read the
BMJ editorial, visit http://at.sfu.ca/ddFrpR