Is the government's war against marijuana justified as public policy - Term paper, research paper & custom essay writing service

Home

Is the government's war against marijuana justified as public policy

Q: Is the government's war against marijuana justified as public policy

by Mark Souder , Lynn Zimmer

Yes: Protect the public from the practitioners of `Cheech-and-Chona'medicine.

Rolling Stone magazine noted in its May 5, 1994. issue that currency speculator and billionaire philanthropist George Soros gave the Drug Policy Foundation, one of many recipients of his "charitable" largesse, suggestions to follow if they wanted his assistance: "[H]ire someone with the political savvy to sit down and negotiate with government officials and target a few winnable issues, like medical marijuana and the repeal of mandatory minimums." Keith Stroup, founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML, told an Emory University audience in 1979 that medicinal marijuana would be used as a red herring to give marijuana a good name. Richard Cowan, writing for the pro-drug High Times magazine, described the "medical model as spearheading a strategy for the legalization of marijuana by 1997."

According to public-opinion polls, legalization of marijuana is not supported by the American people. This explains why the drug lobby carefully steers away from using the term "legalization," preferring cryptic terms such as harm reduction, decriminalization and medicalization. The goal of the drug lobby has not changed; it only is camouflaged. The public sensibly and resolutely remains opposed to recreational marijuana use, but drug legalizers shamefully are trying to con voters through deceptive ballot referenda exploiting the ill and dying.

Marijuana legalizers commonly claim America's prisons teem with young people whose only come was simple possession of marijuana, and that drug arrests disproportionately affect minorities. The recent debate about crack-cocaine sentencing disparities sparked similar claims of racism by the criminal justice system. The drug lobby ignores the obvious fact that a war on drugs hits inner-city traffickers foremost and helps law-abiding residents of neighborhoods who have the least resources with which to fight back. Despite the inescapable conclusion that placing drug dealers behind bars protects neighborhoods against criminals, violent crime and social ills attendant with drug use, drug legalizers such as University of California at Los Angeles' Mark Kleiman absurdly claim: "Locking up a burglar does not materially change the opportunities for other burglars, while locking up a drug dealer leaves potential customers for new dealers."

The drug lobby frequently compares the drug war to Prohibition. But as a publication at the turn of the century (when the United States had a raging drug problem) observed, "a drunkard may retain his moral equilibrium between debauches . . . but the `dope fiend,' once thoroughly addicted, inevitably drops into utter debasement." Unlike illegal drugs, alcohol and drinking were embedded in Anglo-Saxon and European social customs. While the temperance movement prevailed after heated debate, drug restrictions passed during the same period widely were regarded as uncontroversial and needed. Western states passed marijuana-prohibition laws in response to a rash of crimes and violence linked to cannabis use among Mexican immigrants. A medical exemption existed then to the import of marijuana, but soon states and politicians appealed to the federal government for help in confronting -- the "loco weed." Legendary New York journalist Meyer Berger in 1938 summed up expert medical opinion at the time: "Marijuana, while no more habit-forming than ordinary cigarette smoking, offers a shorter cut to complete madness than any other drug."

Drug legalizers recently lost a ballot initiative in Washington state on Nov. 4, a setback from victories to legalize illegal drugs last year in California and Arizona. The Washington-state referendum -- I-685, which failed by a margin of 60 percent to 40 percent --combined the worst aspects of the legalization initiatives in California and Arizona by not only seeking to legalize marijuana but also cocaine, heroin, LSD and other narcotics on Schedule T of the federal Controlled Substances Act, drugs judged to have no medicinal benefit and high potential for abuse. I-685 also would have released drug offenders from prison. I-685 was bolstered by millions of dollars in contributions from a handful of out-of-state millionaires, including Soros -- dubbed the "Daddy Warbucks" of drug legalization by former health, education and welfare secretary Joe Califano -- and Arizona millionaire John Sperling. The measure failed even though drug legalizers outspent antidrug advocates by a ratio of nearly 15-to-1.

Washington state antidrug activists warned against complacency in fighting the legalizers. They acknowledged the battle against I-685 was significantly buoyed by the zealotry of the legalizers to delist Schedule I substances and by the National Rifle Association's successful multimillion-dollar campaign against a gun-control referendum also on the ballot.

The District of Columbia is threatened with a marijuana "medicalization" initiative next November, sponsored by a homosexual advocacy organization, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. AIDS activists should take note of pioneering research by Dr. Thomas Klein at the University of South Florida who showed marijuana alters the immune system and may accelerate HIV-infection into full-blown AIDS cases. D.C.'s Measure 57 would permit up to 20 people to cultivate and sell unlimited quantities of marijuana for an individual suffering from an amorphous range of conditions-essentially shielding drug dealers from prosecution.

As drug czar Barry McCaffrey argues, the ballot box is the wrong place for decisions about efficacy and safety of medicines. The Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, was created to protect the public against snake-oil salesmen, and consumer-safety laws require proper labeling of ingredients and dosages. The sale of crude marijuana circumvents those protections.

The pro-drug lobby successfully described Proposition 215 in California as "medical" marijuana for the sick and dying, preying on the compassionate nature of the American people, but Prop. 215 legalized marijuana with no age limitation for "any illness for which marijuana provides relief," including ailments of dubious nature and severity such as memory recall, writers cramp and corn callouses. The FDA has approved the only psychoactive ingredient of marijuana, THC, found useful for pain relief as Marinol, in pill form through prescription. Marinol, a Schedule IT drug with limited medical use and high potential for abuse, is an antinausea drug for cancer patients who fail to respond to other drugs, and an appetite stimulant for people suffering from AIDS wasting syndrome. THC has not, however, been shown to be safe and effective for any other condition ether than nausea and wasting due to AIDS. In a double-blind study, patients preferred Marinol over smoking marijuana 2-to-1. A marijuana study by the Institute of Medicine concluded risks of marijuana on the immune system were such that it favored development of a smoke-free inhaled delivery system to provide purer forms of THC, or its related compound, cannabinoids.

The drug lobby, however, rejects legal use of THC in Marinol and continues to promote use of crude marijuana cigarettes as medicine. One doctor, explaining why marijuana is not medicine, gave the analog of eating moldy bread in an attempt to get penicillin. A prominent oncologist professed he could manage pain with legal drugs in 99 percent of his patients, and that there are newer and better medications for chemotherapy patients than Marinol, describing one, Zofran, as a "miracle" drug.

Crude marijuana consists of more than 400 chemicals which, when smoked, become thousands of chemicals. Drugs from a pharmacy are of a single ingredient and of a known dosage. Pot advocates often cite the fact that morphine, available under a doctor's care, is a heroin derivative. What they neglect to mention is that morphine received FDA approval and underwent rigorous clinical testing, a public-safety standard approved drugs must meet.

Drug legalizers often cite Americans participating in an ongoing federal experiment at the University of Mississippi to evaluate any benefit from medicinal marijuana, implying that the federal government believes marijuana could be medicinal. But to date, despite 12,000 studies of the medical utility of marijuana, an overwhelming consensus exists in the scientific community that smoked marijuana never can be a medicine. The federal experimental program, consisting of eight people, has declined new admissions since 1992. Congress, in its reauthorization of the drug-czar's office, banned further studies of marijuana as medicine, a provision which I sponsored.

While the Clinton administration campaigns vigorously against cigarettes and chides the tobacco industry for its marketing techniques, marijuana cigarettes rarely are targets of condemnation. Ironically, the tobacco industry, like the drug lobby today, once promoted cigarettes as medicine until the Federal Trade Commission halted this practice in 1955.

Marijuana is addictive, leading to the use of other drugs such as cocaine and heroin, and is a major cause of accidents and injuries. It can cause respiratory disease and mental disorders including depression, paranoia, decreased cognitive performance and impaired memory. Babies born to women who smoked marijuana during pregnancy have an increased incidence of leukemia, low birth weight and other newborn abnormalities. The National Institute of Drug Abuse's director frequently mentions brain scans showing that lower cerebral activity seems to account for some of the reported learning disturbances found in chronic marijuana users.

As a New York Times editorial recently put it, parents need to realize today's marijuana is more potent than the version they may have smoked in their youth, and "research has shown the drug to be far more dangerous to young people than was known in the 1960s and 1970s, with a higher THC content. It can be particularly harmful to the growth and development of teenagers."

There is a solid reason for scientific studies and FDA approval -- to avoid medical catastrophes such as thalidomide. Good medicine is not conceived at the polls, but through routine clinical trials. Since marijuana is far more carcinogenic than tobacco cigarettes, it's not compassionate to recommend it to sick people -- it's cruel.

Souder is vice chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight subcommittee on National Security, which has focused on the U.S. narcotics problem.

No: This costly battle is a waste of government money and human capital.

A friend of mine allows his teenage son to smoke marijuana. The boy gets intense nausea from the chemotherapy for his cancer, and marijuana works better than the medications prescribed by his physician. My accountant, a 35-year-old man with AIDS, smokes marijuana before dinner to stimulate his appetite and help him gain weight. A 77-year-old woman who lives near my mother smokes marijuana to treat her glaucoma. A multiple-sclerosis patient, whom I met last week at a conference, told me he uses marijuana to reduce muscle spasticity.

Under federal law and the laws of most states, these people are committing criminal offenses. In 1996, voters in California and Arizona passed referendums to prevent state law-enforcement officials from arresting people who use marijuana as a medicine. Washington-state voters recently defeated a drug-policy referendum which, among its provisions, allowed patients access to medical marijuana. In exit polls, however, more than half of those voting "no" said they would have voted "yes" if the initiative had been for medical marijuana alone. Next year, voters in several other states will get to approve or reject proposals to decriminalize marijuana's use as a medicine. Public-opinion poll data available today suggests they overwhelmingly will approve. Still, unless federal law is changed, medical marijuana will remain illegal throughout the United States.

Federal officials, including drug czar Barry McCaffrey, oppose leniency on the question of medical marijuana claiming it "sends the wrong message" and undermines government efforts to suppress marijuana's recreational use. By all objective measures, these efforts already are a dismal failure. In 1995, federal agents seized I million pounds of marijuana along the U.S. border and spent millions of dollars to find and destroy marijuana grown domestically. Nonetheless, the following year McCaffrey's Office of National Drug Control Policy reported that "high-quality marijuana is widely available in all parts of the United States." On government surveys, about 85 percent of high-school seniors say it is "very easy" or "fairly easy" to obtain marijuana -- the same as it has been every year since the early seventies.

During the last 20 years, state and local police have arrested nearly 10 million people for marijuana offenses, about 85 percent for possession. Supporters of this approach claim that criminal sanctions keep some people from using marijuana. However, the data show no relationship between the number of arrests for marijuana possession or the severity of sanctions imposed and the number of people who use marijuana.

Following legal changes since the seventies, researchers have compared the rates of marijuana use in states which have decriminalized marijuana with the rates in states which still had criminal sanctions for simple possession. They found no difference. Marijuana use increased throughout the United States during the seventies, irrespective of the policy in individual states. After 1979, marijuana use started declining. This downward trend, like the upward trend that preceded it, occurred in states both with and without criminal penalties for possessing marijuana.

In the mid-eighties, while marijuana use continued to decline, President Reagan launched a new war on marijuana. Congress recriminalized marijuana possession, setting a penalty of one year in federal prison for possessing a single joint (or less) of marijuana the same penalty as for possessing small amounts of cocaine or heroin. Two of the states that decriminalized marijuana in the seventies-Oregon and Alaska reinstated criminal penalties for marijuana possession. In addition, Congress and state legislatures created a variety of new civil sanctions which could be applied to persons arrested for marijuana offenses.

Today marijuana offenders, including those charged with simple possession, can be denied college and or small business loans, farm subsidies, occupational licenses and government grants, contracts and fellowships. More than half the states have enacted "possess a joint loose your license" laws, which automatically revoke the driver's license of anyone convicted of any marijuana offense, even if it was not driving-related. People on probation or parole for any criminal offense can be returned to prison on the basis of a urine test showing them to be marijuana users. Following a marijuana arrest, government officials can seize people's property, including cash, cars, boats, land and houses. And, they can keep the property even if there never is a criminal conviction.

After remaining fairly stable throughout the eighties, arrests for marijuana offenses increased dramatically during the nineties. In 1992, state and local police arrested about 269,000 people for marijuana possession. In 1996, marijuana-possession arrests exceeded 545,000 nearly a doubling in a five-year period. Arrests for marijuana distribution and sale also increased during these years. But about 85 percent of marijuana arrests, the same as always, were for marijuana possession. In New York City, marijuana arrests doubled between 1990 and 1996, reaching 18,000. Most New York City arrests, such as those across the country, are misdemeanor arrests, for either possessing marijuana or smoking marijuana in public.

This war on marijuana has had no apparent impact on marijuana's popularity. From 1992 to 1996, while arrests were doubling, the number of adult marijuana users remained stable. During the same five-year period, adolescent marijuana use increased, after declining for more than a decade. In 1992, 8 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds said they had used marijuana during the last year. By 1996, the rate of past-year marijuana use among adolescents had risen to 13 percent.

Rather than admitting defeat, drug warriors argue that more enforcement and tougher penalties for marijuana offenses are needed. Most marijuana users, they say, never get arrested. And those arrested seldom get sent to prison. Instead, judges give marijuana users suspended sentences, put them on probation or sentence them to community service. A real war on marijuana, drug warriors claim, will produce the deterrence that currently is lacking.

The National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse in 1972 decided that whatever marijuana's harms to users, they paled in comparison to-the harm of being arrested. In addition, commission members understood that "marginalizing" even a small minority of marijuana users did not serve the best interests of society. Consider, for example, how many of today's political leaders smoked marijuana in their youth. President Clinton, Vice President Gore and House Speaker Newt Gingrich are among them. If, rather than escaping detection, they had been arrested for marijuana possession, what they now refer to as a "youthful mistake" might have ruined their career opportunities.

Even if marijuana were a highly dangerous drug, criminalizing its use would do more harm than good. Fortunately, marijuana is far less dangerous than prohibitionists insist. In Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts. A Review of the Scientific Evidence, coauthor John P. Morgan and I conclude, based on the evidence, that although marijuana it not completely harmless it has an extremely wide margin of safety.

Marijuana's only clear health risk is respiratory damage from smoking, and this risk is confined to long-term, heavy marijuana smokers. Claims of other biological harms -- for example, brain damage, infertility and immune-system impairment -- are based on animal and cellular studies using doses of marijuana up to 1,000 times the psychoactive dose in humans. None of these harmful effects have ever been found in studies of people who use marijuana. Unlike most other drugs that humans consume, no dose of marijuana is fatal.

All psychoactive drugs are used in an addictive fashion by some people. Marijuana is no exception. However, compared to other drugs, marijuana has a low addictive potential. Using a synthetic cannabinoid drug which resembles marijuana, researchers recently have reported physical withdrawal in animals. However, to achieve this effect, researchers also administered a blocker drug which immediately strips cannabinoids from receptors. When people stop using marijuana, the drug leaves receptors gradually and they do not experience physical withdrawal.

Even without being addicted, some marijuana users use too much --meaning their use interferes with other life events and activities. Such people, overwhelmingly, had troubled lives before they began using marijuana. There is nothing about marijuana, per se, that causes people to become bad students, poor workers or dysfunctional members of society. Nor is there a pharmacological basis for marijuana's long-alleged "gateway effect." People who have used the least-popular drugs, such as heroin and cocaine, tend also to have used more popular drugs, such alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and marijuana. However, most marijuana users never use another illegal drug. According to government surveys, for every 100 people who have tried marijuana, only one currently is a regular user of cocaine.

The only clear social risk of marijuana is that people will have accidents during the period of intoxication. Marijuana is not as debilitating as alcohol or many prescription medications. Still, during the few hours after using marijuana, most people show some psychomotor impairment. The data indicate that marijuana is not a major contributor to highway accidents. Nonetheless, criminalizing marijuana-impaired driving makes good social sense. A public-service campaign of the sort now used to deter alcohol-impaired driving might also prove useful. A disadvantage of strict prohibition, which defines all marijuana use as equally wrong and equally illegal, is that it makes such a campaign practically impossible. An advantage of decriminalizing marijuana is that it would allow the dissemination of rules for safer marijuana use.

In the current political climate, government officials won't even discuss marijuana decriminalization as an option. But outside government circles, the country is buzzing with decriminalization conversations. Recent public-opinion polls show that half of adults favor eliminating criminal penalties for marijuana possession and use. Nearly three-quarters support immediate removal of the federal ban on marijuana's medical use. They understand, even if government officials don't, that the war on marijuana is unjust, ineffective, unnecessary and far too costly.

Zimmer is an associate professor of sociology at Queens College in New York, and coauthor of Marijuana Myths, Marijuans Facts: A Review of the Scietific Evidence

< Prev		Next >

[ Back ]

Our benefits

Free extras

Main Menu

Service features