Thursday, June 23, 2011

Marijuana is not a vice, but a safer alternative to alcohol.

Former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper interviewed colleagues over a 4-year period. None could remember having a fight with anyone who was determined to be under the influence of marijuana.

However, when Stamper followed with this question: "When's the last time you had to fight a drunk?", they looked at their watches.

Tell me again what this war on drugs is all about.



From Yahoo news (June 22, 2011):


Lawmakers to introduce bill to legalize marijuana
Link
A group of US representatives plan to introduce legislation that will legalize marijuana and allow states to legislate its use, pro-marijuana groups said Wednesday. The legislation would limit the federal government's role in marijuana enforcement to cross-border or inter-state smuggling, and allow people to legally grow, use or sell marijuana in states where it is legal.

The bill, which is expected to be introduced on Thursday by Republican Representative Ron Paul and Democratic Representative Barney Frank, would be the first ever legislation designed to end the federal ban on marijuana.

After reading this article, I called my congressman (Luis Gutierrez, IL-04), and asked a staff member whether Rep. Gutierrez (a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus) supported this bill. The staffer was both friendly and willing to assist, yet after five or so minutes of research, was unable to answer my question.

I thanked her for her time and effort, and pledged to call back once this proposed legislation had a bill number. In closing our conversation, the staffer offered sympathy to the cause. I reiterated my support for this legislation, offering that our police force has better things to do than arrest citizens for partaking in a substance whose side effects are benign, when compared to dealing with countless incidents of violence resulting from use of that legal drug known as alcohol.

In the foreword to the book Marijuana is Safer: So why are we driving people to drink? (2009, by Steve Fox, Paul Armentano, and Mason Tvert), former Seattle police chief and 34-year vet Norm Stamper presents this telling anecdote:

Over the past four years, out of a general interest in this subject, I've been asking police officers throughout the U.S. (and Canada) two questions. First: "When's the last time you had to fight someone under the influence of marijuana?" (And by this I mean marijuana only, not pot plus a six-pack or fifth of tequila.) My colleagues pause; they reflect. Their eyes widen as they realize that in their five or fifteen or theiry years on the job they have never had to fight a marijuana user. I then ask, "When's the last time you had to fight a drunk?" They look at their watches. ..."


In countering the failed 40-year "War on Drugs," cannabis law reformers continue to battle inaccuracies in truth (i.e. anti-marijuana propaganda), while providing a historical context explaining why the plant was criminalized by the U.S. government in 1937. This history is summarized in Marijuana is Safer.

Yet the book goes a step further, in suggesting a practical method of reaching out to those Americans who, despite all the evidence, continue to wrongfully regard a "yes" vote on cannabis reform bills or propositions as "just adding another vice (pot) to our drug-addled culture."

There is a highly effective appeal we can make to such people. This appeal is both simple and practical, and doesn't require intense study of NORML pamphlets, congressional bills, or even knowledge of the history of marijuana prohibition. All you need to know are the harmful effects that the legal drug alcohol has had on American society, or perhaps in your own life.

Beware of false comparisons between the two substances. Marijuana is not a vice, but a safer alternative to alcohol.

Can we deny adults the right of a rational choice to use a less harmful substance? It makes no sense to prosecute someone for pot, when alcohol use and abuse is responsible for $150-200 billion annually in lost productivity, hospitalizations, and criminal justice expenditures (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism).

Can we continue to lie to our children, by endorsing alcohol as a safer and societally-accepted substance, while knowing full well that 1) no one has ever died from cannabis overdose, while 2) alcohol intoxication is responsible for thousands of teenage deaths per year?

What will I tell my children, when alcohol use is an accepted norm, while marijuana is... illegal? (Quick answer: your average American teenager can currently obtain pot much more easily than alcohol, or tobacco, in an average of 23 minutes. This is because drug dealers don't card).

When discussing facts and figures pertaining to cannabis reform, it is easy for the eyes of both the converted and the unconvinced to glaze over, and it's not due to pot smoke. What I find in Marijuana is Safer is a more persuasive argument. Connect with people on the societal norms of alcohol which they are already familiar with, and then introduce cannabis to the conversational canvas. And then see how it goes.

***

Update (6:42 PM CST): Andrew Malcolm of the L.A. Times reports that the bill (HR 2306), referred to in the Yahoo news report above, is not about legalization:

Marijuana bill officially introduced to Congress by Ron Paul, Barney Frank

The goal of the bill, HR 2306, is not to legalize marijuana but to remove it from the list of federally controlled substances while allowing states to decide how they will regulate it.

"I do not advocate urging people to smoke marijuana. Neither do I urge them to drink alcoholic beverages or smoke tobacco," said Frank (D-Mass.). "But in none of these cases do I think prohibition enforced by criminal sanctions is good public policy.

"Criminally prosecuting adults for making the choice to smoke marijuana is a waste of law enforcement resources and an intrusion on personal freedom," he added.

1 comment:

Uncle Bob said...

Good argument. I totally concur.