Prohibition! The Wasteful War on Marijuana…
The arguments over the legalization of marijuana are heating up now that the US is progressing towards a more enlightened and liberated place when it comes to cannabis legislation. The prohibition of marijuana has long seemed ludicrous to a vast number of folks around the world, but the groundswell of support for change lately has finally had a tidal wave type of effect, with more and more states allowing medical marijuana, and with Washington and Colorado legalizing recreational use of weed.
However, there are still some dinosaurs, both in power and in the public, who would throw you in jail for smoking a joint.
Here, we break down some of the arguments, as well as what precedents regarding drug laws have already been established in the US and around the world.
This might be the most controversial place to start. Arguments about marijuana legalization tend to focus on more practical and less theoretical facets of the issue – effectiveness, costs, health concerns. But at the core of the issue are civil rights. Do you have the right to control your own consciousness?
The US government says, “No!”
How can a legislating body defy you the right to do what you want with your body and your mind if you’re not hurting anyone? It’s unconscionable, and an aspect of the “nanny state” style of government that drives marijuana users crazy. Rightly so.
Of course, official arguments about how drug use leads to violent crime inevitably enter the fray. But we already have laws against violent crime. Enforce those, and you have addressed that problem.
And that’s not to mention the fact that marijuana users are not typically prone to violent acts inspired by their cannabis use. In fact, weed users are probably an atypical sample of any portion of the population in terms of how many have violent tendencies. Once you’ve embraced the sensation of medicating with cannabis, most people realize it’s better to be happy and relaxed than angry and combative.
But let’s not mistake that state of happiness and relaxation for one of lethargy and apathy. Of course, there’s a share of shiftless folks in any sample group, marijuana users or otherwise. But the fight to legalize weed is as good an example as any of the get-up-and-go many MMJ users possess. The revolution is well underway.
Prohibition Is Ineffective
The prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s proved to be a resounding failure. So has the prohibition of marijuana. Despite the plant’s criminal status, somewhere between 5-7% of Americans use cannabis regularly. That’s about 17 million people. An even larger percentage have tried smoking pot, including President Obama himself. Could our commander-in-chief honestly say that his life would have been better if he’d gone to jail for that criminal behaviour? And if not, how can he, or anyone, justify imprisoning anyone else for pot use?
On the other hand, in Holland, where recreational marijuana use has been legal for decades, marijuana use is on the decline.
In Portugal, where all drug use and possession was decriminalized over a decade ago, addiction is on the decline. Rather than treating drug use as a criminal matter, the authorities treat it as a health issue. Cases of possession are treated on an individual basis. The result is a healthier, and less incarcerated, populace.
Prohibition Is Dangerous to Health
Speaking of health, when marijuana is decriminalized or legalized, consumers have more control over the quality of the weed they consume. Under prohibition, patients are forced to acquire their meds from underground sources. As such, many cannabis users get poor quality marijuana, or even worse, weed that has been cultivated carelessly, with liberal use of pesticides and carcinogenic chemicals.
When the free market is left to control the production and sale of marijuana, even in the limited capacity of medical marijuana regulation such as you find in California, or de facto decriminalization such as you find in Vancouver and other parts of Canada, the result is safer and higher quality cannabis.
Health problems aren’t the only dangers associated with the criminalization of pot. There’s also the association with organized crime and other criminal implications beyond mere possession.
When pot users and those who use cannabis as medication are forced to buy their weed on the streets, they run the risk of encountering violent criminals or crooked drug dealers selling more than just pot.
But beyond that, allowing marijuana distribution to be controlled by criminal cartels and organized crime means you increase the likelihood of violent turf wars between criminal factions. In a wonderful illustration of this idea, a recent report by Vice reveals that just the legalization of marijuana in Colorado alone has already crippled Mexican cartels who have long controlled the distribution of cannabis (and other drugs).
The War on Drugs – A Costly Waste
The cost of arresting and incarcerating pot users numbers in the billions of dollars every year. And that’s just the financial cost.
The toll that imprisonment takes on the lives of individuals exceeds any fiscal consideration. And when it comes to non-violent, harmless infractions, like the possession of personal amounts of pot, the punishment seems extra heinous. Comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan nailed it when he predicted that future societies would look back on this era of incarcerating pot smokers as equivalent to the witch trial hysteria of the late 17th century.
Furthermore, the revenue generated from taxing legal pot is tremendous. For a country that has already faced financial collapse more than once in recent years, that influx of money is no small thing. In other words, prohibition hurts the prohibitors themselves. Both citizens and government alike would benefit from the legalization of cannabis, and would strike a more effective blow against the aforementioned criminal cartels than any effort of the war on drugs ever has.
One of the other concerns for many anti-pot pundits is the plant’s reputation as a “gateway” drug. That reputation is a fallacy. There’s no evidence that cannabis use leads to harder drug use or addiction. None. Period.
The gateway argument you’ll often hear is one of correlation, rather than causation. Ignorant people say things like, “Every heroin junkie got his start smoking pot.” But even that isn’t true. When it comes to psychoactive substance use, the place just about everyone starts is alcohol. In other words, you can find the same correlation between hard drug use and alcohol as you might with pot.
And then all you have to do is think of how many drinkers or stoners you know who never have and never will touch hard drugs, and you can be certain that pot isn’t a gateway to anything other than stress reduction, pain management, and smiling.
In fact, the status of alcohol is the best place to wrap up this discussion. It’s the final nail in every pro-prohibitionist’s argumentative coffin. That’s because there’s no argument anyone can make in favor of the criminal status of pot that couldn’t be equally or more effectively applied to alcohol. Yet you’ll find very few anti-pot types who also think people should be put in prison for drinking booze.
The L.A. Times reports that about 88,000 deaths are related to alcohol use in the US every year. Contrast that with a report from the Washington, D.C.-based Institute of Medicine that states, “Indeed, epidemiological data indicate that in the general population marijuana use is not associated with increased mortality.”
It’s more possible to consume a lethal dose of salt or of water than of marijuana.
In addition to the contrasting likelihoods of overdosing on alcohol or marijuana, there’s also the effect of each substance. Whereas alcohol is associated with an increase in domestic violence, other physical assaults, and car crashes (to name a few), marijuana has a much cleaner track record.
So how can anyone be in favor of criminalizing marijuana while alcohol is legal?
When it comes to curbing drug use, the Portuguese seem to be on the right track. Addiction is certainly a health issue, not a criminal one.
And marijuana tends not be a part of the addiction conversation because, while it’s arguably possible to develop an unhealthy dependence on any psychoactive substance including something as mild as coffee, marijuana users tend not be addicted. At least not in a normal sense. Withdrawal from regular marijuana use carries with it mild effects or none at all. This is a far cry from the plight of a meth addict or alcoholic, for example.
A good example of how to reduce usage rates for an addictive substance is in the case of cigarettes. Currently in the US, there are more ex-smokers than there are smokers.
Why are so many people giving up tobacco and nicotine? Is it because someone is threatening to throw them in jail? Is it because of harsh Draconian laws and punishment? Nothing of the kind.
The thing that has so many smokers giving up their cigarettes over the past couple of decades is education. Show people the evidence that a substance is harmful, and more and more tend to heed that evidence. The campaign against cigarettes has been constant and truthful. And that truth has turned a lot of people off of smoking.
When it comes to education vs. prohibition, the results bear it out. Education wins hands down.
Unfortunately for the anti-marijuana crowd, they’ll have a hard time honestly vilifying cannabis. They’ve tried with hysterical films like the classic Reefer Madness. They’ve tried to scare you into believing that weed is a gateway drug that will result in you turning tricks for crack. But in the end, there’s not much really bad to truthfully say about marijuana. And that’s the best reason of all to legalize it.
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