Go Green: A Case for Marijuana
Disclaimer - The following article is an opinion piece and is not meant to be taken as legal or medical advice. Marijuana laws vary depending on your location. Those who chose to consume cannabis do so at their own risk. Youchew is not liable for your actions.
The majority of the Youtube Poop community has probably never seen Brian De Palma’s 1987 crime epic “The Untouchables” simply by virtue of its age. In my opinion however, this is not only a movie that people should see, it’s a movie that deserves induction into the Library of Congress for its cultural relevancy. Some people have seen this movie simply because they were fans of Brian De Palma, or because of the all star cast featuring Kevin Costner, Robert De Niro, and Sean Connery. But rather than delving into the virtues of its writing, cast, or cinematography, consider the film for its historical aspects. “The Untouchables” is based on a 1957 novel written by the lead character Eliot Ness. The story is an autobiographical account of his work as a federal agent during the Prohibition era. For those who aren’t yet familiar with Prohibition, suffice it to say it’s a period in US history that most would consider “a mistake”. From 1920 to 1933, the sale of alcohol was illegal thanks to the “Volstead Act” (despite being vetoed by President Wilson). Ness was charged with enforcing a law that the majority of the country did not support. Though he was technically the “good guy”, he was more like the hall monitor in high school telling guys not to make out with their girlfriends between classes. To make things more difficult, he had to deal with the organized crime element led by Al Capone who made sure everyone who wanted to drink could, and where there’s organized crime, police corruption is sure to follow. Lots of money was spent fighting the production of alcohol, and the costs were heavy on both sides. Prohibition continued to lose supporters as time went by, and eventually alcohol production was legalized again in 1933.
Why am I opening an article about marijuana by discussing alcohol? Because those who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it, and as you may have guessed, history is repeating itself. Alcohol may be free of prohibition, but the mistakes of the past are being repeated via marijuana prohibition, and people are paying the price for it in all sorts of ways. Now more than ever, our country needs a serious, nationwide reform of cannabis laws. There are so many potential benefits that could translate into huge windfalls for the government if we could just get over the stigma that continues to plague everyone’s favorite plant. So on this April 20th, sit back, relax, smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em, and lets talk pot.
Don’t be Afraid of the Ganja!
If you had told me 20 years ago that I would be writing an editorial in favor of marijuana legalization one day, I would have laughed in your face and told my mom on you. I remember taking a vow to be “drug free” in first grade, and thinking “I’ll just say no, and never do drugs”. The Regan era which I grew up in was waging the “War on Drugs” and programs like D.A.R.E. were scaring kids straight all across the country (me included). Let us fast forward to the first time I got high smoking weed. I wasn’t thinking about how I was breaking the law. I wasn’t thinking about how disappointed my parents would be if they could see. I wasn’t thinking about how I had broken a promise to myself never to do any drugs. What was I thinking? “Why the hell is this illegal?” All my life I was taught to fear marijuana. It was supposed to be this awful substance that would surely ruin all aspects of my life, but it didn’t feel awful at all. For the most part I felt happy and relaxed. I think I was also really impressed by how the room suddenly seemed bigger too. Then I ripped into a bag of Gummi Savers.
In my opinion, marijuana is one of the most vilified and misunderstood substances on the planet. Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely dangers that can come from smoking, but most of the “dangers” get blown way out of proportion. Some of the rumors perpetuated by the Office of National Drug Control Policy hold very little real truth and deserve some examination.
Myth – Marijuana is a gateway drug
People love to scapegoat. For those in favor of prohibition, this is usually the “go to” reason used to keep the plant illegal. The idea that marijuana use will lead to harder drug use is older than dirt, and it’s easy to see how it caught on because so many people who do harder drugs (cocaine, heroin, etc.) have used marijuana before. It should come as no surprise that most people who have done harder drugs have also smoked cigarettes or consumed alcohol in their lives, yet these substances rarely ever get the “gateway drug” label applied to them. Using the same logic, we could even brand “McDonalds” a gateway drug since probably every obese person on the planet has had the golden arches once in their lives.
But as we learned in math class, correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation. The numbers alone disprove the gateway theory when you consider that in a 2009 survey, almost 60% of people surveyed admitted to trying marijuana within the last year, but the combined total of people who tried heroin and cocaine for the first time was less than 1% of those surveyed. In addition, there are more and more reputable studies coming out each year that disprove the gateway theory. Most instead favor the explanation that a person’s environment or individual circumstances are much better predictors of who is likely to try harder drugs. For example, a person living in the slums of Chicago, Illinois and has divorced parents is much more likely to try harder drugs than someone who lives in a three story house in Greenwich, Connecticut and is on the honor roll.
To really understand where the gateway theory comes from, it is important to consider why the numbers of people who have tried pot are so high compared to other drugs. Many articles on this topic mention teenagers who say it is easier for them to get a hold of pot than it is to get alcohol or cigarettes. I believe that (ironically) marijuana is easier for a teen to get because IT IS illegal. Consider this - If someone wants to get into the business of selling alcohol or tobacco, there are endless hoops to jump through and regulations to follow, and of course taxes to pay. In turn, this legalization and regulation not only make it harder for minors to get tobacco and alcohol, it also makes these substances less appealing to would be “dealers” because the potential profit margin of selling to minors will never outweigh the risk. I mean seriously, how often do you hear of a drug dealer who sells alcohol and cigarettes? So for a 16 year old, I hypothesize that it’s far easier to find a friend who has some weed for sale than to bribe someone they don’t know into selling them some alcohol (or buying it for them).
There are many other possible explanations for the high numbers, but they do suggest marijuana use is far more accepted/tolerated than it was fifty years ago, and the more it is studied the less legitimacy the “gateway theory” holds.
Myth - Marijuana Has No Medicinal Value
Before I delve into this myth, a little background on how the US government classifies controlled substances like marijuana. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has five “schedules” numbered I-V which they use to classify drugs/controlled substances based on potential for abuse/dependence, currently accepted medical uses, and overall safety/health risks of the drug. Schedule I substances are generally considered the most dangerous and usually have the harshest penalties for offenders, whereas schedule V substances could be considered the “least dangerous” of the bunch. Commonly abused recreational drugs such as heroin or methamphetamine appear in schedule I while Schedule II has many drugs that are commonly prescribed for pain such as morphine, opium, and oxycodone. Schedules III-V are mostly drugs that the average person has never heard of. The guidelines for classifying a drug are vague and open to interpretation of those making the laws, but the main distinction between schedules I and II is that schedule II substances have accepted medical uses.
So where does marijuana fit into the DEA schedules? It’s in schedule I. That’s right. Despite the fact marijuana that is legal for medical use in nineteen states and has been used in treatment for a variety of conditions (including glaucoma, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, cancer, opioid dependence, and chronic pain to name a few), in the mind of the US government it has no medical value. Am I the only one that sees a hole in this argument? Now I’m not saying that weed can cure any of the above conditions, but there is concrete evidence to support the idea that marijuana can be used for medical purposes, and the list of possible uses grows as we continue to study it.
Cannabis was first classified as schedule I in 1970 at the recommendation of Roger O Egeberg who at the time was the “Assistant Secretary of Health”. In his recommendation he basically said that not enough was known about marijuana at the time to make a truly informed decision about its scheduling, so it should provisionally be classified as a schedule I substance. Forty two years later, and every attempt to reschedule marijuana (including attempts as recent as 2012) has been blocked, vetoed, or otherwise ignored by the government. The reasons will vary depending on who you ask, but it does make you wonder why people with no medical background (politicians) are passing judgment on the medicinal value of cannabis.
On a side note… anyone wanna guess what schedule cocaine falls under? Well because of its limited medical use, cocaine is a schedule II substance, and in the minds of some people this classification sends the message that cocaine is somehow less dangerous than marijuana. Some of you might even be asking yourselves “what classification(s) do alcohol and tobacco fall under?” Well these two substances, which are generally considered more harmful with a higher risk for dependence than marijuana, aren’t even a part of the controlled substances act. They’re exempt. I personally find this particularly disturbing when you consider how many diseases can be linked to tobacco smoke. Not to mention, alcohol addiction can be so extreme that there are documented cases of addicts dying from withdrawal effects. If the government gives adults the choice to consume potentially deadly products such as these as much as they want, it presents a huge, glaring hypocrisy for them to continuously ignore the growing evidence which supports medical marijuana uses. Our society trusts people to be responsible about their tobacco and alcohol use. Why could we not extend that same trust to adult cannabis smokers?
Prohibition is the problem, not the solution.
It seems like a logical solution - if something is a problem, just ban it and tell people that it’s bad for them. But when your mom brought home a bag of Chips Ahoy and told you to wait until after dinner to have one, did you always listen to her? There are legitimate reasons for the prohibition of many drugs, and you’ll never find me writing an essay in support of meth or heroin legalization. But when a small minority of elected officials prohibit something that the majority of the population wants legalized, problems are inevitably going to arise.
This is where my reference to “The Untouchables” comes back into play. When Alcohol was made illegal, the demand didn’t just disappear. New problems arose when people who didn’t know anything about making liquor started brewing their own. Organized crime elements moved in to meet the demand. Law enforcement had to create new teams to enforce the laws. Each new problem brings in its own subset of problems while the original intent of the law gets lost in the flood. Prohibition didn’t reduce the number of people who drank, just as prohibiting marijuana has done nothing to reduce consumption. And just as it was in the twenties, the same problems that plagued the prohibition era have returned.
During the prohibition era, when people couldn’t buy liquor, some would resort to making their own liquor in whatever ways they had learned. As you can imagine, with no regulation, people could put basically anything they wanted in the alcohol, and there were documented cases of people developing blindness or paralysis as a result of drinking various incarnations of “moonshine”. These days, the production of any kind of alcohol is heavily regulated to ensure purity and safety and people don’t have to fear the possibility of adulterants in their beers or whiskey and this is thanks to government regulation.
Similarly, if you’ve visited a smoke shop any time in the last three to five years, you’ve probably seen a variety of products that have been dubbed “spice” or “herbal incense”. These products are to cannabis what bathtub gin was to alcohol. They appear on the market as a “legal” alternative to weed, and they exploit loopholes in the law in order to stay on the shelves and avert prosecution. As you can imagine they have been the source of much controversy. Each bag/container is labeled with a disclaimer that says “not for human consumption”. Likewise, if you were to ask a store clerk what they are for, you’ll most likely get a very vague explanation of what they are. You might be told to “burn it”, while avoiding terms like “smoking”. Because these products are “not meant for human consumption”, they do not have to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, so they are technically “legal”. The illegality comes when a person tries to smoke it, because they’re using it for other than its intended purpose. Bags are filled with various legal smoking blends that have been sprayed with synthetic chemicals that are intended to mimic the effects of marijuana. Unfortunately, unless you’re a chemist with a gas chromatograph, you probably have no idea what you’re smoking. Bags typically have no information about where they come from or what chemicals they have been sprayed with. Over the last several years the DEA has been banning countless chemical compounds in an effort to curtail the sales of spice. But every time they ban five substances, ten more pop up to take their places. The irony of the whole situation is that if weed were legalized, the demand for these products would almost certainly disappear, just like the demand for moonshine disappeared after prohibition. Government regulation of marijuana could be a potentially great thing for pot smokers because they’re in a position to ensure the quality and safety of what is sold. Smokers would have assurance that someone who knows what they’re doing has grown it and hasn’t adulterated it.
Now on the subject of cannabis law enforcement. The Texas Democratic Party recently published some statistics on marijuana arrests. According to them, the War on Drugs (as it relates to marijuana enforcement) costs the US twelve billion dollars annually, and 85% of marijuana related arrests are for possession only. Although penalties for possession are starting to soften and people aren’t being incarcerated as much, the country still has to pay the costs of processing these offenses, including court costs for lawyers and judges, and the salaries of police officers and DEA agents whose time might be better served going after meth labs instead of raiding medicinal marijuana dispensaries that are operating within the laws of their respective states.
Prohibition doesn’t just cost the government and the tax payers. It costs the end user. If cannabis were legalized and regulated, it would hugely cut into the profits of the drug cartels that are the only ones benefiting from prohibition. Anyone who has ever bought some decent sensimilla (high grade seedless marijuana, sometimes called “dro”) can expect to pay around $60 for an eighth of an ounce (which translates to around $7600 a pound). A large part of this inflated cost comes from the dangers of selling and transporting marijuana. To what degree this affects the cost is open to speculation, but some sources say that if cannabis were legal the price for a pound of sensimilla could be as low as twenty dollars. This leaves plenty of room for the government to tax the hell out of it, and there will be no shortage of people willing to buy weed on the shelves of a legitimate dispensary rather than someone who may or may not be a from a gang or involved in cartels like a dealer.
And last certainly not least, lets not forget that magic “T” word I’ve been using. That’s right, Taxes. It’s no secret that the US is in recovery from the worst financial crisis since The Great Depression. Taxation of cannabis has the potential to make a serious improvement in our economy, because if there is one thing that history has shown us with alcohol and tobacco, it’s that people are willing to pay taxes on items that are in demand. Since cannabis hasn’t ever had an economy in this country, there is obviously speculation about how much tax revenue could be raised from weed, but a realistic figure after all is said and done would be somewhere around 25% of the end cost which is close to what Americans are taxed for alcohol.
Also, legalization could create a significant amount of new jobs in the field of agriculture and in the form of dispensaries and processing plants. Oregon and Colorado (the first two states to legalize marijuana for personal recreational use) are in a unique position to affect future legislation on the plant as they begin to implement new infrastructure to grow it commercially and regulate it. If they can show that marijuana can be grown legally and regulated efficiently, more states are sure to follow. And the sooner that happens, the sooner the federal government is likely to repeal federal laws about marijuana so each state can have the freedom to choose how they will handle marijuana legalization.
Even though the US has finally breached the landmark first states to legalize cannabis, we are still many years away from legalization. But thanks to the growing level of literature and studies on cannabis, people are now more informed about it than ever and public opinion continues to grow in favor of weed reform. It “high time” we started getting honest and up front about the plant and stop trying to ignore this real issue. If you’d like to learn more about marijuana laws in your state, visit the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (Norml.Org).
Happy 4/20!
Sources
http://www.drugscien...tition/C7A.html
http://stopthedrugwa...arijuana_not_ga
http://norml.org/lib...ealth-mythology
http://scienceblog.c...o-gateway-drug/
http://www.deadivers....gov/schedules/
http://www.latimes.c...0,2533952.story
http://www.huffingto..._n_1606217.html
http://www.slate.com...arly_free_.html
This post has been promoted to an article
Disclaimer - The following article is an opinion piece and is not meant to be taken as legal or medical advice. Marijuana laws vary depending on your location. Those who chose to consume cannabis do so at their own risk. Youchew is not liable for your actions.
The majority of the Youtube Poop community has probably never seen Brian De Palma’s 1987 crime epic “The Untouchables” simply by virtue of its age. In my opinion however, this is not only a movie that people should see, it’s a movie that deserves induction into the Library of Congress for its cultural relevancy. Some people have seen this movie simply because they were fans of Brian De Palma, or because of the all star cast featuring Kevin Costner, Robert De Niro, and Sean Connery. But rather than delving into the virtues of its writing, cast, or cinematography, consider the film for its historical aspects. “The Untouchables” is based on a 1957 novel written by the lead character Eliot Ness. The story is an autobiographical account of his work as a federal agent during the Prohibition era. For those who aren’t yet familiar with Prohibition, suffice it to say it’s a period in US history that most would consider “a mistake”. From 1920 to 1933, the sale of alcohol was illegal thanks to the “Volstead Act” (despite being vetoed by President Wilson). Ness was charged with enforcing a law that the majority of the country did not support. Though he was technically the “good guy”, he was more like the hall monitor in high school telling guys not to make out with their girlfriends between classes. To make things more difficult, he had to deal with the organized crime element led by Al Capone who made sure everyone who wanted to drink could, and where there’s organized crime, police corruption is sure to follow. Lots of money was spent fighting the production of alcohol, and the costs were heavy on both sides. Prohibition continued to lose supporters as time went by, and eventually alcohol production was legalized again in 1933.
Why am I opening an article about marijuana by discussing alcohol? Because those who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it, and as you may have guessed, history is repeating itself. Alcohol may be free of prohibition, but the mistakes of the past are being repeated via marijuana prohibition, and people are paying the price for it in all sorts of ways. Now more than ever, our country needs a serious, nationwide reform of cannabis laws. There are so many potential benefits that could translate into huge windfalls for the government if we could just get over the stigma that continues to plague everyone’s favorite plant. So on this April 20th, sit back, relax, smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em, and lets talk pot.
Don’t be Afraid of the Ganja!
If you had told me 20 years ago that I would be writing an editorial in favor of marijuana legalization one day, I would have laughed in your face and told my mom on you. I remember taking a vow to be “drug free” in first grade, and thinking “I’ll just say no, and never do drugs”. The Regan era which I grew up in was waging the “War on Drugs” and programs like D.A.R.E. were scaring kids straight all across the country (me included). Let us fast forward to the first time I got high smoking weed. I wasn’t thinking about how I was breaking the law. I wasn’t thinking about how disappointed my parents would be if they could see. I wasn’t thinking about how I had broken a promise to myself never to do any drugs. What was I thinking? “Why the hell is this illegal?” All my life I was taught to fear marijuana. It was supposed to be this awful substance that would surely ruin all aspects of my life, but it didn’t feel awful at all. For the most part I felt happy and relaxed. I think I was also really impressed by how the room suddenly seemed bigger too. Then I ripped into a bag of Gummi Savers.
In my opinion, marijuana is one of the most vilified and misunderstood substances on the planet. Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely dangers that can come from smoking, but most of the “dangers” get blown way out of proportion. Some of the rumors perpetuated by the Office of National Drug Control Policy hold very little real truth and deserve some examination.
Myth – Marijuana is a gateway drug
People love to scapegoat. For those in favor of prohibition, this is usually the “go to” reason used to keep the plant illegal. The idea that marijuana use will lead to harder drug use is older than dirt, and it’s easy to see how it caught on because so many people who do harder drugs (cocaine, heroin, etc.) have used marijuana before. It should come as no surprise that most people who have done harder drugs have also smoked cigarettes or consumed alcohol in their lives, yet these substances rarely ever get the “gateway drug” label applied to them. Using the same logic, we could even brand “McDonalds” a gateway drug since probably every obese person on the planet has had the golden arches once in their lives.
But as we learned in math class, correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation. The numbers alone disprove the gateway theory when you consider that in a 2009 survey, almost 60% of people surveyed admitted to trying marijuana within the last year, but the combined total of people who tried heroin and cocaine for the first time was less than 1% of those surveyed. In addition, there are more and more reputable studies coming out each year that disprove the gateway theory. Most instead favor the explanation that a person’s environment or individual circumstances are much better predictors of who is likely to try harder drugs. For example, a person living in the slums of Chicago, Illinois and has divorced parents is much more likely to try harder drugs than someone who lives in a three story house in Greenwich, Connecticut and is on the honor roll.
To really understand where the gateway theory comes from, it is important to consider why the numbers of people who have tried pot are so high compared to other drugs. Many articles on this topic mention teenagers who say it is easier for them to get a hold of pot than it is to get alcohol or cigarettes. I believe that (ironically) marijuana is easier for a teen to get because IT IS illegal. Consider this - If someone wants to get into the business of selling alcohol or tobacco, there are endless hoops to jump through and regulations to follow, and of course taxes to pay. In turn, this legalization and regulation not only make it harder for minors to get tobacco and alcohol, it also makes these substances less appealing to would be “dealers” because the potential profit margin of selling to minors will never outweigh the risk. I mean seriously, how often do you hear of a drug dealer who sells alcohol and cigarettes? So for a 16 year old, I hypothesize that it’s far easier to find a friend who has some weed for sale than to bribe someone they don’t know into selling them some alcohol (or buying it for them).
There are many other possible explanations for the high numbers, but they do suggest marijuana use is far more accepted/tolerated than it was fifty years ago, and the more it is studied the less legitimacy the “gateway theory” holds.
Myth - Marijuana Has No Medicinal Value
Before I delve into this myth, a little background on how the US government classifies controlled substances like marijuana. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has five “schedules” numbered I-V which they use to classify drugs/controlled substances based on potential for abuse/dependence, currently accepted medical uses, and overall safety/health risks of the drug. Schedule I substances are generally considered the most dangerous and usually have the harshest penalties for offenders, whereas schedule V substances could be considered the “least dangerous” of the bunch. Commonly abused recreational drugs such as heroin or methamphetamine appear in schedule I while Schedule II has many drugs that are commonly prescribed for pain such as morphine, opium, and oxycodone. Schedules III-V are mostly drugs that the average person has never heard of. The guidelines for classifying a drug are vague and open to interpretation of those making the laws, but the main distinction between schedules I and II is that schedule II substances have accepted medical uses.
So where does marijuana fit into the DEA schedules? It’s in schedule I. That’s right. Despite the fact marijuana that is legal for medical use in nineteen states and has been used in treatment for a variety of conditions (including glaucoma, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, cancer, opioid dependence, and chronic pain to name a few), in the mind of the US government it has no medical value. Am I the only one that sees a hole in this argument? Now I’m not saying that weed can cure any of the above conditions, but there is concrete evidence to support the idea that marijuana can be used for medical purposes, and the list of possible uses grows as we continue to study it.
Cannabis was first classified as schedule I in 1970 at the recommendation of Roger O Egeberg who at the time was the “Assistant Secretary of Health”. In his recommendation he basically said that not enough was known about marijuana at the time to make a truly informed decision about its scheduling, so it should provisionally be classified as a schedule I substance. Forty two years later, and every attempt to reschedule marijuana (including attempts as recent as 2012) has been blocked, vetoed, or otherwise ignored by the government. The reasons will vary depending on who you ask, but it does make you wonder why people with no medical background (politicians) are passing judgment on the medicinal value of cannabis.
On a side note… anyone wanna guess what schedule cocaine falls under? Well because of its limited medical use, cocaine is a schedule II substance, and in the minds of some people this classification sends the message that cocaine is somehow less dangerous than marijuana. Some of you might even be asking yourselves “what classification(s) do alcohol and tobacco fall under?” Well these two substances, which are generally considered more harmful with a higher risk for dependence than marijuana, aren’t even a part of the controlled substances act. They’re exempt. I personally find this particularly disturbing when you consider how many diseases can be linked to tobacco smoke. Not to mention, alcohol addiction can be so extreme that there are documented cases of addicts dying from withdrawal effects. If the government gives adults the choice to consume potentially deadly products such as these as much as they want, it presents a huge, glaring hypocrisy for them to continuously ignore the growing evidence which supports medical marijuana uses. Our society trusts people to be responsible about their tobacco and alcohol use. Why could we not extend that same trust to adult cannabis smokers?
Prohibition is the problem, not the solution.
It seems like a logical solution - if something is a problem, just ban it and tell people that it’s bad for them. But when your mom brought home a bag of Chips Ahoy and told you to wait until after dinner to have one, did you always listen to her? There are legitimate reasons for the prohibition of many drugs, and you’ll never find me writing an essay in support of meth or heroin legalization. But when a small minority of elected officials prohibit something that the majority of the population wants legalized, problems are inevitably going to arise.
This is where my reference to “The Untouchables” comes back into play. When Alcohol was made illegal, the demand didn’t just disappear. New problems arose when people who didn’t know anything about making liquor started brewing their own. Organized crime elements moved in to meet the demand. Law enforcement had to create new teams to enforce the laws. Each new problem brings in its own subset of problems while the original intent of the law gets lost in the flood. Prohibition didn’t reduce the number of people who drank, just as prohibiting marijuana has done nothing to reduce consumption. And just as it was in the twenties, the same problems that plagued the prohibition era have returned.
During the prohibition era, when people couldn’t buy liquor, some would resort to making their own liquor in whatever ways they had learned. As you can imagine, with no regulation, people could put basically anything they wanted in the alcohol, and there were documented cases of people developing blindness or paralysis as a result of drinking various incarnations of “moonshine”. These days, the production of any kind of alcohol is heavily regulated to ensure purity and safety and people don’t have to fear the possibility of adulterants in their beers or whiskey and this is thanks to government regulation.
Similarly, if you’ve visited a smoke shop any time in the last three to five years, you’ve probably seen a variety of products that have been dubbed “spice” or “herbal incense”. These products are to cannabis what bathtub gin was to alcohol. They appear on the market as a “legal” alternative to weed, and they exploit loopholes in the law in order to stay on the shelves and avert prosecution. As you can imagine they have been the source of much controversy. Each bag/container is labeled with a disclaimer that says “not for human consumption”. Likewise, if you were to ask a store clerk what they are for, you’ll most likely get a very vague explanation of what they are. You might be told to “burn it”, while avoiding terms like “smoking”. Because these products are “not meant for human consumption”, they do not have to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, so they are technically “legal”. The illegality comes when a person tries to smoke it, because they’re using it for other than its intended purpose. Bags are filled with various legal smoking blends that have been sprayed with synthetic chemicals that are intended to mimic the effects of marijuana. Unfortunately, unless you’re a chemist with a gas chromatograph, you probably have no idea what you’re smoking. Bags typically have no information about where they come from or what chemicals they have been sprayed with. Over the last several years the DEA has been banning countless chemical compounds in an effort to curtail the sales of spice. But every time they ban five substances, ten more pop up to take their places. The irony of the whole situation is that if weed were legalized, the demand for these products would almost certainly disappear, just like the demand for moonshine disappeared after prohibition. Government regulation of marijuana could be a potentially great thing for pot smokers because they’re in a position to ensure the quality and safety of what is sold. Smokers would have assurance that someone who knows what they’re doing has grown it and hasn’t adulterated it.
Now on the subject of cannabis law enforcement. The Texas Democratic Party recently published some statistics on marijuana arrests. According to them, the War on Drugs (as it relates to marijuana enforcement) costs the US twelve billion dollars annually, and 85% of marijuana related arrests are for possession only. Although penalties for possession are starting to soften and people aren’t being incarcerated as much, the country still has to pay the costs of processing these offenses, including court costs for lawyers and judges, and the salaries of police officers and DEA agents whose time might be better served going after meth labs instead of raiding medicinal marijuana dispensaries that are operating within the laws of their respective states.
A segment from the film "Super High Me" documenting a DEA raid on a medical marijuana dispensary in California. Watching this will give you an idea of why the "War on Drugs" is costing the US So much money.
Prohibition doesn’t just cost the government and the tax payers. It costs the end user. If cannabis were legalized and regulated, it would hugely cut into the profits of the drug cartels that are the only ones benefiting from prohibition. Anyone who has ever bought some decent sensimilla (high grade seedless marijuana, sometimes called “dro”) can expect to pay around $60 for an eighth of an ounce (which translates to around $7600 a pound). A large part of this inflated cost comes from the dangers of selling and transporting marijuana. To what degree this affects the cost is open to speculation, but some sources say that if cannabis were legal the price for a pound of sensimilla could be as low as twenty dollars. This leaves plenty of room for the government to tax the hell out of it, and there will be no shortage of people willing to buy weed on the shelves of a legitimate dispensary rather than someone who may or may not be a from a gang or involved in cartels like a dealer.
And last certainly not least, lets not forget that magic “T” word I’ve been using. That’s right, Taxes. It’s no secret that the US is in recovery from the worst financial crisis since The Great Depression. Taxation of cannabis has the potential to make a serious improvement in our economy, because if there is one thing that history has shown us with alcohol and tobacco, it’s that people are willing to pay taxes on items that are in demand. Since cannabis hasn’t ever had an economy in this country, there is obviously speculation about how much tax revenue could be raised from weed, but a realistic figure after all is said and done would be somewhere around 25% of the end cost which is close to what Americans are taxed for alcohol.
Also, legalization could create a significant amount of new jobs in the field of agriculture and in the form of dispensaries and processing plants. Oregon and Colorado (the first two states to legalize marijuana for personal recreational use) are in a unique position to affect future legislation on the plant as they begin to implement new infrastructure to grow it commercially and regulate it. If they can show that marijuana can be grown legally and regulated efficiently, more states are sure to follow. And the sooner that happens, the sooner the federal government is likely to repeal federal laws about marijuana so each state can have the freedom to choose how they will handle marijuana legalization.
Screen capture of a map from Norml.org. Icons show which states have medical marijuana laws and which states have legalized/decriminalized it.
Even though the US has finally breached the landmark first states to legalize cannabis, we are still many years away from legalization. But thanks to the growing level of literature and studies on cannabis, people are now more informed about it than ever and public opinion continues to grow in favor of weed reform. It “high time” we started getting honest and up front about the plant and stop trying to ignore this real issue. If you’d like to learn more about marijuana laws in your state, visit the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (Norml.Org).
Happy 4/20!
Sources
http://www.drugscien...tition/C7A.html
http://stopthedrugwa...arijuana_not_ga
http://norml.org/lib...ealth-mythology
http://scienceblog.c...o-gateway-drug/
http://www.deadivers....gov/schedules/
http://www.latimes.c...0,2533952.story
http://www.huffingto..._n_1606217.html
http://www.slate.com...arly_free_.html
This post has been promoted to an article