Cannabis control: costs outweigh the benefitsForAgainst

Colin Drummond opens with two straw men. He first asserts that
"legalizers" (a poorly defined category, at best) assert that cannabis is
"harmless" and "legalizers" ignore the health effects. I have been in drug
policy reform for almost fifteen years, and I have personally met most of
the major reform leaders and discussed their views with them. I have also
discussed these issues with perhaps five thousand "prohibitionists." To
date, the only people who ever made that argument are the prohibitionists.

Any search of Internet will show that the majority of information on
the health effects of cannabis is to be found on reform web sites. I have
hundreds of such documents myself(1), and I have distributed literally
millions of copies of them, including some of the documents he cites as
confirming the harms of cannabis.(2)(3)(4)

The second straw man is the comparison with guns. Cannabis is not
guns, and the last person to publicly assert that cannabis was responsible
for things like the Dunblane tragedy was Dr. James C. Munch, the US
Official Expert on Marihuana from 1938 to 1962. Dr. Munch testified in
court, under oath, that marijuana could make your incisors grow six inches
long and drip with blood, and that when he tried it, it turned him into a
bat.(5) Mr. Drummond seems to have left out the part about the bat.

Drummond makes a comparison with the health effects of alcohol and
tobacco, and cites a WHO paper on the health effects, but ignores the WHO
paper that specifically compared alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis.(6)
Whatever accusations may be made against cannabis, it has been clear for a
long time that the health effects are no worse than, and probably
significantly less than, comparable use of alcohol or tobacco.(6) The US
DEA's Chief Administrative Law Judge studied the issue for two years and
collected 15 volumes of research on the health effects of marijuana. He
concluded, "Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest
therapeutically active substances known to man."(7)

Even if what Colin Drummond said about the cancer-causing effects was
true, that would put it roughly in the same category as tobacco cigars or
chewing tobacco. If he is arguing that the penalties on marijuana should
be roughly the same as those on cigars and chewing tobacco, I think I
would have to agree with him.

But the health effects of cannabis never did have anything to do with
the laws. In the United States, marijuana was outlawed because "All
Mexicans are crazy and marijuana is what makes them crazy" and because of
the fear that heroin addiction would lead to the use of marijuana.(5) When
it was outlawed at the national level, no real medical evidence was
provided to justify the law and the American Medical Association opposed
the law as unnecessary because they didn't think cannabis was
dangerous.(8)

Arguing about the health effects itself misses a major point: Just
because a drug is dangerous, that doesn't necessarily mean that
prohibition is the best approach to the problem.

The best evidence of that is the US experience with alcohol
prohibition. If any drug should be prohibited because of its negative
health effects or damage to society, it is clearly alcohol. In the US,
alcohol kills perhaps 110,000 people per year(9). It is involved in about
half of all deaths by auto accident, homicide, drownings, and fires, and
about seventy percent of all sexual assaults on children. It is the only
drug with any real association with drug-induced violent crime.(10) No
illegal drug, or combination of illegal drugs, comes close to the toll of
alcohol, and none ever has.(11)

But alcohol prohibition was a disaster. Violent crime and public
drunkenness rose to record levels (12)(13) (14), police corruption was
rampant(15), and alcohol consumption overall was higher than before
Prohibition.(16) Even worse, it caused a huge drinking epidemic among
children. Teen admissions to hospitals for alcohol problems soared,(16)
schools had to cancel dances because so many kids showed up drunk, and
many children became involved in the bootlegging trade.(17) Some of the
early supporters of alcohol prohibition turned against it because of its
effects on their own children.(18) Alcohol prohibition was passed with a
campaign of "Save the Children from Alcohol". It was repealed with a
campaign of "Save the Children from Prohibition." Historical speaking, the
biggest single cause of drug epidemics among children is hysterical anti-
drug campaigns.(19)

The attempt to link cannabis with violence is just silly. "In sum,
the weight of the evidence is that marihuana does not cause violent or
aggressive behavior, if anything, marihuana generally serves to inhibit
the expression of such behavior."(20) The other major research on the
subject reached the same conclusion. (8) (20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26) The
idea that marijuana and violence are associated comes solely from a long
history of truly absurd propaganda.(5)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)

With respect to the dangers of cannabis and driving, we should first
note that alcohol leads the field in auto-related deaths and always has.
We discovered long ago that outlawing alcohol was not a good solution to
issues like drunk driving. Today, we are sensible enough to legally
separate private alcohol intoxication from creating a public hazard on the
road.

There is a good deal of research on the effects of cannabis on
driving. The fact that cannabis was found in the bodies of accident
victims doesn't mean much. Cannabis can stay in the body for a number of
weeks, so the presence of cannabis in the body simply means that they
consumed cannabis some time in the last month. It doesn't necessarily mean
the person was intoxicated at the time of the accident. The sum of the
research shows that the effects in experienced users of cannabis rarely
rise above the impairment level of about two alcoholic drinks, which has
led one researcher to conclude that it is impossible to prove that
cannabis has a significant effect on driving.(32)

As problems with legalization, Drummond points to the current
problems with "bootleg" alcohol and the evil tobacco industry. He is
correct that there are problems with the current system of alcohol and
tobacco regulation. But, is he recommending that we adopt worldwide
alcohol and tobacco prohibition as the best solution? If not, why not?

As for your son or daughter being killed by someone high on cannabis
-- first, there isn't much of a threat of that, particularly when compared
to the risk from alcohol, and second, if someone gets high and injures
someone else, then you don't need a drug law to deal with them -- same as
with alcohol.

I agree with Mr. Drummond that we need better public education on the
health risks of cannabis. We also need better public education on the
policy options that are really effective in dealing with such problems. If
Mr. Drummond is really interested in effective policy, I suggest he start
by reading the conclusions and recommendations of the major studies of
drug policy over the last 100 years at http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer
under Major Studies of Drugs and Drug Policy.

If he knows of any significant studies of drug policy that support
cannabis prohibition, I would love to hear about them. I have already
asked every US Drug Czar to date if they know of any such studies. So far,
they haven’t come up with any.

References:

1) See, for example, the Cannabis Research Library -
http://druglibrary.org/crl/default.htm or the many studies on cannabis at
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/studies.htm

2) Hall W, Solowij N, Lemon J. The health and psychological effects
of cannabis use. Canberra: Australian Government Publication Service,
1994. (National Drug Strategy monograph No 25.)
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/medical/home.htm

3) Runciman R. Drugs and the law: report of the independent inquiry
into the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. London: Police Federation, 1999. -
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/runciman/default.htm

4) House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology.
Cannabis: the scientific and medical evidence. London: Stationery Office,
1998. - http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/hlords/15101.htm

5) History of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States, by
Professor Charles Whitebread, a speech before the California Judges
Conference, 1995 - http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/whiteb1.htm

6) WHO Project on Health Implications of Cannabis Use: A Comparative
Appraisal of the Health and Psychological Consequences of Alcohol,
Cannabis, Nicotine and Opiate Use - August 28, 1995 By Wayne Hall,Robin
Room, and Susan Bondy - http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/general/who-
index.htm

7) In The Matter Of Marijuana Rescheduling Petition, Docket No. 86-
22, US Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration, Francis L.
Young, Administrative Law Judge, September 6, 1988 -
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/YOUNG/index.html

8) Testimony of Dr. William Woodward, representative of the American
Medical Association, in the transcripts of the congressional hearings for
the Marihuana Tax Act, 1937 at
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/taxact/woodward.htm

9) Source: "Number of deaths and age-adjusted death rates per 100,000
population for categories of alcohol-related (A-R) mortality, United
States and States, 1979-96," National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and
Alcoholism, from the web at
http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/databases/armort01.txt

10) Psychoactive Substances and Violence by Jeffrey A. Roth, Series:
Research in Brief, US Dept. of Justice - February 1994 -
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/GovPubs/psycviol.htm

11) See, for example, the comparative histories of the drugs in the
Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs at
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cumenu.htm

12) Graph - Homicide Rates 1900 to 1990 -
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/graphs/10.htm

13) Testimony of Hon. William Cabell Bruce - The National Prohibition
Law - Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary,
United States Senate - Sixty-Ninth Congress, April 5 to 24, 1926 -
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/e1920/senj1926/cabellbruce.htm

14) - Testimony of Hon. William S. Vare - The National Prohibition
Law - Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary,
United States Senate - Sixty-Ninth Congress, April 5 to 24, 1926
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/e1920/senj1926/vare.htm

15) III. Bad Features of the Present Situation and Difficulties in
the Way of Enforcement, Report on the Enforcement of the Prohibition Laws
of the United States, National Commission on Law Observance and
Enforcement (Wickersham Commission Report), 1931 -
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/wick/index.html

16) History of Alcohol Prohibition, from Marihuana, A Signal of
Misunderstanding, the Report of the US National Commission on Marihuana
and Drug Abuse, 1962 -
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/nc/nc2a.htm

17) Testimony of Judge Alfred J. Talley, Judge of the Court of
General Sessions of the State of New York - The National Prohibition Law -
Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, United
States Senate - Sixty-Ninth Congress, April 5 to 24, 1926 -
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/e1920/senj1926/judgetalley.htm

18) Chapter 7 - Hard Times, Hopeful Times, from Repealing National
Prohibition, by David Kyvig, 1979 -
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/history/rnp/RNP7.html

19) Consumers Union Report, 1972 - Chapter 30 - Popularizing the
barbiturates as "thrill pills"; Chapter 38 - How speed was popularized;
Chapter 44 - How to Launch a Nationwide Drug Menace; Chapter 50 - How LSD
was popularized, 1962-1969; Chapter 51 - How the hazards of LSD were
augmented, 1962-1969 -
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cumenu.htm

20) Chapter III - Social Impact of marihuana use, from National
Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, Marihuana: A Signal of
Misunderstanding, 1972 -
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/nc/ncc3.htm

21) Mariajuana Smoking in Panama - The Military Surgeon Volume 73 -
July-December 1933 -
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/panama/panama1.htm

22) The Marihuana Problem in the City of New York, Mayor's Committee
on Marihuana, by the New York Academy of Medicine, City of New York, 1944.
- http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/lag/lagmenu.htm

23) Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report, 1894-
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/inhemp/ihmenu.htm

24) Report by the Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence, Cannabis,
UK, 1968 -
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/wootton/wootton_toc.htm

25) Chapter 2. Cannabis and Its Effects - Aggression, Violence, and
Crime, from Cannabis, The Report of the Canadian Government Commission of
Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs - 1972 -
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/ledain/ldctoc.html

26) The Dangers of Marijuana, from An Analysis of Marijuana
PolicyNational Research Council of the National Academy of Science, 1982-
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/nas/dangers.htm

27) Chapter 56. Marijuana is outlawed - Consumers Union Report on
Licit and Illicit Drugs, 1972 -
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cu56.html

28) The Forbidden Fruit and the Tree of Knowledge: An Inquiry into
the Legal History of American Marijuana Prohibition, Professors Richard J.
Bonnie & Charles H. Whitebread, Virginia Law Review- Vol. 56, October,
1970, Number 6 -
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/LIBRARY/studies/vlr/vlrtoc.htm

29) Testimony of Harry Anslinger, Director of the Federal Bureau of
Narcotics, in the transcripts of the congressional hearings for the
Marihuana Tax Act, 1937 at
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/taxact/taxact.htm

30) The Drug Hang-Up, America's Fifty Year Folly, by Rufus King, 1972
- Chapters 9-12 - http://druglibrary.org/special/king/dhu/dhumenu.htm

31) Reefer Madness (movie), 1938 -
http://www.crrh.org/hemptv/misc_reefer.html

32) No Proof Cannabis Drivers Put at Risk - The Advertiser,
Australia, 31 oct 2001 -
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n1999/a06.html?1913

Competing Interests: None.