Legalization of Marijuana

I was more interested if the opponents of cannabis could site any studys that suggested a negative short term effect on the brain? If there is a reason they oppose cannabis should be able to back it up with something more than it maybe leading to cancer.

I've also heard that cannabis can trigger schizophrenia in rare cases. I guess it's what they call a calculated guess.

You can cut that bullshit right now. I have no more patience for you saying that than I have with Sandy Vagina (aka Kuvasz).

(Actually that's my stage name Joe), If you want to have a discussion, then we'll discuss. But don't try to score any debating points by claiming that I'm not in earnest.

The only interest I have in this subject is in connection with the general legal and philosophical issues that relate to marijuana legislation.

Assuming that it is, I suggest to you that as a consequence of this principle, there ought to be a presumption of liberty. "We don't know what will happen" ought to inhibit the government's zeal to criminalize; in other words, the burden to prove a danger to the public should be on whoever seeks to prohibit a particular conduct. If we had acted on this principle from the beginning, we would never have burnt wiches or hung people for disbelieving in god and participating in oral sex. It's a good principle, and it should apply to drugs too.

I'm pretty sure you also want this principle applied to the approval of new drugs. And if someone is injured (say, by Thalidomide, for instance), well then that just serves as a useful warning to others.

I've also heard that cannabis can trigger schizophrenia in rare cases. I guess it's what they call a calculated guess.

Marijuana Myths; Marijuana Facts Reviewed by Travis Charbeneau
Might as Well Face it, We're Addicted to Lies


February 15, 1998

"The truth shall make you free' only if you are willing to renounce your chains."

The Bible says, "the truth shall make you free." Surely, this is one of the "traditional values" most prized by Americans. We like "free." The truth, however, can also make you uncomfortable. The Bible hasn't much advice for dealing with this inconvenience, apart from excoriating hypocrites, people who know the truth but apparently take greater comfort in lies. When it comes to marijuana, alas, Americans are ferocious hypocrites.

This particular truth hits hard in Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts, the new book by Lynn Zimmer, Ph.D. and John P. Morgan, M.D. (233pp, Lindesmith Center, $16.95, 800 444 2524). Myths/Facts is an encyclopedic, excruciatingly-footnoted summary of fatuous assertions vs. scientific investigation of marijuana dating back over a century. It ruthlessly exposes our stubborn, downright embarrassing preference for lies over long-established and widely-known truths.

The book is neatly organized around 20 marijuana myths. One opens each chapter in paraphrase: Myth: Marijuana impairs memory and cognition. Several attributed quotes employing the myth ensue, propaganda like, "Marijuana savages short-term memory and the ability to concentrate." (Joseph A. Califano, 1996)

We then get a single-paragraph refutation in the authors' words, essentially a review of the chapter. Fact: Marijuana produces immediate temporary changes in thoughts, perceptions and information processing.... This diminishment only lasts for the duration of intoxication. There is no convincing evidence that heavy long-term marijuana use permanently impairs memory or other cognitive functions.

The body of the chapter follows, a detailed, heavily-annotated review of the best science available, testifying against the myth in question; acknowledging whatever kernels of truth it may contain (and boy, are these rare). The aggregate makes for a tidy, single-volume annihilation of current policy.

Too many of us still applaud politicians preaching the intellectual equivalent of a flat Earth. Far, far worse, too many applaud as fellow citizens are led off to prison for knowing the repeatedly proven truth that marijuana use is, at the very worst, a frivolous vice. (The truth in this case makes you a convict.)

"Frivolous vice" is the essential conclusion of virtually every reputable study:

"The moderate use of hemp drugs is practically attended by no evil results at all." --Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894.

Marijuana's effects have "apparently been greatly exaggerated." Panama Canal Zone Report, 1925.

"... ills commonly attributed to marihuana have been ... exaggerated." LaGuardia Commission Report, 1944.

"... once the myths were cleared, it became obvious that the case for and against was not evenly balanced. ... long-term consumption of cannabis ... has no harmful effect." The British Wooten Report, 1969.

"... little proven danger of physical or psychological harm ..." National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, 1972.

"... anti-social effects ... have not been substantiated by scientific evidence." National Academy of Science Report, 1982.

"... risks of cannabis use cannot ... be described as 'unacceptable'." Report by the Dutch Government, 1995.

All this and much more, and yet headlines were made recently when researchers injected anandamide, a cannabinoid-like compound that occurs naturally in humans, directly into petri dishes containing two-cell mouse embryos. Development stopped! Presto: "serious and harmful effect of marijuana" on pregnancy for mice who throw their embryos into the petri dishes of confused researchers. This is the caliber of "science" offered to refute over a century of clinical study and 5,000 years of cultural experience with hemp.

Again, all this might be of only academic interest were it not for the fact that, even as real crime has diminished for five years running, marijuana arrests have doubled over the same period. We now have 1,725,842 Americans in prison, more than ever. Further, "drug offenses have accounted for more than a third of the growth in the incarcerated population, and since 1980 the incarceration rate for drug arrests has increased 1,000 percent." (New York Times, 1/19/98) For "drug," read "marijuana."

A 1995 study by Virginians Against Drug Violence found that more than half of all drug offenders are arrested for marijuana -- 89.5 percent for simple possession. This is just one truth opposing the lie that pot-smoking today is winked at. Myth: ... lax treatment has allowed criminals to use and traffic in marijuana with impunity. (Washington Post, 9/9/96)

Any pot-smokers recently "winked at" can well appreciate President Nixon's own Shafer Commission's finding in 1970 that "marijuana policy had become more damaging to American society than marijuana." Marijuana use cannot be shown to have destroyed a single life in thousands of years of documented use, clinical observation and medical study. Marijuana law, boasting all the sound legal footing of Paleolithic taboo, has destroyed, and keeps on destroying, tens of thousands of lives every year. Since 1970, a staggering eleven million Americans have been arrested for consorting with a plant.

This superstitious nonsense persists despite examples like the Netherlands, where prohibition has been essentially repealed and marijuana made freely available for over 20 years. Rather than study and heed such examples, American leadership has taken them as grist for more lies: Myth: Marijuana policy in the Netherlands is a failure. Fact: ... rates of marijuana use in the Netherlands are similar to those in the United States. However, for young adolescents, rates of marijuana use are lower ... The Dutch government ... remains committed to decriminalization.

Friends and foes of prohibition will profit from this little book and its thorough documentation. Here are assembled all the reputable studies with each objection and every finding of "sustained" or "overruled." What astounds the reader is not a mere preponderance of evidence overruling the many mythical objections to marijuana, but the devastating blast of refutation on nearly every count; a collective verdict of "innocent" so overwhelming that our persistence -- indeed, our seeming preference for lies becomes as perverse as any drug addiction. We are "sober as a judge" prosecuting our War on Drugs. And yet our judgement is "intoxicated" just

as Webster's defines the word: "poisoned."

Abjuring such a long-practiced perversion in favor of truth may indeed be uncomfortable and inconvenient. With a political culture and legal system so long-addicted to lies, resistance to truth is entrenched to the extent that honest debate is treated like criticism of the Emperor's New Clothes. Ask former Surgeon General Elders.

"The truth shall make you free" only if you are willing to renounce your chains. The truth about marijuana has long been known, but, like junkies in denial, we prefer our chains, shaming and discrediting the law, creating crime from whole cloth, imprisoning the innocent, even persecuting the sick in our Inquisition-style zeal. With the publication of Marijuana Myths; Marijuana Facts our addiction to lies has been entirely exposed. Someday and soon, it must be as entirely rejected.

TRAVIS CHARBENEAU [email protected]

BACKGROUND:

Travis Charbeneau is a writer and commentator living in Richmond, VA. Long-active with The World Future Society, he is especially interested in exploring the evolution and impacts of technological, political and cultural trends. He works in a variety of styles and formats, from magazine-length articles to op-ed.

Charbeneau has worked as a syndicated stringer for Copley News Service and Alternet, appearing independently in Utne Reader, World Monitor, The Des Moines Register, Newsday, The Sun, The Christian Science Monitor, Esquire Magazine, In These Times, The San Jose Mercury-News, The Detroit News, Keyboard, Toward Freedom, On the Issues, The Dallas Times-Herald, The Dallas Morning News, Option, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and many other periodicals. His essay "My Story" won a 1985 PEN award.

Freelance since 1973, Charbeneau first began working in journalism forThe Michigan Daily at The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he graduated in 1967, majoring in English Literature.

Coolwhip wrote:

I've also heard that cannabis can trigger schizophrenia in rare cases. I guess it's what they call a calculated guess.

I've never seen any evidence of schizophrenia.

Me neither.

Oh shut up, what would you know?

You're always picking on me!

nag nag nag

So, on the one hand, you approve of the FDA's work, and yet, on the other hand, you oppose laws that require approval of new drugs by the FDA. I suppose that, under a libertarian regime, the FDA would act as a non-governmental advisory body, sort of like Underwriters Labs, granting its "seal of approval" to drugs. For a variety of reasons (many of which we have discussed in other threads, and which I will not repeat here), I think that's bad policy in theory and unworkable in practice.

As we have seen in this thread, people who really, really want to smoke marijuana will downplay or ignore any evidence that shows that it may be potentially harmful.

That's the democratic compromise in a nutshell.

I'll just add that making the export of wool a capital crime was the result of a misguided economic theory. Times have changed so little over 300 years.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

DrewDad wrote:

joefromchicago wrote:

DrewDad wrote:

You have not made a case for protecting the general welfare, as you cannot show a significant potential for harm. Now you want to force people to be risk averse because that's the way they "should be?"

I'll make a deal with you: if you don't want to waste your time trying to understand my posts, then I won't waste your time by having you read my replies to your posts.

I understand your posts just fine; you just don't seem to want to do the legwork to support your opinion. Or make them hold together, really. Every time someone identifies a hole in your reasoning you just shift the topic.

Instead of strengthening your argument, it just makes you seem lazy.

I couldn't agree more. This is the laziest argument I've ever seen you post, Joe, and I'm mystified as to why you keep at it.

Cycloptichorn

Sometimes this happens when you try to defend a position you do not actually believe in.

This issue brings that out in many people as they want to be "pro-drug-free-society", yet understand that THIS particuliar "drug" is basicly as harmless as many over the counter pain killers.

I know I am torn about this issue. So I guess I will just have to roll up another one and give it some more thought. Got any cookies? :wink:

joefromchicago wrote:

DrewDad wrote:

Everytime someone identifies a hole in your reasoning you just shift the topic.

Really? When did I do that?

Perhaps you should re-read the thread, as you so often encourage others to do.

Then as discussed by me but as yet unanswered by you: "If you cannot quality and quantify in a pragmatic rational manner, the overall harm done in the present circumstances versus circumstances in which marijuana was legal, then it would be logical to err on the side of freedom of choice, unless or until pragmatically obtained and assessed evidence strongly suggested otherwise, no?"

I'm not at all convinced that your so-called "Different cultures yield different results" argument negates my argument that "some comparisons cannot be made between the overall harm done in the present circumstances versus circumstances in which marijuana is legal or less frowned upon". It's not as if the Dutch are Martians!

If you sincerely believe your "Different cultures yield different results" argument then you would be for a different sets of laws for different cultures, rather bizarre if we use Canada's Official Multiculturalism stance!

Fair enough. If that turned out to be the case, I would have no problem with keeping the FDA as a government agency. It would gather and distribute public information about medicine, just as the Census Bureau provides public information about demographics, and the US Geological Survey about geology. I would still leave the DEA abolished, and the laws it enforces out of the books. I don't believe you've argued yet that this variant wouldn't work.

I don't know we have seen that -- I haven't read the whole thread. I also don't know if it would mean much if we had indeed seen it. After all, A2K is a public forum, where you can often see stupid arguments made on every side of every debate. Fortunately, there isn't yet a Federal Thread Agency to regulate the quality of acceptable posts, nor a Thread Enforcement Agency to enforce that only acceptable posts be submitted.

But with these preliminaries out of the way, I am not seeing people who downplay the risks of marijuana smoking. I only see people who think those risks are worth taking, given the pleasure you get in return. I also see people who think this is the individual's tradeoff to make, not society's.

joefromchicago wrote:

That's the democratic compromise in a nutshell.

Says you. I says that democracy means that all legitimate government powers derive from the people. It doesn't mean that all government powers derived from the people are legitimate. That's a claim you are grafting onto democracy, and that's why I'm calling you an enlightened absolutist. If Friedrich II of Prussia was a democratic parliament, not a king, I don't see what principled objection you would make to his regime and its claims of near-absolute government power.

That's an argument for my side, not against it. The risk that the government may act on mistaken theories is an argument for restrained, not expanded, government powers to enforce policies.

(That's a point Herbert Spencer makes in his essay on Overlegislation. It's a pity you haven't read Spencer's writings, but probably have read Hofstadter's caricatures of them.)

Quote:

As I explained above to Cycloptichorn, people are rather bad at evaluating risk when it comes to their own desires.

You've stated that this is your opinion, but have provided zero objective evidence that this is the case.

Really? I haven't seen any proponent of Marijuana on this thread discount the risk that it is potentially harmful. I have seen challenges to factually incorrect information which has been posted. But to equate this with 'ignoring' evidence that something is harmful is a little ridiculous.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Quote:

As I explained above to Cycloptichorn, people are rather bad at evaluating risk when it comes to their own desires.

You've stated that this is your opinion, but have provided zero objective evidence that this is the case.

Well, I'm not exactly sure why I have to post all of my evidence when the others here have not come under the same sort of scrutiny. I suppose if I just printed some rubbish from NORML you'd be satisfied with that.

In any event, economists have long known that people, in general, are risk-averse, particularly when the stakes are less than trivial. You can read Kahneman and Tversky on decision-making, like I did. Or, if you don't want to put the work into it, you can take a quick glance at some of these links:

link
link (.pdf)
link

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Really? I haven't seen any proponent of Marijuana on this thread discount the risk that it is potentially harmful. I have seen challenges to factually incorrect information which has been posted. But to equate this with 'ignoring' evidence that something is harmful is a little ridiculous.

Really? So according to you, what are the actual or potential harms posed by marijuana?

But with these preliminaries out of the way, I am not seeing people who downplay the risks of marijuana smoking. I only see people who think those risks are worth taking, given the pleasure you get in return. I also see people who think this is the individual's tradeoff to make, not society's.

Where do you draw the line between the people acting in a responsible, democratic fashion and the people acting in an oppressive, neo-absolutist fashion?

As long as their basic rights are respected, the minority can't object because the legislation gores their particular ox. After all, they chose to participate in the democratic process too.

Now, of course one can argue that the people have natural rights that are to be respected by the government. You, on the other hand, can't believe that, because you have said that you are a utilitarian, and utilitarians don't believe in natural rights.

I know that you've tried to square that philosophic circle, but those efforts are doomed to failure.

Does that also apply to the government adopting libertarianism?