By Ash Lindstrom
“It took 13 years for the United States to come to its senses and end
Prohibition, 13 years in which people kept drinking, otherwise law-abiding
citizens became criminals and crime syndicates arose and flourished. It has
been more than 40 years since Congress passed the current ban on marijuana,
inflicting great harm on society just to prohibit a substance far less
dangerous than alcohol. The federal government should repeal the ban on
marijuana.”1
So wrote the New York Times (NYT) editorial
board early this summer, in a seminal article advocating the legalization of
cannabis (Cannabis sativa) titled
“Repeal Prohibition, Again.” In it, the editorial board proposed change to the
federal laws concerning cannabis — so citizens and states will not be subject to changing Presidential administrations' views on the matter — as well as the
establishment of cannabis regulations similar to those pertaining to alcohol
and tobacco.
The NYT board cited a US Federal Bureau of Investigation figure of 658,000 cannabis
arrests for 2012 in the initial editorial article, contrasting that number with
only 256,000 arrests made for heroin, cocaine, and their derivatives for the
same year. “Even worse, the result is racist,”
the NYT board wrote, “falling disproportionately on young black men, ruining
their lives and creating new generations of career criminals.”
According to the article, the editorial board of the NYT believes that the
health risks of cannabis absolutely do not outweigh those of legal alcohol and
tobacco use; however, they do propose a legal age of 21 be enacted due to
potential adverse effects of cannabis on the adolescent brain.
Additionally, in “Repeal Prohibition, Again,” the NYT editorial board announced
the commencement of a series of editorials on cannabis issues — titled “High
Time: An Editorial Series on Marijuana Legalization” — which was published over
the summer and is summarized herein.
Part 1: Let States Decide on Marijuana by David Firestone, July 26, 20142
This article begins by setting the scene in 1970, with President Nixon “at the
height of his white-hot war on crime.” It was in that year that he appealed for
the passage of the Controlled Substances Act by Congress; Firestone wrote that
the Senate voted unanimously to pass it after Senator Thomas Dodd (D-Connecticut)
claimed that cannabis caused “dreadful hallucinations” to the point that it led
an Army sergeant to command an attack on his own troops in Vietnam.
Firestone describes the Controlled Substance Act as “antique,” superficially
illustrating this view by pointing out the law’s spelling of “marihuana.”
Interestingly, he notes that changing the law needn’t involve Congress: both
the US Attorney General and the Secretary of Health and Human Services have the
power to do so.
With cannabis already legalized either medicinally, recreationally, or both in
35 states in the US and the District of Columbia, “[r]epealing the [Controlled
Substances Act] would allow the states to decide whether to permit marijuana
use and under what conditions.”
Firestone goes on to call the position of the federal government at the time of
the Act’s passing absurd and archaic, specifically because of its
categorization of cannabis as a Schedule I drug with no medical value “alongside
some of the most dangerous and mind-altering drugs on earth, ranked as high as
heroin, LSD and bufotenine, a highly toxic and hallucinogenic toad venom that
can cause cardiac arrest.” Cocaine and methamphetamine, meanwhile, are Schedule
II drugs with recognized “legitimate medical use.”
“It’s hard for the public to take seriously a law that says marijuana and
heroin have exactly the same ‘high potential for abuse,’” wrote Firestone,
“since that ignores the vastly more addictive power of narcotics, which have
destroyed the lives of millions of people around the world.” No wonder, after
more than 40 years of congressional and presidential refusal to reschedule cannabis
— which has caused zero deaths from overdose — states are now defying federal
law, he asserts. In 18 states and the District of Columbia, Firestone adds,
marijuana has been “decriminalized” — “generally meaning that possession of
small amounts is treated like a traffic ticket or ignored.” This year, voters in
Oregon and Alaska will determine whether to join Washington and Colorado as
states in which recreational cannabis use is legal. “The states… are weary of
locking up thousands of their own citizens for possessing a substance that has
less potential for abuse and destructive power than alcohol,” wrote Firestone.
The article explains that unlike reproductive rights and marriage equality, the
ability to use marijuana is not a “fundamental right” and therefore belongs in
the states’ purview; the fact that marijuana is illegal on a federal level and
carries heavy penalties, however, has discouraged some states from legalizing
it.
According to Firestone’s article, in August 2013, the Justice Department
stated that it wouldn’t meddle in Colorado and Washington, so long as the
following criteria were met:
1)
Marijuana must not be accessible by minors or criminal gangs;
2)
Transport out of state must be prohibited, and;
3)
Prohibition against drugged driving, violence, and illegal drugs must be
enforced.
Of course, this guidance “applies only to this moment in this presidential
administration” — a reference to the fact that a future president may or may
not agree with the current administration’s position and might even propose
policies that revert to the previous status quo.
Firestone proposes that the sensible thing is for the federal government to let
states make their own choices about marijuana the same way they’ve made their
own choices about alcohol since Prohibition ended in 1933. Some longshot
legislation has been proposed that aligns with this view, including the “Ending
Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act,”3 which, if passed, would result
in the following:
1)
Marijuana would be eliminated from the Controlled Substances Act;
2)
A federal permit would be required to grow or distribute cannabis;
3) It would be regulated like alcohol is currently regulated by the Food and
Drug Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and
Explosives.
Another relevant bill — “which would not be as effective” — called the “Respect
State Marijuana Laws Act”4 has been introduced. If it became law,
Firestone explained, cannabis would remain classified as a Schedule I
substance, but the Controlled Substances Act would not be enforced “against
anyone acting in compliance with a state marijuana law.”
Libertarian Republicans and liberal Democrats, Firestone notes, have a more
harmonious perspective on the matter than some may think. “In a surprise move
in May, the House [of Representatives] voted 219 to 189 to prohibit the Drug
Enforcement Agency from prosecuting people who use medical marijuana, if a
state had made it legal,” wrote Firestone. “The measure’s fate is uncertain in
the Senate.”
In the meantime, Firestone put forward a suggestion for President Obama, who
has been quoted as being in favor of Colorado and Washington’s measures but has
punted the matter of cannabis rescheduling to Congress: “[O]rder the attorney
general to conduct the study necessary to support removal of marijuana from
Schedule I.”
“For too long, politicians have seen the high cost — in dollars and lives
locked behind bars — of their pointless war on marijuana and chosen to do
nothing. But many states have had enough, and it’s time for Washington to get
out of their way,” wrote Firestone in closing.
Part 2: The Injustice of Marijuana Arrests by Jesse Wegman, July 28, 20145
This article addresses the trends in and consequences of marijuana arrests.
“The toll,” writes Wegman, “can be measured in dollars — billions of which are
thrown away each year in the aggressive enforcement of pointless laws. It can
be measured in years — whether wasted behind bars or stolen from a child who
grows up fatherless. And it can be measured in lives — those damaged if not
destroyed by the shockingly harsh consequences that can follow even the most
minor offenses.”
To illustrate, Wegman turns to the 2010 case of Bernard Noble who was sentenced
to 13 years in prison for possessing a “small amount of marijuana in his
pocket.” He had only two nonviolent offenses on his record. Next, Wegman tells
the story of Jeff Mizanskey, who received a sentence of life in prison without
parole in 1993 “for participating (unknowingly, he said) in the purchase of a
five pound brick of marijuana” after two previous nonviolent marijuana
convictions.
Prison sentences aren’t the only deeply damaging punishments for marijuana
arrests, which affect opportunities for employment and home ownership, among
other things, because such arrests remain on an individual’s record for years,
according to the article. “[P]olice departments that presumably have far more
important things to do waste an enormous amount of time and taxpayer money
chasing a drug that two states have already legalized and that a majority of
Americans believe should be legal everywhere,” wrote Wegman.
The article claims that 8.2 million marijuana
arrests were carried out by police from 2001 to 2010 in the United States, with
approximately nine of 10 charged for mere possession; startlingly, according to
Wegman, in 2011 “there were more arrests for marijuana possession than for all
violent crimes put together.”
Citing the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Times editorial states that $3.6 billion are spent annually just to
enforce existing cannabis possession laws. And still, every year, around 30
million Americans consume cannabis undeterred.
Again crediting the ACLU as a source, Wegman states that while the use of
cannabis is comparable between blacks and whites, black individuals are nearly four
times as likely to be arrested as white people for possession. “In the
worst-offending counties in the country,” wrote Wegman, “[black people] are up to
thirty times more likely to be arrested.” Even when charges are dropped,
records for arrests are not expunged, to the detriment of people of color in
impoverished communities. These “criminal histories,” according to Wegman, can
and do result in harsher consequences for minor subsequent offenses.
Of the United States’ 2.4 million inmates,
very few — about 1% — are
serving sentences for distributing or possessing cannabis, according to the
article. Still, many of those sentences are bloated as a result of records
tarnished by insignificant offenses, Wegman wrote, adding that approximately
nine in 10 have no history of violence and “blacks are 10 times as likely as
whites to go to prison for drug offenses.”
On the outside, growers and dispensary proprietors in more than 25 states —
particularly those where it is legal recreationally — profit from selling
cannabis. Wegman poignantly quotes Ohio
State University law professor Michelle Alexander: “40 years of impoverished
black kids getting prison time for selling weed, and their families and futures
destroyed. Now, white men are planning to get rich by doing exactly the same
thing?”
Part 3: The Federal Marijuana Ban is Rooted in Myth and Xenophobia by Brent Staples, July 29, 20146
Staples chronicles the historical origins of the criminalization of cannabis in
the United States, which had less to do with public health concerns than with the
stigmatization of minority communities associated with cannabis use in the
1930s — specifically, African Americans and Mexican immigrants.
According to the article, in the mid-1800s, cannabis cultivation was common in
the United States for textile purposes. “The practice of smoking it appeared in
the Texas border towns around 1900,” wrote Staples, “brought by Mexican immigrants
who cultivated cannabis as an intoxicant and for medicinal purposes as they had
done at home.” Soon it was prevalent in the region and available in drug and
grocery stores. Nevertheless, local law enforcement attacked the substance
because of its popularity among “immoral” poor minority groups, which
ultimately led to marijuana’s confounding classification as a “narcotic,” along
with opium-derived drugs, and, later, the prohibition of non-medically
recognized cannabis* in more than 30 states by the early 1930s.
Staples describes the incitement of the federal government’s prohibition of
cannabis, beginning with a “prominent doctor[’s]” claim that cannabis smokers
were responsible for a surge in theft. “Sensationalistic newspaper articles”
abounded, perpetuating exaggerated stereotypes, false facts, and rousing fear
among the general population, according to Staples.
Harry Jacob Anslinger, the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and
the “architect of national prohibition,” loudly proclaimed that cannabis
spurred insanity and harrowing crimes. His propaganda worked — passage of The
Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 established a prohibitively high tax on cannabis,†
according to the Times article.
In 1951, the Public Health Service Hospital’s director of research, Harris
Isbell, testified before Congress that “smoking marijuana has no unpleasant
aftereffects, no dependence is developed on the drug, and the practice can
easily be stopped at any time.” But the damage, it seemed, had been done, according
to Staples. The consequences for using cannabis became more severe on federal
and state levels, even as arguments concerning marijuana’s addictive qualities
receded. A trope was born: Cannabis as the “gateway drug.”
It wasn’t until the 1960s, Staples highlights, that the American public began
to revisit its stance on cannabis due to the appropriation of the substance by
white, well-off young people; the reality of the devastating toll of a
marijuana conviction finally was reverberating across the country. The 1972
National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse determined that
“criminalization was ‘too harsh a tool to apply to personal possession even in
the effort to discourage use,’ and that ‘the actual potential harm of use of
the drug is not great enough to justify intrusion by the criminal law into
private behavior, a step which our society takes only with the greatest
reluctance.’” President Nixon was unmoved by these conclusions, but within a
decade, most states began a steady mellowing of possession penalties, according
to Staples. Today our federal and state cannabis laws remain out of harmony.
“[The federal government] clings to a policy that has its origins in racism and
xenophobia and whose principle effect,” Staples asserts in closing, “has been
to ruin the lives of generations of people.”
Part 4: What Science Says About Marijuana by Philip M. Boffey, July 31, 20147
Boffey begins his health-focused editorial with a 2012 quote to Congress from
Michele Leonhart, administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA): “All
illegal drugs are bad for people.” According to the article, Leonhart “refus[ed]
to say whether crack [cocaine], methamphetamines or prescription painkillers
are more addictive or physically harmful than marijuana.” Boffey uses her testimony
to illustrate the chasm between the federal position on cannabis and the
scientific facts.
Of all of the editorials in the series, this is perhaps the most dense — and
for good reason. Before diving into the deep end, Boffey reiterates that more
dangerous and addictive drugs, tobacco and alcohol, are legal; that there is no
documentation ever of a fatal cannabis overdose; and that the research thus far
on cannabis does not indicate that it causes cancer.‡ Having made
those statements, Boffey then clarifies that cannabis is not altogether
innocuous. “[T]he potency of current strains may shock those who haven’t tried
it for decades,” wrote Boffey, “particularly when ingested as food. It can
produce serious dependency, and constant use would interfere with job and
school performance.”
For healthy adults, the article claims, “casual” use of cannabis carries few
risks, if any. According to Boffey, in 2010, a British independent scientific
committee analyzed the personal and societal damage caused by 20 drugs
(including cannabis, heroin, crack cocaine, and alcohol, among others) and
attempted to rank them by harmfulness.8 Alcohol was determined to be
the most harmful; cannabis placed eighth. Also cited is a nearly 20-year-old
World Health Organization study that determined that the detrimental health
effects of tobacco and alcohol would be greater than those of cannabis in the
West, even if cannabis use were to be used as much as the aforementioned legal
substances.9
A 2012 study, Boffey wrote, concluded that no adverse effects on pulmonary
function were associated with smoking one cannabis cigarette (or “joint”) each
day over the course of seven years.10 “Experts say that marijuana
increases the heart rate and the volume of blood pumped by the heart,” added
Boffey, “but that poses a risk mostly to older users who already have cardiac
or other health problems.”
As for the supposed addictive qualities of marijuana, Boffey clarifies that
unlike heroin, which is a physically addictive drug, cannabis use can result in
a “psychological dependence.” Tolerance can develop in heavy users,
necessitating larger doses, and withdrawal can be accompanied by typically mild
discomfort. Still, a 2012 American Society of Addiction Medicine white paper
stressed that cannabis addiction “is a significant health problem,” according
to the Times article.11
Comparatively, though, cannabis addiction or dependence (or the potential for
either to develop) is not the scourge to society that other drugs are. Citing a
1999 study from the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine, Boffey
claims that a mere nine percent of cannabis users become dependent, as opposed
to 32 percent of tobacco users, 23 percent of heroin users, 17 percent of
cocaine users, and 15 percent of alcohol users.12
One of the longest-running theories posited in the discussion of cannabis’s
potential detrimental health effects on minors is that it serves as a “gateway”
to use of more harmful substances. “People who try marijuana are more likely
than the general population to try other drugs, but that doesn’t mean marijuana
prompted them to do so,” wrote Boffey. “The real gateway drugs are tobacco and
alcohol, which young people turn to first before trying marijuana.”
Boffey upholds the NYT editorial board’s earlier suggestion that cannabis
remain illegal for minors. To support the reasoning of this proposal, he refers
to a long-term 2012 study§ claiming heavy cannabis smoking beginning
in one’s teen years and sustained into adulthood results in the loss of eight
IQ points by age 38.13 A 2002 study, Boffey wrote, “also found an IQ
loss among heavy school-age users who smoked at least 5 joints a week.”14
(There is some speculation regarding causality and correlation.)
The prevailing science does not support cannabis’s current status as an illegal
drug; rather, it supports conscientious legalization and regulation.
Unfortunately, Boffey does not address in this article the significant, absurd
restrictions on medical and scientific research on cannabis due to its Schedule
I classification.
Part 5: The Great Colorado Weed Experiment by Lawrence Downes, August 2, 201415
Since January of 2014, Downes opens, Coloradans have been consuming a variety
of (state-) legal cannabis products and cultivating their own plants for recreational
purposes. (Medicinal cannabis has been legal in Colorado since 2000.)
“Cannabis sales from January through May brought the state about $23.6 million
in revenue from taxes, licenses and fees,” reported Downes. “This is not a huge
amount in a $24 billion budget, but it’s a lot more than zero, and it’s money
that was not pocketed by the black market.”
Citing the Denver Post, Downes notes
that cannabis prosecutions decreased by 77 percent compared with the previous
year. Other crime, specifically theft, also has decreased. Economic and
employment opportunities, on the other hand, have increased since the state
enacted Amendment 64 to “regulate marijuana like alcohol,” according to the
article. The amendment should direct significant tax revenue to education and
medical research.
Downes highlights that despite the fact that Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper
was averse to Amendment 64, “his administration is trying to make legalization
work.” Cannabis regulations pertaining to public consumption and age
restrictions are being established and enforced; cannabis plants are digitally
tracked “from seed to sale.” According to the article, 100 percent compliance
to the law restricting sales to minors was determined for cannabis businesses
in Denver and Pueblo under surveillance by Colorado regulators.
The state is also in the process of developing and refining tools to deter drugged
driving, which, in the case of cannabis, is more difficult to determine than
drunk driving because THC can linger in the body long after use. Downes reports
that, according to the Colorado State Patrol, fatal vehicle collisions
decreased by about 25 percent in the first quarter of this year compared to the
first quarter of 2013.
As the first state to legalize recreational cannabis, Colorado is on the frontline
of identifying and, subsequently, taking responsible measures to counter
unforeseen issues such as clear labeling for edibles, the lack of which
previously caused concern after a small number of non-fatal overdoses was
highly publicized. The state is also leading the way in the areas of educating
children and marketing to minors to discourage underage use of cannabis.
According to Downes, Colorado is devoting $17 million to these priorities.
In short, by virtue of its early adoption of legalized medicinal and
non-medicinal cannabis, Colorado is likely to serve as a national model —
encountering unexpected issues and discovering what works and what does not as
the proverbial eyes of the United States look on. Its experiment with fully
legalized marijuana will be instructive for all. Though Washington State, too,
has legalized both medicinal and recreational cannabis, according to Downes, it
has implemented “far stricter controls on advertising and public displays, and
a tight licensing process that, so far, has allowed relatively few marijuana
stores to open, with limited supplies at very high prices.” Consequently,
Downes posits, legalized recreational cannabis may not overcome less-expensive
black market product — at least among Washington State residents.
Given the remarkable ease with which a medical cannabis ID card is obtained in
the state of California — where it is not technically
legal for recreational purposes — Downes suggests that perhaps readers yet ought
to consider cannabis, for all intents and purposes, unofficially across-the-board
state-legal there. Certainly there have been some growing pains since
California legalized medicinal cannabis in 1996; however, exceptionally
accessible cannabis hardly has transformed the state into an apocalyptically
crime-ridden dystopia over the last two decades.
Part 6: Rules for the Marijuana Market by Vikas Bajaj, August 4, 201416
“How should governments regulate the production and sale of [cannabis]?” asks
Bajaj. An effective regulatory system, the author asserts, should ensure that cannabis
abuse does not increase even as the substance becomes more widely accessible. Further,
it should “protect consumers from both dangerous and counterfeit products” and
should “undermine and eventually eliminate the black market for marijuana,
which has done great damage to society.”
After a state legalizes, the cost of cannabis could decrease as much as 90
percent, according to a Times-cited
figure from Stanford law professor Robert MacCoun and colleagues; thusly, cannabis
retailers will be motivated to encourage cannabis use for economic gain.
According to Bajaj, the Colorado Department of Revenue claims that “nearly 90
percent of the demand for marijuana in the state this year would come from only
30 percent of users, those who use the drug 21 to 31 days a month.”
In light of that knowledge, Bajaj proposes that licensed cannabis retailers
decrease prices only to the extent that they push out black-market distributors
— adding that anything more may encourage more widespread use and/or
dependence. High taxation based on factors other than price (as is the present
custom in both Colorado and Washington State) — potentially on potency, inflation,
and medicinal vs. recreational — Bajaj offers, may present a solution that will
allow the market to circumvent the consequences wrought by insignificant
taxation of alcohol.
Further, Bajaj wrote, regulations must be established for marketing to
discourage underage use, in the same way regulations ban “outdoor advertising
and product placements that the tobacco industry accepted as part of its
settlements with state attorneys general in 1998.” Minors also will be
protected via labelling regulations and the even distribution of psychoactive
ingredients, according to the article. Regulation should address adulteration,
as well.
To avoid vertical integration, Bajaj suggests that the cultivation and retail
aspects of the cannabis industry be kept apart in the long-run. “Colorado
initially required growers to also be retailers in the interest of getting the
legal market going quickly but has since allowed them to specialize,” wrote
Bajaj, adding that ideally production and sales ought to be separated — as
Washington State already has required.
Overall, Bajaj presents what is, in his view, an optimal system of regulation
meant to ensure that the cannabis industry does not repeat the mistakes of the
alcohol and tobacco industries, both of which are dominated by a very few, and,
in the case of the former, has resulted in the imposition of unfair regulations
on small artisanal producers. In the case of the latter, scientific inquiry
was, for a time, suffocated.
“Whatever states decide to do, it is important that they stand ready to modify
policies as legal marijuana markets evolve,” wrote Bajaj. “Policy makers have
little experience regulating a fully commercial market in this drug. It makes
sense for states to proceed with caution and reserve the right to change as
they learn more,” he concluded.
Conclusion
In addition to its longstanding tradition of endorsing presidential candidates
throughout the years, the New York Times
editorial board has expressed its position on a number of important issues —
including marriage equality, the Affordable Care Act, and Guantanamo Bay
Detention Camp, to name just a few — in the pages of the “Old Gray Lady,” as
the 163-year-old newspaper is sometimes called. The dedication of an entire
series of articles to cannabis is apt as the majority of Americans have now
shifted in favor of legalization, and because there are plentiful, significant
angles from which cannabis’s past and future impacts should be addressed in
conjunction with the NYT editorial board’s proposal for federal legalization.
So abundant is the relevant information, and so dynamic is the discussion, that
it would be virtually impossible to cover every aspect of these changing
social, economic, medical, political, and legal trends — but the Times series has succeeded in making
accessible some of the more esoteric components of the cannabis conversation,
encouraging supplementary edification. In time, readers and activists may come
to call this the summer of the “Old Green Lady.”
* At this time, cannabis appeared in the United States Pharmacopeia for
rheumatism, nausea, and pain, among other indications.
† Up to $24 annually; calculating
inflation, this would be nearly $400 today.
‡ The original NYT editorial did not
cite a specific study or studies in support of this statement. A peer reviewer
of this article suggested the following study should be referenced: Hashibe M, Morgenstern H, Cui Y, et
al. Marijuana use and the risk of lung and upper aerodigestive tract cancers:
results of a population-based case-control study. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2006;15(10):1829-1834.
§ A peer reviewer of this article
characterized this as a very poor quality study, stating that it did not
control for binge drinking and alcohol abuse. Further, according to the
reviewer, the study employed only one brain scan, and the researchers’ negative
conclusions regarding density of the hippocampus contradict the preponderance
of scientific literature.
The reviewer added that “All effects on cognition and brain function are
reversible after 30 days of abstinence [from cannabis],” citing the following study: Pope HG Jr, Gruber AJ, Hudson JI,
Huestis MA, Yurgelun-Todd D. Neuropsychological performance in long-term
cannabis users. Arch Gen Psychiatry.
2001;58(10):909-915.
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