A few days ago I brought you some fresh reefer madness from Barbara Kay in Canada’s National Post. She also promised that she would write a follow-up after the National Post editorial board replied with “Barbara Kay vs. Mary Jane”.
Well, here it is. I’ve included only the reefer madness portions, which strain credulity even more than her original article:
Barbara Kay: Why the Post is (still) wrong about marijuana – Full Comment
In fact, marijuana does great harm to our most socially vulnerable youth: aboriginals, the mentally fragile and the socially dysfunctional. Cheaper, readily available cannabis will escalate consumption and exacerbate well-documented harms in that population.
The argument here is that because cannabis may trigger schizotypal reactions in young teens already predisposed to schizophrenia in a very tiny few cases, it should not be legalized for sale to adults. By that same logic, alcohol should be prohibited because a minority of drinkers are predisposed to alcoholism.
But the basis of her statement isn’t even true. Readily available cannabis has not escalated consumption in the Netherlands, where marijuana is available in coffeeshops. In fact, Dutch teens and Dutch adults have about half the consumption rates of cannabis compared to their North American counterparts. When 12 American states decriminalized cannabis, consumption rates remained steady. In the 12 US states that have medical marijuana laws, teen use has declined since passage of the law.
If I’d been around when Europeans were introduced to tobacco four centuries ago, and had known then that even moderate long-term smoking caused lung cancer, why yes, I would have argued against its legalization. Alas, that rusted open barn door can’t be easily closed.
But what has contributed to the decline in tobacco smoking in our society? Not prohibition or fines, but rather a system of age-monitored, advertising-restricted taxation and regulation, combined with anti-smoking ad campaigns and anti-public smoking laws.
The only reason “that rusted open barn door” can’t be closed is because there are far too many cigarette smokers. The barn door for cannabis was wide open for 5,000 years until it was forced closed by prohibitionists in the early 20th century. Most of the medicines of that time contained cannabis and everyone was knew about hemp. Hearst and Anslinger oiled that rusted barn door with racist scaremongering and renaming cannabis “marijuana”. With alcohol prohibition, there were so many drinkers that the negative effects of prohibition were easily visible, but with cannabis prohibition, it was easy to blame the prohibitionary effects on this new “marijuana” that allegedly made the Mexicans violent and the Negroes (sic) seek relations with the white women.
As for alcohol, no. Smoking in any form is harmful. Wine and spirits in moderation confer health benefits. The great majority of social drinkers should not be penalized for the dysfunction of the few.
Yes, smoking is harmful. Eating cannabis and vaporizing cannabis and tinctures of cannabis aren’t “smoking”. Your issue is with the delivery mechanism, not the substance.
And we’re finding more and more evidence that cannabis in moderation can confer health benefits.
And wait a minute, didn’t you just, a couple of paragraphs before, tell us we can’t legalize cannabis because of the dysfunction of a few?
From antiquity, the loving cultivation of vineyards wherever possible, and the enjoyment of wine and spirits has been a positive feature of all Western societies. Prohibition failed because its imposition through a transiently ascendant wave of religious asceticism was inconsistent with democracy and a society in which alcohol generally played a benign role.
Yet humans have cultivated cannabis since antiquity and it has been a positive feature in Western and Eastern societies. Queen Victoria used cannabis for her menstrual cramps. The Bible is littered with references to anointing oil made with the flowering tops of “kaneh bosm” (cannabis). Rastas and Coptic Christians use it spiritually.
How is it that banning alcohol was undemocratic and banning cannabis is not?
And because alcohol in moderation is culturally aligned with enhanced fellowship and animated human interaction, it is therefore a communal as well as an individual good. Conversely, the purpose of marijuana is the alteration of consciousness, an end achieved by a process that thrives in solitude and mental torpor.
Excuse me, I need to go get a cloth to wipe off the soda I just spit out all over my monitor…
Alcohol use isn’t an alteration of consciousness? Marijuana use thrives in solitude? Ms. Kay, you obviously have never used cannabis nor interviewed anyone that has. Let me tell you as someone who played music in bars for fifteen years: the “animated human interaction” you speak of is called “fist fights” and “puking”. Any cop will tell you they’d rather deal with a call involving tokers over drinkers any day.
As well, the greatly augmented proportions of the psychoactive ingredient in today’s cannabis belie the now-anachronistic defence of cannabis’ gentle effects. As one reader wrote me: “One high-potency marijuana reefer is worse on driving reflexes than a whole bottle of wine from my experience. Much worse.”
Nobody says you have to smoke the whole thing… You might as well say, “One bottle of Jagermeister is much worse on driving reflexes than a whole bottle of wine!”
Unlike alcohol or tobacco, the marijuana-rights lobby is linked to an ideology and a larger agenda, in support of which a sympathetic leftist media overlooks its obligation to cover legitimate health concerns. Thus, even though the Post board’s capitulation to the romance of cannabis may spring from lofty libertarian principles, it unwittingly furthers the nihilist agenda of cynical all-drug legalizers who are exploiting marijuana’s relatively innocent image as their Trojan horse.
Again, the “slippery slope” that arguing for marijuana legalization means you want heroin to be sold over the counter at the convenience store. (By the way, as a “leftist”, let me tell you, that media does quite a good job at exaggerating health concerns about cannabis.)
One mirthless irony that theory-fixated libertarians fail to consider is that legalizing marijuana would simply divert invested criminals’ efforts into marketing stronger, illegal marijuana to minors.
Yeah, like how the end of alcohol prohibition forced the bootleggers to make even stronger illegal whiskey to sell to minors.
She fails to note that most cannabis dealers make the bulk of their business from adults. A cannabis consumer can spend around $2,000 per year on a product it took $200 to produce. That price collapses without the artificial support of prohibition; the legal market will set the price. And whatever small market for minors that may still exist will be supplied by older friends buying it for them at the state store, not some criminal dealer. There will be no sustainable business in illegal cannabis sales.
Another is that for accountability and liability purposes, legalization will embroil government, insurance companies, schools and Medicare in such a tortuous maze of regulatory and enforcement interference with their privacy that potheads — and libertarians — will yearn for the paradoxical simplicity of illegal, but unencumbered access.
Sorry, I’ll take taxes and regulations over a federal mandatory minimum any day.
