Reason Magazine – The Perils of Potent Pot
Last week, as part of its ongoing effort to convince baby boomers that today’s “Pot 2.0″ is much more dangerous than the stuff they smoked when they were young, Walters’ Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) announced that “levels of THC—the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana—have reached the highest-ever amounts since scientific analysis of the drug began in the late 1970s.” The University of Mississippi’s Potency Monitoring Project reports that the average THC content of the seized marijuana it tests was 8.1 percent last year, up from 3.2 percent in 1983.
To bolster the idea that marijuana is more addictive today, the ONDCP notes that “16.1% of drug treatment admissions [in 2006] were for marijuana as the primary drug of abuse,” compared to “6% in 1992.” But referrals from the criminal justice system account for three-fifths of these treatment admissions, and marijuana arrests have increased by more than 150 percent since 1990.
By arresting people for marijuana possession and forcing them into treatment, the government shows why it has to arrest people for marijuana possession. That’s our self-justifying drug policy in a nutshell.
Well put.
