EVERY demographic has increased its support for marijuana legalization since 2005

Yesterday we revealed The Top Ten “Reefer Madness” Stories of 2011.  Today we continue our Year-End Retrospective with a look at the biggest news stories of scientific research into cannabis, public opinion polls on legalization, and statistical research on cannabis consumers.  We call it The Top Ten Cannabis Science Stories of 2011.  Tomorrow we’ll continue with The Top Ten “Stupid Stoner Stories” of 2011 and Friday we conclude with the The Top Ten People in Cannabis of 2011.

The Top Ten Cannabis Science Stories of 2011 (audio mp3)

10. The Carbon Footprint of Cannabis

Cannabis Karri reported on a study that measured just how much electricity we’re using to grow cannabis indoors.

A new report conducted and published by Even Mills, PhD, a respected and long time energy analyst along with Staff Scientists at the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory has concluded that Americans spend an amazing 1% of the entire national electricity consumption, or the equivalent of the output of seven large power plants on growing cannabis.

Since medical marijuana use has become so much more popular, and most of those states do not have a dispensary program, many more people are learning to grow marijuana indoors. The 20 terawatt-hours per year that marijuana growers use is due to the bright, often 24 hours a day lighting and an air change rate 60 times higher than a norml home. Even a modest indoor garden can have the same energy consumption rate of an entire data center. Since indoor cultivation of cannabis is a necessity to hide operations from authorities and others the energy bill to growers is about $5 billion each year. That extra energy to produce American cannabis is equal to the energy consumption of an extra 2 million average US homes. It also, unfortunately, produces greenhouse gas pollution equal to 3 million cars according to the new research.

9. Pot smokers are thinner and smarter than average

We have all suffered through jokes about cannabis consumers being fat, stupid couch potatoes.  So it was a joy in 2011 when two international studies found us to be thinner than our non-toking counterparts…

“We found that cannabis users are less likely to be obese than non-users,” [researchers said]. “We were so surprised, we thought we had [made] a mistake. Or that our results were due to the sample we studied. So we turned to another completely independent sample and found exactly the same association.”

…and smarter, too!

A new British study finds … men with high childhood IQs were up to two times more likely to use illegal drugs than their lower-scoring counterparts. Girls with high IQs were up to three times more likely to use drugs as adults. A high IQ is defined as a score between 107 and 158. An average IQ is 100. The study appears in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

None of this means taking up pot smoking is going to shed points and boost IQ.  It does mean that some popular stereotypes about us are completely unfounded.

8. Two-thirds of patients surveyed substitute marijuana for prescription medications

Many a medical marijuana activist can tell anecdotes of patients who’ve reduced or eliminated their need for opiate pain killers by substituting cannabis.  This year, Berkeley Patients Group surveyed their patients and found two-out-of-three had done just that.

In an anonymous survey, 66% of 350 clients at the Berkeley (Calif.) Patients Group, a medical marijuana dispensary, said that they use marijuana as a prescription drug substitute. Their reasons: Cannabis offered better symptom control with fewer side effects than did prescription drugs.

Those with pain symptoms said that marijuana has less addiction potential than do opioids. Others said marijuana helped to reduce the dose of other medications.

Speaking of the addiction potential of opioids…

7. Oxycontin is five times the “gateway drug” as marijuana

Prohibitionists have been using the “Gateway Drug” scare for years to frighten the public about legalization.  Despite every study blowing the concept out of the water, it still resonates with a large segment of the voters.  So I decided to take a look at the data to find out which drug is really the one with the greatest correlation to hard drug use, and it definitely wasn’t cannabis!

We cross-referenced the NSDUH numbers based on whether someone had ever tried marijuana. We found that only 1.5% of people who have toked became monthly cocaine users. For ecstasy, crack, meth, heroin, LSD, and PCP, less than 1% of the people who’ve tried pot are using those drugs regularly. Meanwhile, 2.9% of the people who’ve ever tried an legal analgesic (pain reliever) are regular cocaine users. For ecstasy, crack, and meth, more than 1% of who tried analgesics are regular users. People who tried analgesics are more than twice as likely as people who tried pot to use heroin regularly and three times more likely to use LSD regularly.

But if opponents want to cling to the idea that we should do everything in our power to stop someone from smoking that first marijuana joint, lest they become illegal drug addicts, then it is time to prohibit Vicodin, Lortab, Lorcet, and Oxycontin, those powerful legal opioid pain killers. The first Vicodin/Lortab/Lorcet leads to almost three times the risk of becoming a non-pot illegal drug user than the first joint and almost the same risk as smoking a joint every month. That first Oxycontin is more than five times the risk for drug abuse than the first joint.

6. Drug testing is still unreliable, inaccurate, unnecessary, invasive, and counter-productive

We drug test our citizens when we suspect they’re committing a crime, when they’re applying for a job, when they’re going to school, and when they’re in an accident.  Yet drug detection for marijuana is so unreliable and unscientific that its use is an affront to all free people.

First it is the “drug dog” that police and courts believe are akin to infallible scientific instruments instead of animals with instincts to please their human masters.

The accuracy of drug- and explosives-sniffing dogs is affected by human handlers’ beliefs, possibly in response to subtle, unintentional cues, UC Davis researchers have found.

The study, published in the January issue of the journal Animal Cognition, found that detection-dog teams erroneously “alerted,” or identified a scent, when there was no scent present more than 200 times — particularly when the handler believed that there was scent present.

Next it is the “drug lab” that may mishandle as many as one in ten tests.

An Indiana state lab wrongly reported 1 in 10 marijuana cases as positive, including some that were deliberately manipulated, an audit report indicated.

The audit’s findings showed errors in about 200 of 2,000 marijuana tests reported to law enforcement as having positive results, the Star said. This includes about 50 results the report said were consciously manipulated by lab workers.

Part of the justification for testing us for employment is workplace safety.  Yet, in medical marijuana states where tens or hundreds of thousands of citizens are legally using cannabis, we’ve seen drastic declines in workplace danger.

Prior to the beginning of the medical marijuana program [in Oregon], workplace injuries and illnesses that contributed to a lost workday stood at 3.4 per 100 full-time workers; in 2009 that rate is 2.3 per 100, a decline of 32%.  No-time-lost injuries and illnesses declined 40%, from 3.5 to 2.1 per 100.  Fatalities are down from 3.3 to 1.9 per 100, a drop of 42%.

These declines occurred while the medical marijuana patient registry grew by an average of a little more than 50% per year.

Another egregious use of drug testing is to make it a requirement of citizens seeking welfare assistance.  Florida’s law to do just that has been blocked while its (un-)constitutionality is determined, but in the time it was in effect, it cost Florida more than it saved.  It also found that welfare recipients were less likely to turn up positive than the general public.

The Department of Central Florida’s (DCF) region tested 40 applicants and only two tested positive for drugs, officials said. One of the tests is being appealed.

DCF said it has been referring applicants to clinics where drug screenings cost between $30 and $35. The applicant pays for the test out of his or her own pocket and then the state reimburses him if they test comes back negative.

Therefore, the 38 applicants in the Central Florida area, who tested negative, were reimbursed at least $30 each and cost taxpayers $1,140.

Meanwhile, the state is saving less than $240 a month by refusing benefits to those two applicants who tested positive.

Finally, the unintended consequences of drug testing became more apparent.  When marijuana is the drug that is the hardest to conceal on a drug test, people will turn to drugs that are easier to conceal.

As I looked at the data, I noticed that in the span from 2005 to 2011, the positive test rate for marijuana for all workplace drug tests (pre-employment, random, and post-accident) declined 20%, from 2.5% of approximately 2.4 million tests to 2.0%.  That’s about 12,000 fewer cannabis consumers who were caught by a pee test.

Meanwhile, oxycodone positives have increased 96% for all urine testing, although these tests are administered about one tenth as often (280,000) for oxycodone as for cannabis (2,400,000).  This despite the facts that while marijuana metabolites may be detected in urine for weeks, oxycodone metabolites are flushed from one’s system in two or three days.  Furthermore, random positives for oxycodone (1.20%) are almost twice as great and post-accident positives for oxycodone (1.80%) are nearly three-times greater than pre-employment positives for oxycodone (0.65%), which suggests to me that the pre-employment screens don’t work very well at keeping oxycodone users out of the workplace.

5. For past two years, more Americans arrested for marijuana than all other drugs combined despite arrest protection for America’s One Million Legal Marijuana Users

When somebody mentions “The War on Drugs”, remind them what we’re really talking about is a “War on Marijuana”.

Nationally, there were 1,638,846 drug arrests reported to the FBI, with 52.1% of those arrests for marijuana charges.  Last year, 51.6% of all drug arrests were for marijuana, showing a slight increase in marijuana as the majority of all drug arrests.  The last time marijuana made up a majority of the “War on Drugs” was 1985, when 55.6% of all drug arrests were for marijuana.

Keep in mind that these annual marijuana arrests continue to climb even as we reduce the number of marijuana users eligible for arrest in the medical marijuana state, users who grow and use the most marijuana.

Between one to one-and-a-half million people are legally authorized by their state to use marijuana in the United States, according to data compiled by NORML from state medical marijuana registries and patient estimates.  Assuming usage of one-half to one gram of cannabis medicine per day per patient and an average retail price of $320 per ounce, these legal consumers represent a $2.3 to $6.2 billion dollar market annually.

4. Drug Czar claims medical marijuana makes more young people smoke pot, despite fewer teens smoking pot

A popular refrain of the Drug Czar is that by calling marijuana “medicine”, we lead young people to think it is less dangerous, and therefore, use goes up.

“Emerging research reveals potential links between state laws permitting access to smoked medical marijuana and higher rates of marijuana use,” said Gil Kerlikowske, Director of National Drug Control Policy. “In light of what we know regarding the serious harm of illegal drug use, I urge every family – but particularly those in states targeted by pro-drug political campaigns – to redouble their efforts to shield young people from serious harm by educating them about the real health and safety consequences caused by illegal drug use.”

Except that medical marijuana’s been around on the West Coast for over a dozen years.  Between 2003 and 2009, as more states have adopted medical marijuana, nationally the rate of monthly teen use is on the decline.

In fact, eleven of the thirteen states that had medical marijuana as of 2009 saw declines in teen marijuana use, and the five that added it after 2003 saw double-digit declines.

From 2003 to 2009 in California, monthly teen use is up only 0.26%.  In Colorado, teen use is up 3.77% in that time frame.  Yet Wyoming, a state without medical marijuana, saw the greatest increase of 5.18%.  Furthermore, looking back before 2003, to 1996 and 1998 when the West Coast legalized medical marijuana, teen use is lower now than then.

3. The people really, really want to ask the President about the legalization of marijuana that half of them support

This year, the esteemed Gallup Poll finally recorded half of the US population in support of legalizing marijuana.

Gallup reports that the 50% nationwide support for legalization also represents the first time support has outweighed opposition.  Only 46% of Americans believe marijuana should remain criminalized, with 4% undecided.

Support for marijuana legalization remains greatest in the Western states (55%) and majorities support legalization in the Midwest (54%) and East (51%).  Only voters in the South still oppose marijuana legalization (44%).  Men still support legalization at a much greater rate than women (55% vs. 46%).

Support is also greatest among younger Americans (62%), Democrats (57%), and liberals (69%).  However, support for legalization has increased even in demographics generally opposed to legalization.  Compared to Gallup’s poll last year, support increased 4% points in the South, 12% points in the Midwest, and 6% points among 50-64, but fell 1% among 65+.  Support rose 6% points among Republicans, and 4% points among conservatives. Marijuana legalization is becoming more popular with just about everyone.

President Obama, seeking input from the people on policy questions, was stunned once again to find…

On the “We the People” petitions site of Whitehouse.gov, as of this writing, NORML’s “Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol” petition is #1 by a long shot.  It has garnered over 42,000 signatures.  It needed 5,000 signatures in 30 days to generate an official response from the administration, a figure it had topped in just over three hours.

And when he asked for videos from citizens on policy issues, another stunning result…

The top question, submitted by Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, garnered 13,842 votes – over 1% of all votes cast (people could vote for more than one question).

As a police officer, I saw how waging the war on drugs has cost a trillion dollars and thousands of lives but does nothing to reduce drug use. Should we discuss legalizing marijuana and other drugs, which would eliminate the violent criminal market?

Of the 193,060 people who voted more than 7% voted for the LEAP question.  That’s about one in fourteen people who took the time to Ask Obama.

2. National Cancer Institute drama over anti-tumoral effects of cannabis

A very high-profile battle over scientific integrity played itself out on the webpage of Cancer.gov, the government’s site for the National Cancer Institute.  It began when the site surprisingly updated its summary page on cannabis and cannabinoids.

The potential benefits of medicinal Cannabis for people living with cancer include antiemetic effects, appetite stimulation, pain relief, and improved sleep. In the practice of integrative oncology, the health care provider may recommend medicinal Cannabis not only for symptom management but also for its possible direct antitumor effect.

Cannabinoids may cause antitumor effects by various mechanisms, including induction of cell death, inhibition of cell growth, and inhibition of tumor angiogenesis and metastasis. [9-11] Cannabinoids appear to kill tumor cells but do not affect their nontransformed counterparts and may even protect them from cell death. These compounds have been shown to induce apoptosis in glioma cells in culture and induce regression of glioma tumors in mice and rats.

Then it appeared that somebody pressured NCI to revise its update to better align with the government’s prohibition of cannabis.  The paragraphs above were removed and replaced with:

The potential benefits of medicinal Cannabis for people living with cancer include antiemetic effects, appetite stimulation, pain relief, and improved sleep. Though no relevant surveys of practice patterns exist, it appears that physicians caring for cancer patients who prescribe medicinal Cannabis predominantly do so for symptom management.

Then NCI updated the “clinical studies” portion of the website to again highlight the anti-tumoral effects:

One study in mice and rats suggested that cannabinoids may have a protective effect against the development of certain types of tumors.

Decreased incidences of benign tumors(polyps and adenomas) in other organs(mammary gland, uterus, pituitary, testis, and pancreas)were also noted in the rats.

Cannabinoids may cause antitumor effects by various mechanisms, including induction of cell death, inhibition of cell growth, and inhibition of tumorangiogenesis and metastasis.

Cannabinoids appear to kill tumor cells but do not affect their nontransformed counterparts and may even protect them from cell death.

1. Colorado’s 5ng/mL per se DUID bill dies again as new research backs higher thresholds for regular users

We tackled drug testing above in #6, but this story takes #1 for showing how science and the scientific method can actually beat back prohibition.  Colorado had proposed a 5ng of THC per milliliter of blood (5ng/mL) per se DUID, meaning: if you test positive on a drug test above 5ng/mL, you’re automatically guilty of DUI, whether you were impaired or not.

Naturally, many medical marijuana patients in Colorado complained that they are such frequent and heavy users of cannabis that they would never be under such a threshold.  Furthermore, most of them have developed a tolerance to cannabis’ effects that allows them to drive under its influence without impairment, much as we understand an “until you know how [Pill X] affects you, do not drive or operate heavy machinery” warning on a pharmaceutical.

The “pot critic” of Denver’s WestWord, William Breathes, decided to become the experiment by abstaining from cannabis use under controlled conditions.  After sixteen hours and a night’s sleep, upon awakening, presumably clean and sober, Breathes was tested at 13ng/mL.  This anecdotal report, splashed all over the Denver media, was also backed up by the latest scientific research:

It concludes: “A threshold of 2-3ng/ml THC as an indicator of recent drug use (i.e, smoking within the previous 6 hours) as recommended by Huestis et al appears to be valid only for occasional users. Heavy users might exhibit measurable cannabinoid concentrations in blood, even if the last cannabis use was more than 24 hours ago.… Therefore, cannabinoid concentrations in heavy users’ blood from a later elimination phase might not be distinguished from an acute use of an occasional user.”

The Directors of the American Society for Addiction Medicine had a meeting on Sunday in Washington to discuss their recent California chapter. The California Chapter of the American Society for Addiction has been considering supporting a legalization measure in the state.

The rest is here:
California Chapter of Addiction Medicine Has Different Opinion on Legalization

One of our loyal readers turned us on to this desperate scaremongering video from opponents of California’s Prop 19:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The top video response is the perfect rejoinder:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Line by line debunking follows after the break…

The #1 ADDICTION for 60% of TEENS in Drug rehab.

This is a little like saying orange jumpsuits are the #1 fashion choice of 60% of inmates in prison.  Cannabis is the third most popular substance.  When teens are caught with it, they are sentenced to drug rehab.  This says nothing about whether teens are addicted or whether they need rehab, but it says a lot about prohibition’s failure to keep teens off pot.

A GATEWAY drug to Cocaine and Meth.

Despite every scientific look at the gateway theory proving it to be nonsense, prohibitionists still cling to it.  The only gateway connecting marijuana to meth is the one you walk through to get to the illegal drug market.  Nobody considers alcohol a gateway drug to meth, despite more meth addicts having tried alcohol before they ever touched pot, because you can’t get meth in the liquor store.

4 times more MIND-ALTERING than in the 1970′s

Well, at least this time they’re not saying today’s pot is 14x, 30x, or 400x stronger than the Woodstock Weed.  Look at the clothes and listen to the music; you don’t think 1970′s weed was mind-altering?  The facts are that the average potency of marijuana seizures has doubled.  However, that says nothing about what’s available on the streets.

Law enforcement since the 1970s has increasingly focused on indoor grows that produce stronger weed, so their averages went up.  That doesn’t mean the indoor grows and potent weed weren’t there before.  It would be like picking a baseball team of eight Little Leaguers and Roberto Clemente in 1972 and comparing that team to five Little Leaguers and four Pittsburgh Pirates today and claiming baseball teams are 4x more talented than the 1970s.

50%-70% MORE CANCER-CAUSING than Cigarettes

50% to 70%?  Why the wiggle room?  It should be an easy calculation: count the people who got cancer from cigarettes, count the people who got cancer from cannabis, divide the difference by the former and you’ve got an exact percentage.  Now let’s see, Cancer.gov tells us:

Cigarette smoking and exposure to tobacco smoke cause an estimated average of 438,000 premature deaths each year in the United States. Of these premature deaths, about 40 percent are from cancer, 35 percent are from heart disease and stroke, and 25 percent are from lung disease…

So, 40% of 438,000 is 175,200 cancer cases caused by cigarettes.  For cannabis to be 50%-70% more cancer causing than cigarettes, it must have caused 262,800 to 297,840 cancer cases.  Do you know a single person who smoked cannabis only who ever got cancer?  Where is the cannabis cancer ward, anyway?

What they’re doing here is conflating carcinogens with carcinogenic.  Yes, cannabis smoke has carcinogens, as does every burning vegetable matter from campfires to Camels.  But it also contains THC, which has been shown to have anti-tumoral properties.  Dr. Donald Tashkin at UCLA Medical Center found in 2006 that not only did cannabis-only smokers not have any greater risk for head, neck, and lung cancer, but they had lesser risk of those cancers than did non-smokers.  That cannabis smoke contains carcinogenic molecules is no more frightening than water containing explosive molecules (hydrogen and oxygen) – the question isn’t “does it have carcinogens?”, the question is “does it cause cancer?”

MARIJUANA – What’s Good About Legalizing It?

I know it’s rhetorical, but how about checking kids’ ID, reallocating scarce police and court resources, realizing tax revenues, separating hard and soft drug markets, crippling Mexican drug trafficking organizations, ending discriminatory employment practices, reducing prescription drug and alcohol and hard drug use, reviving our American hemp heritage, living up to our Constitution, and treating adults like adults?

NOTHING

Oh.  So I guess you’re also for criminalizing alcohol and tobacco, right?  They’re addictive, potent, cancer-causing, and popular with kids, too.

Passage of Prop. 19 would mean: Marijuana could be SOLD IN GROCERY STORES.

You mean like alcohol and tobacco, where we check kids for ID, unlike marijuana, which is sold in parks and high school hallways?

Prop 19 does mean pot could be sold in grocery stores… if the government of your city approves that.  I seriously doubt any city is going to go that direction.  The handful of cities that may allow cannabis sales (remember, they aren’t required to) will probably keep it in marijuana-only dispensaries that are adults-only establishments.

Skyrocketing usage among Teens and Young people.

28% of young people aged 18-25 smoke pot once a year.  11% smoke pot twice a week.  85% of high school seniors say pot is “easy” to get.  25% can get a hold of a bag of weed in an hour or less.  It doesn’t seem as if prohibition is really stopping them from using cannabis now.  I find it hard to imagine it will be easier to access for kids when we’re checking people’s ID’s for it.

But let’s suppose that cannabis usage does go up among young people.  If that usage replaces binge drinking or pharmaceutical use among young people, we will have done them and society a great service.

“DRUGGED DRIVING” on Streets and Freeways.

This would be terrifying if you didn’t realize that Californians are smoking pot now and some already irresponsibly use cannabis and drive.  Those people are being arrested now for driving under the influence and Prop 19 specifically does not alter any laws against so-called “drugged driving”.  The people not smoking pot now because it is illegal are the type who like to obey laws, so why would these new pot smokers suddenly want to violate DUID laws?

The fact is that study after study has failed to show any causation between automobile accident and one’s cannabis use.  One study showed even the most stoned driver was no worse than an alcohol-using driver at a 0.05 blood-alcohol level (i.e. below “legally drunk”) and another study showed marijuana-using drivers performed no worse on simulators than when they were sober.  Nobody here is suggesting that you should chief bong hits and see how well you do on the road; what we are saying is that the risk public harm from stoned drivers is less than what we tolerate for alcohol and prescription drugs (or eating fast food while driving, for that matter.)

Higher COSTS for Everyone as Addictions SOAR.

First you have to believe marijuana is a gateway drug and I addressed that above.  Then you’d have to ignore the fact that 3 million Californians are smoking pot now and whatever negligible cost that entails is being paid by society now, while we take in nothing in tax revenue and spend a billion dollars failing to stop pot smoking.  Assuming we make nothing in taxes, we’d still have to see a billion dollars worth of new addiction costs to just break even on the money we’d save not prosecuting marijuana use after Prop 19.

Marijuana Operatives could buy THOUSANDS of Acres of farmland.

“Operatives?”  What are we, a spy agency now?  Aren’t these the people that complain about illegal immigrants setting up illegal marijuana farms in public forests?  Now you’re complaining that California citizens could set up legal marijuana farms on proper farmland?

Considering the plight of the average California farmer these days, I think most would applaud finding a new profitable use for their farmland.

Prop. 19 Means:
Messed up minds.
Messed up lives.
Messed up families.
California out of Control.

Prohibition is the abdication of control of marijuana to criminals.  Nobody is controlling where it will be grown, where it will be sold, or who is allowed to buys and sell it.  Lives and families are messed up when someone is caught using or growing it.  Minds are messed up when forced to assent to lies about marijuana in coerced rehab.

We don’t regulate alcohol because it doesn’t mess up minds, lives, and families.  We regulate it because we want government, not criminals like Al Capone, to have control over it and we’ve found it is the best way to mitigate the harms associated with alcohol by the few who abuse it.  Only prohibition makes marijuana more harmful to the user and society than alcohol.

(AOL Opinion) I was a drug user for many years — if I could smoke, snort or inject it, I would do it. My addiction to opiates led to physical dependence and homelessness, so I am certainly familiar with the culture of AA meetings and in-patient drug rehabs. Funnily enough, none of the ex-addict drug counselors I ever talked to gave credence to the whole “gateway theory” of pot. They were addicts and placed blame for their condition strictly on “the disease” — that hazily understood mix of genetics and brain chemistry — rather than some long-ago, youthful puff on a joint.

No, the truth is that not many people who have actually smoked marijuana on a regular basis give any credence to the idea that it can lead to harder drugs. In fact, many claim that it can have the opposite effect. Seven years ago, when I was detoxing from my decade-long addiction to heroin and methadone, it was marijuana that I turned to when the depression, the insomnia and the urge to use heroin were almost unbearably strong. I certainly felt better about using something natural like marijuana for these protracted withdrawal symptoms than the hard-core antidepressants that the doctors were offering me.

The idea of an “addiction” to marijuana is laughable, too. There can be no physical dependence to weed, and when people talk about being “addicted to marijuana” this says more about the abuse of the word “addiction” in today’s world than anything about the psychopharmacology of the plant itself.

Do you agree?  I know the first drug I tried was alcohol at age 16.  By age 21 I was a beer-chugging shot-chasing alcoholic.  At age 22 I discovered cannabis and almost immediately my alcohol use declined.

But I also discovered I had been lied to regarding the effects of cannabis, so I was much more cavalier about accepting offers of other drugs.  By age 25 I was a meth addict living in a trailer.  An emergency hospital stay convinced me to kick meth, but those days when the withdrawals were the worst I found that a nice bowl of cannabis made everything OK.

What’s your story?  Have you found cannabis to be an “exit drug” from hard drugs and pharmaceuticals?  Let us know in the comments section and your story could be (anonymously) added to one of my rants on NORML SHOW LIVE.

Dr. Drew Pinsky, the Celebrity Rehab / Loveline guy, is getting a lot of flack for his recent comments about Lindsay Lohan.  (If you’re reading this, doctor, you are welcome any time on our show to defend yourself live.)  You can imagine with my hectic 4/20-week travel schedule (2,000 miles in 6 days with LA this weekend) when I’m scanning headlines on the BlackBerry, my brain’s spam filters drop anything with “Lindsay Lohan” in the summary.

"Would you guys legalize hemp already? They're cutting down my cousins to make juice boxes, for Ent's sake!"

But as I’m riding shotgun with my wife driving us through the incredible Redwood National Park, I find the time to catch up on Twitter.  Scanning through the people I follow I find this plea:

@DannyDanko: RT @SSDP Tell @drdrew that Planting Drugs to Frame People is NOT Acceptable! Sign the petition on facebook:http://bit.ly/9xkF3x

What’s this?  Planting drugs to frame people?  What has Dr. Drew done now?  Alas, the coverage on wireless was too spotty for me to do real web surfing, but coming from Danny and SSDP, I figured I would re-tweet it.

I put my phone down to enjoy the scenery.  Soon it buzzed on my leg, which it does only when I’m getting a text message.  But when I pick it up, I find it’s not a text, but a direct message (DM for the g33ks) on Twitter… from Dr. Drew!

Dr. Drew: Please read before you pass judgment:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-drew-pinsky/if-i-were-lindsay-lohans_b_541648.html
7:20 PM Apr 17th

Now remember, at this point I hadn’t read the actual quote that has gotten him into trouble.  I’ve since found that it was an interview piece in RadarOnline (emphasis mine):

The board certified addiction specialist tells RadarOnline.com, “If she were my daughter, I would pack her car full with illegal substances, send her on her way, call the police, and make sure she was arrested. I would  make sure she was not allowed to get out of jail. I would then go to the judge and make sure she was ordered to a minimum of a three year sobriety program.”

Dr. Drew says it’s highly unlikely that Lindsay will recognize she has a problem and go to rehab of her own accord, “I would say it’s less than a 1% chance of her making the decision to go to rehab. I have said this many times before, I believe that Lindsay will make a wonderful sober person, someday, if she survives this. I absolutely wish no harm to her, but I just have a feeling that something awful is going to happen to her, like she is going to lose a limb. I hope Lindsay gets help before something terrible happens.”

I always knew that kid on the left would end up being a bad influence on that kid on the right.

I have a feeling something awful is going to happen to Lindsay, too, like somebody might pack her car full of illegal drugs in an effort to frame her for enough felonies to force her into rehab.  (Lose a limb?  Really?  Like all the now-one-armed coke-addled starlets of the past?)  First off, I like knowing that at any time, Dr. Drew can get his hands on felony amounts of illegal drugs.  Even better that he has the power to “go to the judge and make sure” he gives her the appropriate sentence of three years of rehab.

One of those times and places when slow download speeds are welcome

But I hadn’t read this yet; I was just getting a direct message from Dr. Drew.  I figured he was just watching his “mentions” on Twitter and auto-sending this to anyone who was propagating the Facebook petition.  I clicked the link anyway and waited the very long time Huffington Post took to download as we cruised down US 101.

If I Were Lindsay Lohan’s Father I Would Go to Any Lengths to Get Her Into Treatment

Addiction is a deadly disease. It is a brain disease that alters the brain’s fundamental motivational drives such that thoughts, judgment and volition become severely distorted and actually serve the abnormal motivational priority of getting and using more drugs. Untreated severe addiction is more likely to kill a patient suffering with the condition than most cancers. Treated Breast Cancers, Prostate Cancer, most Lymphomas, and the vast majority of skin cancers, have a better prognosis than a treated addict. And yet addiction is the only disease I have to convince a patient that they have and more importantly convince the patient that without treatment his or her life is in danger.

Do not let this man anywhere near the trunk of your car!

…I spend my days trying to resurrect lives that have been devastated by this disease, devastation that might have been avoided had someone been sufficiently clear to have gone to the mat for this patient when they were younger and earlier in their disease. Family members have to be willing to go to any lengths and unfortunately this often means bringing about circumstances that restrict that individual’s freedom.

…[W]hen I was asked as a father, if I were in Michael Lohan’s position, what would I do to help my daughter, I am clear that I would go to any lengths to get her to and retain her in treatment. Bringing legal consequences to bear is often the only alternative. It would kill me but I would do it. Perhaps I surrendered my equanimity to a flight of journalistic excess by even suggesting that he plant drugs. But if I was in his position and I knew she was addicted (which I personally do not) and all else had failed, I suspect I would contemplate even this as a last resort.

Let me be clear I am not suggesting this as a routine intervention but we frequently enlist law enforcement when we have exhausted other measures. To those of you who reacted in outrage when I made this suggestion, I will remind you that millions of you watched the first season of Sober House when as difficult as it was for her, the house manager, Jennifer Gimenez, summoned police to contain Steven Adler. We then advocated for long-term treatment as an alternative to imprisonment; an enlightened judge granted this, and today as a result Steven is sober and thriving. Were it not for this intervention, as miserable as it was for Steven, I believe he would have soon succumbed to his addiction.

"Lindsay, dear, I think you still have a little bit of powder on your boob..."

The first of many thoughts to come to mind when reading this is if the prognosis for treated addicts is so poor, what’s the motivation to frame them to force them to choose prison or rehab?  The second was that if you have to convince someone they have a problem with drugs, what you’re really saying is you think they have a problem with drugs and they don’t.  The third was that people die from preventable and treatable diseases all the time; we can’t convince them all to get help.  What’s next, chasing around fat people with pitchforks to force them to jog for their own good?  Many more people die from gluttony and sloth than die from addiction and overdose.

Of course, that’s way more than 140 characters for Twitter.  I tried DMing back to Dr. Drew, but he doesn’t follow me so I can’t.  So my only option was to blast my tweet out to the entire Twitterverse as an “@reply” to @DrDrew:

RadicalRuss: OK @drdrew I read it. Judgment: using jail threat to bring you more clients is still wrong. Even if disease, it’s no crime. I’m ACoA, BTW.
7:35 PM Apr 17th via UberTwitter

Much to my surprise, I get a response, again by DM, from Dr. Drew.  Maybe that first one wasn’t an automated reply.  He really is reading my tweets!

Dr. Drew: That’s cool and I have no issue with NORML’s position but as you see using the law helps me for those in dire straights
7:38 PM Apr 17th

Dr. Drew: Or straits that is
7:44 PM Apr 17th

Jeff & Marci Beagley were for convicted of criminally negligent homicide for not getting medical treatment for their 16-year-old son's urinary tract blockage. (Click for source)

So, we’re framing people for their own good?  We’re forcing people to get treatment for their diseases?  Diseased or not, the addict is still a person who is an adult citizen free to make hiser own choices.  For example, suppose Lindsay Lohan decides to leave Hollywood for Oregon City and becomes a Follower of Christ, a fundamentalist Christian sect that believes only in faith healing, no medicines and no doctors.  (There was a high-profile conviction of such a couple in Oregon City for allowing their child to die from an easily treatable condition.  My wife comes from that religion and knew those people personally.)  Suppose she contracts pneumonia and would certainly survive with the most routine medical care, but she steadfastly refuses to go and instead kneels and prays.  Does Dr. Drew then go to any extreme means necessary to force antibiotics into her system against her wishes?  If not, then why does he allow her to choose a religion that will likely kill her, but not a lifestyle that will likely kill her?

But again, too much for Twitter, so I sent this:

RadicalRuss: Also @drdrew you can’t guarantee “enlightened judge” 4 the non-Steven Adlers. Most you’d plant drugs on would get prison (aka “lousy rehab”)
7:48 PM Apr 17th via UberTwitter

Surprisingly, Dr. Drew kept responding:

Dr. Drew: You’d be surprised we get mandated treatment all the time.BTW be clear I am not interested in bumming anyone’s high.
7:50 PM Apr 17th

"The way pot is horticulturally cultivated these days, it clearly has a very powerful opioid effect and very hard to treat." (Click for source)

Where’d that come from?  ”Bumming anyone’s high”?  It’s nice to know Dr. Drew is compassionate about harshing my mellow.  And no, I’m not surprised at all that you get mandated treatment all the time, when the latest Treatment Episode Data Set shows 37.5% of all admissions to rehab for drugs are criminal justice referrals (and 56.9% of all marijuana users in rehab were forced there by a court.)

In response to Dr. Drew’s “using the law helps me” tweet, I sent:

@drdrew Sure it helps, and so would a gun to their head. “Go to rehab, now!” Framing people for their own good is still wrong.
8:25 PM Apr 17th via UberTwitter

I must have touched a nerve, because then Dr. Drew had to pull the “What About the Children!?!” card, the last refuge of the prohibitionist:

Dr. Drew: Are you a father?
8:26 PM Apr 17th

"You heard me, Lindsay. Get yourself into Celebrity Rehab now!"

Ah, yes, I couldn’t possibly understand because I haven’t reproduced.  I can appreciate how a father’s love for his daughter might compel him to do some pretty radical shit, like maybe killing her rapist, or maybe kidnapping and roughing up her pimp, or even maybe planting drugs in her car and narcing her off to the po-po.  How he feels about the harms done to her by herself or others does not legitimize the commission of other crimes in response.

RadicalRuss: @drdrew No I am not a father but my dad was an addict. Him in prison would’ve ruined my life. He CHOSE rehab!
8:44 PM Apr 17th via UberTwitter

Actual story from my hometown paper, The Idaho Statesman, about my dad graduating from college (click for full size)

I’m not ignorant of the whole Twelve Step drug rehab addiction disease modes of thought.  I’m an Adult Child of Alcoholic/Addict (ACoA, they call us) and read many textbooks and attended many groups as my father went through medical detox, 30-day inpatient rehab, and then returned to college at age 40, became president of the Student Social Workers, and got his degree and became a drug and alcohol counselor himself.

Dr. Drew: what if his disease was such that he could not choose and he died and someone could have gotten him in but didn’t
8:51 PM Apr 17th

Exchange the word “gotten” with “forced” and it’s closer to what you mean.  I know that an addict becomes crazy as drugs take over their life.  But if someone has become so insane that they are likely to be self-injurious, we have laws that cover declaring them mentally unstable and mandating forced in-patient treatment in a secure facility (I used to work in one such psychiatric hospital processing that very type of paperwork.)  That doesn’t entail framing them for felonies that will remain on their record and affect their entire life, sober or high.

RadicalRuss: @drdrew It was. He was speed/booze addict on bridge about to suicide when I was 12. Sad if he’d died, but prison wouldn’t have helped.
9:05 PM Apr 17th via UberTwitter

And that was the end of our Twitter conversation, as Dr. Drew hasn’t replied since.  To this day, I would have preferred my dad to jump off that bridge rather than be forced into rehab.  He’d actually been forced, a couple of times, in response to DUIs he’d racked up and cars he had rolled, and those coerced treatment sessions did nothing.

The old joke goes: “How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?  One, but the light bulb has to want to change.”  I actually believe in drug treatment – it saved my dad’s life – but I believe even more that taking drugs or being a drug addict is not a crime.  People have a right to make their own decisions, even bad ones.

Our Executive Director has posted the latest salvo of propaganda from the Drug Enforcement Administration on the NORML Blog and provided a very thorough rebuttal to the notion that Alaskans “legalized” marijuana in the 1970s, freaked out over the carnage and, my god, the children!!, and in the 1990s made it illegal again.  This “failed experiment” with “drug legalization” is supposed to be a dire warning to those on the West Coast who are trying to regulate the third-most popular recreational substance somewhat like the first, but Allen St. Pierre tells you the history of Alaskan constitutional privacy rights the DEA would like you to forget.

Left there hanging on the vine, though, are the other nine “facts” the DEA are presenting, a la David Letterman (but not as funny), in something we’re calling the…

“These here, Paul, from our own government, from somewhere deep in Dick Cheney’s secret bunker, the Top Ten Facts About Legalization from the DEA…”

Fact 1: We have made significant progress in fighting drug use and drug trafficking in America. Now is not the time to abandon our efforts.

The Legalization Lobby claims that the fight against drugs cannot be won. However, overall drug use is down by more than a third in the last twenty years, while cocaine use has dropped by an astounding 70 percent. Ninety-five percent of Americans do not use drugs. This is success by any standards.

Actually, two out of three Americans use drugs if you include alcohol and one out of ten Americans use cannabis (National Survey on Drug Use & Health 2008) every year, so I’m not sure how you can say 95% of Americans do not use drugs.  If we were to include prescription and over-the-counter drug use, I’m sure something close to 95% of Americans actually use drugs.

But we weren’t talking about “legalizing drugs”, we’re talking about regulation of cannabis.  Whether cocaine or other drug use has risen or fallen is beside the point.  Fierce marijuana criminalization laws haven’t stopped the United States from leading the world in lifetime marijuana use and open tolerance of cannabis coffeehouses in The Netherlands haven’t moved the Dutch from having half the lifetime use rates and one-third the young teen (<=15) use rates of cannabis as Americans.  Portugal has decriminalized drugs to a large extent and the international community calls it “a resounding success”.  Singapore and Indonesia have some of the harshest anti-cannabis laws in the world, and yet they still have to keep executing the smugglers who won’t stop bringing it in to the country.  We can’t even keep drugs out of our SuperMax federal prisons; what makes the DEA think it can succeed in keeping drugs out of free adult hands?

Lifetime cannabis use = 31% in 1988 to 41% in 2008

Drug use rates have very little to do with drug laws.  And even the DEA’s claim that drug use is down a third in twenty years is suspect.  If we define “drug use” as the lifetime rates that have been tracked by the National Surveys on Drug Use and Health over the past twenty years (1988-2008), then cannabis use has risen dramatically in the past twenty years, from 31% to 41% of the population aged 12 and older who have tried cannabis.

Lifetime crack use = more than double; heroin use = almost double; hallucinogen use = almost double; coke, meth, and inhalants = all increased >20%

In fact, when you take a look at the lifetime use of illegal drugs (cocaine, crack, meth, heroin, hallucinogens, and inhalants), you find that all those figures have risen over the past twenty years, too.

Annual alcohol consumption = steady; annual cigarette consumption = 38% in 1988 to 28% in 2008

The most interesting figures appear when you look at lifetime, annual, and monthly use of the legal drugs, alcohol and cigarettes.  Alcohol use has remained steady but declining, while cigarette use has plummeted.

What this all tells us is:

• People that want to use substances will;
• Maintaining prohibition over marijuana and drugs hasn’t stopped anyone; in fact use has risen;
• Regulating dangerous and addictive drugs like alcohol and tobacco hasn’t encouraged greater use; in fact use has decreased.

Fact 2: A balanced approach of prevention, enforcement, and treatment is the key in the fight against drugs.

A successful drug policy must apply a balanced approach of prevention, enforcement and treatment. All three aspects are crucial. For those who end up hooked on drugs, there are innovative programs, like Drug Treatment Courts, that offer non-violent users the option of seeking treatment. Drug Treatment Courts provide court supervision, unlike voluntary treatment centers.

Almost twice as much of your tax money goes to trying to arrest you for drugs as trying to help you quit them

That’s a nice sentiment, but it is not how the government actually prosecutes the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs.  49.8% of all drug arrests are for marijuana violations, with 89% of those marijuana arrests made for possession alone.  The “balanced approach” in President Obama’s FY 2011 Budget makes the DEA the fat kid on the see-saw, with $9.9 billion appropriated for law enforcement and interdiction vs. $5.6 billion appropriated for treatment and prevention.

Fact 3: Illegal drugs are illegal because they are harmful.

There is a growing misconception that some illegal drugs can be taken safely. For example, savvy drug dealers have learned how to market drugs like Ecstasy to youth. Some in the Legalization Lobby even claim such drugs have medical value, despite the lack of conclusive scientific evidence.

Once again, I haven’t seen any movement on the West Coast to put legalization of MDMA on the ballot; we’re talking about regulating marijuana.

Remember, this is a graph on a logarithmic scale. Cannabis is actually 2,000 times safer than alcohol.

However there is a way of measuring how safe a particular substance is to ingest; it’s called a “therapeutic index“.  It’s the ratio of “ED-50″, that is, a  minimum dose that will have the desired effect in 50% of test subjects, to the “LD-50″, which is the size of a lethal dose that will kill 50% of test subjects.  For example, half the people who cop a buzz on a “dose” of alcohol – whatever amount that is – will die if they drink ten times that amount.  That’s a “therapeutic index” of 1:10.

When measured by therapeutic index, most “illegal” drugs are technically safer than alcohol and cannabis is the safest of all with a therapeutic index that’s practically immeasurable.  Cannabis is so non-toxic that it’s ratio is estimated to be 1:20,000 to 1:40,000.  The DEA’s Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young concluded it would take a man smoking 1,500 lbs. of cannabis in 15 minutes to die of an overdose.

Fact 4: Smoked marijuana is not scientifically approved medicine. Marinol, the legal version of medical marijuana, is approved by science.

According to the Institute of Medicine, there is no future in smoked marijuana as medicine. However, the prescription drug Marinol—a legal and safe version of medical marijuana which isolates the active ingredient of THC—has been studied and approved by the Food & Drug Administration as safe medicine. The difference is that you have to get a prescription for Marinol from a licensed physician. You can’t buy it on a street corner, and you don’t smoke it.

"The DEA's doing research like it's 1999..."

Nice of the DEA to reference the 1999 Institute of Medicine report.  That was the report that concluded, as every report on the subject has, that marijuana use “does not appear to be a gateway drug to the extent that it is the cause or even that it is the most significant predictor of serious drug abuse.”

That report also noted that only 9% of marijuana users develop “dependence”, compared to 15% for alcohol, 17% for cocaine, 23% for heroin, and 32% for tobacco.

It also noted that “A distinctive marijuana and THC withdrawal syndrome has been identified, but it is mild and subtle compared with the profound physical syndrome of alcohol or heroin withdrawal,” which can cause seizures, hallucinations, and severe cravings.  According to the report, “the symptoms of marijuana withdrawal include restlessness, irritability, mild agitation, insomnia, sleep EEG disturbance, nausea, and cramping.”

So if sometime later in the Top Ten list the DEA wants you to believe that legalization of marijuana will lead to increased addiction, remember that they were the ones using this report to argue against the medical efficacy of smoked marijuana.

However, it is interesting that the DEA makes no mention of the 2009 statement by the American Medical Association which concluded “Results of short term controlled trials indicate that smoked cannabis reduces neuropathic pain, improves appetite and caloric intake especially in patients with reduced muscle mass, and may relieve spasticity and pain in patients with multiple sclerosis…. To the extent that rescheduling marijuana out of Schedule I will benefit this effort [to develop cannabinoid medicines], such a move can be supported.

It’s also interesting how the DEA never mentions vaporization, tinctures, and edibles, which have been proven to eliminate the major harm of cannabis use – smoking.

And I never tire of the DEA that warns us about the super-potent Schedule I “Pot 2.0: Not Your Father’s Woodstock Weed” that approaches average THC potencies of 10% with maximums in the 30% range, then turns around and tells us how Schedule III 100% potent Marinol is so safe and effective.

Fact 5: Drug control spending is a minor portion of the U.S. budget. Compared to the social costs of drug abuse and addiction, government spending on drug control is minimal.

The Legalization Lobby claims that the United States has wasted billions of dollars in its anti-drug efforts. But for those kids saved from drug addiction, this is hardly wasted dollars. Moreover, our fight against drug abuse and addiction is an ongoing struggle that should be treated like any other social problem. Would we give up on education or poverty simply because we haven’t eliminated all problems? Compared to the social costs of drug abuse and addiction—whether in taxpayer dollars or in pain and suffering—government spending on drug control is minimal.

The "Legalization Lobby's" budget, in green, vs. the DEA's budget, in red. What's that, you don't see much green? Yeah, neither do we!

Finally, something sort or true from the DEA: “Drug control spending is a minor portion of the U.S. budget.”  At $15.5 billion compared to the overall fiscal year budget of $3.7 trillion, they’re right.  The entire drug war budget doesn’t even equal  the single “Military Construction” line ($16.9 B) in the Pentagon’s $548 billion budget.

But then they pivot that fact to the falsehood that saving money on law enforcement and making money in tax revenues by regulating marijuana markets would not match the gross expenses we’d suffer from our kids becoming slaves to drug addiction.  Never mind that they just ignored the previous point from the 1999 IOM Report about the gateway theory – what they are telling you is that legal marijuana users will cost society more than it saves and earns from taxation.

Canadian study of costs per substance user per year

To bolster this point, drug warriors like to point out that “sin” taxes on alcohol and tobacco only bring in a fraction of money compared to the measurable social costs of alcoholism and tobacco cancers.  It’s another example of starting from a fact and pivoting to a falsehood.  Alcohol and tobacco cost society a lot of money because (a) they’re addictive (see 1999 IOM Report above) and (b) they can kill you (see therapeutic index above).  A Canadian study on the annual health costs of one tobacco, alcohol, or cannabis user were $800, $165, and $20, respectively, while the enforcement costs on tobacco, alcohol, and cannabis per user were $0, $153, and $328, respectively.  In essence, Canada is spending $328 per toker to save $20 in health care costs!  Those numbers must be worse in America.

But set aside the numbers for a moment and just use some common sense.  If cannabis users cause such a great social harm that they are a cost burden to society, we are costing society right now.  It’s not as if nobody smokes pot now and suddenly legalization on the West Coast will create a country full of 22 million pot smokers imposing a new burden on society.  I’ve broken down this cost argument before, but basically whatever we cost now (some number far less than alcohol or tobacco, certainly), we’d cost less once you’ve made some tax revenue off of us.  The California Board of Equalization estimates $1.4 billion in revenues from legalization, so there would have to be $1.4 billion-worth of new pot smokers recruited and old tokers puffing more for this theory to make any sense at all.  If California doubled its current 2.3 million tokers after legalization, those 2.3 million new tokers would have to cost the state $608 each to eat up the tax revenues.

For comparison’s sake, according to the UC San Francisco Institute on Health and Aging, alcohol abuse costs California $17.8 billion and kills 13,000 Californians annually.  The NSDUH State Reports tell us that 62.5% of Californians 18 and older use alcohol, which works out to 17.1 million drinkers.  That division works out to a drinker costing California $1,041 each.

So in order to swallow this whopper, we need to believe that a legalized toker will cost California 60% as much as a legal drinker, when the studies show that in Canada a legalized toker would cost about 6% as much as a legal drinker.

Fact 6: Legalization of drugs will lead to increased use and increased levels of addiction. Legalization has been tried before, and failed miserably.

Legalization has been tried before—and failed miserably. Alaska’s experiment with Legalization in the 1970s led to the state’s teens using marijuana at more than twice the rate of other youths nationally. This led Alaska’s residents to vote to re-criminalize marijuana in 1990.

Again, see Allen St. Pierre’s deconstruction of the Alaska story, and remember that the same DEA that cited the 1999 IOM Report above that said marijuana use doesn’t lead to hard drug addiction is now telling you West Coast legalization of cannabis will lead to increased addiction.

When we look at the experience of thirteen states that have decriminalized marijuana and the fourteen states that have legalized medical use of marijuana, we find the DEA’s theory blown to bits.  In fact, that same 1999 IOM Report cited by the DEA above even concluded, “In sum, there is little evidence that decriminalization of marijuana use necessarily leads to a substantial increase in marijuana use.”

Fact 7: Crime, violence, and drug use go hand-in-hand.

Crime, violence and drug use go hand in hand. Six times as many homicides are committed by people under the influence of drugs, as by those who are looking for money to buy drugs. Most drug crimes aren’t committed by people trying to pay for drugs; they’re committed by people on drugs.

60% of the revenue for Mexican murderers comes from marijuana prohibition

Drugs, drugs, drugs… what does this have to do with cannabis?  The notion of a cannabis user deprived of weed and jonesing so bad he commits a crime to get the money for weed is ridiculous and the idea that cannabis users are driven to crime by the effects of cannabis is ludicrous.  Every study (like this one) that looks at violence and marijuana finds that cannabis use tends to inhibit violence by its users.

The only violence commonly attributed to marijuana is directly caused by its prohibition.  Mexican drug syndicates are not murdering 18,000 people over a three year span to protect their breweries, vineyards, beer and wine trucks, and hops and tobacco crops.  The only crime commonly attributed to marijuana use is the plundering of munchies from the fridge.

Fact 8: Alcohol has caused significant health, social, and crime problems in this country, and legalized drugs would only make the situation worse.

The Legalization Lobby claims drugs are no more dangerous than alcohol. But drunk driving is one of the primary killers of Americans. Do we want our bus drivers, nurses, and airline pilots to be able to take drugs one evening, and operate freely at work the next day? Do we want to add to the destruction by making drugged driving another primary killer?

No, I actually claim that cannabis is far safer than alcohol, see the therapeutic index data above.  This is another talking point that pivots from a fact (drunk driving is a serious problem) to a falsehood (the implied threat that legalization of cannabis would lead to more highway fatalities).

Nobody's suggesting you hot-box your ride and see how well you do on the test... but you will out-perform a drinker.

First of all, the US Dept. of Transportation fact sheet on cannabis states, “Effects from smoking cannabis products are felt within minutes and reach their peak in 10-30 minutes. Typical marijuana smokers experience a high that lasts approximately 2 hours.”  So if the bus driver, nurse, and airline pilot want to smoke a joint before bed and drive, nurse, or fly me the next day, I’m not at all worried; no more so than if they decide to have a glass of wine the night before work.

Then we have to remember that if cannabis smokers are driving, they are driving now.  If pot smoking were such a threat on our roadways we’d have seen the bodies pile up by now.  Numerous studies have confirmed what we all know:

• Drivers under the influence of cannabis tend to follow less closely to the vehicle in front of them;
• Drivers tend to decrease speed following cannabis inhalation;
• Drivers with blood alcohol levels of 0.05% were three times as likely to have engaged in unsafe driving activities prior to a fatal crash as compared to individuals who tested positive for marijuana;
• Drivers with low levels of alcohol present in their blood (below 0.05%) experienced a greater elevated risk as compared to drivers who tested positive for high concentrations of cannabis (above 5ng/ml).

In other words, even the highest cannabis-using driver is less dangerous than an alcohol-buzzed driver who is still below the per se impairment limits (0.08%) for alcohol.

Fact 9: Europe’s more liberal drug policies are not the right model for America.

The Legalization Lobby claims that the “European Model” of the drug problem is successful. However, since legalization of marijuana in Holland, heroin addiction levels have tripled. And Needle Park seems like a poor model for America.

Compared to Americans, Dutch teenagers use marijuana at half the rates, even though it is sold openly in coffeehouses

The Dutch began their policy of cannabis tolerance in 1976.  According to the 2008 EMCDDA National Report for The Netherlands, lifetime prevalence of heroin use was 0.3% in 1997 and 0.2% in 2001.  I looked all over the DEA’s website and press releases for 2001 looking for them to claim that Dutch cannabis tolerance has led to a one-third decrease in heroin use, but I never found it.  Prevalence of heroin use in 2005 was reported to be 0.6%, which would be triple the 2001 figure, but only double the 1997 figure.

But once again, the DEA cited the 1999 IOM Report above that tells us smoking pot doesn’t lead to heroin addiction, so I’m not sure what the DEA’s point is.  It also doesn’t help their case that their heroin use rates are less than half of American heroin use rates (1.52% lifetime prevalence).

Fact 10: Most non-violent drug users get treatment, not jail time.

The Legalization Lobby claims that America’s prisons are filling up with users. Truth is, only about 5 percent of inmates in federal prison are there because of simple possession. Most drug criminals are in jail—even on possession charges—because they have plea-bargained down from major trafficking offences or more violent drug crimes.

"The fact is that finding a first-time. non-violent offender in prison for marijuana is like finding a unicorn." -- John Walters, former drug czar, on the 11,200 Marijuana Unicorns in a cage right now.

Oh, only 1 out of 20 of the 2.3 million people we imprison are there for simple possession?  My math tells me that’s 115,000 Americans in a cage for their personal use of drugs.  The Sentencing Project determined that 11,200 of those Americans are in a cage for simple marijuana possession alone.  Of course, this is just federal prison we’re talking about, when most marijuana users are processed through city and county jails and housed in state prisons.

Another bit of falsehood pivoted to from these imprisonment facts is that pronouncement that most “drug criminals” are plea-bargaining down from more serious charges.  Often those are “intent to distribute” charges filed when a cannabis user makes the mistake of keeping separate strains in separate bags (multiple bags in the eyes of the law means you must be selling), “conspiracy” charges filed against cannabis users who “go in” with other cannabis users to split the cost of expensive cannabis, and “manufacture” charges filed when a cannabis user grows his own instead of participating in the black market.

But whether people are serving a day, 29 years, or 93 years for marijuana charges is irrelevant; it is the the arrest for marijuana possession itself that causes the harms to the user irrespective of any stay in a jail cell:

• If you’re convicted or enter a plea, you’ll be on probation and mandatory Urinalysis Tests will be performed.
• A conviction could impact child custody issues in family court.
• An arrest for Possession with Intent to Distribute or an arrest for the Manufacture of plants may result in the State attempting to Forfeit your home, your car, your cash and other assets which they can do even if charges are later dismissed or you are acquitted at trial! This heinous law is know as “Asset Forfeiture”.
• A conviction can impact Federally insured student loans
• A felony conviction deprives you of the right to vote
• A felony conviction deprives you of the right to possess firearms
• A conviction can get you tossed out of government subsidized housing
• A conviction can impair your ability to obtain food stamps and other welfare benefits
• Your ability to ever adopt children will be jeopardized
• You will be denied entry into Canada and possibly other countries
• A misdemeanor conviction remains on your record and available to the public for three years before it can be expunged, which may have an impact on current or future employment
• A felony conviction remains on your record and available to the public for five years before it can be expunged, which may have an impact on current or future employment.

The DEA is terrified because there is a legitimate shot for the voters to legalize marijuana use, manufacture, and sales in one, possibly two, and maybe even three West Coast states this year.  If this bit of reefer madness is the best counter they have to offer, I really like our chances!

If you've ever smoked cigarettes and pot, raise your hand if you think quitting cigarettes is easier.

(Trans World News) A study by Dr. Alan Budney and colleagues at the University of Vermont in Burlington found that marijuana smokers who stop using the drug while in their home environment suffer withdrawal symptoms that appear as severe as those associated with tobacco-smoking.

Dr. Budney? Really? Was Dr. Kushtoe out of town? Perhaps Dr. Smokabola from Hawaii is available? I’m sorry, go on…

Dr. Budney and his colleagues evaluated withdrawal symptoms in 12 adult marijuana smokers (7 male, 5 female, average age 30 years) over 3-day abstinence periods that followed 5-day periods when participants could smoke marijuana at will.

During the study, participants lived at home and made daily records rating the intensity of withdrawal symptoms (on a scale from 0, “not at all,” to 3, “severe”) over the preceding 24 hours. In addition, each participant designated an observer — a friend or family member who spent at least 2 hours each day with the participant — to provide an independent rating of the participant’s withdrawal symptoms. The participants made daily laboratory visits during which their abstinence was confirmed by urine tests.

Pop quiz:  What’s the biggest flaw in Dr. Budney’s research?

1. A dozen people is far too small a sample to draw any real conclusions.
2. Article doesn’t mention what qualified these dozen people as “marijuana smokers” – how often and how much did they smoke?
3. Urine tests are one of the worst ways to determine whether someone is abstaining from marijuana use.
4. What way are they using marijuana… they’re not smoking blunts, which contain tobacco, are they?
5. All of the above.

During the abstinence periods, participants reported increases in the severity of craving and sleep difficulty, decreased appetite, and increased aggression, anger, and irritability. In addition, participants reported an increase in “strange dreams” during the second abstinence period. Observers reported increased irritability and restlessness among the participants during abstinence.

“We found consistent emotional and behavioral symptoms that increased during abstinence and dramatically decreased when marijuana smoking resumed, suggesting that these types of symptoms are the hallmark of acute marijuana withdrawal,” Dr. Budney says. “The symptoms most closely resembled many of those observed during nicotine withdrawal.”

There is an identifiable marijuana withdrawal syndrome, no question about it.  The point that is being glossed over by Dr. Budney here is that relatively few of the people who use marijuana ever suffer from the syndrome.  Only 9% of marijuana users, compared to 15% of drinkers and 32% of smokers, ever exhibit any symptoms of dependency.

Now, would someone crave marijuana if they smoked it regularly and suddenly quit?  I suppose so, though I’m as chronic a toker as anyone and never have such cravings when I go without for a few days.  Nonetheless, having known a few tobacco smokers, I cannot believe the cravings are anything like the dreaded “nicky fits” that abort most smoker’s attempts to quit.  I can identify with the sleep difficulty; many people use cannabis to help get a restful night’s sleep. But how a is a marijuana user any worse off depending on pot for a good night sleep over Ambien or Lunesta?

(Drugs.com) Side effects of Ambien and Lunesta can include allergy, daytime drowsiness, dizziness, drugged feeling, headache, indigestion, nausea, dependency, memory loss, vomiting, cramps, dyspnea, throat closing, abnormal thinking and behavior changes, decreased inhibition, visual and auditory hallucinations, agitation and depersonalization, complex behaviors such as “sleep-driving”, “sleep-eating”, and “sleep-sex”.

Decreased appetite is not surprising, considering cannabis’ famous side-effect of munchies.  But are the tokers’ appetites decreasing from “stoned munchies” down to “normal appetite”?  There is no baseline for us to compare to.  Maybe they were overeating when using cannabis and eating just the right amount when not.  I’d make a similar note about the increased aggression, anger, and irritability.  Who hasn’t met that driver in traffic or jerk at the office who could use a little mellowing out with a joint?

So while there may be a tiny minority of tokers out there for whom their marijuana usage has become problematic, the vast majority of us are “addicted” to marijuana in the same way you might be “addicted” to a hot shower.  It makes your body feel better, it helps you stay healthy, it makes you more tolerable to the general public, and you’d really miss it if you went without for a few weeks.  But if you were forced to take cold showers or go without, you’d get a bit irritable and would probably long for a hot shower.

Besides, don’t you think if marijuana was a seriously addictive problem, don’t you think we’d have seen waves of homeless pot junkies by now? Who in the world really thinks pot withdrawal is as bad as cigarette withdrawal?

“Someone suffering from marijuana addiction needs as much help as someone suffering from any other drug addiction,” comments Mary Rieser, Executive Director for Narconon Drug Rehab. “Get them the help they need.”

Ah-ha! It’s not that marijuana “addicts” are suffering from withdrawal. It’s that Mama Reiser needs a new pair of shoes. With marijuana legalization looming, these drug rehabs will have fewer court-mandated customers, so they need to beat the drums about marijuana “addiction” to keep the turnstiles turning at the Narconon Drug rehab.

Today’s dose of reefer madness comes from Chet Phillipe, who has been employed for the past 35 years in the treatment of substance addiction and 12 years of teaching about substance addiction at College of the Sequoias, Porterville College and Merced College. He lives in Visalia, California.

(Visalia Times-Delta) The issue of medical marijuana is a charade. Consider the following:

Its destructive power: Nicotine is the most addictive drug in the world and kills 400,000-plus people annually. Marijuana is addicting and more dangerous than nicotine because of the euphoric feeling. It’s seven to 14 times more powerful today than in the 1960s.

No it’s not.  Marijuana may be twice as potent as it was in the 1960s, if that.  And marijuana kills how many people annually?  Oh, yeah, zero.  For a substance abuse expert, you sure seem ignorant about the nature of addiction.  According to Jack E. Henningfield’s evaluation of addictiveness for the National Institutes on Drug Abuse, here is a comparison on the addictive qualities of nicotine vs. cannabis, and for fun, let’s look at the caffeine we ingest regularly in coffee and sodas:

Marijuana causes cancers throughout the respiratory system: nose, throat, mouth, tongue, lungs, breasts, etc.

No, it doesn’t.  In fact, a government-funded researcher named Dr. Donald Tashkin tried for thirty years to “expose” the association between marijuana smoking and lung cancer.  He instead found “no association and even a suggestion of some protective effect.”  Tashkin continued to say, “Early on, when our research appeared as if there would be a negative impact on lung health, I was opposed to legalization because I thought it would lead to increased use and that would lead to increased health effects.  But at this point, I’d be in favor of legalization.”

It is instrumental in destroying the body in other ways due to its damaging effects to the immune system.

Which is why tens of thousands of doctors have recommended medical marijuana for their HIV/AIDS patients with their severely compromised immune systems

It is physically and psychologically addictive. Addiction requires withdrawal.

Because marijuana is fat-soluble, marijuana leaves the system gradually. It does not “feel” like withdrawal. It feels like the flu.Marijuana withdrawal symptoms (withdrawal of a drug means physical addiction):  Irritability, Anxiety, Physical tension, Heavy perspiration, Confusion, Auditory hallucinations, Depression, Fatigue, Decrease in appetite and mood, Headaches, Double vision, and Apathy.

So marijuana is a terribly physically addictive drug, but when you stop using it, it doesn’t feel like withdrawal.  Not like, say, heroin, where withdrawal feels like you’re going to die, or alcohol, where you very possibly could die from the withdrawal alone.  Plus about half the symptoms Chet lists can’t be found in any serious literature on the matter of marijuana withdrawal and even the ones he’s right on (sleeping problems, sweating, decreased appetite, restlessness, nervousness, and sadness) are only found in less than half of those cannabis users deemed “addicted”.

Issues related to marijuana:  Serious prenatal damage. (Marijuana has caused deformity in different areas of babies.)

Shockingly untrue.  Pre-natal exposure to marijuana does not cause deformities, low birth weight, or cognitive damages.

Impotency after prolonged use.  Inability to perform after prolonged use (marijuana is in the testicles).

Which, of course, explains why the Rastafarians died out and you never see any tie-dye-wearing hippie kids any more.

Short-term memory damage first, then transfers to long-term brain damage.

Complete lie.  During marijuana impairment, there is a problem with short-term memory.  When you’re not high, that problem goes away.  There is no long-term brain damage associated even with chronic daily marijuana smoking.

Ex-WWE Diva & Medical Marijuana patient Shelly Martinez... no droop there!

Drooping breasts for the female (a percentage of females depending upon amount and time of use).

Yes, ladies, if you smoke pot until you are eighty years old, your breasts will droop.  Of course, if you don’t smoke pot, your breasts will still probably droop at age eighty.  This is the first time I’ve ever heard of pot affecting lady boobs, and judging by the many ladies I know who smoke a lot of pot, I will unscientifically declare this to be bullshit (I’d link to a debunking article, but not surprisingly, scientists haven’t done a lot of research into cannabinoid mammary droopage syndrome.  However, if there is to be a study, I hereby volunteer for data collection and analysis.)

Floppy breasts for males (a percentage depending upon amount and time of use).

There we go, my old favorite gynecomastia, or the old man boobs from marijuana lie.  The theory here is that marijuana use lowers testosterone, therefore the estrogen/testosterone balance is tipped toward the female hormone, and thus toward growing man boobs.

The truth, however, is that gynecomastia is very rare and the more likely cause of man boobs among male stoners is eating junk food and not exercising.

Removes pubic hair, male and female.  Removes male chest and facial hair.

Well, that proves it: every porn star and male model is a pothead!  Not only is there no research to confirm this wacky notion, but I’m struggling to understand how these effects even fit in a laundry list of reasons not to use marijuana.

Marijuana may involve your death, but you’ll feel better. Deaths have occurred from driving under the influence, aggressive behavior after prolonged use, walking in front of traffic, home incidents, fires, gas leaks, etc.

Who are these violent stoner arsonists who are walking in front of traffic?  Every time I compose one of these reefer madness articles, I’m more convinced that marijuana is a terrible drug that will freakishly alter the mind… of the people intent on prohibiting it.

Overall, “the public health burden of cannabis use is probably modest compared with that of alcohol, tobacco, and other illicit drugs,” Australian researchers reported in the Oct. 17 issue of The Lancet.

Wayne Hall, PhD, of the University of Queensland in Herston, Australia, and Louisa Degenhardt, PhD, of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, reviewed nearly 100 studies covering acute as well as chronic effects of marijuana, including reports of the prevalence of marijuana use around the world.

Globally, they wrote, about 3.9% of the world’s population used marijuana in 2006, according to United Nations statistics.

Well it opens nicely by noting that cannabis is safer and that almost 1 out of 25 people worldwide use cannabis. It gets a bit dicey from there:

They spent more time detailing the psychomotor impairments associated with the marijuana high. “Some experimental studies have shown diminished driving performance in response to emergency situations,” Hall and Degenhardt said, findings also corroborated in epidemiological studies.

For example, one study of car crash victims found that they were more likely to have tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive component of marijuana, in their blood compared with age- and sex-matched controls.

Another study determined that motorists killed in wrecks were 2.5 times as likely to have been responsible for the accident when they had THC in their blood.

These are meaningless points when you recognize that:

1. Marijuana is the third-most used drug after alcohol and tobacco, so it is not surprising you’d find it in car crash victims;
2. Marijuana is detectable in the blood long after most other drugs, including alcohol, are not; and
3. Recent studies show that people can test positive for THC in the blood up to a week after ceasing their use of cannabis.

Few somatic effects of chronic use have been documented, Hall and Degenhardt found, except for several case-control studies suggesting promotion of lung cancer. Also, THC increases heart rate in a dose-dependent way, perhaps increasing risks for people with preexisting cardiovascular disease.

Yet when we look at populations of chronic cannabis users, we don’t find any link to lung cancer or heart attacks. In fact, we’re finding that cannabis may be a key to preventing and curing cancer!

Cognitive effects while high are, of course, well recognized, but their persistence is less clear, Hall and Degenhardt said. Some studies say cognitive impairment remains in chronic heavy users even after they quit, but others indicate that recovery of function is the rule.

I’d say we just find some old dudes who’ve smoked pot for fifty or more years and put them in a Jeopardy tournament with old dudes who’ve been drinking for fifty or more years and let’s settle this once and for all!

Similar uncertainty clouds the research on whether marijuana fosters use of other, arguably more dangerous, drugs such as cocaine and heroin, the researchers said. People who use marijuana are more likely to use other illicit drugs as well, but causality has been difficult to prove.

How about “impossible to prove”? The Institute of Medicine in 1999 and every other study since has concluded that there is no “gateway effect”. The only gateway in marijuana is to the dealer of illegal drugs. You know why they don’t call tequila a gateway drug? Because you can’t buy cocaine, heroin, or meth on the shelf next to it.

Marijuana use has also been linked to increased risk of psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia and, less consistently, depression.

Except that, worldwide and nationally, the rates of schizophrenia and psychosis remain virtually static even as cannabis use and potency rises and falls. A recent ten-year analysis of data from the UK found no increase in schizophrenia and psychosis even as rates of cannabis use exploded.

Overall, they concluded that marijuana is clearly associated with negative health and psychosocial consequences, but these are not as major as for some other drugs, and the causal relations remain unproven.

“The focus of epidemiological and clinical research should be on clarifying the causative role of cannabis for these adverse health effects,” the authors said.

Really? You looked and looked and found that lots of people use cannabis and you couldn’t prove that it did much harm to them, so the the focus going forward should be to prove that cannabis did harm them? How about accepting that as drugs go, cannabis is probably the safest one out there, the most beneficial to the most people and the least harmful to society?

They also cited a recent study estimating that marijuana accounted for about 0.2% of the total disease burden in Australia, a nation with one of the world’s highest rates of cannabis use. Its health impact was one-tenth that of alcohol and one-fortieth that of tobacco, the study found.

That makes for a nice sound bite: Cannabis – ten times less damaging to society than alcohol, forty times less damaging to society than tobacco, and yet still illegal.

By DUANE SCHRAG/Salina Journal

Allowing the use of marijuana (or cannabis), even for medicinal purposes, doesn’t appear to have much support among public officials in Kansas. Locally, Saline County Sheriff Glen Kochanowski said he believes relaxing the rules would be ill-advised. Saline County Attorney Ellen Mitchell, who was deep into preparing for the third murder trial of Cameron Nelson, expressed skepticism. Salina Police Chief Jim Hill didn’t return a call seeking comment.

And Kansas Attorney General Steven Six said he would oppose it if the Legislature ever brought it up.

“The use of marijuana can lead to the use of other harder, more serious, drugs,” he said in an e-mail, via a spokesperson.

Ah, the old Gateway Theory.  Somebody send Attorney General Six a copy of the 1999 Institute of Medicine report, please, which found concluded that marijuana was not a “gateway drug to the extent that it is a cause or even that it is the most significant predictor of serious drug abuse,” a finding which has been echoed by a 2001 American Journal of Public Health report, a 2002 study by RAND, a 2002 Canadian Senate study, and a 2006 University of Pittsburgh study.

Or just offer the common sense observation that while nearly every heroin and cocaine user first tried pot, nearly every pot user doesn’t try heroin or cocaine.  There are now 102 million Americans age 12 and older who have tried marijuana, yet there are only 2 million active cocaine users and 350,000 active heroin users.

Proponents of decriminalization sometimes point out that marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug in the United States and question the actual harm of using marijuana. Some argued, for instance, that it really isn’t addictive. Medical researchers now know that it is.

“For many years, the scientific community had been reluctant to acknowledge the dependence potential of cannabis because certain types of experimental findings were lacking,” wrote Alan Budney and Brent Moore in a paper published in 2002 by the Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. “In contrast, the past 10 to 15 years of clinical and basic research have produced strong evidence demonstrating that cannabis can and does produce strong dependence.”

The authors go on to note that marijuana’s addictive properties are not as intense as those of other commonly abused substances.

“Cannabis has a substantial, albeit lower, rate of conditional dependence (9 percent) than substances such as alcohol (15 percent), cocaine (17 percent), heroin (23 percent), or tobacco (32 percent),” they wrote.

This “strong dependence” of which they write includes such dramatic withdrawal symptoms as “irritability”, “anxiety”, “sleep disturbance”, and “depressed mood”.  You know, just like when you picture a heroin addict trying to quit cold turkey, or just like your average cigarette smoker trying to put down the cancer sticks.

It’s a “strong dependence” that they’ll admit is less intense than other drugs and occurs at the lowest rates of other drugs.  So I suppose heroin and cigarettes and alcohol produce “super-duper strong dependence”.

One of these studies desperately trying to convince you that the cannabis monkey on your back is a gorilla is out of Johns Hopkins where they took six men and six women who smoked both cannabis and tobacco and made them quit one for five days, then the other for five days, then both for five days, with periods of regular use in between.  They found that six of them thought it was harder to quit both at once, six found it harder to quit one at a time, and their scores for anger, irritability, etc. were similar whether they were quitting one or the other.  Based on that – a dozen people with wildly varying results – the headline reads “Marijuana withdrawal as bad as withdrawal from cigarettes”.

Now I’ve never been addicted to tobacco, but watching my friends who’ve tried to kick repeatedly fail, combined with my many instances where through choice or circumstance I’ve been unable to smoke pot for days, I’m convinced that going a few days without weed is far easier than going a few days without cigs.

When it is smoked, its effect on the respiratory system is similar to tobacco use but at much lower doses.

“Habitual marijuana use is as injurious to the epithelium of the large airways as regular tobacco smoking, despite a much smaller daily number of marijuana than tobacco cigarettes smoked,” wrote the authors of a paper on the respiratory consequences of marijuana smoking that was published in the Journal of Clinical Pharmacology.

Yet habitual marijuana smoking does not seem to lead to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema, or head, neck, or lung cancers.  Yes, I will grant that inhaling the smoke of any burning vegetable matter is not a healthy choice, and it will increase your chance of bronchitis, but compared to tobacco smoke it is less harmful by a great degree.  And then there’s vaporization, which few ever seem to recognize, which eliminates nearly every harm of smoking.

Regardless, I still wonder why some people think it is logical to arrest and jail people to protect their lungs, and if so, why aren’t tobacco smokers in prison?

[State Sen. Pete Brungardt, R-Salina.] said the Legislature heard testimony on that subject.

“Most of the testimony we heard was that all those things that are desirable are duplicated by other medicines,” he said. “In fact, the other medications are superior.”

I guess they didn’t have any puking chemo patients testifying, who can’t swallow and keep down anti-nausea pills that don’t work as well as inhaled cannabis.  I guess they didn’t catch the studies showing cannabis therapy as a superior remedy for neuropathic pain.  I guess they’ve never read the side effects of these other medications.

[Saline County Sheriff Glen Kochanowski] doesn’t see the benefits outweighing the drawbacks.

“You’re going to have people playing the system (if medical use is allowed),” he said. And too often chemical abuse has disastrous effects.

“I have seen families broken, I have seen careers ruined because of a person’s desire to use any kind of drug,” he said.

He rejects the suggestion that legalizing it would free law enforcement up to pursue other criminals.

“I have a hard time looking at decriminalizing something just to make things easier for everyone,” he said. “What, do we decriminalize drunk driving? Do we decriminalize rape because it’s too hard to deal with?”

While I always enjoy law enforcement officials using their quality medical training at the police academy to opine on medical matters, I’m a bit troubled by a sheriff who can’t seem to understand the difference between drunk driving, rape, and some adult smoking a joint in their own home to relieve pain, nausea, spasticity, or to just relax after a long days’ work.  See, sheriff, if you allow adults to be adults in the privacy of their own home, maybe you’ve got more resources to go after those drunk drivers and rapists that are actually harming others!