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.”

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1. White House responds to legalization petition
2. California ASA sues feds over crackdown on medmj
3. Canada to shift medmj approval responsibility from Health Canada to doctors
4. BPG survey finds 2/3rds of patients substitute cannabis for other prescription meds

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Radical Rant

• The Drug Czar responds to legalization petition with the same old tired lies and misdirections

I really think criminals deserve these beds more than cannabis consumers

Following up on “The David Evans Inequality”, I wanted to puncture another talking point of the prohibitionist.  This is the claim that we really don’t lock up anybody for marijuana in prison – it’s as rare as finding a unicorn, as Drug Czar Walters once said.

This one I’ve christened “The George Skelton Diversion” in honor of the Los Angeles Times writer who recently penned this:

Our prisons aren’t exactly bulging with people who were sent there for growing or selling grass, let alone ingesting it. Fewer than 1% of the inmates have been sentenced for marijuana or hashish crimes of any sort, according to state prison data.

They total 1,325 out of 164,156. If you do the math — each prisoner costing nearly $50,000 a year — it isn’t chump change: around $66 million. But it’s hardly noticeable in a $10-billion prison budget.

So the reader is left to believe that we only spend $66 million enforcing marijuana prohibition.  Why, that’s a 0.6% drop in the prison spending bucket!

As usual, the prohibitionist ignores the true cost to society and the marijuana consumer – the arrest itself.

Every one of California’s pot arrests require police time.  Police labs have to test baggies of weed while rape kits sit on shelves.  California pays unemployment and other benefits to workers fired only for failing a pee test.  Cops have to follow up on grow tips and rip up gardens.  People have to replace doors and belongings after cops destroy them in a raid.  Court stenographers have to be paid to transcribe trials whether defendants are convicted or acquitted.  People lose upward mobility when a marijuana conviction impedes their job ladder or education plan.

Then there are the people in prison for weed who don’t show up in the “there for weed” statistics.  If you robbed a gas station two decades ago, served your time, and are on probation when you’re caught for a joint, you can go back to prison for your robbery and it doesn’t show up as a “busted for weed” imprisonment.  If you’ve had two convictions in California your joint can be your “third strike” that puts you away.  If you kept your different strains in different bags, you can go to prison for distribution, not possession.  There are conspiracy charges where you can be imprisoned even if no weed was found and you had no major role in the trafficking of cannabis.

Besides, no matter how few people are in prison and how little it may cost, is it right?  I say one man in a cage and a dollar to house him for the “crime” of growing and using a plant is still too much.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

On September 12, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) authored a letter to “Gateway” Gil Kerlikowske, the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. While Rep. Cohen opens with his shared concern about the scourge of “[h]eroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, crack, and other similar drugs [that] are highly addictive, cause physical damage, and often lead addicts to criminal activity to fulfill their habit”, the focus of his letter to the Drug Czar was that prohibition of marijuana is a futile and harmful failure. Yesterday, Kerlikowske responded with a letter to Rep. Cohen filled with half-truths, diversions, and outright lies.

Rep. Cohen plainly stated one of the conclusions of the recent Global Commission on Drug Policy report:

The continued focus of federal and state governments on the criminalization of simple possession of marijuana has resulted in increased prison populations, devastating racial disparities and a lost generation of people with no education and no job prospects because of an arrest that haunts them for the rest of their lives.

To which Drug Czar Kerlikowske replies:

This administration agrees that we should expand alternatives to incarceration for those whose criminal offense is related to an underlying substance abuse problem. We are also working to remove barriers for those who are in recovery or have fulfilled sentences related to drug offenses.

As marijuana arrests climb, so do the number of drug courts. Coincidence?

The problem, of course, is that use of marijuana is the criminal offense.  In most cases, the use of marijuana does not indicate an underlying substance abuse problem.  What Kerlikowske is pointing to is more use of drug courts which sentence users of cannabis to a rehab they don’t need.  Then he’ll point to all the admissions for cannabis rehab to demonstrate what a serious health issue cannabis abuse is.  And the solution, of course, is more marijuana arrests that sentence abusers to drug courts.

Cohen:

 Marijuana does not belong on Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) alongside such hard drugs as cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. There is no evidence that marijuana has the same addictive qualities or damaging consequences as these harder drugs and it should not be treated as such. Similarly, the so-called “Gateway Drug” theory has been thoroughly discredited with respect to marijuana. Marijuana ought to be placed at the lowest end of the CSA in accordance with its true risks.

You said marijuana was harmless and non-addictive! Liar!

Kerlikowske:

In your letter, you raise several important issues which I would like to address. First, you state that marijuana is harmless, non-addictive, and should be decriminalized….

Huh?!?  Rep. Cohen, watch out, there’s a straw man behind you!  I thought you said marijuana (Schedule I) wasn’t as addictive or harmful as heroin (Schedule I), coke and meth (Schedule II), and that it ought to be at the lowest end of the CSA (Schedule V) that recognizes a drug that “has a low potential for abuse… has a currently accepted medical use… [and] may lead to limited physical dependence or psychological dependence…”  That doesn’t sound like “harmless” or “non-addictive” to me.

Kerlikowske:

Scientists at The National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Federal Government’s leading researchers on the science of drug abuse, confirm that marijuana is not a benign substance and that it is addictive.

About as addictive as coffee, slightly more buzz than cigarettes

Addictive?  Do you mean “hallucinating, crawling on the floor, writhing in agony, vomiting, shaking, cold sweat, potential death”-addictive, like kicking heroin or alcohol “cold turkey”?  Or do you mean “really grumpy in the morning if I can’t get my Starbucks”-addictive?  Because scientists at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) rating five qualities of addictive effects among nicotine, heroin, cocaine, alcohol, caffeine, and cannabis found cannabis to be the least addictive in three categories: dependence (how much you “gotta have it”), withdrawal (how bad does it hurt to quit), and tolerance (gotta have more and more to get high).  It’s second-lowest to caffeine in reinforcement (taking it makes you want more) and third-lowest to caffeine and nicotine in intoxication (how much buzz does it pack).

Kerlikowske:

In fact, the lifetime risk of drug dependence in cannabis users has been estimated at about 9 percent, rising to one-in-six in those who initiate use in adolescence. The rate of dependence on marijuana is nearly twice as prevalent when compared to any other illicit psychoactive substance.

Dependence?  Yes, NIDA does put the lifetime dependence rate on cannabis at 9%, which, again, puts it down in the Starbucks coffee range.  Also, consider that this “dependence” is partially categorized in the DSM-IV (the psychological diagnoses manual) as people who “use very potent cannabis over a period of months and sometimes years, and may spend significant time acquiring and using the substance”.  Yes, because that substance is illegal, expensive, and hard to find.  The diagnosis also includes people whose cannabis use “interferes with family, work, school, or recreational activities”, which is also hard to separate from the illegality of cannabis that frightens family, gets tested for at work and school, and frowned upon at recreational activities.  How many beer drinkers would be “alcohol dependent” if getting a twelve-pack of potent microbrews cost $300 and two-hours of cross-town trips and phone calls, failing an alcohol test would cost their job or scholarship, and family reunions, pool halls, bowling alleys, and public parks only allowed pot smoking, not beer drinking?

The “rate of dependence for cannabis is twice as prevalent as illegal drugs” is a pure lie.  Cocaine gets a 17% and heroin gets a 23% from NIDA.  Unless Kerlikowske really means use rates of cannabis, which are well over twice as great as use of other drugs… which tells you something, doesn’t it?  Heroin’s not as popular because people know it’s dangerous and are generally not inclined to want to use it.  People love cannabis because they know it to be the safest recreational substance and herbal medication.

Kerlikowske:

Further, marijuana is the most prevalent drug used by young people and is associated with lowered academic performance, fatal drugged driving accidents, and visits to emergency rooms across the country. According to data from the Department of Health and Human Services, marijuana was involved in 376,000 emergency room visits in 2009.

We've dramatically lowered alcohol and tobacco use among teens without locking up a single adult for possession of those substances

No.  Alcohol and tobacco are the most prevalent drugs used by young people.  And remarkably, alcohol use among 12th graders has dropped from a lifetime prevalence of 92% to 71% in the past 35 years.  Tobacco use among seniors has fallen from 75% to 43% in the same span.  Yet we haven’t arrested a single adult for possession of those substances.  Instead we instituted strict ID carding procedures, began public education campaigns, restricted advertising, and in the case of booze, raised the legal age*.

Even marijuana use is lower now, at 42%, than its modern peak of 60% in 1979 and the medical marijuana-era peak of almost 50%.  If regulation proved successful with two addictive substances like alcohol and tobacco, why would it not succeed for cannabis?

As for “lowered academic performance”, well, for one, it’s tough to maintain good grade when you get suspended for smoking pot.  Kerlikowske also omits the fact that conditions that lead to adolescent substance use (abuse or neglect at home, poverty, quality of schools, etc.) also tend to lead to lowered academic performance regardless of marijuana use.  Recent studies show moderate use doesn’t affect cognitive abilities at all.

Kerlikowske’s emergency room visits scare is also specious.  Marijuana “involved” in an ER visit means it was either tested for or mentioned by a patient in an ER.  If tested, that can be metabolites from days or weeks ago and it counts as “involved” in the visit.  If mentioned, that can be “I smoked a joint at a party then fell and broke my ankle on the icy sidewalk outside” and now marijuana is “involved” in the visit.  Nothing measures marijuana causing an emergency room visit, because there are so very few of those, since marijuana is non-toxic and only mildly mood-altering.  The same concepts apply to the “fatal drugged-driving accidents”; presence of marijuana metabolites in a crash victim do not implicate the marijuana as causing the crash – even the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says so!

Cohen:

This is an issue of compassion, as medical marijuana provides a little relief and dignity to people who are dying. I have personally witnessed a close friend who was suffering in the last days of pancreatic cancer benefit tremendously from smoking marijuana. It increased his appetite, eased his pain, and allowed him to smile. It allowed him to deal with death with a little more dignity.

Kerlikowske:

We share your concerns about the importance of providing relief and dignity to individuals at the last stages of their life. To that end, we ardently support research into determining what components of the marijuana plant can be used as medicine.

Why are the least toxic drugs considered most dangerous and the most toxic drugs the least dangerous?

LIAR.  As our Paul Armentano so ably points out: “the Drug Czar is claiming that the federal government ‘ardently supports’ medical marijuana research just days after the US government formally denied a request for an FDA-approved clinical trial to assess cannabis’ therapeutic safety and efficacy” for treating post traumatic stress disorder among our returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

Well, maybe not “LIAR” so much as “equivocator”.  Kerlikowske supports “components of the marijuana plant” that can be synthesized, bottled, bar-coded, and marked-up for the profit of a pharmaceutical company.  He praises the Marinol 100% synthetic THC pill you’re supposed to swallow and keep down for 45 minutes to treat your violent heaving nausea (good luck with that).  It’s that whole-plant, 15% natural THC you can grow yourself without enriching a corporation he’s got a problem with, even if it helped your friend dying of cancer.

Kerlikowske:

[No] major medical association [has] come out in favor of smoked marijuana for widespread medical use.

Really?  Is the American Medical Association not “major” enough for you when they said:

Conclusions. 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. However, the patchwork of state-based systems that have been established for “medical marijuana” is woefully inadequate in establishing even rudimentary safeguards that normally would be applied to the appropriate clinical use of psychoactive substances. The future of cannabinoid-based medicine lies in the rapidly evolving field of botanical drug substance development, as well as the design of molecules that target various aspects of the endocannabinoid system. To the extent that rescheduling marijuana out of Schedule I will benefit this effort, such a move can be supported.

So the AMA even admits that smoked cannabis is medically beneficial.  The AMA wants “botanical drug substance development” – those “components of the marijuana plant” Kerlikowske mentions – and in order to facilitate that they support removing marijuana from Schedule I… just like Rep. Cohen is demanding you do!  I guess his weasel word here is “widespread”, since the AMA listed only a few limited uses of cannabis.

Finally, this Administration stresses the importance of not approaching our Nation’s drug problem as a “war on drugs.” As someone who has spent his entire career in law enforcement, I recognize that we will never be able to arrest our way out of our drug problem. Drug addiction is a disease of the brain. Like any other chronic disease, it can be successfùlly prevented and treated. That is why our policies support preventing drug use and reforming the criminal justice system. Our drug control budget reflects this reality. Last year, the President’s Budget devoted $10.4 billion to drug education and treatment programs. compared to $4.3 billion for incarceration programs.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (graphic by Pete Guither, DrugWarRant.com)

Once again, some fuzzy math from the drug czar.  Obama’s drug war budget is still tilted 2:1 in favor of law enforcement.  If you only count “incarceration programs” you might get $4.3 billion, but add in those helicopters flying eradication missions, parole and probation officer costs, and other costs of trying to bust cannabis and drug users, and that cost climbs.  Then realize that the $10.4 billion he’s counting for drug treatment includes the drug courts that still equate to marijuana arrests and law enforcement and soon you realize the shell game he’s playing.  In reality, drug war budgets for treatment and prevention have risen slightly and domestic law enforcement, interdiction, and international efforts have risen less slightly over the past three fiscal years.

Finally, may I mention that the “entire career in law enforcement” spent by Gil Kerlikowske included being Chief of Police from 2001 – 2009 in Seattle, a city that voted marijuana enforcement its lowest police priority, whose city attorney won’t even prosecute minor marijuana offenses, whose mayor spoke in favor of legalization at this year’s Seattle Hempfest, and whose city council just stood up to the governor’s veto of medical marijuana dispensaries by instituting regulations for city dispensaries.  Gil, you know damn well from experience that what you are spreading are lies, half-truths, and mis-directions about marijuana!

Rep Cohen to Drug Czar Letter

Drug Czar to Rep Cohen letter

* I often wonder why we never hear “What About The Children?!?” and a cry for raising the legal age for tobacco to 21?

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"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” – Gandhi (kinda)

Paul Armentano, NORML’s Deputy Director, and Paul Kuhn, from the NORML Board, co-wrote an op-ed for marijuana legalization in Tennessee’s largest newspaper.  Usually when NORML composes these things we might get a response from “Parents United for Safe Healthy Youth” (or some-such anti-legalization group) but the Drug Czar’s office ignores us.

Apparently we’re now in the “they fight you” stage, because a deputy director at the ONDCP, David Mineta, took the time to rebut our op-ed.  You can tell how desperate the prohibitionists are in the age of Google to maintain the fear-mongering over cannabis right out of the gate:

Proponents of marijuana legalization often argue it will do everything from fixing our economy to ending violent crime (“Marijuana legalization bill offers safer alternative,” Tennessee Voices, Aug. 15). Yet, the science is clear: Marijuana use is not a benign drug and it is harmful to public health and safety.

I agree: marijuana use is not a benign drug.  Marijuana may be fairly benign drug, marijuana use may be a relatively benign act, but I know my verbs from my nouns.  (Is this the level of writing accepted at Berkeley these days?)  The stilted construction of the second sentence is only bested by the two strawman arguments in the first.  Nobody says it will “fix” the economy or “end” violent crime, but that legalization will help in those goals.  Kinda like how the drug czar always tells us that drug abuse is something that never goes away but prohibition will help in those goals.

After the strawmen are introduced, we dive right into the Reefer Madness lies (I’ll count them for you):

Decades of scientific study, including research from the prestigious National Institutes of Health, show marijuana use is associated with addiction (1), treatment admissions among young people (2), fatal drugged driving accidents (3), and visits to emergency rooms (4). Data also reveal that marijuana potency has almost tripled in the past 20 years (5). This is especially troubling for use among teens because the earlier a person begins to use drugs, the more likely they are to develop a more serious abuse and addiction problem later in life (6).

(1) According to the prestigious National Institutes for Health, the dependency rate for first-time users of cannabis is about 9%.  For alcohol it is 15% and for tobacco it is 32%.  So, we’re making booze and cigs prohibited soon, right?

(2) Treatment admissions are fueled by an ever-rising number of drug courts, which sentence young people caught with cannabis to a rehab many of them don’t need or want.  A majority (57%) of admissions to rehab for cannabis are due to the criminal justice system; only 15% are self-admissions.  Over a third (37%) of cannabis rehab admissions hadn’t used any cannabis in the month prior to rehab.

(3) When you test the blood or urine of people who have been in fatal accidents and discover THC or its metabolites, what you’ve learned is that many people use cannabis.  Since metabolites stay in the urine for days or weeks and THC in the blood stays for hours or days, we aren’t learning a thing about cannabis’ culpability in accidents.  We don’t even know if the cannabis driver’s death was due to the other driver in a crash abusing meth or cocaine or heroin, since in many cases those metabolites are eliminated by the time the driver is tested.

(4) Ditto for emergency rooms – if you’re admitted for a broken leg from playing touch football and the pee test shows you smoked weed last weekend, that’s counted as a “marijuana-related emergency room admission.”

(5) Average potency of seized cannabis has varied over the years but has steadily increased.  The average now is about twice that of twenty years ago.  However, the inference that more potent marijuana equals greater addictive potential is another fallacy.  It would be like saying people who drink wine are more likely to become alcoholics than beer drinkers.  More potent pot means you get the same high with less pot, that’s all, or if you smoke more, you fall asleep.  It’s not like alcohol where a beer drunk is friendly and a tequila drunk is mean (generalizing).

(6) It’s true, the percentage of hard drug users who started with cannabis, alcohol, and tobacco is much greater than those who started with hard drugs.  That’s as meaningful as saying the percentage of people in the Hell’s Angels who rode a bicycle as kids is much greater than those who started on a Harley.  It doesn’t mean bicycles lead to biker gangs any more than cannabis leads to heroin.  The “gateway theory” has been disproved by that same prestigious National Institutes for Health report that Mineta cites above.

Would marijuana legalization make Tennessee healthier or safer? One needs to look no further than Tennessee’s current painful experience with prescription drug abuse. In Tennessee, prescription drugs are legal, regulated, and taxed — and yet rates of the abuse of pain relievers in the state exceed the national average by more than 10 percent.

So…. because Tennessee has a problem with people abusing toxic, addictive, legal prescription drugs, we need to make sure we lock ‘em in a cage if they use a non-toxic, non-addictive medicinal herb?  Is this an argument for making prescription drugs illegal?  The Drug Czar’s office is getting very desperate if the way they defend keeping marijuana in Schedule I is that they can’t control the Schedule II and III drugs.

Nationally, someone dies from an unintentional drug overdose — driven in large part by prescription drug abuse — on average every 19 minutes. What would America look like if we had just as many people using marijuana as we currently have smoking cigarettes, abusing alcohol, and abusing prescription drugs? The bottom line is that laws that control substances have had a real and lasting effect on keeping drug use rates relatively low. They keep prices higher which helps hold use rates relatively low. Moreover, other addictive substances like alcohol and tobacco, which are already legal and taxed, cost much more in social costs than the revenue they generate.

Considering that some people would substitute marijuana for alcohol, tobacco, and prescription drugs, I think America would look a whole lot better.  The bottom line is that Mineta equates all marijuana use with abuse, as he does tobacco use.  ”Using marijuana” and “smoking cigarettes” are equated with “abusing alcohol” and “abusing prescription drugs”, implying that alcohol and prescriptions have legitimate and acceptable uses.

Now consider Mineta’s point that prohibition keeps drug prices high.  It’s not true; in inflation-adjusted 1981 dollars, heroin is 81% cheaper, meth is 57% cheaper, cocaine is 80% cheaper, and crack is 60% cheaper.  Only cannabis is more expensive; it costs 86% more now than 1981.  So, prohibition has made the safest substance more expensive and it has acted as a price support for weed dealers and Mexican drug lords.  It hasn’t stopped anyone from accessing cannabis; 1-in-3 young adults toke annually, 1-in-8 toke weekly, and 80+% of teenagers say cannabis is easy to access.

Finally, alcohol and tobacco tax revenues don’t cover alcohol and tobacco’s social costs because… wait for it… alcohol and tobacco are toxic, addictive, and harmful to your organs.  If there are social costs from cannabis – a big “if” and a small amount – we are recovering zero in tax revenue to offset it and spending billions in a futile attempt to stop it.

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