A new article on MedPage today claims that we still don’t fully understand the health risks of cannabis use:

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.

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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.

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Forty-one percent (41%) of likely U.S. voters think the United States should legalize and tax marijuana to help solve the nation’s fiscal problems.

However, nearly half (49%) oppose this idea, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

These results show little difference from a survey conducted in February that asked Americans about legalization only. At that time, 40% said marijuana should be legalized, but 46% disagreed.

Over half of Democrats (52%) support the idea of legalizing and taxing pot, but only 28% of Republicans agree. Most GOP voters (65%) are against the idea, as are 37% of Democrats. Unaffiliated voters are more evenly divided: 41% are in favor of the idea and 47% are opposed to it.

Adults between the ages of 18 and 40 are much more likely to support legalizing and taxing marijuana than those over 40.

The new survey also shows that nearly half of voters (46%) believe marijuana use leads to use of harder drugs. Thirty-seven percent (37%) do not see marijuana as a “gateway” drug.

That “gateway drug” argument sure is persistent, isn’t it?  I guess I could give it a positive spin: at least if you’re relying on the “gateway drug” argument to show how awful marijuana is, you’re tacitly admitting that the marijuana itself isn’t so harmful.

The only three effective tools left in the prohibitionist’s rhetorical arsenal are:

1. Marijuana is a gateway drug that leads to use of harder drugs.
2. If we legalized marijuana, our streets would be filled with stoned drivers!
3. What about the children?  For God’s Sake, won’t somebody think of the children?

So it is up to us to educate our friends and family and elected representatives.  We need to have people who bring up “gateway drug” laughed out of the room like people who insist the moon landing was faked*.

We’ll deal with “stoned drivers” and “what about the children” another time.  For your peers that shoot you the “gateway drug” argument, you could tell them that the Institute of Medicine debunked this theory in 1999 and every study subsequent to it has agreed.  Or you could point out that the “gateway theory” is a logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning (that since this came before that, this caused that).  But if your peers were swayed by logic and reason, we wouldn’t have 46% of them believing the “gateway theory”.

The theory survives because it fits a pattern familiar to most people.  They understand that the falling-down drunk who’s loaded on scotch was once probably a guy who drank a beer or two.  They understand that the chain smoker was once probably a guy who had a cigarette now and then.  They understand that the right-wing talk radio host who was downing 30 illegal Oxycontin a day probably started on one or two a day.  They also realize — accurately, I’ll admit — that the crack addict and heroin junkie probably smoked a joint or two before they moved on to the hard stuff.

So the way you attack this is to flip the perspective.  They’re looking at all the hard drug addicts and noting that almost all of them used pot.  You need to make them see all the marijuana users and show how few actually use hard drugs.  Here are your three rhetorical attacks on the “gateway theory”:

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Aw, you write that like it is a bad thing…

WASHINGTON (BP)–The decision by the Obama administration to surrender to bad state policies on so-called medicinal marijuana will have disastrous effects.

Medicinal marijuana is the Trojan horse of the marijuana decriminalization movement. The movement sees it as the means to appeal to people’s compassion in order to change public opinion about marijuana and ease the way toward decriminalization of marijuana. The Obama administration’s decision to cave on enforcement of federal drug laws against marijuana distribution represents the dropping of the first shoe on decriminalization of marijuana and signals the next one is coming.

I love the idea that we “legalizers” are meeting at Dr. Evil’s island lair to figure out how to pull a fast one over on the American people. Like we’re sitting there saying, “How are we ever going to convince the public that this dangerous killer plant is actually OK so we can get high legally?” We don’t have to appeal to anything to change public opinion that marijuana is medicine, we only have to show them the truth. Medical marijuana is not a “Trojan horse”, it is Galileo’s telescope proving the sun doesn’t revolve around the earth, not matter how much the religion of the day says it does.

With the federal government out of the way, we can expect to see a rapid rise in marijuana distributors and marijuana demand in states that have fallen victim to the medical marijuana scam. None of this escalation will prove especially helpful to the sick or to society. Those who use medicinal marijuana will pay the price first, and then everyone else will.

Yes, there will be more medical marijuana distributors, and as people realize they have a safe, legal, non-toxic alternative to the side-effect-laden killer pharmaceuticals shoved at them for pain and other conditions, there may be an increase in demand. But I’m still waiting for that medical marijuana patient to complain that we “legalizers” have taken advantage of them. I’m still waiting for those patients to protest the opening of another dispensary.

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Such decriminalization (which isn’t the same as legalization; it would be OK to hold small amounts of marijuana for personal use, but sale and distribution would still be illegal) might solve some problems but exacerbate others. It could, for example, encourage more young people to begin using drugs. And though marijuana doesn’t cause anywhere near the number of deaths of tobacco and alcohol, it is a gateway drug to more dangerous substances, and its decriminalization could worsen the impact of drugs on our communities.
via – The LA Times “A no-win ‘war on drugs’”

Yeah, I know, you’re thinking ’same old, same old’, why is he sharing this? It’s subtle; the article is in the Health section. There’s an Oatmeal Raisin cookie recipe posted in a sidebar next to it. Isn’t this where pot should be?

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VIENNA (AFP) – A UN drugs agency warned Thursday against underestimating the dangers of cannabis.

“The international community may wish to review the issue of cannabis,” the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) wrote in its annual report.

“Over the years, cannabis has become more potent and is associated with an increasing number of emergency room admissions,” the report stated.

Ooh, a swing and a miss!  Cannabis has become more potent, but increasing potency does not mean increase in danger, as marijuana smoking is a self-titrating action.  If you have schwag, you smoke a lot and get high.  If you have kind, you smoke a little and get high.  As for emergency room admissions, this myth is taken from the DAWN statistics where they determine if someone has used cannabis prior to admittance, not whether cannabis caused the admittance.  Since cannabis is the most popular illicit drug, it is naturally going to be mentioned more often in the ER.

Cannabis was often the first illicit drug taken by young people and was frequently called a “gateway drug,” in that it could lead to later use of hard drugs.

Steeerike two!  In 1999, US Institute of Medicine shot down the “gateway theory” and many studies that followed found the same thing.  Nowadays no serious scientist even brings it up anymore… but that doesn’t stop cannabiphobic bureaucrats from saying it anyway.

Indeed, many countries allowed the “recreational” use of cannabis, and public perceptions of the so-called “medical” uses of the drug and its recreational use “are overlapping and confusing,” it said.

Hmm, I think that’s a foul tip.  There’s nothing “so-called” about the medical uses of cannabis and if its medical use is “overlapping and confusing” then why did teen marijuana use rates decline in the states that implemented medical marijuana?

It also urged governments to “stimulate” the controlled use of opiate-based painkillers to help “alleviate unnecessary suffering of millions of patients.”

“Although the access to controlled medicines, including morphine and codeine, is considered by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to be a human right, it is virtually non existent in over 150 countries,” the report said.

“The WHO estimates that at least 30 million patients and possibly as many as 86 million annually suffer from untreated moderate to severe pain.”

via The Raw Story | UN agency recommends world stop ‘trivializing’ marijuana dangers.

Yerrrr OUT!  In fact, not only are you out, but your whole team is out, disqualified, and banished from the league!  In the same set of recommendations where you demonize cannabis and its “so-called medical” uses you then remind us access to painkillers is a human right, millions are suffering with under-treated pain, and you recommend we “stimulate” more use of opiates?  Who writes your recommendations, the Opium Poppy Growers Union?

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OK, when steel-mill town newspaper columnists like Tony Rhodin brazenly declare “Legalize marijuana, tax it, regulate and make money from it. The cocaine crazies won’t rule the streets.” you know this stupid prohibition is about to fall.  This is from the Lehigh Valley Express-Times, in the Allentown, Pennsylvania, area, and the columnist is talking to Democratic legislators Bob Freeman and Joe Brennan:

When quizzed on the state’s reliance on sin taxes — video poker is the latest targeted cash cow — the discussion turned to legalizing marijuana and prostitution, regulating it, taxing it and, for lack of a better word, benefiting from it.

When asked directly if we should legalize pot, Brennan began talking about separating violent from nonviolent offenders in prison and the other legislators seemed to like the direction that would take them — into talking about prison funding. That’s not what you were asked, I interrupted. Would you support the legalization of marijuana in order to pour more tax money into the state budget?

Freeman’s voice took on a suddenly high pitch and he went off on cocaine addicts running through the streets — I can only assume he meant if marijuana were legalized. Reefer madness, I guess. It sounded like something out of sixth-grade health class. Better to scare than make aware.

I know a bit about gateway drugs and how they become gateway drugs. You can consider this a true story. You’re buying dope from a friend who has been pretty reliable and you’re not shy about dumping some bucks on an ounce or two a month. You get to know the guy, you hang out some and he says at a party that hey, you want to try some coke? It’s a friendly exchange. No money switching hands. Sure, you say. Why not? So you do. And once you try coke, marijuana seems pretty boring. And it can go from there.

Anyway, the point is the gateway was the dealer, not the initial drug. You tried it because he made it available. You probably wouldn’t have gone looking for it. And for someone with an addictive personality, a drug such as coke can make you pretty crazy.

Consider the alternative. You go into a state store and you buy your ounce of premium pot. It costs a bit more, because it’s taxed and regulated, but it’s purity isn’t in question. And while the clerk may suggest a nice Merlot for the bong instead of water, he’s probably not going to suggest cocaine. It’s not on the menu and the guy likes his state job with all its perks.

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When commentary like this from Kathleen Parker starts hitting the staid Washington Post, can real change we can believe in be far behind?

…Olympian swimmer Michael Phelps and Sheriff Leon Lott of South Carolina’s Richland County are being forced to treat seriously a crime that shouldn’t be one.

Our marijuana laws have been ludicrous for as long as we’ve been alive. Almost half of us (42 percent) have tried marijuana at least once, according to a report published last year inPLoS Medicine, a journal of the Public Library of Science.

There are good reasons for substance restrictions for children that need not apply to adults.

That’s the real drug message that should inform our children and our laws, rather than the nonsense that currently passes for drug information.

Today’s anti-drug campaigns are slightly wonkier than yesterday’s “Reefer Madness,” but equally likely to become party hits rather than drug deterrents. One recent ad produced by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy says: “Hey, not trying to be your mom, but there aren’t many jobs out there for potheads.”Whoa, dude, except maybe, like, president of the United States.

Once a kid realizes that pot doesn’t make him insane — or likely to become a burrito taster, as the ad further asserts — he might figure other drug information is equally false. That’s how marijuana becomes a gateway drug.

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My post on the “Marijuana: A Gateway Drug to Meth” has now been picked up on Salon.com and in Portland’s Willamette Week newspaper:

WWire | Marijuana in Molalla: Return of the ‘Gateway Drug’
As featured on the Oregon NORML website, a member of the pro-pot group recently photographed this incredible billboard on Highway 99E.

And it appears that you paid for it.

As revealed by NORML’s research, the group named on the billboard — Molalla Coalition Against Drug Crime — receives federal money from the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

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Just south of the Portland, Oregon, metro area is a town called Molalla. Like most rural areas in Oregon, it is politically much more intolerant of cannabis than the liberal confines of Multnomah County.

An Oregon NORML member snapped this pic while driving on US Hwy 99E.  In case it’s unreadable (click pic for larger version) the message on this billboard from the Molalla Coalition Against Drug Crime says:

MARIJUANA- A Gateway Drug to METH

This message is accompanied by a picture of a man smoking a joint on the left, and the now infamous Oregonian picture of the pock-marked female meth addict.  Then the message continues by asking people to call the county sheriff’s office anonymous tip line.

We’re not against community organizations who in good faith try to relieve their neighborhoods of crime.  It’s just sad that they’re trying to reduce the harm from hard drugs by lying about cannabis.  Marijuana is not a gateway to meth or any other drug, any moreso than coffee, nicotine, alcohol, sugar, or Flintstones Chewable Vitamins.  The gateway theory has been debunked by many independent organizations and even by our own drug-hating government:

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