The South Gate, Michigan City Council unanimously clarified the smoking ban rules on Tuesday night when it comes to city parks. The city has recently added some designated smoking areas to some parks,  but apparently some confusion over what people might be smoking needed some clarification.

Paul Adams, the director of Parks and Recreation, wants it to be known that designated smoking areas in the parks are for tobacco use only, and not for medicinal marijuana consumers. He told the council before the vote, “We want to make it clear that there are to be no intoxicants in the park, you can’t use drugs or anything that will change your emotional state while at the park”.

The clarification was also suggested from the South Gate police department that the city clarity the rules for those using medical marijuana. Adams said that the police told him they have had to approach some people smoking marijuana in the park, and inform them that medical marijuana was not allowed in city parks. The park has always had a prohibition of consumption of alcohol, narcotics and drugs in the park.

External Links:
http://southgate.patch.com/articles/medicinal-marijuana-clarified-as-banned-from-parks

Gatewood Galbraith at Seattle Hempfest 2010

Kentucky political figure and perennial gubernatorial candidate Gatewood Galbraith died early Wednesday of complications from chronic emphysema, according to Fayette County Coroner Gary Ginn.Galbraith, 64, was found at home in his bed by family members Wednesday morning, according to a report by Ginn. The Lexington Division of Fire was called at 8:42 a.m., and Galbraith was pronounced dead at 9:19 a.m.

Ginn said a family member told him that Galbraith had been sick for about a week. Galbraith’s cold-like symptoms were complicated by chronic asthma and emphysema, Ginn said. He was a heavy smoker of cigarettes.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/01/04/2015454/longtime-political-figure-gatewood.html#storylink=cpy

NORML’s remembrance of Gatewood Galbraith

Gatewood’s interview on NORML SHOW LIVE – 12/3/2010

We’ll miss you, Gatewood.  We’ll never stop fighting the “Petrochemical-Pharmaceutical-Military-Industrial-Transnational-Corporate-Fascist-Elite-Bastards“.

UPDATE: According to Dea Riley, his former running mate and friend:

Gatewood did not smoke cigarettes only marijuana. As a matter of fact Gatewood would not enter a public facility in which smoking was allowed. He had earlier in his life smoked cigarettes, but a relatively short time compared to his long years of marijuana smoking.

I apologize – I didn’t personally know the extent of Galbraith’s tobacco habit and was only reporting what the coroner said.

Oh, pity the poor cigar industry!  The sterling reputation of their toxic, addictive, carcinogenic product might be sullied by cross-identification with marijuana!

(Register Guard) SALEM — Oregon is one of a growing number of states where the cigar industry wants a ban on “blunt wraps” — which ostensibly are for roll-your-own cigar aficionados, but in many instances are used to make super-size marijuana joints.

The Cigar Association of America requested House Bill 2363 as one of several such proposals in state capitals nationwide, said its Oregon lobbyist, Paul Cosgrove.

The bill would make it illegal for anyone in Oregon to “sell or dispense” these items, also known as cigar or blunt wrappers.

They are made wholly or in part from tobacco, come in the form of a leaf, sheet or tube, and often are flavored.

The cigar group, which represents manufacturers, is planning to argue in Salem, as it has been contending in other state capitals, that the reputation of its own products is being sullied by the marketing of these wrappers to pot smokers under the guise of being part of the cigar culture.

“We don’t want to be connected with drugs,” Cosgrove said.

“We have a legitimate, lawful product.”

So, um, the solution, Mr. Cosgrove, is to ban another legitimate, lawful product?  And where are the tobacco industry execs lobbying for a ban on Zig-Zag and Bambu rolling papers… you know we’re using those to roll cannabis, too, don’t you?

This same lunacy is happening next door in Idaho, too:

(Spokesman Review) BOISE – The Cigar Association of America wants Idaho to outlaw “blunt wraps,” a type of roll-your-own cigar wrapper, as drug paraphernalia.

Russ Westerberg, lobbyist for the group, told the Idaho Senate Judiciary Committee today that “blunts” traditionally were cigars rolled in a single, continuous tobacco leaf, which had a blunt end as opposed to a tapered end. “In recent times, the term ‘blunt’ has become associated with marijuana or joints,” he told lawmakers.

The wrappers, which are made of tobacco, often flavored, and sold in cigar stores and convenience stores for little more than a dollar apiece, “are becoming popular with users of marijuana and other illegal substances,” Westerberg said. “If there is a legitimate use, at a minimum any legitimate use of a blunt wrap would pale in comparison with the illegal one,” he declared. “Near as we can tell, there is no legitimate use for a cigar wrap.”

I’d say the legitimate use is the same one offered by Zig-Zags and Bambus – a person could legitimately roll tobacco in them and smoke it, as was noted by Illinois lawmakers in rejecting a ban on blunt wraps:

(MyWebTimes.com) House sponsor and Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, a Democrat from Chicago, said people can disguise the smell of marijuana by rolling their own cigarettes in blunt wraps.

“This bill defines something that is clearly drug paraphernalia,” Currie said. “You only buy it if you want to smoke a joint.”

But Rep. Dan Brady, R-Bloomington, disagreed.

“I got a dear friend who likes to smoke cigars and likes to use these wraps, or buy these wraps, and he has no intent to smoke a joint,” Brady said.

Even with a blunt wraps ban, marijuana users still can find ways to be innovative.

“This product in no way is used for only wrapping marijuana,” said Rep. Monique Davis, D-Chicago. “Pipes are used for smoking marijuana. Are we going to prohibit the sale of pipes, because some people choose to use them improperly?”

“They roll marijuana in a newspaper — shall we stop selling newspapers?” she said.

The Cigar Association of America would like you to believe they have the best interests of cigar aficionados and the public alike, but what this really comes down to is the bottom line: banning blunt wraps sells more cigars.  It has nothing to do with their “reputation” – if, indeed, blunt wraps have no legitimate use in cigar smoking, then how could you claim a negative connection with “drugs”?  If everyone thinks of them as a cannabis paraphernalia, then nobody is thinking of them as cigars.

The Cigar Association of America knows banning blunt wraps won’t stop people from using them to “mask the smell of marijuana smoking” (as one lobbyist claimed) or to amplify the psychoactive effects of cannabis.  Before blunt wraps were marketed, tokers used to (and still do) buy a box of “Swisher Sweets”, a type of “cigarillo”, or small thin cigar, or a full-size cigar, and then empty out the tobacco and re-pack it with cannabis.

If you were Cigar Association of America, wouldn’t you rather someone bought a $7 cigar and emptied it out rather than a $1 blunt wrap?  By their logic, we ought to be calling for a ban on cigars because their toxic, addictive, carcinogenic tobacco is sullying the reputation of smoking cannabis.

Yet another lie from the Stoners Against Legalization goes up in smoke

(Fresno Bee) Among some determined pot market conspiracy theorists, scattered in marijuana fields of Mendocino or Humboldt or at some urban dispensaries in California cities, one rumor refuses to die:

Big tobacco is coming – and wants to take over the California weed market.

But one of America’s leading tobacco companies says it has no interest going into the pot business – regardless of whether California voters pass Proposition 19 in November to legalize marijuana for recreational use.

In an interview today, Frank Lester, spokesman for Reynolds America Inc., seemed almost apologetic for killing the speculation. But he confirmed that the parent company for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, Santa Fe Natural Tobacco and the American Snuff Company won’t be adding a marijuana production division.

“Even going back years, I remember hearing that same thing back in the 1970s and 1980s,” Lester said of the Big Tobacco pot business rumors. “We are paying attention to the California initiative just as a political situation. But we’re not preparing to enter into the marijuana trade at all.”

If only Stoners Against Legalization had the legal analysis skills to match their PhotoShop skills, none of this would be necessary.

But the Stoners Against Legalization continue to push the notion that Prop 19 means big tobacco takeovers of cannabis production.  The picture above and the one to the right are two examples of their blatant lies still posted on Stop19.com.  They also repeat the lie in their bullet points:

• Do you provide your extra medical cannabis to dispensaries? It will be a crime to do so if Prop 19 passes. In addition, large Oakland growers and tobacco companies will take control of the market and push you out.

We can’t say it enough times:  Prop 19 does not invalidate, change, or supersede Prop 215 in any way, shape, or form! Please see Prop 19 is the best thing to happen to medical marijuana patients since Prop 215 for the full explanation, but the relevant analysis is this:

Anyone who claims that Proposition 19 will restrict or eliminate rights under the Compassionate Use Act (CUA or “Prop 215?) or the Medical Marijuana Program (MMP or “SB420?) is simply wrong.

Section 2B presents the controlling and relevant purposes for understanding what Prop. 19 can and cannot do. This section EXPRESSLY excludes the reach of Prop. 19 from the CUA and MMP.Sections 2B (7 & 8) specifically state that the purpose of this initiative is to give municipalities total and complete control over the commercial sales of marijuana “EXCEPT as permitted under Health and Safety Sections 11362.5 and 11362.7 through 11362.9.”

…existing laws cannot be repealed by inference and instead must be EXPRESSLY repealed. A court cannot find that a law, such as the CUA or MMP, was changed by “implication.”

It is contrary to any rational understanding of statutory construction to infer that since Prop. 19 gives cities control over the distribution of non-medical marijuana, that it also gives cities the right to control the medical distribution of cannabis beyond what the CUA and MMP allows.

In other words, Prop 19 is about personal use and Prop 215 is about medical use.  They are two separate systems and the establishment of the former does not alter the latter.  If you’re a patient and you’ve been selling to a dispensary, that does not change, for that all falls under “medical”.  If you’re just a dude who wants to sell to a marijuana store after Prop 19, that will fall under Prop 19′s licensing guidelines.
Just for fun, let’s look at Stop19′s other bullet points full of lies.

How will Prop 19 affect you?• Are you age 18-20? You will not be allowed to consume cannabis legally under Prop 19. Currently, all you need is a medical recommendation to do so.

Are you age 21-115?  You are not allowed to consume cannabis legally now.  After Prop 19, you can.  And for the 18-20s, you can still go get that medical recommendation.  Prop 215 does not go away after Prop 19.

• Do you interact with anyone under age of 21? You will be looking at up to 6 months in jail for passing them a joint. (If the person is under 18 you will be looking at up to 7 years in prison.)

The parenthetical scare sentence is what the law is now if you pass a joint to a minor.  Prop 19 doesn’t create that law.  The new punishment is for people 21+ passing a joint to people 18-20… and if your opposition to legalization for everyone 21-115 years old is that you don’t want to go to jail for smoking pot with teenagers, I cannot reason with you.

• Do you live in the same “space” and a minor? (Space could mean anything from the same house to an entire apartment complex.) You will not be allowed to consume cannabis.

“Space” could mean the entire cosmos!  Once again, if your opposition is that you can’t smoke pot around little kids, I cannot reason with you.  Currently all over America, moms and dads put their kids to bed and step out to the patio or garage to smoke pot and that’s all anyone is asking of you.  Unless you’re a Prop 215 patient, because, once again, that doesn’t change and if you’re using medically around your kids, you’re just as legal as you are now.

• Do you rent your home? Prop 19 will only allow you to grow cannabis if you have permission from your landlord. Due to the risks involved, many (if not most) California landlords do not allow it. How is this legalization?

Uh, because the people who have cool landlords will be able to grow cannabis?  What a reach this is!  Pets are legal, but my landlord can forbid me from having them in my apartment.  Or does your version of “legalization” mean you have an absolute right to install high-voltage indoor lighting, support structures, air scrubbers, and bring pounds of dirt and gallons of water onto someone else’s property?

• Do you grow cannabis with a doctor recommendation? Prop 19 will likely be interpreted by law enforcement and judges to limit your grow space to 5?x5?.

Not likely, not even possible.  (And it’s “25 square feet”, not “5′x5′”.  Nothing mandates that your 25 square feet be actually square.)

• Do you currently have to use your medical cannabis anywhere but home? Prop 19 will prevent patients from using their medicine anywhere in pubic. Which for many people with illnesses is not always possible.

Prop 215 does not go away when Prop 19 passes.  Prop 19 specifically deals with personal, not medical use.  Prop 19 doesn’t allow personal use of marijuana in public.  Prop 215′s medical use allowances will still exist.

• Do you sell your extra medical cannabis to other medical patients? Prop 19 will make this practice illegal. Even if you are only selling it to cover your growing cost.

And now we’re getting to the root of the issue… growing weed in your closet and selling it at grossly inflated prices is coming to an end.  If you want to be in the business of growing and selling marijuana, then we’re going to treat it like a business.

• Do you currently enjoy the use of cannabis free from Government interference? Not only will the Government impose excessive taxes under Prop 19, but the federal government will likely respond with unprecedented action against California cannabis users. “The federal Controlled Substances Act makes it a felony to grow or sell cannabis. California can repeal its own marijuana laws, leaving enforcement to the feds. But it can’t legalize a federal felony. Therefore, any grower or seller paying California taxes on marijuana sales or filing pot-related California regulatory paperwork would be confessing, in writing, to multiple federal crimes.”

This same argument was made with Prop 215 – the feds won’t like it and they’ll crack down on California!  Well, sure, until the feds change their marijuana laws, they aren’t going to like it if the states do.  But remember that federal law enforcement completely depends on local law enforcement to engage in these busts and Prop 19 has language that specifically forbids state and local law enforcement from even “threatening or attempting to seize” lawfully cultivated marijuana.

When it comes to well-meaning prohibitionists, you can’t find any better representative than Canada’s National Post columnist Barbara Kay.  In her latest piece, she investigates the latest studies about “marijuana-induced psychosis” and presents them as an argument for maintaining marijuana prohibition, as she did back in 2008.

Her colleagues razzed (as did I) and asked why marijuana should remain illegal while alcohol and tobacco, which she admits is more “noxious in its effects in the general public”, are legal.  Two reasons: history and economics, she argues:

The use of alcohol stretches back over the millennia as an integral part of human civilization and remains, when used properly, a prime ingredient of civilized conviviality and positive social bonding. Alcohol in moderation is not only a social lubricant, it is good for one’s health.

It’s the old Art Linkletter / Richard Nixon argument:

The transcripts show Linkletter telling Nixon, “There’s a great difference between alcohol and marijuana.”

Nixon replies: “What is it?” The president wants to know!

“When people smoke marijuana,” Linkletter explains, “they smoke it to get high. In every case, when most people drink, they drink to be sociable.”

“That’s right, that’s right,” Nixon says. “A person does not drink to get drunk. . . . A person drinks to have fun.”

A year later, however, Linkletter changed his tune.  According to the New York Times, “After much thought and study he had concluded that the drug was relatively harmless.”

Nixon and Kay are wrong, of course: plenty of people are drinking to get drunk, most particularly the young people she’s so concerned would suffer from “marijuana-induced psychosis”.  According to SAMSHA, 8% of youth aged 12-17 engaged in binge drinking (five or more drinks in a row, or as I used to call it, Friday night) in the past thirty days.  Twice as many (16%) teens report experiencing a blackout from alcohol use.

I’m not arguing that we prohibit responsible use of alcohol for adults in order to protect the children from irresponsible use, but that’s exactly what Kay is supporting for marijuana.  Yet everything she praises about alcohol – thousands of years of human use, integral to civilization, social bonding, good for health – are praises tenfold for cannabis use.

It is rather kooky to criminally prohibit marijuana and then claim its lack of social integration is reason to keep it prohibited.  It is ghoulish to support the legality of alcohol and tobacco with economic arguments, as Kay continues:

As for tobacco, if we knew hundreds of years ago what we know now about its effects – never good, only bad – I would have argued against legalizing it as well. But as with alcohol, it’s not so easy to disband an industry as huge and profitable as tobacco on the grounds that it is unhealthy. There is too much at stake economically. So we’re stuck with it.

So if a substance makes government a ton of money and creates a ton of jobs, it really doesn’t matter that it kills 400,000 North Americans a year, does it?  See, if marijuana wanted Barbara Kay’s support, all the money it generates and jobs it creates would need to be legal and taxed, then she wouldn’t mind being “stuck with it”.  But since marijuana’s effects are “usually good, rarely bad”, Kay sticks with her support of criminal prohibition of cannabis.

The latest studies confirm that the risk of marijuana-induced psychosis is real, and the most at-risk users are teenagers; regular teenage pot smokers seem to have double the risk of developing paranoia, hallucinations and psychotic breaks five years later.

These studies she links to are referenced in an article that features the story of Don Corbeil:

Corbeil had been smoking pot since he was 14, a habit that escalated to about 10 joints a day.

He started hearing voices and, at one point, Corbeil thought he was the Messiah. Police found him one day talking incoherently, and brought him to hospital, where he was eventually diagnosed with drug-induced psychosis.

Corbeil had dabbled in other drugs, such as acid and ecstasy. But marijuana was his mainstay.

Of course, the article does note that “who exactly is at risk remains hazy” and “the study, however, did not determine whether the drug prompted symptoms or was used to self-medicate.”  It also noted “the vast majority of pot smokers will not go psychotic.”  But the warnings that the small subset of young teenagers already susceptible to mental illness that smoke ten joints a day might have an increased risk of psychoses is enough for Kay to support locking adults in cages for smoking a joint at home.

According to CAMH, more than thirty percent of Onrtario’s Grade 10 students reported cannabis use in the past year. Add to that the worries about the vastly increased strength of today’s marijuana. Since the 1970s mainstream marijuana has seen a 25-fold increase in tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabis’s psychoactive ingredient.

“Pot 2.0!  It’s Not Your Father’s Woodstock Weed!”  Look, I’ve seen the clothes, hairstyles, and listened to the music of the 1970s… there is no way our parents’ weed was 25 times weaker than what we’re smoking now.  In fact, even the article from which Kay cribs the “Ontrario” high school sophomore data knows better:

And what they’re smoking is not their hippie dad’s doobie. Growers have bred more potent pot, more than doubling the amounts of Tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive ingredient, and decreasing the cannabidiol, a protective ingredient.

Eh, “doubling”, “25-fold increase”, it’s all the same to a prohibitionist.

Now if Kay were really worried about those kids and their access to pot, maybe she should explain how what we’re doing now is working when 3-in-10 Ontario sophomores have smoked it this year?  According to the Canadian Centre for Substance Abuse, the number of tobacco smokers aged 15-19 works out to aboot 3-in-20 (14%), eh?  They also find that only aboot 1-in-20 (5.6%) 15-19-year-olds have an unhealthy dependence on alcohol.

It’s not that marijuana is harmless and that’s why we should legalize it.  We’ve found that prohibition of a very harmful substance, alcohol, was a worse problem than the minority of people who use it irresponsibly or unhealthily.  We’ve found that strict regulation of an addictive substance, tobacco, has had remarkable success in reducing its use.  So why wouldn’t we try that solution with a substance that is far less harmful and addictive than those two?

Barbara Kay tries to straddle the fence, because even she knows the truth about cannabis, but is still reluctant to give up on prohibition:

Clearly the actual statistical negatives of pot are very small. But what seems to emerge is that for a very small subset of the population, the risk for psychosis is high. One of these days it may be possible to test for that susceptibility as we do for allergies. What we know is that the health facts on marijuana use are not all in, and until researchers are as familiar with the effects of marijuana as they are with those of alcohol and tobacco, there should be no rush to make pot available in local handy stores.

Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/09/barabara-kay-more-warnings-about-the-dangers-of-pot/#ixzz0vBvpu4L2

We are still learning plenty about alcohol and tobacco and their effects on health and behavior.  It wasn’t that long ago that “Doctors Smoke Chesterfield” ads were on our TV sets and nobody had ever heard of “fetal alcohol syndrome”.  Yet discovery of tobacco and alcohol’s previously unknown health dangers never prompted Barbara Kay to pull those products from local handy stores (is that Canadian for “convenience store”?)  And day after day here at NORML we report study after study that shows heretofore unknown benefits of cannabis use, like this one that shows schizophrenics who use cannabis demonstrate better cognitive functioning… the same people whose susceptibility to cannabis Kay is using to frighten us into caging adults over cannabis.

As for allergies – there are people on this continent who are deathly allergic to peanuts.  Some of them are even children.  For the rest of us, peanuts are nice plant product we consume for nourishment, enjoyment, and occasionally while socializing.  The fact that peanuts can kill a tiny subset of people with an allergy didn’t lead us to laws banning all peanut use for adults.  Instead we did the sensible thing and required confectioners, bakers, and snack food manufacturers to label their products not only if they contain peanuts, but even if their non-peanut snacks are made with equipment that has touched peanuts.

So legalize it already and slap on a warning label: “This product contains cannabinoids. Discuss cannabinoid use with your doctor.  Cannabinoids should not be used by pregnant women, children, and those susceptible to psychoses or with a family history of mental illness.”

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.

AUGUSTA, Maine (Bangor Daily News) — While the voters approved the citizen initiated bill to expand access to marijuana for medical purposes last month, a task force established by Gov. John Baldacci is struggling to craft a measure that will implement the will of the voters.

For example, there is language in the original bill that appears to grant what Attorney General Janet Mills called “extraordinary rights” if a person had a card under the law allowing them to use pot for medicinal uses anywhere at anytime. She said that would be a “nightmare” and would lead to unnecessary litigation.

There appeared to be broad agreement on the panel to recommend dispensaries be subject to the same inspection standards as other licensed facilities in the state, but there was disagreement on whether the same inspection standards should apply to an individual growing their own marijuana in their home.

But there was broad agreement on recommendations dealing with confidentiality. The general public would not have access to the names of individuals whose doctors have approved their use of medical marijuana, but law enforcement officers would have access to a confidential list of legitimate card holders.

There are several unresolved issues, such as how many marijuana plants an individual should be allowed to grow for their own use. As passed, the measure says six plants, but Dan Walker, an attorney representing the group that put the issue on the ballot, suggested that be changed to six mature and six immature plants to assure a constant supply.

I’m interested in the notion that allowing someone to take their medicine anywhere at anytime is considered an “extraordinary right”.  Is it a “nightmare” that my father is allowed to take one of his Vicodin while walking through the shopping mall?  Do diabetics self-administering their insulin shots lead to “unnecessary litigation”?  It seems to me that everybody who uses any medicine other than marijuana has this “extraordinary right” to take their medicine anywhere at anytime.

Now of course I understand that using medical marijuana, if smoked, does infringe on others nearby if they dislike the secondhand smoke and smell.  I’m not asking for medical marijuana patients to be allowed to blaze up in typically non-smoking areas.  I am asking that they get as much consideration for their medical use of marijuana as we give nicotine addicts for the recreational use of tobacco.  Anywhere tobacco smoking is allowed, medical marijuana smoking should be allowed.

(Washington Post) The shift is widely described as generational. A Gallup poll in October found 44 percent of Americans favor full legalization of marijuana — a rise of 13 points since 2000. Gallup said that if public support continues growing at a rate of 1 to 2 percent per year, “the majority of Americans could favor legalization of the drug in as little as four years.”

A 53 percent majority already does so in the West, according to the survey. The finding heartens advocates collecting signatures to put the question of legalization before California voters in a 2010 initiative.

Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said he was astonished recently to be invited to contribute thoughts to the Office of National Drug Control Policy.  “I’ve been thrown out of the ONDCP many times,” St. Pierre said. “Never invited to actually participate.”

Anti-drug advocates counter with surveys showing high school students nationwide already are more likely to smoke marijuana than tobacco — and that the five states with the highest rate of adolescent pot use permit medical marijuana.

Really?  That’s the best you can do?  Let’s take a look at the actual numbers from the government’s own surveys:

National Survey on Drug Use & Health, 12-17 age group, 2001-2008 (see SAMHDA)

Indeed, it is impressive that we went from one-third (33.4%) of all minor teenagers having tried a cigarette to now less than one-fourth (22.7%) in just seven years.  How did we accomplish that?

Did we arrest those teenagers caught with cigarettes and subject them to a criminal proceeding?

Did we institute random searches of kids’ lockers at school to find cigarettes?

Did we require that any kid who wants to play sports or be involved with extra-curricular activities submit to a urine screening for nicotine and its metabolites?

Did we arrest and incarcerate adults that we caught with tobacco, because doing otherwise would “send the wrong message to the children”?

No.  We’ve engaged in terrific anti-smoking campaigns aimed at kids (like thetruth.com), vigorously enforced a law that allows adults to smoke while strictly carding teens, and fostered research and development of stop-smoking aids for those who wish to quit.

Now, another look at the chart shows that, despite the hysteria, the youth who have tried marijuana has steadily declined.  Not at the rate of the tobacco decline, but we’ve still gone from around one-in-five (20.2%) to around one-in-six (16.5%) in just seven years.  This is while we went from eight medical marijuana states to thirteen and while lifetime use by ages 12 and older increased from 83 million total and 36.9% of the population to 102 million total and 41% of the population.

As for the likelihood that teens prefer marijuana to cigarettes, the government surveys don’t bear that out, either.  In the past year, 15% of teens smoked a cigarette versus 13% that have smoked a joint.  In the past month, 8.9% have used tobacco versus 6.6% that have used cannabis.  So with lower usage rates than tobacco, shouldn’t these anti-drug advocates be arguing for the prohibition of tobacco like marijuana?  No, of course not!  If anything, their citation of the drastic reduction of tobacco use rates among teens is an argument for treating marijuana more like tobacco.

Why not tax pot and alleviate the financial burden of our cities and states? We tax alcohol sales and it earns billions. “The latest studies show that the U.S. collects about $8 billion yearly in taxes from alcohol.” However, this is not the end of the story. “The problem is, the total cost to the U.S. in 2008 due to alcohol-related problems was $185 billion, and the government pays about 38% of that cost (about $72 billion), all due to consequences of alcohol consumption, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse & Alcoholism.”

In other words, if we “legalized” marijuana, the damage caused by all the rampant stoners would cost us more than the pot taxes would bring in.

Of course the argument is silly on its face; alcohol use causes serious health problems, violence, and auto wrecks, so it naturally costs society more than it brings in.  Cannabis use is relatively safe and as I’ve argued before, 22 million of us are using it now, so if there is any social cost, why not at least bring in some tax revenue instead of none?

So today I was very happy to see Paul Armentano’s latest piece on the NORML Blog regarding a Canadian study of social costs of cannabis vs. alcohol and tobacco, which concluded:

In terms of costs per user: tobacco-related health costs are over $800 per user, alcohol-related health costs are much lower at $165 per user, and cannabis-related health costs are the lowest at $20 per user. On the enforcement side, costs for cannabis are the highest at $328 per user—94% of social costs for cannabis are linked to enforcement. Enforcement costs per user for alcohol are about half those for cannabis ($153), while enforcement costs for tobacco are very low.

Now that’s Canada, so our US numbers may vary a bit, especially when we’re talking about health care costs.  But in the title of his post, Paul asked me to “do the math”.  So here it is:

• Prohibited Cannabis: Total Cost to Society = (22,000,000 Annual Users * $20) + (22,000,000 Annual Users * $328) = $7,656,000,000

When cannabis is relegalized, that doesn’t mean the $328/user enforcement costs go completely away.  I don’t think they’d be as high as alcohol but not as low as tobacco.  Let’s split the difference and say it ends up costing $75/user in cannabis enforcement costs.

• Relegalized Cannabis (Low Estimate): TCS = (22M * $20) + (22M * $75) = $2,090,000,000

Let’s also imagine that cannabis enforcement does cost as much as alcohol, unreasonable as that may sound:

• Relegalized Cannabis (High Estimate): TCS = (22M * $20) + (22M * $153) = $3,806,000,000

For David H. Kerr and the other prohibitionists’ theory about legal cannabis costing society more than prohibited cannabis, there has to be enough increase in use and users to make up between $5.6 and $3.8 billion dollars in cost.  In the Low Estimate, a cannabis user costs society $95/user; in the High Estimate, $173/user.  So between 22 and 58 million more people would have to smoke cannabis in the US, at rates comparable to the current usage rates, for legal cannabis to cost as much as what we spend on prohibiting it.  That means a 100% to 263% increase in annual user population, or 44 to 80 million annual users, or between 18% and 32% of all US adults.

Now currently, only about 9% of US adults use cannabis annually.  So imagine a room with 25 adults in it.  Right now, about 2 of those adults will smoke pot this year.  Under relegalization, about 2 to 6 more would have to start smoking pot for the TCS to break even.

Then we’d have to consider what happens under a substitution effect; that is, would alcohol and tobacco users lower their use of those substances if they have the choice of legal cannabis?  The alcohol user costs us $318 per year and the tobacco user costs us $800 per year.  Under the Low Estimate, three drinkers are worth close to ten tokers and two smokers are worth close to seventeen tokers; under the High Estimate, the ratios are about 1:2 and 2:9.  If just 1% of the 162.5 million annual drinkers and 70 million annual smokers quit and took up cannabis instead, that’s a savings of over a billion dollars in health and enforcement costs, or another 3.9 to 10 million new tokers we could afford over the 2.3 million new ex-smoker/drinker tokers we’ve added.

In other words, in order for legal cannabis to cost society more than illegal cannabis, a whole hell of a lot more people will have to be smoking it, and that’s even under grossly inflated estimates of legal marijuana’s enforcement costs.