This fall, California and Canada threaten to join Alaska, Washington and Oregon in legalizing recreational marijuana from the Arctic Circle to the Mexican border.
Those states — in addition to 25 others with medical marijuana programs — violate federal law.
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, marijuana is a Schedule I controlled substance. It has a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use. However, the White House has decided to not enforce the law and allow states to experiment with legalization.
The federal government’s decision to look the other way instead of shifting to a policy that accommodates legal marijuana is representative of a drug enforcement apparatus defined by contradiction, inequality and intellectual dishonesty — born of drug prohibitionists and anti-prohibitionists alike.
Anti-prohibitionists have long argued that marijuana should be legalized and regulated like alcohol — as though the drug is some sort of success story. Alcohol distracts and kills in ways that we should all be familiar with on this campus.
In many ways, marijuana is not consumed like alcohol. Ingesting weed is fundamentally about becoming intoxicated in a way that drinking a glass of wine is not. Marijuana users more closely fit the profile of tobacco users than alcohol drinkers. The Washington Post reports a landmark study that found a poorer, less educated swath of Americans who smoke multiple times a day use a majority of the country’s pot.
The idea of Marlboro pumping out spliffs and placing them in every corner store next to the lottery tickets and malt liquor concerns me. Poor Americans do not need another way for corporations to suck money out of their chemical dependence.
Anti-prohibitionists appeal to personal freedom in order to dodge the difficult questions of how society manages more widely available marijuana. How can people be prevented from driving while high? Are companies free to capitalize on addiction? Who is responsible when poor, marginalized people turn to marijuana?
Legalization comes with complex consequences that proponents are all too willing to ignore.
On the other hand, prohibitionists stifle crucial research and rely on outdated scare tactics in place of effective harm reduction. The DEA claims marijuana has higher abuse potential and lower medical value than cocaine and methamphetamine. It severely restricts research about marijuana while asserting that there is not enough research about marijuana to change policy.
Marijuana legalization shifted from a leftist pipe dream to a stark reality so fast that prohibitionists still rely on a style of fear mongering and demonization. This is quickly debunked when a young person meets someone who smokes marijuana and still manages to avoid homelessness and insanity.
The conversation needs an injection of science, and more broadly, an injection of honesty. It needs an honesty that accepts that marijuana is likely no more harmful than alcohol or tobacco — but that thousands die as a result of our collective failure to effectively manage those legal substances. It needs an honesty that recognizes the challenge and complexity in crafting sound drug policy. It needs an honesty that acknowledges the ubiquity of class in how we talk about drugs.
No conversation about contradictory federal drug policy can be honest without acknowledging the human cost of the “war on drugs.” Minority communities bear the brunt of humiliating pat-downs, terrifying raids and constant suspicion despite, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, using drugs at rates similar to richer, whiter communities — communities like ours, where every weekend, students are free to drink, smoke and snort with relative impunity.
The current marijuana policy is insane in its inequity and irrationality. The solution is not unmoored legalization, nor is it the militarized prohibition that disrupts lives and families without lowering drug abuse rates.
I don’t know what the answer is. But whatever it is, I’m sure that honesty will lurk in the background.
Appeals to a limitless personal freedom or a fundamental immorality in drug use do not matter to those who have seen the corrosive effects of alcoholism and drug abuse. They understand that reducing harm is far more important than tallying points in a meaningless culture war.
Danny Bugingo
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An Vo
"Are companies free to capitalize on addiction?" Clearly you've never heard of big pharma. It's already happened.
Joe Smith
The Washington Post reports a landmark study that found a poorer, less educated swath of Americans who smoke multiple times a day use a majority of the country’s pot" That's only because of work place drug testing and taboo. Use your brain!