Mr. Sabet is correct: there are ways to make America's current marijuana policies more practical and productive.
NORML supports the elimination of all criminal and civil penalties for the personal use of cannabis, regardless of whether one is smoking cannabis for medical use or for personal pleasure. This policy is generally called ³decriminalization.² We also support the right of consumers to cultivate cannabis for personal use.
We further support the eventual establishment of a legally regulated market where adult cannabis consumers could buy their marijuana from a safe and secure environment. This model is generally called ³legalization.²
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the responsible use of cannabis by adults and this should be of no interest or concern to the government.
In truth, cannabis is the third most popular recreational drug in American, exceed in popularity only by alcohol and tobacco, two legal but far more harmful drugs.
While no substance is totally harmless, cannabis smoking is far less of a threat to health than either tobacco or alcohol. According to the Centers for Disease Control, approximately 46,000 people die each year from alcohol-induced deaths (not including motor vehicle fatalities where alcohol impairment was a contributing factor), such as overdose and cirrhosis.
Similarly, more than 440,000 premature deaths annually are attributed to tobacco smoking. By comparison, cannabis is non-toxic and cannot cause death by overdose. In a large-scale population study of cannabis use and mortality published in the American Journal of Public Health, cannabis use, even long-term, showed no causal effect on mortality.
Yet both alcohol and tobacco are legal for adults to purchase and use, so long as they use them responsibly.
Each year in this country we arrest more and more of our citizens on cannabis charges. In 2006, the last year for which the data is available, we arrested 830,000 Americans on cannabis charges, and 88% of those arrests were for personal possession and use, not trafficking. They were otherwise law-abiding citizens who consume cannabis.
Since 1965, a total of nearly 20 million Americans predominantly young people under the age of 30 ‹ have been arrested on cannabis charges; more than 11 million cannabis arrests just since 1990. Thousands have been disenfranchised, tens of thousands have been unnecessarily sent to ³drug treatment,² hundreds of thousands have lost their eligibility for student aid, and perhaps an entire generation (or two) has been alienated to believe that the police are an instrument of their oppression rather than their protection.
Currently 47% of all drug arrests in the country are for cannabis, and another cannabis consumer is arrested every 38 seconds. Police arrest more people on cannabis charges each year than the total number of arrestees for all violent crimes combined, including murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.
Of course, not everyone busted for possessing small amounts of pot receives jail time ‹ most do not. But that doesn¹t mean that they don¹t suffer significant hardships stemming from their arrest. Seldom emphasized penalties associated with a minor cannabis conviction include probation and mandatory drug testing, loss of employment, loss of child custody, removal from subsidized housing, asset forfeiture, loss of federal student aid, loss of voting privileges, loss of adoption rights, and the loss of certain federal welfare benefits such as food stamps. In many states, convicted cannabis offenders are automatically stripped of their driving privileges, even if the offense is not driving related. Thousands of Americans suffer such sanctions every day.
Numerous state and federally commissioned reports, including the 1972 report of the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug entitled Marihuana, A Signal of Misunderstanding Abuse (aka the Shafer Commission), have concluded that the laws against marijuana cause far more harm than the use of the drug itself, and have recommended that we decriminalize marijuana and stop arresting responsible smokers. Twelve states in America have adopted decriminalization as their marijuana policy (Alaska; Colorado; Maine; Minnesota; Mississippi; North Carolina; Nebraska; Nevada; New York; Ohio; and Oregon; and Massachusetts is expected to approve marijuana decriminalization this fall via a voter initiative.)
These states that have decriminalized minor marijuana offenses have experienced no increase in usage rates. The only U.S. government study ever commissioned to assess whether the enforcement of strict legal penalties positively impacts marijuana use found, ³Overall, the preponderance of the evidence which we have gathered and examined points to the conclusion that decriminalization has had virtually no effect either on the marijuana use or on related attitudes and beliefs about marijuana use among American young people.²
The ³big lie² underlying the government¹s war on cannabis consumers is the premise that all marijuana use is abuse, and therefore must be criminalized.
In fact, the vast majority of cannabis consumers are adults who cause no harm to themselves or to anyone else, so there is no reason for the state to be involved.
With alcohol we acknowledge the distinction between use and abuse, and we focus our law enforcement involvement on efforts to stop irresponsible use.
We do not arrest or jail responsible alcohol drinkers. That should be our policy with marijuana as well.
The criminal prohibition of cannabis is a failed and costly public policy that must be ended. It is an enormous waste of law enforcement resources that should be focused on violent and genuinely serious crime.
America¹s public policies should reflect this reality, not deny it. It makes no sense to continue to treat nearly half of all Americans as criminals.
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