SmokeDog420
New Member
Chicago Police Sgt. Tom Donegan has provoked a useful debate by suggesting that people possessing small amounts of marijuana should be fined rather than arrested and jailed. Donegan's idea is a useful step that doesn't go far enough.
In fact, a strong factual and scientific case can be made that the best way to reduce the harm associated with marijuana is to junk our current policy of prohibition and replace it with a system of common-sense regulation.
That's not as radical an idea as it may seem. Such a system has been in place in the Netherlands for nearly three decades and is working well. In Alaska, where the courts have ruled that the state constitution gives citizens the right to possess small amounts of marijuana in their homes for personal use, voters will shortly decide on a ballot measure that would pave the way for a system of marijuana regulation in that state.
Marijuana regulation would focus law enforcement resources where they belong: on behavior that puts others at risk, such as driving under the influence or selling marijuana to kids. Just as important, it would increase society's control over marijuana. Prohibition guarantees that we have no control.
We've been down the prohibition path with alcohol, and it failed dismally. Drinking declined a bit, but any benefits were swamped by a huge increase in crime and violence generated when prohibition handed the liquor market over to gangsters. Crime bosses got rich, the murder rate skyrocketed, the prisons filled and deaths from tainted booze soared (after all, you can't enforce purity standards on a banned product).
The record of marijuana prohibition has been even worse. Alcohol prohibition reduced drinking slightly, but, according to the U.S. government's own figures, use of marijuana by young people under 21 rose more than 2,000 percent after America banned marijuana in 1937. Government surveys show that nearly 100 million Americans have now used marijuana, an all-time record. And despite a recent slight decline (much hyped by Bush administration officials), marijuana use by teenagers remains near record levels.
The striking thing about the European countries that have decriminalized marijuana possession is that every single one of them has a lower rate of marijuana use than the United States. In its landmark 2001 report, ''Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us,'' the National Research Council looked at the data and concluded -- largely based on the experiences of the dozen U.S. states that have adopted laws similar to Sgt. Donegan's proposal -- that stricter laws and tougher punishments have little or no effect on marijuana use.
Those who support criminal penalties for marijuana possession often justify them based on the so-called gateway effect -- the idea that use of marijuana leads people to try hard drugs such as cocaine and heroin. But a White House-commissioned study by the Institute of Medicine found: ''There is no evidence that marijuana serves as a steppingstone [to hard drugs] on the basis of its particular physiological effect.''
Recent research suggests that it is marijuana prohibition, not marijuana itself, that causes the ''gateway effect,'' by forcing marijuana into the same illicit drug marketplace as cocaine, speed and heroin.
Look at the Netherlands, where adults are allowed to possess small amounts of marijuana and purchase it from regulated merchants rather than from the criminal underground. Not only are marijuana use rates far lower than in the United States, so are rates of hard drug use. A study in the May 2004 American Journal of Public Health that compared marijuana users in Amsterdam with those in San Francisco, where marijuana remains illegal, found no difference in the patterns of marijuana use in the two cities. But marijuana users in Amsterdam, with access to a regulated market completely separate from the hard drug trade, were far less likely to use cocaine, opiates, amphetamines or Ecstasy.
It is time to listen to science and history, junk our failed experiment with marijuana prohibition, and replace it with a system of responsible regulation.
Source: Chicago Sun-Times (IL)
Author: Robert Kampia
Published: September 24, 2004
Copyright: 2004 The Sun-Times Co.
Contact: letters@suntimes.com
Website: Chicago Sun-Times
In fact, a strong factual and scientific case can be made that the best way to reduce the harm associated with marijuana is to junk our current policy of prohibition and replace it with a system of common-sense regulation.
That's not as radical an idea as it may seem. Such a system has been in place in the Netherlands for nearly three decades and is working well. In Alaska, where the courts have ruled that the state constitution gives citizens the right to possess small amounts of marijuana in their homes for personal use, voters will shortly decide on a ballot measure that would pave the way for a system of marijuana regulation in that state.
Marijuana regulation would focus law enforcement resources where they belong: on behavior that puts others at risk, such as driving under the influence or selling marijuana to kids. Just as important, it would increase society's control over marijuana. Prohibition guarantees that we have no control.
We've been down the prohibition path with alcohol, and it failed dismally. Drinking declined a bit, but any benefits were swamped by a huge increase in crime and violence generated when prohibition handed the liquor market over to gangsters. Crime bosses got rich, the murder rate skyrocketed, the prisons filled and deaths from tainted booze soared (after all, you can't enforce purity standards on a banned product).
The record of marijuana prohibition has been even worse. Alcohol prohibition reduced drinking slightly, but, according to the U.S. government's own figures, use of marijuana by young people under 21 rose more than 2,000 percent after America banned marijuana in 1937. Government surveys show that nearly 100 million Americans have now used marijuana, an all-time record. And despite a recent slight decline (much hyped by Bush administration officials), marijuana use by teenagers remains near record levels.
The striking thing about the European countries that have decriminalized marijuana possession is that every single one of them has a lower rate of marijuana use than the United States. In its landmark 2001 report, ''Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us,'' the National Research Council looked at the data and concluded -- largely based on the experiences of the dozen U.S. states that have adopted laws similar to Sgt. Donegan's proposal -- that stricter laws and tougher punishments have little or no effect on marijuana use.
Those who support criminal penalties for marijuana possession often justify them based on the so-called gateway effect -- the idea that use of marijuana leads people to try hard drugs such as cocaine and heroin. But a White House-commissioned study by the Institute of Medicine found: ''There is no evidence that marijuana serves as a steppingstone [to hard drugs] on the basis of its particular physiological effect.''
Recent research suggests that it is marijuana prohibition, not marijuana itself, that causes the ''gateway effect,'' by forcing marijuana into the same illicit drug marketplace as cocaine, speed and heroin.
Look at the Netherlands, where adults are allowed to possess small amounts of marijuana and purchase it from regulated merchants rather than from the criminal underground. Not only are marijuana use rates far lower than in the United States, so are rates of hard drug use. A study in the May 2004 American Journal of Public Health that compared marijuana users in Amsterdam with those in San Francisco, where marijuana remains illegal, found no difference in the patterns of marijuana use in the two cities. But marijuana users in Amsterdam, with access to a regulated market completely separate from the hard drug trade, were far less likely to use cocaine, opiates, amphetamines or Ecstasy.
It is time to listen to science and history, junk our failed experiment with marijuana prohibition, and replace it with a system of responsible regulation.
Source: Chicago Sun-Times (IL)
Author: Robert Kampia
Published: September 24, 2004
Copyright: 2004 The Sun-Times Co.
Contact: letters@suntimes.com
Website: Chicago Sun-Times
