Oh BN, don't be so tough. Look, I agree that it would take a heck of a lot of pot to kill someone. In fact, I agree, that its probably impossible for anyone to die of overdose on pot.
But doesn't pot have many of the same health consequences as smoking cigarettes? Doesn't the inhalation of heated smoke into your lungs cause damage? Are those direct or indirect effects?
Car accidents? Deaths in which marijuana contributed? Those do sound a bit like Alcohol related deaths.
http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/drugfact/marijuana/marijuana_ff.html
Health Effects
Marijuana abuse is associated with many detrimental health effects. These effects can include respiratory illnesses, problems with learning and memory, increased heart rate, and impaired coordination. A number of studies have also shown an association between chronic marijuana use and increased rates of anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and schizophrenia. Long-term marijuana abuse can lead to addiction. Studies conducted on both people and animals suggest marijuana abuse can cause physical dependence. Withdrawal symptoms may include irritability, sleeplessness, decreased appetite, anxiety, and drug craving. 11
Someone who smokes marijuana regularly may have many of the same respiratory problems that tobacco smokers do, such as daily cough and phlegm production, more frequent acute chest illnesses, a heightened risk of lung infections, and a greater tendency toward obstructed airways. Cancer of the respiratory tract and lungs may also be promoted by marijuana smoke. Marijuana has the potential to promote cancer of the lungs and other parts of the respiratory tract because marijuana smoke contains 50 percent to 70 percent more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than does tobacco smoke.12
Marijuana's damage to short-term memory seems to occur because THC alters the way in which information is processed by the hippocampus, a brain area responsible for memory formation. In one study, researchers compared marijuana smoking and nonsmoking 12th-graders' scores on standardized tests of verbal and mathematical skills. Although all of the students had scored equally well in 4th grade, those who were heavy marijuana smokers, i.e., those who used marijuana seven or more times per week, scored significantly lower in 12th grade than nonsmokers. Another study of 129 college students found that among heavy users of marijuana critical skills related to attention, memory, and learning were significantly impaired, even after they had not used the drug for at least 24 hours.13
Of an estimated 113 million emergency department (ED) visits in the U.S. during 2006, the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) estimates that 1,742,887 were drug-related. DAWN data indicate that marijuana was involved in 290,563 ED visits.14
Also check out page 2 of this-
http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/pdf/mj_rev.pdf
(there's more there, but you'll have to pick at it).
Biased? Maybe. I personally think the gateway theory is bunk. Tobacco is a bigger gateway drug that pot.
Are we surprised that kids who are likely to use tobacco early are also likely to use alcohol or pot? Could the reasons be some yet unknown variable that drives certain behaviors? Perhaps.
That said, and as I began this, to me, its generally a harmless drug that missed out on the end of prohibition in the US because it was mostly consumed by fringe groups and blacks. THe problem of the war on drugs isn't so much marijuana as the harder drugs. Its those that concern me.
This debate has gone a lot further than I thought it would, and thanks to Sander for responding as he has. The point here was to stimulate debate and that's happened.
Ok, what about some statistics. Someone asked me about that.
Here's a link I found that does some summarizing-
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n150/a08.html
By the way, for those interested in global drug trade and use-
http://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2009/WDR2009_eng_web.pdf
Note that the report suggests that, in the US, cannabis use among young people fell by 21% between 1998 and 2008 (page 24). There also seems to be decreases in lifetime use in other regions of the world (Australia, Europe).
I used to have the US version of this report, but can't find it. But a lot of the data can be found here-
http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov...ate&txtTopicID=1&txtSubTopicID=0&lstLanguage=
Check the 2009 national strategy and the data supplement. Lots of useful data there.
The argument made in the preface of the World Drug report is quite a good one and, over all, the report also suggests that there has been some progress in the global war on drugs.
That said, what about prohibition? Also, what about the idea of having a free market run by corporations and let reasonable people decide.
The problem with that is that prohibition of drugs was largely the result of a very free market that allowed pharmaceutical companies to basically sell their goods (addictive substances) and let the buyer beware. The same principle of the cigarette companies- (addition is the best marketing strategy) applied to heroin (a substitute for morphine) and early cocaine.
The problem with both those experiences is that it led to massive amounts of drug addicts and many of these addicts were given their drugs by doctors and pharmacists. Why? Much like over-prescription of certain depression related drugs or other mood altering drugs, legalized dealers (doctors) know that if you don't get your drugs from them, then you can equally go to someone else and take your business with them.
The role of the government in regulating the market is to protect the consumer and market participants by creating not a free but a fair market. Since the consumer lacks information about the product, they are at risks. And like Tobacco companies, what company is going to tell you that their product is harmful. The consumer therefore is stuck with the costs of the drugs.
If the recent financial meltdown has taught us anything- don't trust companies.
What about prohibition of alcohol- this was done because women's rights movements were arguing that men were coming home from the factory drunk. In the process they either drunk their paychecks away and thus led to impoverishment of the family due to alcoholism, or because they were beating their wives to death in an alcoholic rage.
Yes, I totally agree that alcohol is more dangerous than pot. I will accept even that tobacco is more dangerous than pot. But does that mean that two wrongs make a right?
What about legalization and control by the state?
Ed Koch wrote about this back in the 1980s when as Mayor of New York he had to deal with the problem of the Crack epidemic (which led to nearly 2000 homicides in NY).
First he hits at the "its a man's right to do what he wants."
Some of those in favor of legalization would have us believe that the laws against drug use and drug trafficking are prohibi- tions against a manner of personal conduct or style and that they are the imposition of society's moral values on the individual. Rather, they are laws that prohibit conduct which destroys not only the individual users, but their families, the innocent victims of their crimes and the very foundation of a productive society.
What about if drug was an accepted commodity and regulated by the state-
Proponents of legalization also say that crime associated with drug trafficking will diminish once drugs become an acceptable commodity. They ignore history and the facts. We have only to look at Great Britain's desperate failure to relieve its heroin addic- tion problem through heroin distribution programs during the 1960s and 1970s to see that the opposite is closer to the truth. Until 1970, heroin was freely prescribed in Britain by private doctors. But overprescription led to a doubling of the addicted population between 1970 and 1980. Then cheap heroin from Pakistan began flooding the black market. More potent than what the government was handing out, this heroin came without bureaucratic restrictions and the number of addicts quadrupled in 5 years. By 1986, the British Home Office estimated that there were 50,000 to 60,000 heroin addicts in the country. Unofficial estimates were three times greater. How was crime in Britain affected by legalization? One 1978 study (4) showed that 50% of the addicts in government programs were convicted of crimes in their first year of participation.
Unemployment among addicts remained chronic, as did use of other kinds of drugs. Another facet of the crime problem is that a number of drugs, crack in particular, have been shown to have behavioral effects that result in violent criminal conduct not limited to theft. "Designer" drugs are emerging that are likely to have similar effects as the drug sellers search for a product that gives quicker and more intense highs. Should the government distribute or condone these crime-inducing drugs too?
Science, New Series, Vol. 242, No. 4878, (Oct. 28, 1988), pp. 495-495
What about taxing drugs-
Ironically prohibition which is really when the war on drugs really begins as a consequence of colonialism.
Once upon a time, when Europe had colonized much of Asia, it wanted to do so on the cheap. To do that it sold narcotics to the people of those countries. It licensed opium dens and even profitted from the taxes on drugs.
And that was fine- millions of people in those colonies became addicted which not only provided revenue for French Indochina or British Burma or Dutch Indonesia, but it also kept large portions of those populations 'medicated'. And a medicated population is a more easily controlled population.
And then the drugs began to come back to Europe- and so you see the beginning of international efforts to ban the use of drugs- why, because the workers weren't effective anymore.
For more on this Alfred McCoy and Alan Block- War on Drugs- Chapter 10, "Heroin as a Global Commodity."
