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Penalties for Marijuana use Increased ======================= Partnership for a Drug Free America's
main funding sources are, in order of importance, pharmaceutical
companies, the tobacco industry and the alcohol industry - their
inference being that legal drug industries, by denouncing illegal drugs,
might increase their market share. ======================== Nonetheless,
there is some evidence that decreased marijuana use leads to increased
alcohol and other drug consumption. The New York Times reported in 1992
that in studies by UC-Irvine in conjunction with Princeton, and by
graduate students at Harvard, data showed that as penalties for marijuana use increased,
alcohol consumption did too. And as marijuana penalties decreased, so
too did other drug- and alcohol-related emergency-room visits ========================= Conspiracy,
you ask? "There are vested interests," says conservative
Hoover Institution fellow and former San Jose Police chief Joseph
McNamara. "It's not a conspiracy, but the government always
promotes government growth. There are vast programs springing up for
mandatory treatment; there's the drug-testing industry as well as the
DEA and other enforcement agencies. The military is involved as well.
Then you have the prison industry, which is the fastest growing
government sector." ============= But,
you don't need to smoke pot to realize that the real drug problem in
this country is not the drugs. And we can help solve drug problems,
crime problems, environmental problems - even our racial problems if we
say no to George Bush and get together and grow more pot! ============== People who are under the influence of
marijuana most of the time, like people who are drunk most of the time,
may not get good grades in school or promotions at work. But that does
not mean that occasional marijuana use renders people incapable of
academic or professional success, any more than an occasional drink does.
The staunchest opponents of marijuana invest the drug with the power to
permanently transform people, ruining their potential and turning them
against society. =============== The
tricks of anti-pot propaganda are usually more subtle, however. A
common approach is to cite the immediate effects of smoking marijuana
without noting that they wear off when the drug wears off. In a joint statement
that accompanied the release of a 1995 report called Legalization:
Panacea or Pandora's Box (you can guess which side they came down on),
Bill Bennett and Joseph Califano, the former Health, Education, and Welfare
secretary who heads the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, said
that "marijuana use...savages short term memory, sharply curtails
ability to concentrate and diminishes motor functions." ================ 1930's
propaganda Although
drug warriors nowadays rarely claim that marijuana causes crime, that
charge played an important role in building support for state and
federal prohibition in the 1920s and '30s. A 1938 book, Marijuana,
America's New Drug Problem, quoted an account by New Orleans Public
Safety Commissioner Frank Gomila of a "crime wave" in the late
'20s: "Youngsters known to be 'muggle-heads" fortified
themselves with the narcotic and proceeded to shoot down police, bank
clerks and casual bystanders. Mr. Eugene Stanley, at that time District
Attorney, declared that many of the crimes in New Orleans and the south
were thus committed by criminals who relied on the drug to give them
false courage and freedom from restraint. Dr. George Roeling, Coroner,
reported that of 450 prisoners investigated, 125 were confirmed users of
marihuana. Mr. W.B. Graham, State Narcotic Officer, declared
in 1936 that 60 percent of the crimes committed in New Orleans were by
marihuana users." ================= The
gateway theory is also the last resort of drug warriors who are
frustrated by the lack of evidence that marijuana is a menace. In the 1984 book Getting tough on Gateway Drugs, Dr.
Robert Dupont estimated that "up to 50 percent of regular users of
marijuana also use heroin" In its 1995 paper on drug legalization Califano's Center
on Addiction and Substance Abuse reported that "12 to 17 year olds
who smoke marijuana are 85 times more likely to use cocaine than those
who do not." Formulations
of this kind obscure two crucial points: First, most marijuana users
never even try another illegal drug, let alone use it regularly. Second,
it is not safe to conclude from the fact that marijuana users are more
likely to use heroin or cocaine that marijuana use results in heroin or
cocaine use. (It is probably also true that adults who wear jeans more
than three days a week and people who ride motorcycles without a helmet
are more likely to try heroin or cocaine.) In this case as in so many
others, anti-drug polemicists tend to confuse correlation with
causation. ================= According to a 1999 and 1990 American Jail
Association survey, less than 20% of jails reported having drug
treatment programs involving paid staff and 75% provided no group
therapy, drug education, transition planning, or referral to community
drug treatment agencies ================= Who
sits on the NORML advisory board? In 1979, among the board members were:
Hugh Hefner, Actor/Kennedy Peter Lawford, Geraldo Rivera, Hunter S.
Thompson, Ron Dellums, Ramsey Clark, Dr. Benjamin Spock. Among those in
2003: Willie Nelson, director Robert Altman, Woody Harrelson, Bill
Maher, Hunter S. Thompson (still!), Terence Hallinan. ================= Abundant
and convincing evidence exists to support the view that illegal drug use
has more to do with choice, values, and expectations than with
addiction, compulsion, or disease. Drug policy is always based on
explanations for drug use, but the explanations are diverse. US drug
policies are largely based on the assumption that drugs cause addiction,
but many leading researchers view this as a social construct =================== People have a right to get stoned. They have a right to think and explore their own minds. This is as intimate a part of their being as their sexuality. Any culture which mitigates that is clearly afraid of a full and fair and open dialogue about what reality is and what real human values ought to be. Terence McKenna =================== Merely
forbidding natural substances and policing the population for compliance
is an inadequate means of controlling potentially dangerous drugs in a
free society. This
policy is failing to protect both our rights and our safety. Since
demand for consciousness altering substances is legitimate and will
always exist, prohibition maintains a state of these substances being
perpetually and completely out of control. We
must regain control over these substances by ensuring the safety of
children from drugs and respecting the rights of adults to choose from
certified safe and pure commercial products and to freely grow their own
plants of choice. We can do both! ================== Terence McKenna ================== "At
one point consciousness-altering devices like the microscope and
telescope were criminalized for exactly the same reasons that
psychedelic plants were banned in later years. They allow us to peer
into bits and zones of Chaos."
Timothy Leary =================== "The very idea of being punished for
self gratification and indulgence, in whatever form it takes, is not
only absurd but it's dangerous. It is simply a matter of civil
rights."
============= The
drug war is much like our attempt to stamp out alcohol in the 1920s. Consider
the resolution of the Women's Organization for National Prohibition
Reform, passed unanimously at its first convention in April 1930: "......(W)e
are convinced that National Prohibition is wrong in principle” has been equally disastrous in consequences in the hypocrisy, the
corruption, the tragic loss of life and the appalling increase of crime
which have attended the abortive attempt to enforce it; in the shocking
effect it has had upon the youth of the nation; in the impairment of
constitutional guarantees of individual rights; in the weakening of the
sense of solidarity between the citizen and the government which is the
only sure basis of a country's strength." A market cannot be destroyed by making it more profitable, and that profit corrupts both sides of the fight. As in the 1920s, the arrestees are poor
and powerless, sometimes not choirboys. ==================== THEY
SAY SMOKING MARIJUANA CAN WRECK YOUR LIFE. AND THE GOVERNMENT IS MAKING
SURE OF IT. ==================== Unless someone can figure out how to nullify the immutable laws of supply and demand, the counterproductive war on drugs will remain counterproductive. Our drug war is financing organized crime at home and international terrorists abroad. |
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Joseph McNamara
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Bill Bennett
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Dr. Robert DuPont was director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the nation’s second White House Drug Czar serving from 1973 – 1978 under Presidents Nixon and Ford. |
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Terrence McKenna |
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