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The Amazing Lie That Continues to Cause Misery, Bloodshed and Hinder Progress
I know you’re shocked, but the Your Government is Lying to you…again About “Marijuana”
ALLEGATION #1 “There is a serious drug problem in this country.”
TRUTH America does have a serious drug problem and our public policy needs to better address this issue with health and science-based educational programs, and by providing more accessible treatment to those who are drug-dependent.
Unfortunately, the bulk of America’s anti-drug efforts and priorities remain fixated on arresting and jailing drug consumers – particularly recreational marijuana smokers.
1 In this sense, there is a serious drug enforcement problem in this country.
Despite the notion that America’s drug war focuses primarily on targeting so-called hard drugs and hard drug dealers, data compiled by the FBI reports that 46 percent of all drug arrests are for marijuana.
2 In 2003, the last year for which statistics are available, law enforcement arrested an estimated 755,186 persons for marijuana violations.
3 This total far exceeds the total number of arrests for the violent crimes of murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.
4 Today, state and local taxpayers spend between $5.3 billion
5 and $7.7 billion
6 dollars annually arresting and prosecuting individuals for marijuana violations. The federal government spends an additional $4 billion per year on marijuana-related activities.
7 These monies would be far better spent targeting violent crime and protecting national security. Since 1990, over 7.2 million Americans have been arrested on marijuana charges,
8 more than the populations of Alaska, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wyoming combined.
9 Nearly 90 percent of these arrests were for simple possession, not cultivation or sale.
10 Despite the fact that reported adult use of marijuana has remained relatively constant for the past decade, annual marijuana arrests have more than doubled since 1990.
11 Arrests for cocaine and heroin have declined sharply during much of this period,
12 indicating that increased enforcement of marijuana laws is being achieved at the expense of enforcing laws against the possession and trafficking of more dangerous drugs. Rather than stay this course, federal officials ought to take a page from their more successful public health campaigns discouraging teen pregnancy, drunk driving, and adolescent tobacco smoking – all of which have been significantly reduced in recent years.
13 America did not achieve these results by banning the use of alcohol or tobacco products or by targeting and arresting adults who engage in these behaviors responsibly, but through honest, fact-based public education campaigns. There is no reason why these same common sense principles and strategies should not apply to marijuana and responsible adult marijuana use.
This video is CERTAINLY worth a watch…and share:
ALLEGATION #2 “Nationwide, no drug matches the threat posed by marijuana.”
TRUTH This statement is pure hyperbole. By overstating marijuana’s potential harms, America’s policy-makers and law enforcement community undermine their credibility and ability to effectively educate the public of the legitimate harms associated with more dangerous drugs like heroin, crack cocaine, and methamphetamine. In fact, almost all drugs – including those that are legal – pose greater threats to individual health and/or society than does marijuana.
14 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.
15 Similarly, more than 440,000 premature deaths annually are attributed to tobacco smoking.
16 By comparison, marijuana is non-toxic and cannot cause death by overdose.
17 In a large-scale population study of marijuana use and mortality published in the American Journal of Public Health, marijuana use, even long-term, “showed little if any effect … on non-AIDS mortality in men and on total mortality in women.”
18 After an exhaustive, federally commissioned study by the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 1999 examining all of marijuana’s potential health risks, authors concluded, “Except for the harms associated with smoking, the adverse effects of marijuana use are within the range tolerated for other medications.”
19 (It should be noted that many risks associated with marijuana and smoking may be mitigated by alternative routes of administration such as vaporization.)
20 The IOM further added, “There is no conclusive evidence that marijuana causes cancer in humans, including cancers usually related to tobacco use.”
21 A 2001 large-scale casecontrolled study affirmed this finding, concluding that “the balance of evidence … does not favor the idea the marijuana as commonly used in the community is a major causal factor for head, neck, or lung cancer.”
22 More recently, a 2004 study published in the journal Cancer Research concluded that cannabis use is not associated with an increased risk of developing oral cancer “regardless of how long, how much, or how often a person has used marijuana.”
23 Numerous studies and federally commissioned reports have endorsed marijuana’s relative safety compared to other drugs, and recommended its decriminalization or legalization.
24 Virtually all of these studies have concluded that the criminal “classification of cannabis is disproportionate in relation both to its inherent harmfulness, and to the harmfulness of other substances.”
25 Even a pair of editorials by the premiere British medical journal, The Lancet, acknowledge: “The smoking of cannabis, even longterm, is not harmful to health.
26 … It would be reasonable to judge cannabis as less of a threat … than alcohol or tobacco.”
27 Indeed, by far the greatest danger to health posed by the use of marijuana stems from a criminal arrest and/or conviction.
ALLEGATION #3 “60 percent of teenagers in treatment have a primary marijuana diagnosis. This means that the addiction to marijuana by our youth exceeds their addiction rates for alcohol, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, ecstasy and all other drugs combined.”
TRUTH This statement is purposefully misleading. Although admissions to drug rehabilitation clinics among marijuana users have increased dramatically since the mid-1990s, this rise in marijuana admissions is due to a proportional increase in the number of people arrested by law enforcement for marijuana violations and subsequently referred to drug treatment by the criminal justice system.
28 Primarily, these are young people arrested for minor possession offenses,
29 brought before a criminal judge (or drug court), and ordered to rehabilitation in lieu of jail or juvenile detention. As such, this data is in no way indicative of whether the person referred to treatment is suffering from any symptoms of dependence associated with marijuana use; most individuals are ordered to attend supervised drug treatment simply to avoid jail time. In fact, since 1995, the proportion of admissions from all sources other than the criminal justice system has actually declined, according to the federal Drug and Alcohol Services Information System (DASIS).
30 Consequently, DASIS now reports that 58 percent of all marijuana admissions are through the criminal justice system.
31 Referrals from schools and health care/drug abuse care providers comprise another 15 percent of all admissions.
32 By comparison, only 38 percent of those admitted to treatment for alcohol and only 29 percent of those admitted to treatment for cocaine are referred by the criminal justice system.33
ALLEGATION #4 “We may never rid this country of every crack pipe or marijuana plant. However, research proves that we have made substantial success in reducing drug use in this country.”
TRUTH In fact, marijuana enforcement has had no discernable long-term impact on marijuana availability or use. According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, teenagers report that marijuana has surpassed tobacco and alcohol as the easiest drug to obtain.
34 This result is hardly surprising, given that annual federal data compiled by the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future project reports that an estimated 86 percent of 12th graders say that marijuana is “fairly easy” or “very easy to get.”
35 This percentage has remained virtually unchanged since the mid- 1970s36 – despite remarkably increased marijuana penalties, enforcement, and the prevalence of anti-marijuana propaganda since that time. The percentage of adolescents experimenting with marijuana has also held steady over the long-term. According to annual data compiled by Monitoring the Future, 47.3 percent of 12th graders reported having used marijuana in 1975.
37 Despite billions of dollars spent on drug enforcement and drug education efforts (such as the federally funded DARE program) since that time, today’s number (for the Class of 2004) is 49 percent.
38 In addition, according to data compiled by the federal National Household on Drug Abuse survey, an estimated 2.6 million Americans tried marijuana for the first time in the year 2003, up from 1.5 million in 1990 and 0.8 million in 1965.
39 Today, nearly one out of every two American adults acknowledges they have used marijuana, up from fewer than one in three in 1983.
40 ALLEGATION #5 “The truth is that marijuana is not harmless.”
TRUTH This statement is correct; marijuana isn’t harmless. In fact, no substance is, including those that are legal. However, any risk presented by marijuana smoking falls within the ambit of choice we permit the individual in a free society.
41 According to federal statistics, approximately 80 million Americans self-identify as having used marijuana at some point in their lives,
42 and relatively few acknowledge having suffered significant deleterious health effects due to their use. America’s public policies should reflect this reality, not deny it. Marijuana’s relative risk to the user and society does not support criminal prohibition or the continued arrest of more than 750,000 Americans on marijuana charges every year. As concluded by the Canadian House of Commons in their December 2002 report recommending marijuana decriminalization, “The consequences of conviction for possession of a small amount of cannabis for personal use are disproportionate to the potential harm associated with the behavior.”
43 ALLEGATION #6 “As a factor in emergency room visits, marijuana has risen 176 percent since 1994, and now surpasses heroin.”
TRUTH This statement is intentionally misleading as it wrongly suggests that marijuana use is a significant causal factor in an alarming number of emergency room visits. It is not. Federal statistics gathered by the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) do indicate an increase in the number of people “mentioning” marijuana during hospital emergency room visits. (This increase is hardly unique to marijuana however, as the overall number of drug mentions has risen dramatically since the late 1980s – likely due to improved federal reporting procedures.
44) However, a marijuana “mention” does not mean that marijuana caused the hospital visit or that it was a factor in leading to the ER episode, only that the patient said that he or she had used marijuana previously.
45 For every emergency room visit related to drug use (so-called “drug abuse episodes”), hospital staff list up to five drugs the patient reports having used recently, regardless of whether or not their use of the drug caused the visit. The frequency with which any drug is mentioned in such visits is generally proportional to its frequency of use, irrespective of its inherent dangers.
46 End Notes:
1 Washington Post. “Marijuana Becomes Focus of Drug War.” May 3, 2005.
2 Federal Bureau of Investigation. 2004. Crime in America: FBI Uniform Crime Reports 2003. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, p. 269 Table 4.1 & p. 270 Table 29. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. (Violent Index Crimes Total = 597,026) 5 J. Miron. June 2005. The Budgetary Impacts of Marijuana Prohibition in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard. (available online at http://www.prohibitioncosts.org/mironreport.html) 6 J. Gettman. March 2005. Crimes of Indiscretion: Marijuana Arrests in the United States. Washington, DC: The NORML Foundation. (available online at http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6476) 7 J. Miron. June 2005. Federal Marijuana Policy: A Preliminary Analysis. Washington, DC: Taxpayers for Common Sense. (available online at: http://www.taxpayer.net/drugreform/intro.htm) 8 R. King et al. May 2005. The War on Marijuana. Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project. (available online at www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/waronmarijuana.pdf) 9 US Census Bureau. July 2004. State Population Estimates. (available online at: http://www.census.gov/popest/states/tables/NST-EST2004-01.pdf) 10 FBI, combined Uniform Crime Reports, 1991-2003.
11 Ibid. 12 Bureau of Justice Statistics. 2005. Drugs and Crime Facts. Table: Number of Arrests by Drug Type, 1982-2003. US Department of Justice: Washington, DC. See also: NORML News Release. Drug War Priorities Shift From Hard Drugs To Marijuana Arrest Figures Reveal. July 8, 1999. (available online at: www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=4015) 13 National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, Teen Pregnancy Rates in the United States, 1972-2000. (available online at: http://www.teenpregnancy.org); Mothers Against Drunk Driving, General Statistics. (available online at: http://www.madd.org/stats/0,1056,1112,00.html); Partnership for a Drug Free America, Partnership Attitudes Tracking Study (Teens), 2004, p.21. 14 L. Iverson. 2005. Long-term effects of exposure to cannabis. Current Opinion in Pharmacology 5:69-72. See specifically: Abstract: “Overall, by comparison with other drugs used mainly for ‘recreational’ purposes, cannabis could be rated a relatively safe drug.” 15 Center for Disease Control, National Vital Statistics Report Vol. 53, 2005. 16 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Smoking-attributable mortality and years of potential life lost — United States, 2005. (available online at: http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/research_data/health_consequences/mortali.htm); Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 1993, 42(33):645-8. 17 Australian National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre. 1994. The Health and Psychological
Consequences of Cannabis Use. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. See specifically: Chapter 9, Section 9.3.1 Acute Effects: “There are no recorded cases of fatalities attributable to cannabis, and the extrapolated lethal dose from animal studies cannot be achieved by recreational users.” See also: National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine. 1999. Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base. National Academy Press: Washington DC. 18 S. Sidney et al. 1997. Marijuana Use and Mortality. American Journal of Public Health 87: 1-4. 19 National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine. 1999. Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base. p. 5. 20 D. Gieringer et al. 2004. Cannabis Vaporizer Combines Efficient Delivery of THC with Effective Suppression of Pyrolytic Compounds. Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics. 4: 7-27. 21 National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine. 1999. Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base. p. 199. 22 D. Ford et al. 2001. Marijuana use is not associated with head, neck or lung cancer in adults younger than 55 years: Results of a case cohort study. In: National Institute on Drug Abuse (Eds) Workshop on Clinical Consequences of Marijuana: Program Book. National Institutes of Health: Rockville, MD: p. 10. 23 K. Rosenblat et al. 2004. Marijuana use and risk of oral squamous cell carcinoma. Cancer Research 64: 4049-4054. 24 Studies include but are not limited to: Canadian House of Commons Special Committee on the NonMedical Use of Drugs. 2002. Policy for the New Millennium: Working Together to Redefine Canada’s Drug Strategy. Ottawa; Canadian Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs. 2002. Cannabis: Our Position for a Canadian Public Policy. Ottawa; United Kingdom’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. 2002. The Classification of Cannabis Under the Misuse of Drugs Act of 1971. London; British House of Commons Home Affairs Committee. 2002. Third Report. London; Jamaican National Commission on Ganja. 2001. A Report of the National Commission on Ganja. Kingston; Australian National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre. 1994. The Health and Psychological Consequences of Cannabis Use; First Report of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse. 1972. Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. 25 House of Commons Home Affairs Committee. 2002. Third Report. See specifically: Note 118
26 Editorial: “Deglamorising Cannabis.” The Lancet, Nov. 11, 1995. (346:8985). 27 Editorial: “Dangerous Habits.” The Lancet, Nov.14, 1998. (352:9140). 28 The DASIS (Drug and Alcohol Services Information System) Report. March 29, 2002. Treatment Referral Sources for Adolescent Marijuana Users. US Office of Applied Studies, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration: Washington, DC. 29 74 percent of those arrested for marijuana possession in the United States are under 30 years of age. J. Gettman. March 2005. Crimes of Indescretion: Marijuana Arrests in the United States. 30 Ibid. Figure 1: Number of Adolescent Marijuana Admissions, by Referral Source: 1992-1999. 31 The DASIS (Drug and Alcohol Services Information System) Report. June 24, 2005. Differences in Marijuana Admissions Based on Source of Referral: 2002. Washington, DC: US Office of Applied Studies, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (available online at http://oas.samhsa.gov/2k5/MJreferrals/MJreferrals.htm). 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid
34 Associated Press. “Teens Say Buying Dope Is Easy.” August 19, 2002. 35 Monitoring the Future. 2004. Annual Data From In-School Surveys of 8th, 10th, and 12th Grade Students. Ann Arbor, Michigan. See specifically: Drug and Alcohol Press Release and Tables: Specific Drugs – Figure 2: Marijuana: Trends in Annual Use, Risk, Disapproval, and Availability for 8th, 10th, and 12th Graders. (available online at: monitoringthefuture.org/data/04data.html#2004data-drugs) 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. p.74. 39 US Department of Health and Human Services, 2003 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, Washington: US Office of Applied Studies, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. See table 4.1A: Trends in Initiation of Substance Use: Marijuana. (available online at: http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/nhsda/2k3tabs/Sect4peTabs1to60.htm#tab4.1a) 40 Results from a Time Magazine/CNN telephone poll of 1,007 adult Americans age 18 or older, conducted October 23-24, 2002.
41 “Penalties against drug use should not be more damaging to an individual than use of the drug itself. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against the possession of marijuana in private for personal use.” Presidential address to Congress by Jimmy Carter. August 2, 1977. 42 US Department of Health and Human Services, 2003 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, Washington: US Office of Applied Studies, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. 43 Canadian House of Commons Special Committee on the Non-Medical Use of Drugs. 2002. Policy for the New Millennium: Working Together to Redefine Canada’s Drug Strategy. p. 131. 44 John P. Morgan and Lynn Zimmer. 1997. Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts: A Review of the Scientific Evidence. The Lindesmith Center: New York. p. 131. 45 C. Roberts. 1996. Data Quality of the Drug Abuse Warning Network. American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse 22: 389-401. 46 DAWN has recently implemented a new system of data collection and reporting. In future DAWN reports, only drugs related to the ED visit are recorded. Previously any drug use reported by the patient, regardless
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