It is time to re-evaluate our attitudes about alcohol and other drugs
By Chip Parkhurst a guest columnist to the ocregister.com.

In purely objective terms, beverage alcohol is a recreational hard drug: mind-numbing, easy to misuse and intimately connected with aggression, carelessness, and despair. When a drugged individual is involved in a violent crime or an accident, the drug is most often alcohol. In America, alcohol is responsible for 65 percent of murders, 55 percent of college rapes (that’s 70,000 per year), 39 percent of traffic fatalities, 33 percent of all trauma injuries, 33 percent of drownings and other accidental deaths, and 25 percent of teen suicides. About 150,000 Americans die from chronic alcohol-related illnesses each year, and another 3,000 from accidental overdoses.

Alcohol is not without merit. With moderate use (one or two drinks a day) alcohol acts like a soft drug, providing pleasant short-term effects (enhanced sociability and relaxation) and favorable long-term effects (lower blood pressure and cholesterol, lower risk of stroke and heart disease and longer life).

A similar scenario exists among pharmaceutical drugs, with substantial risks accompanying their benefits. For pain, over-the-counter painkillers including aspirin and Tylenol are indispensable, yet they kill 15,000 people annually. The antidepressant Paxil raises the risk of suicide. Xanax (for anxiety) is highly addictive. Ambien (for insomnia) causes sleepwalking and sleep-driving. Humira (for arthritis) triples the risk of cancer. Advair (for asthma) may cause pneumonia. Ketek (for infections) is linked to liver damage. Thalidomide (newly approved for treating skin cancer) causes horrendous birth defects. Children are put on ADHD drugs (Ritalin, Strattera) even though each year thousands end up in the hospital from bad reactions, hundreds of children taking the drugs report having suicidal thoughts, and a few end up dead from complications. Oregon physicians can administer intentionally lethal “medicines” to terminal patients.

A legal stimulant – caffeine – is so pervasive and accepted that most of the population (including children) consume it daily via coffee, soda or energy drinks, even though moderate consumption raises the risk of a heart attack, and five grams of caffeine (33 cups of coffee) will kill you.

So, we clearly allow people to ingest hazardous drugs. We just have to give them enough information about the drugs so they can choose and use them safely and responsibly. Against that backdrop, we must evaluate another drug being used by tens of millions of Americans, albeit one that must be used covertly despite its remarkable safety: marijuana.

First, police across the nation readily admit that, unlike alcohol, marijuana doesn’t make users violent or reckless. If anything, it makes them peaceful and introspective.

Second, a comprehensive 1999 study commissioned by the federal drug czar at the time, Barry McCaffery concluded marijuana was a “viable and effective medicine … moderately well-suited for chemotherapy-induced nausea, AIDS wasting, severe pain, and other conditions.” A 2004 study showed it blocks gamma herpes; a 2005 study showed it slows hardening of the arteries; a 2006 UCLA study concluded marijuana isn’t linked to lung cancer and may inhibit tumor growth. A 2006 Ohio State University study indicated it may stave off Alzheimer’s. Other pharmaceutical medicines may be more effective than marijuana in certain applications, but marijuana has an inherent advantage: It’s nontoxic.

The Drug Enforcement Administration itself conceded in 1988 that there are no reported deaths from marijuana in recorded medical history.

Third, regarding recreational use, an independent RAND Corp. study in 2002 concluded that marijuana does not act as a gateway drug or lead teenagers to experiment with hard drugs. According to the drugmaker Merck, marijuana’s active ingredient, THC, unlike alcohol and nicotine, doesn’t cause physical dependence. Merck’s researchers concluded that opposition to the drug “rests on a moral and political, and not a toxicologic, foundation.

Common sense is slowly taking hold, as many states now allow marijuana at least for medical use. Federal lawmakers, however, want to continue to subject marijuana users to arrest and punishment, without scientific or moral basis. There is no aspect of marijuana in a private setting that warrants federal agents breaking down doors and treating as thugs people who have not harmed anyone, arresting them or seizing their property.

Over the 70 years of marijuana prohibition, American citizens have suffered cruel and unusual punishment, as well as unequal protection under the law. Imprisonment should be restricted to those we fear: murderers, rapists, batterers, thieves and people driving under the influence – whether alcohol, marijuana or sleeping pills.

To add insult to injury, the United Nations this fall proclaimed that a quintupling of marijuana’s strength over the past 30 years through cultivation advances has made it dangerous, warranting more intrusive global enforcement efforts. Nonsense. Whiskey is eight times stronger than beer, but people simply adjust their “dosage” to get the desired result and aren’t arrested for it.

If governments truly wanted to solve the marijuana problem, they could allow the tobacco farmers to grow it, the government to tax it, the FDA to inspect it, the liquor companies to sell it, the police to control it, and the adults to use it. The only problem with marijuana is that it’s illegal.

In a word Marijuana is illegal in the United States and while it is no one should use it because the risks of ruining your life aren’t worth it. The fact that it is illegal is simply hysteria and non-sensical. I personally don’t like marijuana, so this isn’t a personal agenda for me. If you must smoke marijuana, you may do so legally in numerous countries throughout the world. Until it is legal in the U.S. don’t possess it or consume it here. By doing so you are financially supporting criminal networks that do bad things. Smugglers are not good people. They don’t donate their money to charity. They sometimes hurt people to protect their profits. Exercise your freedom of speech at the voting both give the North Carolina tabacco farmers something to grow, and tax it til we don’t have a national deficit anymore and then give all of the tax proceeds to public schools, universities and charitable thospitals. And when they do legalize it, in the words of Elliott Ness from the 1987 movie the Untouchables, when the reporter mentions that Prohibition is due to be repealed, he asks what Ness might do then? “I think I’ll have a drink.”

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