Culturally, marijuana has become hardly more than a punch line. But in reality, U.S. marijuana policy is no joke; it causes great harm, both directly and indirectly. Here are the 10 most important reasons our marijuana laws deserve serious reconsideration
Americans Increasingly Favor Legalization of Pot
Marijuana-legalization advocates and members of community groups attend a rally against marijuana arrests in front of One Police Plaza in New York City on June 13, 2012<br>For the first time ever, a solid majority of Americans supports legalizing marijuana for recreational use: 56%, according to the most recent Rasmussen poll. Support for legalization has been <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/150149/record-high-americans-favor-legalizing-marijuana.aspx" target="_blank">growing steadily</a> since the 1990s; in 1994, just 25% were in favor.<br><br><br><br>In November 2010, California residents <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/03/25/us-marijuana-california-idUSTRE62O08U20100325" target="_blank">voted on a ballot initiative</a> to legalize the possession and sale of marijuana. Although the measure failed to pass — 46% to 54% — the fact that the initiative made it onto the ballot and garnered that much support was itself historic. Indeed, it was fear of the initiative's passage that led then California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to decriminalize possession of up to 1 oz. of pot shortly before the vote — a move that was intended to bleed voter support from the ballot question. Had it passed, California would have been the first state to legalize the drug outright. In 2012, Colorado and Washington State will vote on total legalization.<br><br><br><br>Because support for legalization tracks closely with age, change would seem inevitable in the long run. The most recent Gallup poll found that 62% of people ages 18 to 29 favor full legalization, compared with 31% of senior citizens. As far as medical marijuana goes, Americans are nearly unanimous in their approval: 70% or more support it.maiasz
Supporting Marijuana Reform Is No Longer Political Suicide
State attorney general candidate Ellen Rosenblum debates with Dwight Holton at the City Club in Portland, Ore., on April 27, 2012 <br>Some politicians are slowly discovering that lingering fears about being labeled “soft on crime” for supporting marijuana reform are unwarranted.<br><br><br><br>In May, two Democrats <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/drug-policy-no-longer-a-political-third-rail/2012/06/02/gJQA6uJr9U_story.html" target="_blank">upset</a> Establishment favorites by running in favor of marijuana reform. Beto O’Rourke, who favors the total legalization of marijuana, won the primary to run for Congress from Texas' 16th Congressional District, a safely Democratic district that borders Mexico’s drug-violence-ridden Ciudad Juarez. Ellen Rosenblum won the primary for state attorney general in Oregon and has no Republican challenger; she beat her Democratic opponent largely on a platform supporting medical marijuana and opposing federal interference with it.<br><br><br><br>On June 13, Rhode Island became the 15th state to decriminalize marijuana. Governor Lincoln Chafee signed a bill making possession of small amounts of pot no worse than a parking ticket.<br><br><br><br>New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg have both recently called for the decriminalization of open possession of marijuana. Possession itself was decriminalized in the state in 1977, but due to a quirk of state law that makes it a crime to show the drug visibly, people are still being arrested after police, following “stop and frisk” policies, order them to empty their pockets.<br><br><br><br>While national politicians remain mired in late-'90s thinking that suggests supporting the drug war is the only viable position, national polling trends (especially by age) and state-level political movements indicate that serious consideration of marijuana reform makes sense.maiasz
Teens Are More Likely to Smoke Pot than Cigarettes
<br>All the major national surveys of youth behavior show that, for the first time ever, teens are more likely to be users of marijuana than cigarettes.<br><br><br><br>For example, the latest Monitoring the Future survey by the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that in 2011, while 19% of high school seniors reported smoking at least one cigarette in the previous month, 23% said they had smoked marijuana at least once over the same time period. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey were virtually identical.<br><br><br><br>Cigarettes or marijuana: one of these products contains the most addictive known drug and kills about 50% of its users; the other one is illegal.maiasz
Marijuana Doesn't Increase Risk of Lung Cancer, Mental Illness or Death
<br>A recent <a href="http://www.blf.org.uk/Page/Special-Reports" target="_blank">report</a> by the British Lung Foundation made the headline-grabbing claim that the risk of developing cancer was 20 times higher per marijuana joint than per cigarette. However, the scientific data simply do not support this contention.<br><br><br><br>Dr. Donald Tashkin, professor of medicine at University of California, Los Angeles, is among the foremost researchers studying the effects of marijuana on the lungs. His <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17035389" target="_blank">2006 study</a>, one of the largest to look at marijuana use and lung and upper-airway cancers, found that the “association of these cancers with marijuana, even long-term or heavy use, is not strong and may be below practically detectable limits.”<br><br><br><br>A larger, longer-term study published in 2012 by a separate group of researchers showed that marijuana had no detrimental effect on lung function. Tashkin, who was not involved in the study, <a href="http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/10/study-smoking-marijuana-not-linked-with-lung-damage/" target="_blank">called it</a> “well conducted” and said the results confirmed his own findings.<br><br><br><br>A smaller recent <a href="http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/31/2/280.abstract?ijkey=9d7341998f7c2dc0d628c820552b4f4504089b41&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha">study</a> did find a link between extremely heavy marijuana use (at least a joint a day for 10 years) and lung cancer, but that study suffered several methodological flaws. For one, Tashkin explains, it included very few people who actually smoked marijuana heavily, making its results “imprecise.” (Unlike the average cigarette smoker, the average marijuana smoker doesn’t smoke daily — let alone daily for 10 years or longer.) <a href="http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/32/3/815.long#target-1">Other researchers</a>, pointing out the study's various limitations, agreed that its results could have occurred by chance alone.<br><br><br><br>The tobacco literature, in contrast, is unequivocal: smoking increases the odds of developing lung cancer by a factor of at least 9.<br><br><br><br>It's possible that marijuana may increase the risk of death from other causes, but so far, <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20565525" target="_blank">research</a> hasn’t been able to offer any evidence of that. Again, in contrast, the research does show that smoking cigarettes is clearly linked with a doubling to tripling of heart disease and stroke risk.<br><br><br><br>If mental health is your concern, there is some evidence that marijuana can <a href="http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2005559,00.html" target="_blank">hasten or worsen schizophrenia</a> in those who are predisposed to it. But over the past five decades, as marijuana use has increased, rates of schizophrenia haven't risen in tandem. Further, there's no evidence that current marijuana policy reduces the risk to those who may be vulnerable to developing the disorder: the 3,500% increase in the drug-fighting budget since the 1970s hasn't stopped the majority of boomers and succeeding generations from smoking pot. Moreover, legalizing the drug could offer a way to reduce psychosis risk; by regulating the chemical balance in marijuana, its safety could be controlled. That can't be accomplished if the drug is illegal.maiasz
Medical-Marijuana Dispensaries Aren't Linked with Crime
The Med Stop marijuana dispensary, across from Del Pueblo Elementary School in Denver<br>Most people with personal experience using marijuana recognize the absurdity of the claim that smoking pot can turn ordinary folks into criminals. But the possibility still lingers in some Americans’ minds — as demonstrated by the media coverage of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, whose body was found to contain marijuana after his death. Martin, who was black, was shot to death by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood-watch volunteer who put forth Martin's possible drug use to suggest it made the teen violent and justified his killing.<br><br><br><br>A recent study of medical-marijuana dispensaries should help put this canard connecting marijuana and crime to rest. Like previous studies, it found no association between the number of dispensaries in a neighborhood and rates of violent crime or property crime.<br><br><br><br>The number of outlets that sell alcohol in an area, however — even after controlling for demographic factors and poverty — is consistently linked with rates of violent crime, according to the research.maiasz
Most Drug Arrests Are for Marijuana Possession
<br>The No. 1 reason people get arrested in the U.S. is for violating drug law. More people are arrested for drug-related crime than for any violent crime, including drunken assaults. Of all drug-related arrests, <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/persons-arrested" target="_blank">82% are for possession</a>, and more than half of those are for marijuana. Basically, the war on drugs winds up being focused on marijuana possession, despite the fact that it is less addictive than other illegal drugs and is not pharmacologically linked with violence or overdose the way alcohol is.<br><br><br><br>These arrests not only take up an enormous amount of police time but also are extremely expensive: one estimate put the costs at $10.7 billion. And for what? There is no relationship between arrest rates and rates of drug use or addiction.maiasz
Marijuana Enforcement Targets Blacks and Hispanics
<br>Although African Americans use and sell marijuana at the same or lower rate as white people, they are three to six times more likely to be arrested for it, depending on when they get caught and where they live, according to a <a href="http://www.hrw.org/en/node/81110/" target="_blank">study</a> of FBI data between 1980 and 2007 by Human Rights Watch.<br><br><br><br>In 2011 in New York City alone, there were nearly 51,000 marijuana arrests — 87% of them among blacks and Hispanics, a rate that is completely out of proportion with the city’s racial makeup.<br><br><br><br>Drug convictions are often a gateway to a life of crime: they label young people as criminals, disrupt their education, expose them to more serious types of crime during incarceration and reduce their odds of employment. Because more minorities get arrested for marijuana, they are disproportionately exposed to this vicious cycle, which often ends in long prison terms and loss of voting rights. Consequently, enforcement of U.S. drug law causes far greater harm to health and well-being — especially among minorities — than marijuana itself.maiasz
New Uses for Medical Marijuana
<br>Recent research confirms the effectiveness of marijuana in treating <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22483680" target="_blank">opioid-resistant cancer pain</a> and the spasticity associated with <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21878454">multiple sclerosis</a>. Drugs similar to THC, a major active ingredient in cannabis, also show promise for <a href="http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v37/n2/full/npp2011204a.html">preventing</a> and <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19228182">treating</a> posttraumatic stress disorder. Further, a recent clinical trial showed that CBD, another component of cannabis, can <a href="http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v2/n3/full/tp201215a.html">treat schizophrenia</a> as effectively as standard prescription drugs, without the same side effects of movement disorders or weight gain, which can increase diabetes risk. Finally, both THC and CBD seem to have cancer-fighting effects — including, ironically, against <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22198381">lung cancer</a>.<br><br><br><br>The illegality of marijuana, however — along with the fact that the plant cannot be patented — is a big barrier to pharmaceutical development of these promising drugs.maiasz
Real Marijuana Is Probably Safer
<br>The rise of "legal highs," sold under names like Spice, K2 or the much-vilified “bath salts,” has got legislators desperately trying to ban them. Meanwhile, illegal chemists are rapidly developing substitutes that aren’t covered under these bans — a race that's driven in part by the illegality of marijuana.<br><br><br><br>Looking at these drugs' chemical makeup, it's plausible that because their active ingredients — the THC-like drugs that can trigger psychosis — aren't balanced with CBD, which induces natural marijuana's mellowing effect, they may be more likely to cause psychotic reactions. Fake pot also tends to be more potent than the real stuff, which could increase risks to users. But although they've been fingered for causing violence, no one knows what the short- or long-term effects of these substances really are because they haven't been tested on humans.<br><br><br><br>Meanwhile, humanity has had thousands of years of experience with marijuana itself, which, while not harmless, certainly doesn’t carry the risks of taking a drug fresh from the lab.maiasz
A Judge's Plea
Judge Gustin Reichbach, presiding over a murder trial in Brooklyn on Oct. 15, 2007<br>In a moving op-ed published in May in the New York <em>Times</em>, Justice Gustin Reichbach of the New York State supreme court described how medical marijuana was the only drug that helped ease his nausea and allowed him to eat or sleep during the brutal treatment for his pancreatic cancer.<br><br><br><br>He <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/opinion/a-judges-plea-for-medical-marijuana.html" target="_blank">concluded</a>:<br><br><blockquote>Because criminalizing an effective medical technique affects the fair administration of justice, I feel obliged to speak out as both a judge and a cancer patient suffering with a fatal disease. I implore the governor and the Legislature of New York, always considered a leader among states, to join the forward and humane thinking of 16 other states and pass the medical marijuana bill this year. Medical science has not yet found a cure, but it is barbaric to deny us access to one substance that has proved to ameliorate our suffering.</blockquote><br><br>Reichbach did not discuss recreational use of marijuana, but his plea eloquently demonstrates why the federal law against medical marijuana is senseless.maiasz
