We’re all waiting breathlessly to see if California passes Proposition 19, as part of todays national elections in the U.S.. That’s the groundbreaking proposal which would legalize a variety of marijuana-related activities.
Coincidentally, the Lancet medical journal has just published the study by UK researcher and head of the Independent Committee on Drugs David Nutt, who reports that alcohol is more dangerous than heroin and cocaine.
Nutt’s my kind of guy – sort of. Not that I’m promoting those last two drugs, but the research reminds me of what we used to say to our parents all the time during the 60s. Our pot use, we insisted, was way less deleterious than the alcohol they happily imbibed every time they got together with their friends.
Which is, unfortunately, one of the big difficulties with the way Nutt’s study is being reported. It’s not, as it appears from the blaring headlines, that those specific drugs are less dangerous to the individual – heroin rearranges your brain structure for life – but rather, that many more people consume alcohol and, therefore, the social costs of consumption are much higher. That’s why alcohol got the highest rating, 72 out of 100
Canada’s counterpart to Nutt, Jurgen Rhem, senior scientist at T.O.’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and author of a Canadian study that concluded that the social costs of tobacco and alcohol consumption were far higher than those behind illegal drugs, got it right when, in response to Nutt’s study he suggested that policies begin to target alcohol ads. Our advertising landscape gives the impression that without alcohol, there’s no such thing as fun, that alcohol consumption is the gateway to the good life and that you might as well not go up to that cottage without a two-four of beer.
He also suggested easing up on marijuana laws, another smart idea. Marijuana, which scored only 20 in the study – behind tobacco, by the way – is a so-called gateway drug (to more high-risk narcotics) only because marijuana users are treated like criminals, the same as other narcotics users.
According to NORML, the national Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (norml.org), more than 700,000 Americans were arrested on marijuana charges last year and more than 5 million Americans have been arrested for marijuana offenses in the past decade. Almost 90 percent of these arrests are for simple possession, not trafficking or sale, automatically making weed smokers de facto criminals and wasting billions of dollars on policing, money that could be directed to more harmful crimes.
Here’s hoping Californians see the light and vote yes to the greening of America. It could be the big step forwards towards getting a proper dialogue on that subject going in Canada.
