Five Myths About Legalizing Marijuana

[sano]

Five myths about

legalizing marijuana

By Doug Fine, Published: June 7

Doug Fine is the author

of “Too High to Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic

Revolution,” in which he followed one legal medicinal cannabis plant

from farm to patient.

With 16 states having decriminalized or

legalized cannabis for non-medical use and eight more heading toward some kind

of legalization, federal prohibition’s days seem numbered. You might wonder

what America will look like when marijuana is in the corner store and at the

farmers market. In three years spent researching that question, I found some

ideas about the plant that just don’t hold up.

1. If pot is legal,

more people will use it.

As drug policy undergoes big changes, I’ve

been watching rates of youth cannabis use with interest. As it is for most

fathers, the well-being of my family is the most important thing in my life.

Whether you like the plant or not, as with alcohol, only adults should be

allowed to partake of intoxicating substances. But youth cannabis use is near its highest

level ever in the United States. When I spoke at a California high school

recently and asked, “Who thinks cannabis is easier to obtain than alcohol?,”

nearly every hand shot up.

In Portugal, by contrast, youth rates fellfrom 2002 to 2006, after

all drugs were legalized there in 2001. Similarly, a 2011 Brown University-led

study of middle and high school students in Rhode Island found no increases in

adolescent use after the state legalized medical marijuana in 2006.

As for adult use, the numbers are mixed. A

2011 University of California at Berkeley study, for example, showed a slight

increase in adult use with de facto legalization in the Netherlands (though the

rate was still lower than in the United States). Yet that study and one in 2009

found Dutch rates to be slightly lower than the European average. When the

United States’ 40-year-long war on marijuana ends, the country is not going to

turn into a Cheech and Chong movie. It is, however, going to see the transfer

of as much as 50 percent of cartel profits to the taxable economy.

2. Law enforcement

officials oppose legalization.

It is true that many law enforcement lobby

groups don’t want to end America’s most expensive war (which has cost $1

trillion and counting), but that’s because they’re the reason it’s so

expensive. In 2010, two-thirdsof federal spending on the drug

war, $10 billion, went toward law enforcement and interdiction.

But law enforcement rank and file know the

truth about the drug war’s profligate and ineffective spending, says former Los

Angeles deputy police chief Stephen Downing, one of 5,000 public safety

professionals who make up the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. “Most

law enforcers find it difficult not to recognize the many harms caused by our

current drug laws,” he wrote to me in an e-mail. Those harms include, according

to a new ACLU report, marijuana-possession

arrests that are skewed heavily toward minorities.

Since marijuana prohibition drives the drug

war, these huge costs would end when federal cannabis law changes. Sheriff Tom

Allman in Mendocino County, Calif., helped

local cannabis farmers in 2010 and 2011.

When I asked him why, he said: “This county has problems: domestic violence,

meth, poverty. Marijuana isn’t even in the top 10. I want it off the front

pages so I can deal with the real issues.”

3. Getting high

would be the top revenue generator for the cannabis plant.

I called both of my U.S. senators’ offices to

support inserting a provision into this year’s farm bill to legalize hemp for

domestic cultivation. Based on my research on industrial cannabis, commonly

called hemp, I’m staggered by the potential of this plant, which is not the

variety you smoke.

In Canada, where 90 percent of the crop is

bought by U.S. consumers, the government researches the best varieties for its

hemp farmers, rather than refusing to issue them permits, as the United States

tends to do. In a research facility in Manitoba, I saw a tractor whose body was

made entirely of hemp fiber and binding. BMW and Dodgeuse hemp fibers in their

door panels, and homes whose insulation and wall paneling are made partially of

hemp represent a fast-growing trend in the European construction industry.

Jack Noel, who co-authored a 2012 industrial

hemp task force report for the New Mexico Department of Agriculture, says that

“within 10 years of the end of the war on drugs, we’ll see a $50 billion

domestic hemp industry.” That’s bigger than the $40 billion some

economists predict smoked cannabis would bring in.

Foods such as cereal and salad dressing are

the biggest U.S. markets for hemp today, but industrial cannabis has the

brightest future in the energy sector, where a Kentucky utility is planning to

grow hemp for biomass energy.

4. Big Tobacco and

Big Alcohol would control the legal cannabis industry.

In 1978, the Carter administration changed

alcohol regulations to allow for microbreweries. Today the craft-beer market is

worth $10.2 billion annually. The top-shelf

cannabis farmers in California’s Emerald Triangle realize this potential.

“We’re creating an international brand, like champagne and Parmigiano cheese,”

says Tomas Balogh, co-founder of the Emerald Growers Association in Humboldt,

Calif. Get ready for the bud and breakfast.

When America’s 100 million cannabis

aficionados (17 million regular partakers) are freed from dealers, some are

going to pick up a six-pack of joints at the corner store before heading to a

barbecue, and others are going to seek out organically grown heirloom strains

for their vegetable dip.

As Balogh puts it: “When people ask me if the

small farmer or the big corporation will benefit from the end of prohibition, I

say, ‘Both.’ The cannabis industry is already decentralized and farmer-owned.

It’s up to consumers to keep it that way.” So Big Alcohol might control the

corner store, but not the fine-wine shop or the farmers’ market.

5. In the heartland,

legalization is a political nonstarter.

President Obama, in an interview last

December, for the first time took seriously a question about the legalization

of cannabis. He said that he didn’t yet support it but that he had “bigger fish to fry” than harassing

Colorado and Washington.

In Colorado in 2012, 40 percent of Republican

voters chose to legalize cannabis, and a greater share of Coloradans voted for

legalization than voted for Obama.

In Arizona, a pretty conservative and silver

state, 56 percent of those in a poll last month supported regulating cannabis

for personal use. Maybe fiscal conservatives know about the $35 billion in

annual nationwide tax savings that ending prohibition would bring. In Illinois,

63 percent of voters support medicinal marijuana, and they’re likely to get it.

Even 60 percent of Kentuckians favor medical cannabis.

I’m not surprised. I live in a conservative

valley in New Mexico. Yet as a woman in line at the post office recently told

me: “It’s pills that killed my cousin. Fightin’ pot just keeps those dang

cartels in business.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-legalizing-marijuana/2013/06/07/9727eac4-c871-11e2-9f1a-1a7cdee20287_story_1.html

[matsegredo]

4. Big Tobacco and

Big Alcohol would control the legal cannabis industry.

Nao acho que va acontecer isso

Ja existe um mercado na area

[rsfan]

Perfect dude.

[politicweed]

4. Big Tobacco and

Big Alcohol would control the legal cannabis industry.

Nao acho que va acontecer isso

Ja existe um mercado na area

Existia o hotmail, ainda existem o cadê, msn, yahoo e outras empresas que prestam o mesmo serviço... mas o que detém o monopólio é o google, que veio depois. Se os caras tiverem uma sacada muito boa, com muita boa comunicação... eles levam. Tanto é que um ex-diretor da microsoft tá louco pra tomar o mercado... são centenas de bilhões em jogo. O negócio é estatizar permitindo autocultivo e clubes de cultivo ou se não dê tudo pros capitalistas e já era.

[matsegredo]

Existia o hotmail, ainda existem o cadê, msn, yahoo e outras empresas que prestam o mesmo serviço... mas o que detém o monopólio é o google, que veio depois. Se os caras tiverem uma sacada muito boa, com muita boa comunicação... eles levam. Tanto é que um ex-diretor da microsoft tá louco pra tomar o mercado... são centenas de bilhões em jogo. O negócio é estatizar permitindo autocultivo e clubes de cultivo ou se não dê tudo pros capitalistas e já era.

E verdade... aliado ao dinheiro que essas empresas tem pra aplicar, da pra fazer um avanço bacana!

[Rickroller]

Gostaria de ver os bigplayers longe do mercado da maconha..... mas eh quase impossivel.

[Juniaum]

Seria bom que legalizasse e que fosse mais fácil encontrar cannabis do que álcool. Se as pessoas fumassem, vaporizassem ou consumissem mais cannabis no lugar do álcool, viveríamos melhor. Os esforços da justiça deveriam ser direcionados, para prender quem realmente precisa ir para cadeia e estão soltos.

Aqui, se fosse ver bem, a maconha não está nem no top 30!! Temos tantas outras prioridades!

Legaliza logo e deixa nós plantarmos cada um a sua plantinha que todo o mundo agradece :-)

[Donic]

Pode vir todos os big player os bossplayer e os godsplayers, não tem como privatizar a natureza, podem vir que só vem a somar, quer legalizar deixa eles joga tmb que ai vai que nem manteiga.

[Wellincolin]

Tópico perfeito, apesar dos mais informados já saberem de tudo isso faz tempo.

O que eu acho pior é que no Brasil, as pessoas são tão alienadas que elas nem pensam nesses assuntos mais complexos. Aqui, só se ouve "se legalizar, vai todo mundo fumar! Que loucura!". Claro, porque todo mundo bebe álcool, só pelo simples fato de ele ter sido legalizado.

O pior é quando eu ouço que se legalizar, vai todo mundo ficar dando risada, lerdo... Como se isso fosse algo errado! Agora dar risada, ficar lesado e feliz é algo que não deveria acontecer. O mesmo povo que se orgulha ao chamar os americanos de gordos e burros. Seria cômico, se não fosse trágico...