Pubdate: Fri, 14 Jan 2011 Source: Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL) Copyright: 2011 Sun-Sentinel Company Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/mVLAxQfA Website: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/159 Author: Nicole Brochu Note: Nicole Brochu is an editorial writer and health columnist for the Sun Sentinel. Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion) BID TO LEGALISE MARIJUANA ALL SMOKE AND MIRRORS It's difficult to raise the topic of marijuana usage in America today without somehow touching off intense debate over whether this relatively mild, but still harmful drug should be decriminalized, even fully legalized. That's how much the pro-pot crowd has hijacked the national conversation over the nation's ongoing struggle with drug use. Exhibit A: an opinion piece posted in this space earlier this week by a drug treatment psychologist bemoaning a national spike in teen pot smoking and attributing it largely to society's growing tolerance of marijuana use. Folks, this is not an outrageous assertion. In fact, in figures released Wednesday, the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future - -- the largest survey on teen drug abuse polling more than 46,000 8th, 10th and 12th graders -- found that teens' exposure to anti-drug messages has nosedived over the past seven years. This at a time when teens also reported finding such messages actually work. Perhaps it's not all that irrelevant then that, after a decade's decline in pot-smoking, the same study also saw a spike in marijuana usage among teens last year, with more high school seniors lighting up joints than cigarettes. The numbers, and the trend, are not in dispute. What is up for debate, a heated one at that, is what to do about it. And judging by the deluge of e-mails cluttering up my inbox, there's an increasingly vocal force pushing mighty hard for the country to give up all pretense that the "prohibition" on marijuana is either effective or in the public's best interests. The only answer, these ganja-loving crusaders say, is to quit the double-speak and finally put cannabis where it belongs, in the same legal category as that other socially accepted mood-altering drug, alcohol. To which I say, they must be high. It's a far-fetched notion to suggest Washington would ever have the political will to take such a drastic step -- for good reason, because it's irresponsible public policy. Listen, I'm sympathetic to many of the legalization crowd's arguments. To classify marijuana, for example, as a Schedule 1 drug next to heroin is to exaggerate its potency and potential for abuse. I mean, no one's ever died of a THC overdose. The same can't be said for alcohol, which is far more addictive and destructive than pot ever was. So I understand that it smacks as hypocritical to target marijuana in the war on drugs, while scantily clad beauties and Clydesdale horses peddle Budweiser during TV timeouts. But to suggest that legalizing marijuana is somehow an answer to society's drug problems -- that regulating its sale and distribution would actually lead to a reduction in usage, especially among youth -- defies sober reasoning. Legalization proponents like to point out that the Netherlands, with its liberal drug policy, has a lower drug rate than America's, but they neglect to tell you the country's marijuana usage among 18- to 20-year-olds nearly tripled after legalization -- at a time when usage among adolescents in the United States decreased steadily, according to the medical journal Pediatrics. Putting pot up for sale in convenience stores next to cigarettes and beer will only make it more accessible, and more acceptable, not to mention more affordable, creating more consumers, not less. Youth will be the most vulnerable, if Alaska's experiment with legalization in the '70s is any example. The state's youth started smoking at twice the rate of those nationally, convincing Alaska to recriminalize marijuana in 1990, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. We've seen that with alcohol -- ironically, the example legalization proponents keep going back to in pushing for reform. It's a bad example. Suggesting that age limits will prove more effective than an all-out ban in keeping pot out of teens' hands ignores the very real problem that alcohol poses for young people today. According to the Monitoring the Future study, alcohol is generally twice as popular among teens as marijuana. Don't tell me being legal, and more widely available, isn't instrumental in those statistics. This isn't a model experiment in legalization we want to duplicate with another recreational substance. And saying pot isn't as bad as alcohol isn't by default the ringing endorsement some want to make it. Anyone who says marijuana isn't harmful is just being dishonest. Studies have shown that long-term marijuana use may shrink parts of the brain and have lasting impacts on mental health. And despite efforts to pooh-pooh its reputation as a gateway drug, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reports that the younger someone is when using marijuana, the more likely he or she is to use other drugs in adulthood. In fact, according to the Center on and Substance Abuse at Columbia, children who use marijuana are 85 times more likely to use cocaine and 17 times more likely to be regular cocaine abusers. The numbers are equally troubling for heroin. (Think that's why Holland's heroin addiction rate has tripled since it legalized marijuana?) Do we really need more drug addicts in America? No. We don't need another drug declared legal, either. Alcohol has posed enough of a problem, thank you very much. Sure, legalizing marijuana may mean a nice boost to the country's revenue stream through regulation and taxation, but we don't need to sell out our morals and public health for financial gain. We've done enough of that already. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake