Pubdate: Sun, 04 May 2014
Source: Wisconsin State Journal (WI)
Copyright: 2014 Madison Newspapers, Inc.
Contact:  http://host.madison.com/wsj/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/506
Author: Chris Rickert

SOAKING WET WISCONSIN NO MODEL FOR MAINSTREAMING MARIJUANA

Legalize pot in Wisconsin? Sure, as long as it isn't sold as any more 
of a "medicine" than the most popular legal high (alcohol). In the 
area of government-sanctioned inebriation, what's fair should be 
fair. Besides, pot advocates have had some decent reasons for saying 
theirs is the safer buzz.

And then I read about a man in Colorado - where marijuana is already 
legal - who reportedly shot his wife after eating too much pot-laced 
candy. Another man ate too many marijuana-infused cookies and jumped 
off a hotel balcony to his death.

Candy might be dandy, but in Colorado, sweets can be downright dangerous, too.

"I'm very concerned about the increasing permissiveness toward 
marijuana," said Dr. Richard Brown, a physician and addictions 
specialist at UW-Madison. He said it can be addictive and interferes 
with users' motivation and ability to learn.

"I'm very worried that more lenient state laws about marijuana are 
creating a lower perception of risk among high school students," 
Brown said. "Such changes in perception are usually followed in the 
next few years by increases in use."

Dane County Board member Leland Pan - who co-sponsored a successful, 
nonbinding referendum last month to legalize marijuana in Wisconsin - 
had a different take.

While he doesn't endorse getting high, he said "prohibition does 
nothing to reduce usage or prevent usage."

Marijuana's effects also don't tend to be as incapacitating as 
alcohol's, according to UW-Madison physician and bioethicist Dr. 
Norman Fost, who holds a master's degree in public health. Pan 
agreed, saying "the social harms that come from marijuana are much 
less severe than alcohol."

Kevin Florek, CEO of the Madison-based nonprofit substance abuse 
treatment center Tellurian UCAN, said legal pot would probably spur 
more pot use. His agency's workers have also seen pot play the role 
of "gateway drug" and witnessed its negative effects on users' 
careers and marriages.

But even he noted that marijuana might have legitimate medicinal uses 
and that it typically doesn't lead to the kind of violence often 
associated with heavy drinking.

I suppose you could argue I've been brainwashed by the faulty logic 
of prohibition and the costly and largely failed American war on 
drugs, but the criminalization of marijuana is among the things that 
keeps me from seeking a high that I enjoyed and found relatively 
harmless when I was a younger (and more rebellious) man.

To bring pot into my home with my three young children? When getting 
caught and convicted for drug possession would probably get me fired? 
When drug testing is a given at most large employers these days?

It's not worth the risk, and I bet a lot of 40-something folks with 
jobs, kids and mortgages would say the same thing.

But if picking up a pan of THC-infused brownies at Copps were as 
legal and socially acceptable as picking up a six-pack ... ?

Who knows how many of us otherwise straight-laced, recreational 
buzz-seekers wouldn't so much replace one buzz (alcohol) with another 
(pot), but rather, enjoy both. Theoretically, the amount of time 
Wisconsinites spend legally intoxicated in a pot- and liquor-legal 
Wisconsin could double, as would the chances for intoxication-related 
problems - from drunken driving and violence, to marriage discord, 
job loss and academic failure. No doubt it's an "extreme injustice," 
as Fost said, to lock people up for years for marijuana possession 
when "what you need to do to get thrown in jail for drunk driving - 
you really have to work at that."

Or that, as Pan said, legalization could help stamp out the gangs and 
crime endemic to the current illegal marijuana industry.

Or that legalization could open up a whole new source of tax revenue. 
If it did, Florek would like to see at least some of those tax 
dollars sent to agencies like his, because there is a "major, major 
shortage of government funding for treatment of addictions."

Significantly increased funding for substance abuse treatment would 
probably be the best - if most ironic - result of legalization.

The worst would be that pot becomes so socially and culturally 
accepted that it becomes difficult to take the drug's negative 
ramifications seriously - because, well, it's so socially and 
culturally accepted.

That's basically the history of Wisconsin's relationship with 
alcohol, which is so woven into our existence that even 
nation-leading binge-drinking and drunken-driving rates can't spur 
lawmakers to make first-offense drunken driving a crime or raise the beer tax.

The question is whether the benefits of legal pot are worth the risk 
of another such dysfunctional relationship.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom