Pubdate: Thu, 21 Aug 2014
Source: Washington Times (DC)
Copyright: 2014 The Washington Times, LLC.
Contact:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/492
Author: R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
Note: R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is editor in chief of the American
Spectator, a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research
and the author of "The Death of Liberalism" (Thomas Nelson, 2012).

THE GROWING ACCEPTANCE OF WEED

Legalization Of Marijuana Ignores The Link To Brain
Damage

Turning once again to what the sociologists call "coping mechanisms":
There is marijuana, and then there is alcohol.

They are increasingly the civilized options.

Consider alcohol.

Consider a suave scotch and soda. One does not sit down to a scotch
and soda to get blitzed, unless one is a veritable drunk.

One sits down and sips a scotch and soda while conversing with
friends.

Perhaps one reads a book. One enjoys the scotch for the
taste.

With scotch, there are scores of different tastes.

One drinks a single malt. One drinks a blend.

The same is true with bourbon and all manner of alcoholic
drinks.

One imbibes for the taste, then for the refreshment, finally for the
relaxed feeling it imparts.

Very, very finally, some drinkers drink a scotch and soda to get
blitzed and drop out. Maybe the pathetico drinks to pass out or to
throw up. A true alcoholic is a sad spectacle. A drunk is a person who
has ruined many a good drink.

Consider the increasingly civilized option, marijuana.

One smokes a joint to get stoned and steadily to drop out. Is that
really civilized? I have never heard of a connoisseur savoring a joint
for the taste.

One smokes it for the effect.

One takes it in a brownie or cookie for an even more immediate effect
- - sometimes a deadly effect. Colorado, which has legalized
recreational marijuana, has already reported at least two casualties
and many more hospitalizations. Possibly, the marijuana smoker becomes
more convivial at first, but mainly one becomes steadily more
isolated, more alone.

Is this really civilized? A pot party, as opposed to a cocktail party,
can be a pretty gray affair.

With contemporary marijuana, the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) rate, that
is to say, the psychoactive ingredient in the drug, is about 15
percent higher than it was in the 1960s or '70s. The increased level
of THC makes the drug at least five times more powerful and brings
with it increased medical problems.

This littleknown fact hints at how widespread our ignorance really is
during the current debate about marijuana, or I should say the current
non-debate?

Recent polls indicate increased tolerance for a drug that until
recently, was considered malum prohibitum across the nation.

In January, a CNNORC International study found 55 percent of Americans
favoring legalization of marijuana.

Most consider it harmless.

I would not be surprised if they adjudged it less harmful than scotch
and soda.

Yet in a very instructive piece in The Wall Street Journal, former
drug czar William J. Bennett and lawyer Robert A. White wrote that
"while almost all the science and research is going on one direction -
pointing out the dangers of marijuana use - public opinion seems to be
going in favor of broad legalization." In sum, the studies show that
in teenagers and young adults, regular use of marijuana - which means
about once a week - leads to cognitive decline, poor attention and
memory, and a decline in IQ of about six points - and our young
people's IQ rates are low enough already.

This mental impairment seems to last for years.

One study found that teenagers who smoked marijuana daily developed
abnormal brain structure.

Moreover, there are psychiatrists who for years have argued that
extended use of marijuana was linked to psychosis and to permanent
brain damage.

Possibly, these findings might bear on Michael Brown's erratic
behavior in Ferguson, Mo., before his tragic death.

We know that the 6-foot-4, 292-pound teenager was at least on
marijuana.

We know that 10 minutes before he was shot, he robbed a liquor store
of cheap cigars. And at least some of us know that those Swisher Sweet
cigars are used as a conduit for ingesting a mixture of PCP and
marijuana. My guess is that Brown's senseless death was brought on by
what the psychiatrists mentioned above have referred to as psychosis
and permanent brain injury.

Yet marijuana, despite these findings, is increasingly considered the
civilized alternative to moderate use of alcohol.

How can this be? How can a country that has recently driven out
tobacco - whose problems most people were well aware of - suddenly
legalize a drug found to be so dangerous by modern science?

Lung disease is terrible, but mental health disorders are arguably
worse, and they occur across a wide range of human behavior.

My answer is weariness.

We have been fighting marijuana and other drug use for years, and it
seems to me the country is fatigued with throwing up the same arguments.

They are valid arguments, but many fellow citizens, especially the
young, are tired of them. Another way of saying it is that Americans
have become bored by the subject.

As Colorado goes, so goes America, and recent events in Ferguson may
just be just a harbinger.  
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D