Pubdate: Sat, 14 Feb 2015
Source: Register Citizen (CT)
Copyright: 2015 Register Citizen
Contact:  http://www.registercitizen.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/598
Author: Susan Bigelow, CTNews Junkie.com
Note: Susan Bigelow is an awardwinning columnist and the founder of 
CTLocalPolitics. She lives in Enfield with her wife and their cats.

MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION WORTH A SHOT

Marijuana is now legal in several states out west, and the world has 
yet to end. That's part of why two Connecticut lawmakers, Reps. Edwin 
Vargas, D-Hartford, and Juan Candelaria, D-New Haven, want to bring 
legalization east.

Is that a good idea? What will happen if we fully legalize marijuana?

Conventional wisdom on that breaks down into two camps: One side says 
that crime will go up, use will go up, and that all of this will pose 
a serious public health risk. The other says that legalization will 
save the government money, help keep people out of jail, and 
otherwise not make life too different.

Which is true: dystopia or pothead paradise? Well, like most things, 
the reality falls somewhere in the murky middle.

That legalization brings in revenue isn't in doubt. So far taxes on 
marijuana on Colorado have brought in more than $39 million in 
revenue, which, for a state staring at a deficit, is nothing to 
sneeze at. Other states are seeing similar windfalls.

However, as legalization becomes more common across the country  and 
there's no reason at this point to think it won't  these effects will 
start to diminish. This is sort of like gambling: it brought in a lot 
of revenue when Foxwoods was the only casino this side of New York 
City, but now that casinos are a lot more common, each new casino 
brings in less and less. So sure, the state will get some money, but 
it may be less than we think.

What about use going up? Based on experiences following the 
intermediate steps of medical marijuana and marijuana 
decriminalization - which made it so that possessing a small amount 
of marijuana would be punishable by a relatively small fine instead 
of much larger fines and jail time  it's not abundantly clear that 
marijuana use rates would go up significantly, if at all.

As for crime, at least one report suggests that crime rates went up 
after medical marijuana legalization and/ or decriminalization, 
though it's not clear why that happened. But Colorado reports after 
one year of legalization that violent crime rates are actually down, 
as are traffic fatalities. These look like continuations of ongoing 
trends, which means that in one state, at least, the immediate 
effects were almost negligible.

What about healtwh effects, though? The National Institute on Drug 
Abuse says that marijuana has a "wide range of effects, particularly 
on cardiopulmonary and mental health."

A 2014 meta-study published in the New England Journal of Medicine 
does suggest that some of these health risks are reasonably 
well-documented, but that there are plenty of "confounding factors" 
that make assessing the severity of those risks difficult. The 
science seems to boil down to the following: marijuana is definitely 
harmful, but we're still not certain just how harmful it is.

So we're left with frustrating uncertainty. Public opinion actually 
favors legalization, but the governor has said that he won't sign a 
legalization bill. Would it really be worth trying to change his mind 
if there isn't a clear answer one way or the other?

I think it is, for a couple of reasons.

First, let's admit it: Lots of people in this state smoke pot, and 
for the most part they get it from illicit dealers. Naturally, 
there's no regulation of their products. Because of that, over the 
past decades we've seen a rise in the psychoactive ingredient THC 
(Tetrahydrocannabinol) content of marijuana from 3 percent in 1980 to 
about 12 percent today. The various studies out there suggest that 
the dangers of marijuana increase as the THC percentage goes up. 
Trying to get people to stop using marijuana hasn't been effective, 
and neither has trying to stop the production and trafficking of the 
drug. Doesn't it make sense to try and at least make it safer?

It also makes sense to bring marijuana use and sale out of the 
shadows. If someone you love is going to use marijuana anyway, 
wouldn't you rather they acquired it safely?

We have such a strange relationship with various drugs, both legal 
and not. A lot of us drink alcohol or smoke tobacco cigarettes, for 
instance. In both of those cases, the government and public health 
advocates have opted to try and educate the public, regulate the sale 
and composition of tobacco and alcohol, and impose significant "sin 
taxes" instead of banning them. Maybe that's the way to go here.

It's not a perfect solution, to be sure. But our current drug 
policies don't work at all. Let's use our common sense and give these 
bills the consideration they deserve.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom