Pubdate: Tue, 12 Jul 2016
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2016 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact: http://services.bostonglobe.com/news/opeds/letter.aspx?id=6340
Website: http://bostonglobe.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Joan Vennochi

LIKE BILL CLINTON, I DIDN'T INHALE

The Fight Against Marijuana Legalization

When it comes to marijuana legalization, what do you trust? Studies 
that conclude cannabis is not a harmful gateway drug - or the memory 
of a glassy-eyed college roommate who stopped going to class?

For me, it's the memory.

Like Bill Clinton, I didn't inhale. Honest. I went to college in the 
'70s, so pot, as we called it then, was obviously all around me. But 
I had a mother who warned me that the slightest intake would turn me 
into a heroin addict. I didn't develop deep skepticism toward 
authority until later in life, so I listened to her. When I finally 
tried marijuana - after college - I horrified the guy I was with by 
puffing out, not in. That humiliation saved me from future 
experimentation that could prove Mom wrong.

According to the data, legalization proponents say, there's no 
connection between marijuana use and opioid addiction. But whether 
one leads to the other really doesn't matter. Why increase the number 
of stupefied people wandering around an already perilous world? I 
also know alcohol is dangerous when abused, but I don't see that as a 
reason to add THC to the mix.

My kind of thinking gives Governor Charlie Baker, House Speaker 
Robert DeLeo, and Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh a solid chance at 
winning the anti-legalization argument - no matter how much money the 
other side pours into a ballot question that would legalize small 
amounts of marijuana for those over 21.

The website for the pro-legalization campaign - Regulate Marijuana 
Like Alcohol - stresses that the initiative does not allow marijuana 
to be used in public, only in "an enclosed, locked space" within a 
residence. It also creates "a tightly controlled system of licensed 
marijuana retail stores" that would be regulated by the Cannabis 
Control Commission. If you're already under the influence of a 
controlled substance, that's reassuring. Otherwise, not so much.

The three elected politicians, who spoke out against the November 
ballot question at a press conference last week, begin this fight 
with a slight edge. According to a recent Suffolk University/Boston 
Globe poll, 46 percent of likely general-election voters in 
Massachusetts said they would oppose a ballot question calling for 
legalization. Forty-three percent favor it, and 11 percent were 
undecided. There's also a clear age divide.

Voters age 18 to 55 support legalization. Voters age 56 and older 
oppose it. That covers the baby boomers, who remember the hippie 
culture and the recreational drug use that was a celebrated part of 
it. That generational experience - as major-or minor-league 
participant, or even as mere observer - does influence perspective.

During a 2014 gubernatorial debate, Baker, 59, answered "yes" to a 
question about whether he ever smoked marijuana. "I went to college 
in the '70s," he explained later. DeLeo, who is 66, said he tried 
marijuana "in my late 20s. . . . I was late to the game." At 49, 
Walsh brings his powerful personal story as a recovering alcoholic to 
the debate.

All three politicians offer anecdotal evidence to tie marijuana use 
to the opioid problem.

"If you know anyone in the recovery community, talk to them," said 
Walsh. "You'll hear that most of them, many of them, started with 
marijuana." DeLeo said the best evidence he has of the connection is 
not via "reports," but through visits he makes to halfway houses. 
When recovering addicts are asked how they started out, he said, "90 
percent of the time" they say it was marijuana. Baker also expressed 
concern about the danger of increased accessibility of drugs to young people.

The data may not yet predict that outcome. But common sense and 
memory don't rule it out.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom