OFF THE WIRE
By David L. Nathan, Special to CNN
David Nathan says pot should be sold and regulated like alcohol and tobacco.
Editor's note: David L.
Nathan, a clinical associate professor at Robert Wood Johnson Medical
School, was recently elected as a distinguished fellow in the American
Psychiatric Association. He teaches and practices general adult
psychiatry in Princeton, New Jersey.
(CNN) -- David Frum is one of today's best and most reasoned conservative political voices, so his recent CNN.com op-ed on
marijuana policy was just a little disappointing. Not because he
advocates the drug's decriminalization -- he rightly thinks locking
people up or arresting them for casual use is a bad idea -- but because
he opposes its legalization for adults.
I agree with much of what
he says about pot's potential harm, especially for the young and the
psychiatrically ill. Like Frum, I am a father who worries about my kids
getting sidetracked by cannabis before their brains have a chance to
develop. But I am also a physician who understands that the negative
legal consequences of marijuana use are far worse than the medical
consequences.
Frum would reduce the
punishment for marijuana use for adults but nominally maintain its
illegality in order to send a message to young people that pot is a "bad
choice," as if breaking the rules wasn't as much an incentive as a
deterrent for adolescents. Kids are smart enough to recognize and
dismiss a "because I said so" argument when they see one. By trying to
hide marijuana from innately curious young people, we have elevated its
status to that of a forbidden fruit. I believe a better approach is to
bring pot into the open, make it legal for people over the age of 21,
and educate children from a young age about the actual dangers of its
recreational use.
David Nathan
Throughout my career as a
clinical psychiatrist, I have seen lives ruined by drugs like cocaine,
painkillers and alcohol. I have also borne witness to the devastation
brought upon cannabis users -- almost never by abuse of the drug, but by
a justice system that chooses a sledgehammer to kill a weed.
Alcohol, tobacco,
marijuana, caffeine and refined sugar are among the most commonly used,
potentially habit-forming recreational substances. All are best left out
of our daily diets. Only marijuana is illegal, though alcohol and
tobacco are clearly more harmful. In several respects, even sugar poses more of a threat to our nation's health than pot.
I agree with Frum that chronic use of cannabis correlates with mood changes and low motivation, especially when started in adolescence. In individuals with psychosis, it may trigger or worsen their symptoms.
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But these dangers are far surpassed by the perils of alcohol, which is associated with
pancreatitis, gastritis, cirrhosis, permanent dementia, physiological
dependence and fatal withdrawal. In healthy but reckless teens and young
adults, it is frighteningly easy to consume a lethal dose of alcohol,
but it is essentially impossible to do so with marijuana. Further,
alcohol causes severe impairment of judgment, which results in violence,
risky sexual behavior and more use of hard drugs.
Those who believe
cannabis to be a gateway to opioids and other highly dangerous drugs
fail to appreciate that the illegal purchase of marijuana exposes
consumers to dealers who push the hard stuff. Given marijuana's
popularity in this country, the consumption of more dangerous drugs
could actually decrease if pot were purchased at a liquor store rather
than on the street corner where heroin and crack are sold.
There is another more
pressing reason to legalize and regulate marijuana, even for the sake of
our children: the potential for adulteration of black-market cannabis
and the substitution of even more dangerous copycat compounds.
Much like Prohibition-era fatalities from bad moonshine, harmful
synthetic marijuana substitutes are proliferating, with street names
like K2 and Spice. The Drug Enforcement Administration struggles to
combat these compounds by outlawing them, but I see no decrease in their
popularity among my patients. Natural marijuana poses much less danger
than synthetic cannabinoids -- legal or otherwise.
So who had the bright
idea of banning cannabis in the first place? Was it physicians? Social
service organizations? No. The credit goes to the Federal Bureau of
Narcotics, which in 1937 pushed through laws ending the growth, trade
and consumption of all forms of cannabis, including the inert but
commercially useful hemp plant. America's ban on the so-called "Weed of
Madness" was based on bad science and fabricated stories of violence
perpetrated under the influence. The madness of cannabis can be ascribed
not so much to its users, but to those who sought to criminalize the
drug so soon after the monumental failure of alcohol Prohibition.
That's not to say our
marijuana laws have failed to change drug use in America. Cannabis is
more widely used today than at any time before its prohibition, even
though it was domesticated in antiquity and has been cultivated ever
since. Pot prohibition has also greatly increased illegal activity and
violence. Otherwise law-abiding private users became criminals, and
criminals became rich through the untaxed, bloody and highly lucrative
illicit drug trade.
But America can fix this
mess through marijuana legalization. Federal, state and local
governments can regulate the cannabis trade as they do with alcohol and
tobacco -- monitoring the production process for safety and purity,
controlling where it is sold, taxing all aspects of marijuana production
and consumption, and redirecting resources from punishment to
prevention.
Forget the antiquated
dogma and judge pot prohibition on its own merits. If you still believe
that cannabis should be illegal, then you must logically support the
criminalization of alcohol and tobacco, with vigorous prosecution and
even imprisonment of producers and consumers. Does that sound
ridiculous? Then you must conclude that the only rational approach to
cannabis is to legalize, regulate and tax it.