Let’s Look at the Facts About Drugs

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Drugs. I use them. You use them. And now, Governor Evers, and a majority of Wisconsinites, think residents should be able to use cannabis without being branded criminals. But the odds of that look slim. The “don’t bother me with facts” caucus in our gerrymandered State Assembly has no interest in either the majority opinion of our citizenry (59% favor full legalization, 83% support medical) nor the scientific facts about the benefits and dangers of using marijuana. Let’s look at those facts.

First off, a psychoactive drug is any substance you ingest that alters your consciousness. Caffeine, booze, antidepressants, opioids, cocaine, LSD, sugar, nicotine . . . the list is long. In moderation, a number of them are essentially harmless, while others can kill you the first time you try them. Many of us rely on drugs to get through the day. We are chemical creatures and, with few exceptions, tinker with our psyches by employing psychoactive substances that produce the mood-altering effects we desire. But make no mistake. We all use mind-altering drugs, including certain foods.

So, which substances are most dangerous to individual and public health? In Wisconsin, alcohol, popular among the anti-cannabis ideologues in state government, tops the list. This legal elixir kills more people than all illicit drugs combined, as does nicotine, and as do abused prescription drugs. According to the WHO, alcohol kills over three million people each year, with about 100,000 of these preventable deaths in the United States. In the ranks of killer substances, this puts booze second only to tobacco (about 480,000 US fatalities annually). What’s more, overdosing on alcohol can kill in one sitting.

Meanwhile, marijuana has no known toxicity. If you overdose on cannabis, you ultimately fall asleep and wake up goofy. There is not one single verified case of someone dying from cannabis toxicity. Zippo. But what about cannabis smoke causing lung disease? Inhaling smoke is bad, period, but there are no proven cases of someone dying of lung cancer from smoking pot. The damage from smoking can be avoided by vaporizing cannabis flower or consuming edibles. So, within our State’s current drug policy, lethality (alcohol and cigarettes) is rewarded with legality. This irony was not lost on Congress, which, in 1919, passed Prohibition, outlawing alcohol. But the criminalization of booze worked about as well as today’s war on drugs—not at all.

Treatment, Not Prison

So, Prohibition was repealed and we decided to provide treatment to those hooked on alcohol rather than incarcerate them. And that was wise, because treatment is both more effective in promoting recovery and far less expensive than putting users behind bars. Criminalization of drugs leads to more deaths, more tax dollars down the crapper, plays into the hands of criminal cartels and gangs, and does nothing to curtail addiction itself. Simply stated, it’s flat out dumb.

Arguments for a law enforcement approach to cannabis are hackneyed and unsupported by research. Pot as a gateway drug? Most hard-core substance users start with tobacco and alcohol. What about crime? Most intoxicated violent offenders commit their transgressions under the influence of alcohol. Domestic violence and sexual assault? Booze again. Traffic fatalities? Drunk driving causes far more than all other drugs combined.

That’s not to say people can’t get messed up on marijuana. They can and do, some badly. If it becomes the center of their existence and undermines their school, job, family or health, it’s a serious problem. And there is strong evidence that, until reaching adulthood (think 21), most psychoactive substances, with few exceptions, are bad for the developing brain and should be avoided entirely. Nonetheless, substance abuse is an individual and public health issue, not a criminal justice one. It’s time we quit haggling over legality and address addiction/dependence, regardless of the drug, as what it is — a disease of the brain — not a moral failing or character flaw.

Bottom line? Of all the primary psychoactive drugs, legal and illicit, cannabis has the lowest toxicity profile and the least potential for adverse health consequences. What’s more, medical marijuana has proven a godsend for many struggling with pain, chemotherapy side effects, PTSD, sleep disorders and a host of other ailments.  

As for the Reefer Madness throwbacks in the Assembly blocking cannabis legalization, their thinking on this matter, if one could call it thinking at all, is seriously impaired.

For more, visit philipchard.com.