Generally, I find the Daily Kos posts to be too shrill and partisan for my taste, which may be why I read their spam – a take on the fever-pitch on the political left. But this post concerning the effects of just a few states beginning to legalize marijuana is really just lovely, and as well as appealing to the hippy wing of the political left, it should also appeal to the honest libertarian wing of the political right (this I say from 25-30 years of reading REASON Magazine – dunno what REASON says these days, though). Its gist is that villages in Mexico that had been growing pot for decades have stopped because of the economics – it’s just not worth it.
As far back as I can recall, foreign political leaders have reiterated that American entreaties, threats, and other types of messages requesting them to stop would be better met by reducing demand, rather than stopping supply. Not that they didn’t try – the Americans have been especially active in South America, supplying military aid in attempts to interdict supplies. Since this was a politically motivated process, empty successes were proclaimed – tons of this or that captured and burned. Meanwhile, the supplies kept coming, by “mule” and even by rude submarines, and the interdiction efforts didn’t result in cessation of supply, but (economics majors, hold your breaths) … rising prices.
And did the consumers of the drugs then work harder to make the money to buy the drugs? Well, I’m sure some did – but the general consensus is that a lot of them turned to crime to finance their habits.
And all this over a drug which apparently has no direct negative impact on physical health (unlike, say, alcohol). Andrew Sullivan’s Dish blog followed this issue extensively here; their conclusion was that studies indicated no harm except maybe, possibly to teenage users who, to borrow a term, over-imbibed.
Now, a new study out from the University College of London provides even stronger evidence that the Duke findings were flawed. The study draws on a considerably larger sample of adolescents than the Duke research – 2,612 children born in the Bristol area of the U.K. in 1991 and 1992. Researchers examined children’s IQ scores at age 8 and again at age 15, and found “no relationship between cannabis use and lower IQ at age 15,” when confounding factors – alcohol use, cigarette use, maternal education, and others – were taken into account. Even heavy marijuana use wasn’t associated with IQ.
Of course, this isn’t the entire issue; the use of marijuana, the thought goes, may lead to less desirable behaviors. From the same Washington Post report:
In a press release accompanying the study, lead author Claire Mokrysz noted that “this is a potentially important public health message- the belief that cannabis is particularly harmful may detract focus from and awareness of other potentially harmful behaviours.” Reviewer Guy Goodwin of Oxford University agreed: “the current focus on the alleged harms of cannabis may be obscuring the fact that its use is often correlated with that of other even more freely available drugs and possibly lifestyle factors. These may be as or more important than cannabis itself.”
This is a key point. Many skeptics of legalization in the United States focus on the potential harms of marijuana use alone. But marijuana use is just one of many behaviors that can possibly affect life outcomes. In many cases these other behaviors are likely to play a much larger role in determining a person’s trajectory through life.
It also partly explains why even as we’ve seen increasingly permissive laws regulating marijuana use in the past decade, there has been no corresponding uptick in negative outcomes.
In all fairness, other studies may indicate changes to how the brain is wired; here is a Boston Globe news report on this subject:
Young adults who occasionally smoke marijuana show abnormalities in two key areas of their brain related to emotion, motivation, and decision making, raising concerns that they could be damaging their developing minds at a critical time, according to a new study by Boston researchers.
Meanwhile, being sent to jail for marijuana use, or intent to distribute, isn’t a negative outcome? This may be the key point in the “War on Drugs” – Americans can be very stubborn, and attempting to direct their lives is, along with being UnAmerican, also futile, expensive, and wastes lives that might have been otherwise highly productive.
The knock-on effects of marijuana legalization include simplifying, to a great extent, the job of policemen; elimination of a large number of prison beds (and perhaps the elimination of the private prison companies); the lessening of fear amongst a substantial portion of the American citizenry; and possibly greater productivity for those folks who find medicinal marijuana helps them cope with chronic pain and other illnesses.
I contacted Senator Amy Klobuchar to discover her current plans on the drug front, but received a disappointing form letter in return:
As you may know, although 15 states and the District of Columbia have enacted laws permitting the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, a federal law known as the Controlled Substances Act continues to prohibit the use of marijuana in the United States. In October 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder released a formal set of guidelines for states that have enacted laws authorizing the medical use of marijuana. The new guidelines direct attorneys to refrain from focusing their investigative and prosecutorial resources on patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws on medical marijuana, but reiterates that federal prosecutors will continue to fully prosecute illegal drug trafficking and related activities.
Congress has determined that marijuana is a dangerous drug, and the illegal distribution and sale of marijuana is a serious crime. Commercial enterprises that unlawfully market and sell marijuana for profit continue to be an enforcement priority for the Department of Justice. Please know that I will keep your comments in mind should any relevant legislation come before the Senate for consideration.
