Opponents of legalizing marijuana focus on risk to teens
“The bottom line is, if you care about young people succeeding in education and later in life in your state, then you don’t want to legalize marijuana,” said Kevin Sabet, a former adviser to Gil Kerlikowske, the Obama administration’s drug policy director.
Sabet, who is working with anti-legalization groups in the three states, said the risk to young people has emerged as a focal point of their campaign.
The federal government considers marijuana a dangerous, illegal narcotic.
PROHIBITION?
Mason Tvert, co-director of the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, which is the main group behind the legalization measure in Colorado, said voters see prohibition as the “worst possible policy” for protecting teenagers.
“Because it’s putting marijuana in an underground market, where it’s entirely uncontrolled,” he said.
His group points to a survey by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that showed while pot use went up nationwide, the percentage of teen users in Colorado fell to 22 percent in 2011 from 25 percent in 2009.
Is marijuana less dangerous than alcohol and/or cigarettes?
Every objective study on marijuana has concluded that it is far safer than alcohol and cigarettes for the consumer and the surrounding community. Alcohol and tobacco are more toxic, more addictive, and more harmful to the body than marijuana, and alcohol is more likely to result in injuries and lead to interpersonal violence. According to an assessment recently published in the British Columbia Mental Health and Addictions Journal, health-related costs for alcohol consumers are eight times greater than those for marijuana consumers, and those for tobacco consumers are are 40 times greater than those for marijuana consumers. Our campaign has compiled a great deal of evidence regarding the relative harms of marijuana and alcohol at marijuana-vs-alcohol.org, and I have also co-authored a book on the subject titled, Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People To Drink? (Chelsea Green, 2009).
Has anyone, to your knowledge, ever died from marijuana usage?
There has never been a fatal marijuana overdose in history, and there is no clear-cut case of a death attributed to marijuana use. Thus, it comes as little surprise that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which track all causes of death in the United States, does not even have a category for marijuana use. It does, however, attribute upwards of 40,000 deaths per year to alcohol use, including hundreds of acute overdoses.
Does marijuana use lead to a higher likelihood of cancer?
There is no conclusive evidence linking marijuana use to cancer, and the largest case-controlled study ever conducted on the subject found that marijuana smoking is not associated with an increased risk of developing lung cancer. In fact, much to the surprise of the researchers, that study found that people who smoked marijuana actually had lower incidences of cancer compared to non-users. Meanwhile, alcohol has been found to contribute to the development of various forms of cancer, and we all know just how carcinogenic tobacco is. It’s telling that there are no cancer-related deaths attributed to marijuana each year, but there are thousands attributed to alcohol and hundreds of thousands attributed to tobacco.
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The Huffington Post | By Matt Ferner
That coincided with the creation of a state agency in 2010 to oversee medical marijuana use, which Tvert’s group says shows that regulating pot - not prohibiting it - may reduce teen use.
But opponents said there is no information to back that up.
A survey of U.S. teens released this year by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found 27 percent of respondents said it was easiest to obtain cigarettes, 24 percent said beer and 19 percent named marijuana.
“The claim that legalization and tight regulation will mean that youth will use less is bogus, because we don’t have the experiment,” said Rosalie Pacula, co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center. She added that state-level legalization itself would be “the experiment.”
“We don’t know definitively that legalization will increase youth use. I can tell you from the research I’ve done, it supports such a conclusion,” she said.
Marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug in the United States. Teens are increasingly turning to it, and last year pot overtook cigarettes in popularity with 6.6 percent of 12th-graders using it daily, according to the University of Michigan Monitoring the Future Survey.
In comparison to the limited funds raised by pot opponents, the coalition of groups campaigning to legalize marijuana in Colorado have raised over $1 million this year, according to campaign finance reports. In Washington state, records show the pro-legalization group has taken in about $2 million since the measure qualified for the ballot in January.
In Oregon, the pot legalization group has only raised about $13,000, but the latest state records do not show any funds raised by opponents.
An Angus Reid Public Opinion Poll released in June found 52 percent of Americans support legalizing pot. The survey of 1,017 adults had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent.
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By Keith Coffman and Alex Dobuzinskis