Pubdate: Sun, 23 Sep 2012
Source: Metrowest Daily News (MA)
Copyright: 2012 MetroWest Daily News
Contact:  http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/619
Author: Lester Grinspoon

MARIJUANA IS HERE TO STAY

In 1967 , because of my concern about the rapidly growing use of the
dangerous drug marijuana, I began my studies of the scientific and
medical literature with the goal of providing a reasonably objective
summary of the data which underlay its prohibition.

Much to my surprise, I found no credible scientific basis for the
justification of the prohibition.

The assertion that it is a very toxic drug is based on old and new
myths.

In fact, one of the many exceptional features of this drug is its
remarkably limited toxicity .

Compared to aspirin, which people are free to purchase and use without
the advice or prescription of a physician, cannabis is much safer:
there are well over 1000 deaths annually from aspirin in the United
States alone, whereas there has never been a death anywhere from marijuana.

In fact, when cannabis regains its place in the US Pharmacopeia, a
status it lost after the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 , it
will be seen as one of the safest drugs in that compendium.

Moreover, it will eventually be hailed as a "wonder drug" just as
penicillin was in the 1940s.

Penicillin achieved this reputation because it was remarkably
non-toxic, it was, once it was produced on an economy of scale, quite
inexpensive, and it was effective in the treatment of a variety of
infectious diseases. Similarly , cannabis is exceptionally safe, and
once freed of the prohibition tariff, will be significantly less
expensive than the conventional drugs it replaces while its already
impressive medical versatility continues to expand.

Given these characteristics, it should come as no surprise that its
use as a medicine is growing exponentially or that individual states
have established legislation which makes it possible for patients
suffering from a variety of disorders to use the drug legally with a
recommendation from a physician. Unfortunately , because each state
arrogates the right to define which symptoms and syndromes may be
lawfully treated with cannabis, many patients with legitimate claims
to the therapeutic usefulness of this plant must continue to use it
illegally and therefore endure the extra layer of anxiety imposed by
its illegality .

California and Colorado are the two states in which the largest number
of patients for whom it would be medically useful have the freedom to
access it legally . New Jersey is the most restrictive, and I would
guess that only a small fraction of the pool of patients who would
find marijuana to be as or more useful than the invariably more toxic
conventional drugs it will displace will be allowed legal access to
it.

The framers of the New Jersey legislation may fear what they see as
chaos in the distribution of medical marijuana in California and
Colorado, a fear born of their concern that the more liberal
parameters of medical use adopted in these states have allowed its
access to many people who use it for other than strictly medicinal
reasons. If this is correct, it is consistent with my view that it
will be impossible to realize the full potential of this plant as a
medicine, not to speak of the other way s it is useful, in the setting
of this destructive prohibition.

Marijuana is here to stay ; there can no longer be any doubt that it
is not just another transient drug fad. Like alcohol, it has become a
part of our culture, a culture which is now trying to find an
appropriate social, legal and medical accommodation. We have finally
come to realize, after arresting over 21 million marijuana users since
the 1960s, most of them young and 90 percent for mere possession, that
"making war" against cannabis doesn't work anymore now than it did for
alcohol during the day s of the Volstead Act. Many people are
expressing their impatience with the federal government's
intransigence as it obdurately maintains its position that "marijuana
is not a medicine".

Thirteen states have now decriminalized marijuana. And, beginning with
California in 1996, another 17 states and the District of Columbia
have followed suit in allowing patients legal access to marijuana, and
others are in the process of enacting similar legislation. These
states are inadvertently constructing a large social experiment in how
best to deal with the reinvention of the "cannabis as
medicine"phenomenon, while at the same time sending a powerful message
to the federal government. Each of these state actions has taken a
slice out of the extraordinary popular delusion known as
cannabinophobia.

Perhaps in part because so many Americans have discovered for
themselves that marijuana is both relatively benign and remarkably
useful, moral consensus about the evil of cannabis is becoming
uncertain and shallow. The authorities pretend that eliminating
cannabis traffic is like eliminating slavery or piracy , or
eradicating smallpox or malaria. The official view is that every thing
possible has to be done to prevent everyone from ever using marijuana,
even as a medicine. But there is also an informal lore of marijuana
use that is far more tolerant. Many of the millions of cannabis users
in this country not only disobey the drug laws but feel a principled
lack of respect for them. They do not conceal their bitter resentment
of laws that render them criminals. They believe that many people have
been deceived by their government, and they have come to doubt that
the "authorities"understand much about either the deleterious or the
useful properties of the drug. This undercurre! nt of ambivalence and
resistance in public attitudes towards marijuana laws leaves room for
the possibility of change, especially since the costs of prohibition
are all so high and rising.

It is also clear that the realities of human need are incompatible
with the demand for a legally enforceable distinction between medicine
and all other uses of cannabis. Marijuana simply does not conform to
the conceptual boundaries established by twentieth-century
institutions.

It is truly a sui generis substance; is there another non-toxic drug
which is capable of heightening many pleasures, has a large and
growing number of medical uses (www.rxmarijuana.com) and has the
potential to enhance (www.marijuanauses.com ) some individual
capacities? The only workable way of realizing the full potential of
this remarkable substance, including its full medical potential, is to
free it from the present dual set of regulations - those that control
prescription drugs in general and the special criminal laws that
control psychoactive substances. These mutually reinforcing laws
establish a set of social categories that strangle its uniquely
multifaceted potential. The only way out is to cut the knot by giving
marijuana the same status as alcohol - legalizing it for adults for
all uses and removing it entirely from the medical and criminal
control systems.

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Lester Grinspoon M.D. is Associate Professor of Psychiatry, emeritus,
at Harvard Medical School and the author of Marihuana Reconsidered and
(with James B Bakalar) Marijuana, the Forbidden Medicine.