Pubdate: Mon, 28 Oct 2013
Source: Manawatu Standard (New Zealand)
Copyright: 2013 Manawatu Evening Standard
Contact:  http://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1057
Author: Andrew Sullivan
Page: 8

SEA CHANGE IN CANNABIS ATTITUDES

Legalisation of Cannabis in the United States Is Only a Matter of
Time, Writes Andrew Sullivan.

Alexis de Tocqueville, easily the best European interpreter of
America, observed how opinion shifts in this still-new country: " As
long as the majority is still undecided, discussion is carried on; but
as soon as its decision is irrevocably pronounced, everyone is silent,
and the friends as well as the opponents of the measure unite in
assenting to its propriety."

If you want to know why universal healthcare is still being fought
over in America, the answer is that the country remains split on the
subject. And if you want to know why gay marriage has suddenly gone
from being unthinkable to being an increasingly accepted part of the
American landscape, you'll notice how polling support for it has
shifted from 57- 40 against marriage equality in 2009 to 54- 43 in the
latest Gallup poll four years later.

That's why it's striking that Gallup just found the first clear
national majority for legalising cannabis for all uses. Like the
question of gay marriage, the idea of legal marijuana was once
unthinkable. In 1996 only 27 per cent of Americans backed same-sex
marriage and 25 per cent backed legalising weed, in Gallup's polling.
In 2013, those numbers became 54 per cent and 58 per cent,
respectively.

In the last year alone, Gallup found support for legal pot rising 10
points. ( The notion that the 1960s were much more relaxed about this
is a myth. In 1969, at the height of the youth revolt, only 12 per
cent favoured legalisation.) As with gay marriage, the younger
generations are the most emphatic. About 70 per cent of young
Americans favour both.

The young columnist, Josh Barro, puts the 58 per cent statistic in
perspective: " More Americans want to legalise marijuana than think
President Obama is doing a good job ( 44 per cent), want to keep or
expand Obamacare ( 38 per cent), favoured attacking Syria ( 36 per
cent), support a 20- cent gas tax increase to pay for infrastructure (
29 per cent), or like the Republican party ( 28 per cent). And legal
marijuana has more than five times as many supporters as Congress does
( 11 per cent)."

In this climate, the federal government's official position is not
just an outlier, but an absurdity. In the US, unlike Britain, the
government's legal view is that " marijuana has a high potential for
abuse, has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the
United States, and has a lack of accepted safety for use under medical
supervision". This is simply empirically untrue.

No-one has ever overdosed from cannabis; it has been used in the
Americas for centuries for medical purposes. Even the federal
government's own National Institutes of Health has a patent for
medical cannabis on the grounds that " cannabinoids are found to have
particular application . . . in limiting neurological damage following
a . . . stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative
diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and HIV
dementia". The potential for cannabis-based breakthroughs in
treatment of various ailments led The Lancet to call it " the aspirin
of the 21st century"  a decade ago. Colorado and Washington state,
where marijuana sales are now regulated in the same way as alcohol.
The sky has not fallen. Legal marijuana for purely medical use something 
deemed impossible by the federal government  is now
permitted in 19 states and Washington DC. Like the issue of same-sex
marriage, federalism is a boon here.

Cannabis is increasingly a middle-class drug, too. Vast swaths of the
American professional classes use it the way they drink alcohol after
a long day at the office, or as a toke before a concert.

America, of course, is a Puritan country, founded by Puritans. My New
York apartment sits above an old speakeasy from the 1920s, where the
rich used to drink in secret. Prohibition of alcohol was popular -
from Right to Left - when it was introduced. It collapsed only because
it was proved to boost crime, hypocrisy and misery when the Great
Depression kicked in.

When Prohibition ended, it did so like an ocean liner suddenly going
vertical and sinking beneath the waves. It will happen with
prohibition of marijuana too. Much sooner than many now expect.

The Sunday Times
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MAP posted-by: Matt