August 31, 2016
Page 7
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Federal Marijuana Laws Reek of Hypocrisy
Keeping pot
on same list as
heroin
J ill r iChardson
For a few brief
months, it looked
like America might
take a step closer to
sanity. And then came the news:
the Obama administration will
not loosen federal restrictions on
marijuana after all.
Before delving into the issue
of marijuana, consider its two
fellow “gateway drugs:” alcohol
and tobacco. Aside from the po-
tential benefits from drinking a
glass of red wine, neither one is
good for you.
Alcohol can be incredibly
harmful, either via acute alcohol
poisoning or via chronic destruc-
tion to your life and liver. Ciga-
rettes are always bad for you.
All three—alcohol, tobacco,
and marijuana—supposedly en-
tice users to take a timid step into
the world of drug use and then
find themselves plunged all the
way in with “harder” drugs like
heroin, cocaine, or meth.
by
And while illegal drugs like
meth and heroin can ruin your
life or kill you, so can legal ones
like alcohol. Just ask any recov-
ering alcoholic.
But among the three
so-called gateway drugs,
marijuana alone is illegal
according to the federal
government.
Marijuana is classified
as a Schedule I drug, defined as
having no medical use and being
subject to abuse. It’s more regu-
lated than cocaine, which hospi-
tals have on hand for medical use.
But half of all U.S. states dis-
agree and have enacted laws to
legalize medical marijuana at the
state level.
So recently, two governors
asked the feds to take anoth-
er look at its classification. The
Obama administration and the
DEA had a chance to ask them-
selves—should marijuana really
be on the same list as heroin, as
it is now?
Yes, they decided, it should.
They’ve agreed to expand the
availability for “legitimate re-
searchers” to conduct clinical
trials to determine whether mari-
juana has any legitimate medical
uses, but they currently say there’s
no credible evidence that it does.
The hypocrisy is unbelievable,
on two levels.
First, because alcohol and to-
bacco are allowed, even though
people can abuse them, and even
when they provide no medical
benefit.
Second, because we use an
entirely different standard to de-
termine the safety and legality of
any number of other chemicals.
In most cases, our laws treat
chemicals as safe until proven
dangerous. Marijuana, on the oth-
er hand, is being held to a higher
standard. It’s not even that it’s
considered dangerous until prov-
en safe. The government says that
they won’t lift regulations on it
until it’s proven beneficial.
In the last 40 years, the EPA
banned just five out of over
80,000 chemicals used in the U.S.
So while asbestos was still legal,
even after scientists knew how
toxic it was, people were locked
up in jail for smoking pot.
To be fair, Congress just
passed a reform of toxic chemical
regulations this year. But the new
law only goes so far. The EPA is
currently working its way down a
list of 90 high-priority chemicals
that are both toxic and legal, in-
cluding asbestos and arsenic.
Why do we have one standard
for thousands of chemicals—con-
sidered safe until proven other-
wise—and another for marijua-
na?
Imagine a world in which as-
bestos had to be proven safe be-
fore it could be sold legally. How
many horrible deaths from meso-
thelioma would’ve been prevent-
ed?
Meanwhile, what if marijuana,
which has caused zero deaths by
overdose, was considered safe
until proven otherwise?
We could regulate it just like
we do tobacco and alcohol. We
could say no advertising its use,
no driving or working while high,
no selling marijuana to anyone
under 21, and so on.
The decision to keep marijua-
na illegal on a federal level until
it’s proven to be beneficial reeks
of hypocrisy.
OtherWords columnist Jill
Richardson is the author of Rec-
ipe for America: Why Our Food
System Is Broken and What We
Can Do to Fix It. OtherWords.
org.
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