Irrational Arguments for Drug Prohibition
Dominique Browning in The New York Times Book Review:
Julie Myerson, a novelist living in London and the mother of three children, was finally forced to throw her eldest son out of the house — and change the locks — when his cannabis habit so deranged him that he became physically violent. He was 17 years old.
“I am flattened, deadened. I have nothing in my mind except the deep black hole that is the loss of my child,” she writes in “The Lost Child: A Mother’s Story.” Myerson undergoes a crash course in drugs. Her son is smoking skunk, she learns, a strain of cannabis whose THC content is much more potent than garden- variety pot — except that it has become garden variety. I had never heard of skunk either, but a quick search online led me to a souk of seeds for the home farmer, advertising up to a toxic 22 percent tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content in some strains. My shopping cart remained empty as I browsed in disbelief. Even as stronger varieties are being bred and marketed, medical research is linking cannabis use to behavioral and cognitive changes reminiscent of psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression and anxiety disorder. And yet we find ourselves arguing about whether pot is addictive or a gateway drug or should be legalized.
So the current drug policy, where narcotics are illegal, produces a world where particularly potent strains of marijuana are being produced, an evolution incentivized by the need to smuggle it. A teenager, who wouldn’t be able to get pot legally even if drug prohibition ended, gets it under the current regime, and does damage to his life. This anecdote is cited as an obvious argument against legalizing pot.
I am unaware of evidence linking particularly potent marijuana to psychiatric disorders, but if that kind of reaction were happening, due to a particularly virulent strain seeping into the enormous market for illegal pot, there would seem to be two options — continue the failed policy of prohibition as though it might magically start working, or enact a regime of legalized marijuana where dangerous varieties could be mostly regulated away.
Back-door skunk is pretty big here in the UK. The strongest strains have mostly arisen through accidental crossing, usually by home growers. The more commercial stuff, like hash, is usually made in Europe under lights and brought into England.
That said, if you know a home-grower, you’re usually guaranteed a decent product at a fair price. It’s anecdotal, but I can’t say any of the potheads or growers I know have ever been violent. They’re just regular working folk looking to relax and make a couple bucks on the side.
I guess it’s a lot better for the money to be going to decent, working people than organized crime syndicates.
— Hard Rain · Aug 31, 10:18 AM · #
I can’t say any of the potheads or growers I know have ever been violent. They’re just regular working folk looking to relax and make a couple bucks on the side.
— supra shoes · Aug 31, 01:33 PM · #
What atmosphere! (A woman and an empty shopping cart? No way!)
Uh huh.
Sacred urgency: if you can penetrate it, I don’t want it.
Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to wake and bake and suck today’s dick.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Aug 31, 01:36 PM · #
That’s obtuse, Conor. I’m pro-legalization, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that once we legalize it, <i>more</i> 17-year-olds will use pot than while it’s illegal. Given that, Myerson’s story indicates that some of those 17 year olds will burn out.
It’s possible that other positive effects will ameliorate some of that cost, but it doesn’t do us any good to just pretend the cost away. An honest legalization proponent, IMHO, says (1) yes, young Myerson’s life was ruined by pot and (2) yes, the number of people’s lives ruined by pot may go up after we legalize, but (a) let’s experiment with partial legalization and test and/or (b) those costs are justified by the benefits of legalization, as follows . . .
— J Mann · Aug 31, 02:08 PM · #
It’s funny, you’d never hear something like vodka described as having a “toxic 37% ethyl alcohol content”, even though the LD50 for ethyl alcohol is far, far lower than the LD50 for cannabis. There has never been a documented human death by marijuana poisoning, and the so-called “safety ratio” of cannabis (the ratio of estimated fatal dose to the minimum effective dose) is 1000 to 1, a far higher ratio than legal drugs including alcohol, nicotine, or even asprin.
So? Surely the number of lives ruined by alcohol also increased post prohibition. And I think we all know far more people for whom alcohol has made a ruin of their lives than we know people for whom pot have done the same thing – but for some reason, turn 21 (or even younger where this story occurred!) and it’s perfectly legal for you to buy a beer, buy some wine, or buy a bottle of dangerous, toxic spirits.
I’m as liberal as they come, but even I know that freedom is necessarily going to come with the freedom of some people to ruin their lives. The balance must be struck somewhere, and when we observe that the vast majority of the citizenry are simply ignoring a law – the prohibition on cannabis use, downloading music, etc – that’s an indication that we’ve struck this balance poorly.
— Chet · Aug 31, 02:55 PM · #
JMann,
Here’s the thing: pot is ubiquitous in high school. For a 14 year old, it’s easier to score a joint than it is to copy someone’s pre-algebra homework. Until college it’s much easier for a teenager to get high than drunk (unless a friend’s parents are especially permitting, or an older sister steps in and saves the day). But no older intermediaries are necessary for pot. To purchase as much pot as you please, all you have to do is get a job at Jack in the Box, or Carmike Cinemas, or Red Lobster, or American Eagle, or know the right people at school. (This is now true for cocaine, too.)
You might argue that pot’s illegality repels would-be users on the margins, and that legalization, insofar as it reduces the social stigma of smoking the reefer, will lead to a marginal increase in demand. That might be true (though the operative factor is ‘peer stigma’, which is close to zero as is). However, I’m not sure legalization will have any — can have any — detrimental effects on teenage supply and availability. In fact, the opposite should obtain: allow adults to buy pot upon presentation of ID, punish any sale to minors, and you make it much harder for a teenager to find a willing supplier at a reasonable price.
Another thing: pot is so ubiquitous with minors that we know, experimentally, the rate of teenage burn outs during decades of nigh-unlimited availability. And it’s not that bad.
And finally: how do we know that young Myerson’s life was ruined by pot? All we know from reading that article is that his (obviously weak) mother thinks 1) her son’s life is ruined, and 2) that pot — not her parenting, not culture, not friends nor psychology — is the culprit. That’s some weak tea, no?
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Aug 31, 03:18 PM · #
That said, there are some signs that heavy marijuana use may increase the risk of anxiety disorders, depression, and maybe even schizophrenia. Of course, there are also some pretty strong signs that college education does the same thing (by some estimates, one half of college educated Americans will have bouts with some kind of mental disorder in their lifetimes). Also, way more schizophrenics are born in the winter.
Ultimately, all we know is that people on marijuana think and behave differently in broadly similar ways. Kind of like coffee and alcohol.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Aug 31, 03:42 PM · #
Chet writes:
Sure, and I think an honest analysis of alcohol legalization would include that fact as well. At bottom, alcohol (1) ruins lots of lives but (2) is still legal because (a) the pleasure of the responsible many outweighs the pain of the alcoholic few; (b) liberty is an important social good; © prohibition has many associated costs that outweigh any benefit; and/or (d) many of those lives would be ruined by alcohol or subsitute vices even if we had prohibition.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t legalize – I’m absolutely pro-legalization. I’m just saying that we shouldn’t hand-wave away the costs, as Conor does when he calls the Myerson story an “irrational argument for drug prohibition” instead of a “sympathetic but ultimately unconvincing argument”.
Kris: I generally agree, although I don’t believe that legalizing pot for adults will reduce pot use among minors. I’ll grant that the current distribution channels obviously are willing to sell to minors, but my recollection from being a teenager late in the last century was that it was trivial for teens to obtain tobacco and alcohol, notwithstanding age limits on sale. (In my day and region, it was slightly harder, but still trivial to get pot.)
— J Mann · Aug 31, 06:05 PM · #
I’m not sure anyone wants to do that. But it’s pretty clear that the identifiable costs of cannabis use are so mild that they’re on a level we essentially ignore when it comes to any other substance. For instance, cannabis is surely safer than bisphenol-a, but we’re not even having a national conversation about making it illegal to own containers made from plastics that contain bisphenol-a. Cannabis is surely safer than drain cleaner, in terms of the deaths each has been responsible for, but we’re not having a conversation about whether or not to make it illegal to clear your own drains. More people have died from inhalation of spray paint than from inhalation of cannabis smoke, but again, we don’t consider that cost when it comes to the potential legalization of cans of spray paint.
By all means, lets talk about the costs, but by the metrics we use to assess the costs of other potentially hazardous substances, cannabis simply has zero costs. Somebody turning into a total asshole has never been something we’ve cared about for any other substance; I don’t see why an “honest assessment” has to include that when it comes to pot.
— Chet · Aug 31, 09:54 PM · #