Since today seems to be Drug Reform Sunday, I can’t resist the opportunity to add my $.02 to the discussion. I’m enjoying what is hopefully my last weekend as a smoker. Once again, I’m enrolled in a stop smoking seminar at the local hospital in yet another attempt to rid myself of a deadly addiction to nicotine. This will be my fourth attempt in about two years. I have successfully quit for periods of 2, 4, and 9 months, but I always seem to get complacent and get drawn back in by my addiction.
In our support group we talk about the mechanics of nicotine addiction, and how nicotine affects the brain by working on the same dopamine and serotonin receptors as heroin and cocaine. We are told that nicotine addiction is as hard to overcome as addictions to heroin or crack cocaine. Tobacco is far more deadly than either of these substances, however, killing an estimated 450,000 Americans every year. Worldwide, the World Health Organization estimates 1,000,000,000 deaths in this century from tobacco use. That’s ONE BILLION!
Tobacco smoking kills more people than alcohol, assault (homicide) illegal drugs, HIV, firearms, and motor vehicles. Not just more people than all these horrible things that we work so hard to eliminate, but 3 TIMES as many deaths as all these causes combined. One-half of the people who use tobacco will die from it.
So we should really ask about our government’s efforts to protect us from dried plants, because that’s what they do, right?
Surely someone must be held to account for all this misery and carnage. Our prisons are full to the bursting point with users and dealers of far-less deadly and damaging drugs. Where are the tobacco criminals responsible for this deadly epidemic? Where is our government’s effort to protect us from this deadly and addictive dried plant?
Unfortunately, rather than arrest and incarceration, the purveyors of this deadly drug get – CASH. Piles and piles of hard-earned taxpayer dollars have been thrown at them by the Bush administration, further adding to our budget woes. The table below shows subsidies from 1995 – 2006, but there were no subsidies paid until 2000 when the "tough on crime" "fiscally conservative" George W. Bush took office:
So you would think that with tobacco being legal, regulated, taxed, and even government-subsidized, that its use would have soared. After all, tobacco is available to every adult in millions of retail locations in every city, county, and state. But surprisingly, that has not been the case:
Percentage of Adult Smokers 1965-2004
Source: CDC
Tobacco use has dropped by nearly half! Then there is cannabis, the other dried plant. The federal government still considers it a Schedule 1 controlled substance, with a high potential for addiction and no established medical use. This is in spite of the fact the thirteen states have approved marijuana for medical use. But to protect us from this "Devil Weed", various levels of government spend inordinate amounts of money - billions of dollars - investigating, prosecuting, and incarcerating anyone who grows, distributes, or possesses this mostly benign substance. Cannabis has never been clinically implicated in directly causing a singe death.
With billions of dollars in enforcement efforts and all manner of draconian and punitive sanctions, one would expect that marijuana use would experience similar declines. Unfortunately, that has not been the case:
Lifetime Marijuana Use among Persons Aged 12 to 25, by Age Group: 1965–2002
Source: www.oas.samhsa.gov
These are the government’s own numbers here – no funny stuff. So while tobacco – taxed, regulated, and sold everywhere – has seen use cut in half since 1965, marijuana – despite increasingly harsh criminal sanctions and billions spent on enforcement – has seen use explode from roughly five percent to over fifty percent among young adults. That’s a 1000% increase in marijuana use versus a 50% decrease in tobacco use over the same period. Which strategy seems to be working?
The prohibition strategy is clearly failing, despite the chilling arrest statistics:
source: www.ojp.usdoj.gov
The number of marijuana arrests continues to soar, hitting another record in 2007. 872,720 were arrested for marijuana crimes in 2007, significantly more than the 597,447 arrested for all manner of violent crimes. Overall, there were 1,841,182 drug arrests in 2007. This figure even tops arrests from property crimes, which were only 1,610,088. Do you think that if we transferred resources from our #1 law enforcement activity – busting pot smokers – to other crimes, we may experience a significant reduction in both law enforcement costs and in other types of criminal behavior?
Why is there such a disparity between enforcement of marijuana laws and the free reign given tobacco to poison and plague our society? If you guessed money, you would, as usual, be correct. Politicians have become as addicted to tobacco dollars as the unfortunate victims are to nicotine. Plied with generous campaign contributions, our leaders looked the other way while tobacco addicted and sickened millions of our citizens. Of course revenue from the ever-increasing tobacco taxes are another government addiction. These taxes are truly regressive as smoking is much more prevalent among the less educated, the poor, and minorities.
The latest money grab by our government has been the Master Tobacco Settlement, giving 203.5 billion to the states so far. The government doesn’t really care if the tobacco companies kill millions of people – they just want a bigger cut of the proceeds. So much for protecting us from dried plants!
Marijuana prohibition has always been about money, too. Powerful industrial interests in the paper (Hearst) and rope (DuPont) industries wanted to monopolize those markets by outlawing the competition. Thus began the demonization of marijuana and the push to have it prohibited. Their efforts were supported by the left-over prohibition-era apparatus that had nothing better to do once alcohol returned to legal and regulated status. The current funders of continued prohibition are the taxpayers, of course, but also the pharmaceutical and alcoholic beverage industry, who stand to lose significant revenue if less dangerous and more effective substitutes become readily available. Government objects because they haven’t figured out a way to tax your garden – yet!
So here we are. I’m trying to give up a legal, regulated and widely available substance that I know will kill me, but I can purchase it almost anywhere with the government’s blessing. However, if I choose to smoke the less addicting and far less harmful cannabis plant, I am threatened with arrest, incarceration, and forfeiture of my property. How absurd is that?
I think I’ll stick to the quitting smoking cigarettes this time – if for no other reason than to stick it to my government. They clearly sold us all out once again. It’s time to get a real grip on substance problems – and non-problems – and find a rational strategy for moving ahead.
Wish me luck, and wish our country luck! Addictions are hard to break.
