High: The True Tale of American Marijuana - Review

There's a great new film about the drug war making its debut this month. John Holowach has created a serious documentary that's lots of fun to watch. And while the title, High: the True Tale of American Marijuana gives you the starting point for this film, the overall content sneaks up on you and before you're fully aware of it, you've come to understand that the entire drug war is inescapably interconnected.


A picture named high.gif John Holowach is an accomplished film-maker who has passionate feelings about the drug war (he's been a regular at Drug WarRant). This film came about because of his realization that there was an important void to be filled. And "High" is the only documentary out there that provides a comprehensive contemporary view of drug policy reform.

Like many modern documentaries, this one is filmed with a clear point of view -- there's no doubt that the film maker believes that the drug war is a failure -- even the film's poster makes it obvious! But Holowach does it without preaching or stridency -- and balanced with quite a sense of humor.

Clocking in at a full three hours, this is no brief flirtation with the drug war. It's deep immersion. And the good news is that it moves well enough that it doesn't feel like three hours. Highly seasoned drug policy reformers may not learn a whole lot of new information, yet they'll still find the interviews fascinating. The real audience for "High" is the open-minded young person who needs to know more. It's a must-show for campus groups. It's also going to be something that drug policy reformers will want to own -- to show friends or loan out.

"High" is shot in an informal style -- lots of hand-held camera interviews in available light, interspersed with stock footage and nostalgic images. Clearly low-budget, but well researched. The writing and John Holowach's breezy narration style keep it light and entertaining.

The one thing missing? Opponents. Holowach addresses the fact that no major drug war proponent was willing to be filmed, so he found his own way to add a debate. With the permission of "The Bill Good Show" on CKNW News Talk 980, he was able to get a tape of John Walters' interview with Peter Warren, and Holowach dismantles Walters' propaganda point by point.

There are two extended segments in the film to break your heart and outrage you. One with a victim, and the father of a victim, of Straight, Inc., and another with the patients of Dr. Paul Heberle, who was targeted for practicing pain medication.

Other interviews include Keith Stroup talking about the history of the marijuana legalization movement, Ricardo Cortes talking about his marijuana book for children, Jeffrey Miron on the economics of the drug war, Lyle Craker on drug policy science, and Siobhan Reynolds on the war on pain medicine. Fascinating individuals all. And there's something incredible about a moment near the end of the film when Siobhan Reynolds simply and elegantly describes drugs:

They're things. They're not good. They're not bad. They're... stuff.

10 Things Every Parent, Teenager Or Teacher Should Know About Marijuana

1 Q. What is Marijuana?

A. "Marijuana" refers to the dried leaves and flowers of the cannabis plant [1], which contain the non-narcotic chemical THC at various potencies. It is smoked or eaten to produce the feeling of being "high." The different strains of this herb produce different sensual effects, ranging from sedative to stimulant.

2 Q. Who Uses Marijuana?

A. There is no simple profile of a typical marijuana user. It has been used for 1000s of years for medical, social, and religious reasons and for relaxation [2]. Several of our Presidents [3] are believed to have smoked it. One out of every five Americans say they have tried it. And it is still popular among artists, writers, musicians, activists, lawyers, inventors, working people, etc.

3 Q. How Long Have People Been Using Marijuana?

A. Marijuana has been used since ancient times [4]. While field hands and working people have often smoked the raw plant, aristocrats historically prefer hashish [5] made from the cured flowers of the plant. It was not seen as a problem until a calculated disinformation [sic] campaign was launched in the 1930s [6], and the first American laws against using it were passed [7].

4 Q. Is Marijuana Addictive?

A. No, it is not [8]. Most users are moderate consumers who smoke it socially to relax. We now know that 10% of our population have "addictive personalities" and they are neither more nor less likely to overindulge in cannabis than in anything else. On a relative scale, marijuana is less habit forming than either sugar or chocolate but more so than anchovies. Sociologists report a general pattern of marijuana use that peaks in the early adult years, followed by a period of levelling off and then a gradual reduction in use [9].

5 Q. Has Anyone Ever Died From Smoking Marijuana?

A. No; not one single case, not ever. THC is one of the few chemicals for which there is no known toxic amount [10]. The federal agency NIDA says that autopsies reveal that 75 people per year are high on marijuana when they die: this does not mean that marijuana caused or was even a factor in their deaths. The chart below compares the number of deaths attributable to selected substances in a typical year:

Tobacco...............................340,000 - 395,000

Alcohol (excluding crime/accidents).............125,000+

Drug Overdose (prescription)............24,000 - 27,000

Drug Overdose (illegal)...................3,800 - 5,200

Marijuana.............................................0

*Source: U.S. Government Bureau of Mortality Statistics, 1987

6 Q. Does Marijuana Lead to Crime and/or Hard Drugs?

A. No [11]. The only crime most marijuana users commit is that they use marijuana. And, while many people who abuse dangerous drugs also smoke marijuana, the old "stepping stone" theory is now discredited, since virtually all of them started out "using" legal drugs like sugar, coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, etc.

7 Q. Does Marijuana Make People Violent?

A. No. In fact, Federal Bureau of Narcotics director Harry Anslinger once told Congress just the opposite - that it leads to non-violence and pacifism [12]. If he was telling the truth (which he and key federal agencies have not often done regarding marijuana), then re-legalizing marijuana should be considered as one way to curb violence in our cities. The simple fact is that marijuana does not change your basic personality. The government says that over 20 million Americans still smoke it, probably including some of the nicest people you know.

8 Q. How Does Marijuana Affect Your Health?

A. Smoking anything is not healthy, but marijuana is less dangerous than tobacco and people smoke less of it at a time. This health risk can be avoided by eating the plant instead of smoking it [13], or can be reduced by smoking smaller amounts of stronger marijuana. There is no proof that marijuana causes serious health or sexual problems [14] but, like alcohol, its use by children or adolescents is discouraged. Cannabis is a medicinal herb that has hundreds of proven, valuable theraputic uses - from stress reduction to glaucoma to asthma to cancer therapy, etc. [15].

9 Q. What About All Those Scary Statistics and Studies?

A. Most were prepared as scare tactics for the government by Dr. Gabriel Nahas, and were so biased and unscientific that Nahas was fired by the National Institute of Health [16] and finally renounced his own studies as meaningless [17]. For one experiment, he suffocated monkeys for five minutes at a time, using proportionately more smoke than the average user inhales in an entire lifetime [18]. The other studies that claim sensational health risks are also suspect, since they lack controls and produce results which cannot be replicated or independently verified [19].

10 Q. What Can I Do About Marijuana?

A. No independent government panel that has studied marijuana has ever recommended jail for users [20]. Concerned persons should therefore ask their legislators to re-legalize and tax this plant, subject to age limits and regulations similar to those on alcohol and tobacco.

StumbleUpon

I would like to welcome all our visitors who are coming to this site via the StumbleUpon toolbar. And remind you to please press the "I like it!" button or the StumbleUpon link I put in the sidebar if you like the content of this site.

Thanks! :)

Most Marijuana Users Do Not Touch Hard Drugs

We all may know heroin addicts who smoked marijuana, which may lead us to think that marijuana and heroin go together. But we forget the 83 million Americans who tried marijuana and never touched heroin. The chances of regularly using hard drugs after trying marijuana are small. In fact the chances of regularly using marijuana are small.
Data from the 2001 National Household Survey on Drug abuse show that if you've ever tried marijuana in your life, your chance of using other drugs in the last month is:

* 1 in 7 for marijuana
* 1 in 12 for any other illicit drug
* 1 in 50 for cocaine
* 1 in 208 for crack
* 1 in 677 for heroin

You're more likely to flip a coin nine times and get all 'heads' than become a regular user of heroin after trying marijuana.
In short, most people who try marijuana do not use it regularly and never try hard drugs.
Again, we all may know heroin addicts who used marijuana first. Nevertheless, research shows plenty of people, especially those with drug problems, use hard drugs before marijuana. One study showed that 39% of drug abusers started with a drug other than marijuana.
Users tend to start with whatever drug is most available. In neighborhoods filled with crack dealers, people could start with crack. But crack is not the gateway to marijuana use. Allen Ginsberg, the legendary 'Beat' poet, used heroin before marijuana. But heroin is not the gateway, either. Obviously, if marijuana use doesn't happen first, it can't cause hard drug use.
Even if every heroin addict used marijuana first, that fact alone would not prove that marijuana caused heroin addiction. They all ate bread before their heroin addiction, but nobody has called bread the gateway drug. (At least not yet.) Marijuana doesn't cause hard drug use. People may wonder, "What's the harm in scaring teens with this little white lie, especially if it keeps them away from drugs?" Like all lies, this one catches up later. Teens who believe that marijuana leads to hard drugs end up using substances with markedly worse effects. I've had clients and students explain: "We heard pot led to heroin, so we just sniffed glue." Inhalants cause more problems than marijuana ever will, including brain damage and death.
In addition, the gateway lie leads to hard drugs in unexpected ways. When kids try marijuana, they realize that the propaganda they've heard is untrue. They don't shoot their friends with handguns, wake up pregnant, or support terrorism. They soon suspect that other drug information is false. The teachers who said that marijuana leads to hard drugs were wrong. Why believe it when they say that crack is addictive?
The gateway lie costs us our credibility. Marijuana does not lead teens to hard drugs, but lying to them about it does.

Top 10 Pot Studies Government Wished it Had Never Funded

10) MARIJUANA USE HAS NO EFFECT ON MORTALITY: A massive study of California HMO members funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) found marijuana use caused no significant increase in mortality. Tobacco use was associated with increased risk of death. Sidney, S et al. Marijuana Use and Mortality. American Journal of Public Health. Vol. 87 No. 4, April 1997. p. 585-590. Sept. 2002.

9) HEAVY MARIJUANA USE AS A YOUNG ADULT WONT RUIN YOUR LIFE: Veterans Affairs scientists looked at whether heavy marijuana use as a young adult caused long-term problems later, studying identical twins in which one twin had been a heavy marijuana user for a year or longer but had stopped at least one month before the study, while the second twin had used marijuana no more than five times ever. Marijuana use had no significant impact on physical or mental health care utilization, health-related quality of life, or current socio-demographic characteristics. Eisen SE et al. Does Marijuana Use Have Residual Adverse Effects on Self-Reported Health Measures, Socio-Demographics or Quality of Life? A Monozygotic Co-Twin Control Study in Men. Addiction. Vol. 97 No. 9. p.1083-1086. Sept. 1997

8) THE “GATEWAY EFFECT” MAY BE A MIRAGE: Marijuana is often called a “gateway drug” by supporters of prohibition, who point to statistical “associations” indicating that persons who use marijuana are more likely to eventually try hard drugs than those who never use marijuana implying that marijuana use somehow causes hard drug use. But a model developed by RAND Corp. researcher Andrew Morral demonstrates that these associations can be explained “without requiring a gateway effect.” More likely, this federally funded study suggests, some people simply have an underlying propensity to try drugs, and start with whats most readily available. Morral AR, McCaffrey D and Paddock S. Reassessing the Marijuana Gateway Effect. Addiction. December 2002. p. 1493-1504.

7) PROHIBITION DOESNT WORK (PART I): The White House had the National Research Council examine the data being gathered about drug use and the effects of U.S. drug policies. NRC concluded, “the nation possesses little information about the effectiveness of current drug policy, especially of drug law enforcement.” And what data exist show “little apparent relationship between severity of sanctions prescribed for drug use and prevalence or frequency of use.” In other words, there is no proof that prohibition the cornerstone of U.S. drug policy for a century reduces drug use. National Research Council. Informing Americas Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Dont Know Keeps Hurting Us. National Academy Press, 2001. p. 193.

6) PROHIBITION DOESNT WORK (PART II: DOES PROHIBITION CAUSE THE “GATEWAY EFFECT”?): U.S. and Dutch researchers, supported in part by NIDA, compared marijuana users in San Francisco, where non-medical use remains illegal, to Amsterdam, where adults may possess and purchase small amounts of marijuana from regulated businesses. Looking at such parameters as frequency and quantity of use and age at onset of use, they found no differences except one: Lifetime use of hard drugs was significantly lower in Amsterdam, with its “tolerant” marijuana policies. For example, lifetime crack cocaine use was 4.5 times higher in San Francisco than Amsterdam. Reinarman, C, Cohen, PDA, and Kaal, HL. The Limited Relevance of Drug Policy: Cannabis in Amsterdam and San Francisco. American Journal of Public Health. Vol. 94, No. 5. May 2004. p. 836-842.

5) OOPS, MARIJUANA MAY PREVENT CANCER (PART I): Federal researchers implanted several types of cancer, including leukemia and lung cancers, in mice, then treated them with cannabinoids (unique, active components found in marijuana). THC and other cannabinoids shrank tumors and increased the mices lifespans. Munson, AE et al. Antineoplastic Activity of Cannabinoids. Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Sept. 1975. p. 597-602.

4) OOPS, MARIJUANA MAY PREVENT CANCER, (PART II): In a 1994 study the government tried to suppress, federal researchers gave mice and rats massive doses of THC, looking for cancers or other signs of toxicity. The rodents given THC lived longer and had fewer cancers, “in a dose-dependent manner” (i.e. the more THC they got, the fewer tumors). NTP Technical Report On The Toxicology And Carcinogenesis Studies Of 1-Trans- Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol, CAS No. 1972-08-3, In F344/N Rats And B6C3F Mice, Gavage Studies. See also, “Medical Marijuana: Unpublished Federal Study Found THC-Treated Rats Lived Longer, Had Less Cancer,” AIDS Treatment News no. 263, Jan. 17, 1997.

3) OOPS, MARIJUANA MAY PREVENT CANCER (PART III): Researchers at the Kaiser-Permanente HMO, funded by NIDA, followed 65,000 patients for nearly a decade, comparing cancer rates among non-smokers, tobacco smokers, and marijuana smokers. Tobacco smokers had massively higher rates of lung cancer and other cancers. Marijuana smokers who didnt also use tobacco had no increase in risk of tobacco-related cancers or of cancer risk overall. In fact their rates of lung and most other cancers were slightly lower than non-smokers, though the difference did not reach statistical significance. Sidney, S. et al. Marijuana Use and Cancer Incidence (California, United States). Cancer Causes and Control. Vol. 8. Sept. 1997, p. 722-728.

2) OOPS, MARIJUANA MAY PREVENT CANCER (PART IV): Donald Tashkin, a UCLA researcher whose work is funded by NIDA, did a case-control study comparing 1,200 patients with lung, head and neck cancers to a matched group with no cancer. Even the heaviest marijuana smokers had no increased risk of cancer, and had somewhat lower cancer risk than non-smokers (tobacco smokers had a 20-fold increased lung cancer risk). Tashkin D. Marijuana Use and Lung Cancer: Results of a Case-Control Study. American Thoracic Society International Conference. May 23, 2006.

1) MARIJUANA DOES HAVE MEDICAL VALUE: In response to passage of Californias medical marijuana law, the White House had the Institute of Medicine (IOM) review the data on marijuanas medical benefits and risks. The IOM concluded, “Nausea, appetite loss, pain and anxiety are all afflictions of wasting, and all can be mitigated by marijuana.” While noting potential risks of smoking, the report added, “we acknowledge that there is no clear alternative for people suffering from chronic conditions that might be relieved by smoking marijuana, such as pain or AIDS wasting.” The governments refusal to acknowledge this finding caused co-author John A. Benson to tell the New York Times that the government “loves to ignore our report they would rather it never happened.” Joy, JE, Watson, SJ, and Benson, JA. Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base. National Academy Press. 1999. p. 159. See also, Harris, G. FDA Dismisses Medical Benefit From Marijuana. New York Times. Apr. 21, 2006

Medical Marijuana: The Replacement for Very Dangerous Drugs

Dr. Phillip Leveque for Salem-News.com

Cannabis / marijuana medicines were at one time the “drugs of choice” in the United States, until they were declared illegal. They had been used for 100 specific medical problems through the use of about 30 prescription medicines.

Salem-News.com

(MOLALLA, Ore.) - When I was ordered before the Oregon Board of Medical Examiners, the first question I was asked by Dr. Spokas, the chairman, from Ontario, Oregon, was “Dr. Leveque don’t you know that marijuana is very addicting and very dangerous?”

Frankly, I didn’t know or believe this and all of my experience with fifty years study and 4000 patients told me this was totally false, but when one is facing a “Spanish inquisition” with psychological “thumb screws” or “hanging”, I decided to answer “maybe for some people”. I didn’t believe a word of it. I didn’t dare ask where he got his information but I assumed it came from the U.S. government, which has produced false propaganda for 70 plus years.

Marijuana is less addictive and less dangerous than Starbuck’s espresso.

The Oregon Medical Marijuana Law allows the use of marijuana for Cancer, HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer’s rage, Glaucoma, chronic pain, chronic nausea, chronic spasms, Multiple Sclerosis and seizures.

As a retired Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology, I accepted this with a grain of salt but when I started seeing patients, I was astonished and pleased that indeed the above conditions were “miraculously” alleviated by the use of medical marijuana.

I was further astonished when I was told by the patients “marijuana is much better than any prescription I have been given". Further questioning of patients indicated it was better that the morphine-like painkillers, such as Oxycontin, Percodan or Demerol. It was also better than the Valium-like tranquilizers, such as Xanax, and Ambien, etc. and even the anti-depressants, such as Elavil, Trazadone, etc. and the really heavy anti-depressants, such as Prozac, Zoloft, etc.

Another, almost strange, report was that it was preferred to Aspirin and Tylenol, etc. because it worked faster with no stomach or liver damage.

For a retired Professor of Pharmacology, the patient’s reports were really a “blockbuster”. The biggest surprise came really quickly by Viet Nam veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. They had been given every kind of medication, which gave minimal, if any, relief and many suffers simply turned to alcohol stupefaction to blot out PTSD battle stress.

The latter had become a tragedy for many as they had discovered in Viet Nam the marijuana was an excellent tranquilizer, better than any standard such drug or alcohol.

Literature review for current Marijuana Therapy led me to “O’Shaughnessy, The Journal of Cannabis in Clinical Practice”, a newspaper-like magazine published by a group of California Marijuana Specialists, which are providing the cutting edge for information on the subject.

California is the leading marijuana state with about 300,000 legal marijuana patients. I am not / was not surprised to see that the reports of the fifteen doctors in the journal correspond with my own experiences. In fact, Dr. Tod Mikuriya has found that marijuana provides relief for about 200 specific diseases. It seems like marijuana could be / should be the first choice drug rather than the last.

Cannabis / marijuana medicines were at one time the “drugs of choice” in the United States, until they were declared illegal. They had been used for 100 specific medical problems through the use of about 30 prescription medicines.

Dr. Phillip Leveque is a Combat Infantryman, Physician and Toxicologist. He served with distinction in World War II, at one time taking 26 Nazi officers into custody that he and one other soldier discovered.

America's relationship with marijuana has been conspicuosly tumultuous and political. In this century, marijuana, a substance that has enjoyed a rich medical history dating back thousands of years, has been relegated to merely another target in the war on drugs. Such a war has been responsible for thousands of casualties in individuals suffering from illnesses such as cancer and AIDS, who cannot receive legally a form of treatment which can relieve their pain. Consequently, many otherwise law-abiding citizens have been forced to violate federal law. In many cases, these same individuals face criminal prosecution and possible incarceration. The recent burgeoning of medical marijuana laws in states throughout that country suggests that Americans will no longer tolerate this treatment of the seriously ill. The federal government could elect the respect to the will of people by rescheduling marijuana or by exercising their prosecutorial discretion in a way that formally ends the prosecution of medical marijuana patients. It also can choose to protect the citizens against themselves. If so, should it be consistent with the notions of fairness, liberty and justice?

My uncle, who is in fact a doctor self medicates his epilepsy by smoking cannabis.

ANOTHER Fun thing to do while high

This one is crazy! Trust me and try it now! even if you are not high.


Look in the mirror, use both hands to pull your lips wide, then snap your teeth open and closed as shown in the photo. This makes you "AWARE OF YOUR SKULL." Why, your face is just a thin layer of meat! Now be honest, can't you feel your Death sitting up there in the future, patiently waiting? You Americans, you talk and you talk, but you don't consider The Salmon Mousse! All too soon that skull in the mirror won't be moving any more. Might there be something important you should be doing right now? (Once the full-blown skull awareness wears off, find another mirror and restore it to full strength.)

Fun thing to do while high

Un SELF -ishness
This person (I?) has just remembered an idea from last year. Write a long email or a story, but do not say "I" or "me", instead say "this one" or "the body." After a couple of hours of this, THIS ONE encounters a slightly drunken state, and THE BODY becomes prone to fits of giggling, and certain childish verbal gyrations begin to arise spontaneously in the writing. Beware, for if the body should accidentally send the resulting email message to a similar body at another location, that distant body will aquire the conviction that the originating body has gone entirely whack-o. Expose numberous extraneous bodies to the same message and they will forever gaze on the initiating body with perhapsvalid suspicions about its sanity. THIS ONE also suggests employting this self-cancellation technique when dressed as an alien for Halloween. A genuine hivemind organisms would refer to the hive members as "this one", and if all selfreferential internal selftalk terminology is altered until a certain temporal threshold is exceeded, the body will not only THINK borg, but will become in danger of BEING borg!

O NOES!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070608/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_dutch_smoking;_ylt=Ak92Mbb66ElSEb0mpTVzNYTMWM0F

Quotes:

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Dutch smoking ban will come into force in July next year for all restaurants and cafes -- including coffee shops where cannabis is the top attraction, the government decided on Friday.

"Coffee shops will be treated in the same manner as other catering businesses. They will be smoke-free," Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende told NOS television.

"It would have been wrong to move towards a smoke-free catering industry and then make an exception for coffee shops. People would not have understood that."

Establishments will not in fact have to be completely smoke-free. Proprietors will be allowed to set up a separate room or glass partition behind which people can smoke, but customers will not be served there to protect staff.

"Employees should not have to work in an environment were they are constantly exposed to the harmful effects of smoking," Balkenende said after the cabinet's decision on Friday.



The sad thing about this is that the problem wasn't pot smokers in the first place, it was tobacco.

I guess it's not too bad though. As "Proprietors will be allowed to set up a separate room or glass partition behind which people can smoke, but customers will not be served there to protect staff."

WOW, I got high legally.

Yeah, I tried to smoke that "legal herb" stuff you always see in ads on websites about cannabis.

Of course it could not compare to the real stuff, but I was pleasantly surprised by the effects. You really get all the effects like cottonmouth, red eyes, and even the munchies. It just feels---- different. It is a must try for anyone who does not want to dodge cops just to get your fix, or if theres a drought in your area a stash of this stuff can come in useful.

Click the pic to go to the site I bought it from. It's supposedly the best stuff out there.

An end to marijuana prohibition: the drive to legalize picks up

NEVER before have so many Americans supported decriminalizing and even legalizing marijuana. Seventy-two percent say that for simple marijuana possession, people should not be incarcerated but fined: the generally accepted definition of "decriminalization." Even more Americans support making marijuana legal for medical purposes. Support for broader legalization ranges between 25 and 42 percent, depending on how one asks the question. Two of every five Americans--according to a 2003 Zogby poll--say "the government should treat marijuana more or less the same way it treats alcohol: It should regulate it, control it, tax it, and only make it illegal for children."

Close to 100 million Americans--including more than half of those between the ages of 18 and 50--have tried marijuana at least once. Military and police recruiters often have no choice but to ignore past marijuana use by job seekers. The public apparently feels the same way about presidential and other political candidates. Al Gore, Bill Bradley, and John Kerry all say they smoked pot in days past. So did Bill Clinton, with his notorious caveat. George W. Bush won't deny he did. And ever more political, business, religious, intellectual, and other leaders plead guilty as well.

The debate over ending marijuana prohibition simmers just below the surface of mainstream politics, crossing ideological and partisan boundaries. Marijuana is no longer the symbol of Sixties rebellion and Seventies permissiveness, and it's not just liberals and libertarians who say it should be legal, as William F. Buckley Jr. has demonstrated better than anyone. As director of the country's leading drug-policy-reform organization, I've had countless conversations with police and prosecutors, judges and politicians, and hundreds of others who quietly agree that the criminalization of marijuana is costly, foolish, and destructive. What's most needed now is principled conservative leadership. Buckley has led the way, and New Mexico's former governor, Gary Johnson, spoke out courageously while in office. How about others?

A SYSTEMIC OVERREACTION

Marijuana prohibition is unique among American criminal laws. No other law is both enforced so widely and harshly and yet deemed unnecessary by such a substantial portion of the populace.

Police make about 700,000 arrests per year for marijuana offenses. That's almost the same number as are arrested each year for cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, Ecstasy, and all other illicit drugs combined. Roughly 600,000, or 87 percent, of marijuana arrests are for nothing more than possession of small amounts. Millions of Americans have never been arrested or convicted of any criminal offense except this. Enforcing marijuana laws costs an estimated $10-15 billion in direct costs alone.

Punishments range widely across the country, from modest fines to a few days in jail to many years in prison. Prosecutors often contend that no one goes to prison for simple possession--but tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people on probation and parole are locked up each year because their urine tested positive for marijuana or because they were picked up in possession of a joint. Alabama currently locks up people convicted three times of marijuana possession for 15 years to life. There are probably--no firm estimates exist--100,000 Americans behind bars tonight for one marijuana offense or another. And even for those who don't lose their freedom, simply being arrested can be traumatic and costly. A parent's marijuana use can be the basis for taking away her children and putting them in foster care. Foreign-born residents of the U.S. can be deported for a marijuana offense no matter how long they have lived in this country, no matter if their children are U.S. citizens, and no matter how long they have been legally employed. More than half the states revoke or suspend driver's licenses of people arrested for marijuana possession even though they were not driving at the time of arrest. The federal Higher Education Act prohibits student loans to young people convicted of any drug offense; all other criminal offenders remain eligible.

This is clearly an overreaction on the part of government. No drug is perfectly safe, and every psychoactive drug can be used in ways that are problematic. The federal government has spent billions of dollars on advertisements and anti-drug programs that preach the dangers of marijuana--that it's a gateway drug, and addictive in its own right, and dramatically more potent than it used to be, and responsible for all sorts of physical and social diseases as well as international terrorism. But the government has yet to repudiate the 1988 finding of the Drug Enforcement Administration's own administrative law judge, Francis Young, who concluded after extensive testimony that "marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man."

Is marijuana a gateway drug? Yes, insofar as most Americans try marijuana before they try other illicit drugs. But no, insofar as the vast majority of Americans who have tried marijuana have never gone on to try other illegal drugs, much less get in trouble with them, and most have never even gone on to become regular or problem marijuana users. Trying to reduce heroin addiction by preventing marijuana use, it's been said, is like trying to reduce motorcycle fatalities by cracking down on bicycle riding. If marijuana did not exist, there's little reason to believe that there would be less drug abuse in the U.S.; indeed, its role would most likely be filled by a more dangerous substance.

Is marijuana dramatically more potent today? There's certainly a greater variety of high-quality marijuana available today than 30 years ago. But anyone who smoked marijuana in the 1970s and 1980s can recall smoking pot that was just as strong as anything available today. What's more, one needs to take only a few puffs of higher-potency pot to get the desired effect, so there's less wear and tear on the lungs.

Is marijuana addictive? Yes, it can be, in that some people use it to excess, in ways that are problematic for themselves and those around them, and find it hard to stop. But marijuana may well be the least addictive and least damaging of all commonly used psychoactive drugs, including many that are now legal. Most people who smoke marijuana never become dependent. Withdrawal symptoms pale compared with those from other drugs. No one has ever died from a marijuana overdose, which cannot be said of most other drugs. Marijuana is not associated with violent behavior and only minimally with reckless sexual behavior. And even heavy marijuana smokers smoke only a fraction of what cigarette addicts smoke. Lung cancers involving only marijuana are rare.

The government's most recent claim is that marijuana abuse accounts for more people entering treatment than any other illegal drug. That shouldn't be surprising, given that tens of millions of Americans smoke marijuana while only a few million use all other illicit drugs. But the claim is spurious nonetheless. Few Americans who enter "treatment" for marijuana are addicted. Fewer than one in five people entering drug treatment for marijuana do so voluntarily. More than half were referred by the criminal-justice system. They go because they got caught with a joint or failed a drug test at school or work (typically for having smoked marijuana days ago, not for being impaired), or because they were caught by a law-enforcement officer--and attending a marijuana "treatment" program is what's required to avoid expulsion, dismissal, or incarceration. Many traditional drug-treatment programs shamelessly participate in this charade to preserve a profitable and captive client stream.

Even those who recoil at the "nanny state" telling adults what they can or cannot sell to one another often make an exception when it comes to marijuana--to "protect the kids." This is a bad joke, as any teenager will attest. The criminalization of marijuana for adults has not prevented young people from having better access to marijuana than anyone else. Even as marijuana's popularity has waxed and waned since the 1970s, one statistic has remained constant: More than 80 percent of high-school students report it's easy to get. Meanwhile, the government's exaggerations and outright dishonesty easily backfire. For every teen who refrains from trying marijuana because it's illegal (for adults), another is tempted by its status as "forbidden fruit." Many respond to the lies about marijuana by disbelieving warnings about more dangerous drugs. So much for protecting the kids by criminalizing the adults.