As we approach the vote on California’s Proposition 19, I’ve been seeing variations of this assertion in a number of places. Here’s David Sirota:
Here’s a fact that even drug policy reform advocates can acknowledge: California’s 2010 ballot initiative to legalize marijuana does, indeed, pose a real threat, as conservative culture warriors insist. But not to public health, as those conservatives claim.
According to most physicians, pot is less toxic — and has more medicinal applications — than a legal and more pervasive drug like alcohol. Whereas alcohol causes hundreds of annual overdose deaths, contributes to untold numbers of illnesses and is a major factor in violent crime, marijuana has never resulted in a fatal overdose and has not been systemically linked to major illness or violent crime.
So this ballot measure is no public health threat. If anything, it would give the millions of citizens who want to use inebriating substances a safer alternative to alcohol. Which, of course, gets to what this ballot initiative really endangers: alcohol industry profits.
Beer distributors believe this to be the case as well. The California Beer and Beverage Distributors, has given $10,000 to defeat the measure. But is it true? Gus Lubin at the Business Insider writes:
Would marijuana legalization really cut into alcohol consumption?
Probably so. The interest group also includes Heineken, which knows from Amsterdam how legalization affects the market.
But the numbers don’t back this up. The WHO statistics on alcohol consumption across European countries don’t show any difference between the Netherlands and other European countries when it comes to alcohol consumption. Nor does it show any marked decrease in alcohol consumption since the Dutch started tolerating marijuana sales in the 1970s. In fact, while alcohol consumption across the entire EU dropped from 1980 to 2003 by 27%, it only dropped by 18% for the same time period in the Netherlands.
Marijuana and alcohol are often compared to each other in order to drive home the parallels between our historical attempts to prohibit each drug. And those comparisons are valid and illuminating. But the drugs themselves aren’t so similar in their effects on users. Marijuana is far more psychoactive than alcohol, but also more safe to consume. Alcohol tends to make people more aggressive and more social, while marijuana tends to make people more passive and less social. As a result, each drug caters to different personalities and different situations. And since marijuana is already widely available to whoever wants it, that segregation of use occurs already. As with the Netherlands, I’d expect that the eventual end of marijuana prohibition won’t have any noticeable effect on the current rates of alcohol consumption.
What it would have an effect on, however, is our prison overcrowding problems.
Beer and marihuana are the best of pals — along with their good buddy, potato chips.
This splits the Republican’s between the anti-pot culture warriors and the civil libertarians who think what you smoke is none of the gov’ment’s business.
lee, if you watch shows like cops, some others that i cant think of right now, you’ll see police armed to the teeth, playing out the ultimate high stakes, macho games. they’re playing an adult version of cops and robbers and they love it. they’re not going to give it up, and police make up a huge economic/political segment. pot may be decriminalized, but they’ll never give up their job and their real life video game by legalizing other drugs.
The California Beer and Beverage Distributors is obviously a socialist organisation that does not believe in competition and the free market.
@3
You’re right that they’ll fight it tooth and nail, but they can be defeated.
The beer and private prison lobbies might contribute to defeat a pot legalization measure. But surely Cheetos would make a donation in support!!!!
Shit, I’ve agreed with Man of Idiocy two days in a row.
Cannabis has many of the same relaxing qualities of alcohol, without all the negatives, such as hangovers and premature death. Alcohol is a toxic poison. Cannabis is not.
MoT makes a pretty valid point there. And while cops should continue to pursue the purveyors of more dangerous drugs like cocaine and heroin, until marijuana is legalized nationally, there’s always going to be some yahoos that think Reefer Madness was real and go after pot smokers like they were child rapists.
Small point.
Marijuana and alcohol are entirely different kinds of things.
Alcohol is a well defined molecule, ethanol (CH2CHOH). That molecule, esp in its pure form, is very toxic (do NOT drink 200 proof CH2HOH!
Marijuana is a plant. Like any impure substance, its safety will always depend on what else is in the processed vegetable material. The same is true of other recreational foods that have molecules that are effective as drugs … e.g. coffee, prunes, tea, peppers, and chocolate. We assume that the safety of those products is overseen by the government. The same should be true of MJ.
The active ingredients in marijuana, however, are pure molecules .. esp tetra hydro cannabinol (THC) and .. as Lee says .. these appear to be very safe. In fact,. despite the BS that flows between he and I, as far as I can see there is no evidence for significant toxicity from THC (unlike ethanol).
So, other than a very real concern that smoked MJ delivers a high dose of carcinogens (along with a number of other legal “natural” products we use), MJ ought to be pretty safe as long as it is not adulterated.
I think that conern is very real. While few incidents of adulterated MJ have been reported, , a synthetic cannabinoid, K2, is now being sold .. mostly legally, even over the internet, as a plant material. Unfortunately, there have been reports of toxicity in this material, probably because the stuff being sold has been adulterated. Unfortunately, a number of states are now trying to make K2 also illegal.
So leaving the tryst between Lee and I aside, I personally think MJ should be legal, if only to place it under the same safety standards as other impure drugs that people enjoy .. like coffee, tea, and .. the lady’s favorite chocolate.
I’d say occasional smoking of marijuana is no more hazardous to one’s health than enjoying a beer or two several nights a week. Marijuana wasn’t a problem until alcohol prohibition ended. Then, the concern was providing follow-on jobs to the alcohol agents. You see, there was a depression raging, and it wouldn’t look too good to have the government lay-off a bunch of guys. So, marijuana was a perfect scapegoat. After all, the only people who used it, to any degree, were minorities and maybe some poor whites. It only became a problem when middle and upper-class white kids found out how much better it was than boozing in the 1960s.
@7
Shit, I’ve agreed with Man of Idiocy two days in a row.
ok, i know it’s not fun for you to be agreeing with me on everything, so i’ll post something you can disagree with.
the drug trade and gang membership of young black males is more than epidemic, its almost total. that is not the result of mean republicans who dont want to spend more money on inner city problems. it is a result of the so called great society where liberals, for a few reasons that are another story, allowed inner city minorities to be so dependant on government they took no responsibilities for their own lives. when this same experiment was done on indian reservations, the same culture of irresponsibiliy resulted.
When we finally legalize marijuana, that generation is going to wonder what the fuck took so long.