As the big meeting between Obama’s Drug Czar (and former Seattle Police Chief) Gil Kerlikowske and the Seattle Times editorial board approaches tomorrow, the Times is hosting a live chat today at noon to debate the topic of marijuana legalization. While Ryan Blethen explained that feedback to their editorial stance has been both overwhelming and positive, they’re still very willing to have a debate about it.
To that end, they published an editorial from Patti Skelton-McGougan, the director of Youth Eastside Services. And if this is the best the prohibition-backers can come up with, they’re in worse shape than I thought:
AS we consider the legalization of marijuana, we must bear in mind the impact on our youth. Politics aside, the legalization debate is sending a confusing message that’s contributing to a rise in marijuana use among teens.
There’s absolutely no evidence supporting this assertion. Drug use rates have gone up and down periodically over the years and we’ve been having a debate over legalization for a long time. In fact, the enactment of medical marijuana laws led to decreases in teen marijuana use across the country. But at that time, we were told the same thing. We were told that medical marijuana laws send a confusing message to kids about the dangers of marijuana and that would lead to greater use. It was wrong then, and it’s still wrong today.
In the Seattle Times’ Feb. 20 editorial calling for the legalizing of marijuana and Editorial Page Editor Ryan Blethen’s Feb. 27 column, the potential impact on youth was blithely dismissed.
I thought that the Times editorial could’ve been stronger on one particular point. Legalizing and regulating marijuana will have a positive impact on the youth in this state. As has been pointed out millions of times, teenage marijuana use rates in Holland (where sales to adults have been allowed for over 30 years) are much lower than in the United States. A big reason for this is exactly the reason why Skelton-McGougan’s logic in her opening paragraph is wrong. In Holland, marijuana is far less glamorous. It’s not associated with teenage rebellion the way it is here. Claiming that marijuana is far more dangerous than it really is only taps into the teenage tendency to rebel. That’s especially true when most teenagers are smart enough to see with their own eyes that marijuana isn’t meth or heroin because they often see older siblings or other people they know using it and leading normal lives.
Beyond that, the Times editorial did provide some good points on the policy impacts for youth. Marijuana prohibition leads to increased involvement in the criminal justice system and exposure to gangs. And young people with marijuana convictions can lose out on scholarship money and other benefits that can radically alter their future prospects in life. It’s never good to see anyone under 18 using marijuana. People who start using it before they reach adulthood increase their likelihood of developing destructive habits as they get older. But cutting off someone’s access to an education, or getting them involved in criminal activity is far more detrimental.
Finally, and maybe most importantly, there’s the question of access. The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University does an annual survey of teenagers and they consistently find that teenagers report that it’s easier to get marijuana than it is to get alcohol. Why? Because when you put control of an illegal commodity in the hands of criminal gangs, they generally don’t care whether or not the person buying it from them is over a certain age. If you want to reduce access to young people, a good start is by establishing a system that allows us to regulate its sale to those over 21. Currently, we have no way of doing that.
The people who are advocating for the end of marijuana prohibition are not “blithely dismissing” the impacts of such a move on our youth. They’re advocating for it because they know that it’s the best path forward for them. And there’s a mountain of evidence and even more common sense that points very clearly in that direction. I’ve probably written variations of this post a half-dozen times to various editorials and other outbursts of uninformed nonsense. And I’ll continue to do so until the baseless fear-mongering over “protecting our youth” is proven to be nothing more than uninformed attempts to prop up a failed policy that does exactly the opposite.
UPDATE: Well, that was interesting. It looked like there were a lot of participants in the discussion. Some interesting things to note:
– According to Ryan Blethen, the details of the meeting with Kerlikowske will be made public. In addition, Kerlikowske was expected to be out in Seattle anyway at this time.
– Stephen Bogan, a Therapist who was arguing to keep prohibition in place, made this interesting claim at the end of the session:
Most kids get pot and other drugs from their parents homes.
I’ve never seen any evidence that even comes close to supporting this claim, and after looking through some similar data in the CASA survey, it doesn’t even seem plausible. Has anyone heard this one before?
Bogan was quite vocal about his concerns over teenage drug use, but was never able to explain why he supports a policy that puts the distribution of marijuana in the hands of gangs and others who could care less about how young their customers are.
Anyone writing or making policy or deciding editorial board positions on this needs to answer one simple question:
have you smoked pot?
I suspect everyone on that times edit board has done so. Yet they’re afraid to say so. Because if you admit it you then have to say …well being high is not that ….bad. In fact….it’s kind of nice. Like a nice scotch whiskey or two. But also mellower.
We never talk about what it’s like to be high.
They’d also have to say why they didn’t turn themselves in for the crime of possession or the felony of buying.
We should also ask Gil the same question.
BTW if he hasn’t tried it, how does he know it’s bad?
you can’t win the argument about protecting youth, either till you and i mean all who have smoked it come forward and say yeah i smoked it. some of us, we still do. no big deal. no, it does not make you crazy or criminal. should kids smoke it? well, just like a kid shouldn’t drink whiskey, no they shouldn’t smoke it, but YES I firmly believe that when they are an adult that’s a choice they get to make because it is not so bad and I know that because I smoked it.
the power of the taboo is mind boggling. Imagine, 40% of Amnericans have smoked it, 60% whatever, yet no one can talk in public about what it’s like.
If Scott Walker wants to save money he should eliminate the portion of Wisconsin’s public budget (state, county, and municipal) that goes for busting pot smokers.
And if the “nonpartisan” Republicans on the King County Council want to save money locally, they can do so by eliminating funding for law enforcement task forces dedicated to busting people for having tomato plants.
The only way to seriously consider the question is to take a few tokes, down a few shots of Hennessey, and listen to some Funky Broadway.
Half a million people die of tobacco per year. In the US alone! Where is the outrage in that? And with Nicotine we are talking about something that is deadly physically addictive. Unlike cannabis which is only mildly psychologically addictive, as addictive as a chocolate bar in my opinion.
And she also raises the false alarm about respiratory problems, completely ignoring the fact that there are other ways to consume it, such as edibles and a vaporizer.
And she also raises the false alarm about the power of cannabis now compared to the stuff we used to buy for $10 a lid in the seventies. Guess what, Whiskey is a lot stronger than beer but that doesn’t mean we go home and down a six pack of 12 ounce whiskies just like it was beer. None of these people have the sense to realize that if cannabis is more powerful, we just use less of it (which is actually better for your lungs.) My god they are dumb.
I had some respect for Kerlikowske; he never seemed to care much about pot when he was chief. Now he does. It couldn’t be more obvious some vested interest told him how to think.
It couldn’t be more obvious some vested interest told him how to think.
Seattle’s voters said very clearly that we wanted marijuana enforcement to be the lowest priority of Chief K., and we canned the City Attorney who went against our policy. Not much ambiguity there.
Now, the people who pay him have a different agenda, so he serves that agenda. In each case, he’s doing the job he’s paid to do. That’s what professionalism in law enforcement means; the police don’t make the policy, they implement it. While I disagree with the agenda he now serves, I don’t ever want to live in a place where the police set policy.
Some deliberate mixing of issues. Many kids do get drugs from their parents medicine cabinets. I expect pot is not one of them.
To the extent that he has to personally fly across the country, no doubt with entourage at tax payer expense, to chide an editorial board about their reasonable opinion? You are correct; that is exceptionally professional.