The contrast between the legal status of tobacco cigarettes – a known poison with no medicinal value – and the criminalization of marijuana even when used for medicinal purposes in the United States is very instructive as to the corrupting influence of money in U.S. politics.
TOBACCO CIGARETTES
Health effects of tobacco cigarettesThe health destroying effects of tobacco cigarettes are well known and have been extensively studied, with thousands of peer reviewed journals articles testifying as to their harmful effects. According to
a recent report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), approximately 443,000 people die prematurely every year in the U.S. due either to the direct effects of smoking or to exposure to the second-hand smoke of others. The main specific causes of tobacco deaths include lung cancer, ischemic heart disease, and chronic obstructive lung disease, as depicted in this chart:
Legal status and a brief history of arguments over the health effects of tobaccoWhen due to accumulating evidence of lung cancer deaths attributable to cigarette smoking, the tobacco industry began to be sued by surviving spouses of cigarette smokers, the tobacco industry’s first line of defense was their claim that there was no proof that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer – or any other disease.
An article published in
Tobacco Control vividly documented this history:
Analysis of public statements issued by the tobacco industry sources over the past five decades shows that the companies maintained the stance that smoking had not been proven to be injurious to health through 1999. The public statements of the tobacco industry are in sharp contrast to the private views expressed by many of their own scientists. The tobacco documents reveal that many scientists within the tobacco industry acknowledged as early as the 1950s that cigarette smoking was unsafe. The sincerity of the industry’s promise to support research to find out if smoking was harmful to health and to disclose information about the health effects of smoking can also be questioned based upon the industry’s own documents which reveal… that research findings implicating smoking as a health problem were often not published or disclosed outside the industry.
But by the late 1990s it gradually became no longer possible for the tobacco industry to maintain that stance – perhaps largely due to
the efforts of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner David Kessler to bring cigarettes under FDA purview.
So the tobacco industry switched to a different argument – an argument that was virtually the opposite of their previous claim of no proof that cigarettes are harmful. They began
claiming that everyone always knew that cigarettes were harmful. Thus, they had their expert historians:
re-narrate the past, creating an account for judges and juries that makes it appear that “everyone has always known” that cigarettes are harmful, meaning that smokers have only themselves to blame for their illnesses.
In other words, they now claim that during all those decades that they were aggressively arguing that there is no proof that cigarettes cause illness, nevertheless “everyone knew” that they do.
In comparing the way that our government treats the tobacco industry with the way that it treats marijuana users, possessors, sellers, or prescribing physicians, it is instructive to note that the sale and use of tobacco cigarettes in this country are not only legal, but that there has never been much talk of criminalizing them. Furthermore, the tobacco industry’s arguments in defending themselves against lawsuits have never suggested that there was any evidence that their cigarettes are safe, but only that it was not definitively proven that they are
unsafe. In summary, tobacco is a poison with no medicinal benefits that is
legally sold for internal consumption in the United States. I say this not to argue that cigarettes should be criminalized, but only as a basis for comparison with how marijuana is treated in our country.
MARIJUANAThe U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)
classifies marijuana as a schedule I drug, which means that it is considered dangerous and of no use for any medical purpose. As a result of this and our federal government’s declared “War on Drugs”, marijuana users are often vigorously prosecuted in our country, even when they use marijuana solely for medicinal purposes, and even when its use for medicinal purposes is legal according to state law.
Of 700,000 marijuana arrests in 1997 (when the “War on Drugs was less vigorously prosecuted than it is today), 87% were for mere possession, and 41% of those incarcerated for a marijuana offense were incarcerated for possession only. Arrests for marijuana possession in 2004 were more numerous than arrests for all violent crimes combined. Our extremely high incarceration rate is at least partially explained by the fact that most non-violent first time offenders guilty of drug possession today in the United States get a
mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years with no parole, or 10 years with no parole if a large quantity of drugs is involved.
Here is
one example of how government intrudes on the lives of innocent people:
US Army veteran Steven Tuck was lying in a Canadian hospital bed. He fled to Canada after his plants were raided in California by DEA agents. He smoked marijuana to alleviate chronic pain from a 1987 parachuting accident.
Canadian authorities arrested him on his gurney, drove him to the border, and delivered him to US agents, and he then spent five days in jail – all with a catheter still attached to his penis. He was offered no medical treatment during his stay in the hospital, and his lawyer, Doug Hiatt, said, “This is totally inhumane. He’s been tortured for days for no reason.”
Adverse health effects of marijuanaIn assessing the adverse health effects of marijuana as an argument for criminalizing its use, one must keep in mind that virtually all drugs used for medicinal purposes have at least some adverse health effects. With that in mind, consider the following:
Lack of evidence for risk of deathIn comparing our government’s treatment of marijuana with that of cigarettes, it is instructive to start with deaths, because of the vivid contrast. Compared with the 443,000 annual deaths attributable to tobacco smoke,
federal government sources, including the National Institutes of Health, estimate that the number of annual deaths due to marijuana use is zero. According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine:
In healthy young users, {marijuana’s} cardiovascular effects are unlikely to be of clinical significance. Documented evidence of death resulting from recreational use, even in large doses, is lacking.
Other adverse health effectsThe best documented adverse health effect of marijuana use is the danger it poses for automobile accidents when used while driving. In view of its known propensity for temporary impairment of mental ability, that should not be surprising. A
study of fatal automobile accidents in France showed the presence of marijuana in 8.8% of drivers who were found to be at fault, compared to only 2.8% of those found not to be at fault. It should be noted that alcohol is responsible for far more automobile accidents than marijuana.
Long term marijuana use also poses a risk for mental illness. One
study of 2,437 teenagers and young adults that controlled for multiple potential confounding variables concluded that moderate use of marijuana increases the risk of psychotic symptoms in young people but has a stronger effect in those with evidence of predisposition for psychosis.
Another study showed that young women who used marijuana daily were five times more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety than nonusers. A
study by Swedish researchers provided evidence that marijuana use can significantly increase the risk of schizophrenia, finding that 0.71 percent Swedish military conscripts who smoked marijuana developed schizophrenia.
Marijuana carries with it some potential for addiction, though significantly less than many other drugs that are legal. Epidemiological data from
a national study demonstrated that about 10% of regular marijuana users become addicted to it, compared to 15% of alcohol users, 32% of nicotine users, and 23% of opioid users. Though the addiction potential of marijuana when used for medical purposes has not been extensively studied, it seems highly likely that in a medical setting the potential for addiction would be far less than when used for recreational purposes, as is known to be the case with narcotics when used for pain control.
While it is well known that marijuana results in short-term mental impairment, it is widely believed that those effects are not permanent.
A study of 1,318 subjects followed over a twelve year period demonstrated no permanent mental impairment from marijuana use. The authors concluded that “Over long time periods… {cognitive decline} does not appear to be associated with cannabis use”. Similarly, a 1999 study of 1,300 subjects reported “no significant differences in cognitive decline between heavy users, light users, and nonusers of cannabis” over a 15-year period.
A meta-analysis of neuropsychological studies of long-term marijuana smokers conducted by the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse came to a similar conclusion.
It is known that marijuana smokers inhale many of the same chemical components as do tobacco cigarette smokers. However, that doesn’t seem to translate into a high cancer risk.
A study of the long-term effects of marijuana smoking on cancer risk concluded that “the association of these cancers with marijuana, even long-term or heavy use, is not strong and may be below practically detectable limits”.
Medical benefitsPeter J. Cohen, in an article titled “
Medical Marijuana: The Conflict Between Scientific Evidence and Political Ideology”, begins his article by noting a long history of the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes:
Accounts dating back as far as 2700 B.C. describe the Chinese using marijuana for maladies ranging from rheumatism to constipation. There are similar reports of Indians, Africans, ancient Greeks and medieval Europeans using the substance to treat fevers, dysentery and malaria. In the United States, physicians documented the therapeutic properties of the drug as early as 1840, and the drug was included in the United States Pharmacopoeia, the official list of recognized medical drugs, from 1850 through 1942. During this period, lack of appetite was one of the indications for marijuana prescription.
Pain reliefNumerous studies have documented that marijuana is effective in relieving pain.
A study published in 2007 found that marijuana reduced daily pain by an average of 34%. Pain relief was rapid and no serious adverse events occurred during the study. The authors concluded that “smoked cannabis was well tolerated and effectively relieved chronic neuropathic pain from HIV-associated sensory neuropathy.”
A similar study concluded:
This study adds to a growing body of evidence that cannabis may be effective at ameliorating neuropathic pain, and may be an alternative for patients who do not respond to, or cannot tolerate, other drugs.
A study that
assessed the value of marijuana in alleviating pain associated with HIV concluded that “smoked cannabis was generally well tolerated and effective in treating patients with medically refractory pain due to HIV”.
Combating the effects of chemotherapyChemotherapy used to treat such diseases as cancer and hepatitis C often results in debilitating symptoms, including extreme fatigue, nausea, muscle aches, loss of appetite and depression, which are often severe enough to cause the patient to stop treatment. A study that assessed the usefulness of marijuana in combating the symptoms produced by chemotherapy used to treat viral hepatitis C
concluded that marijuana significantly ameliorated those symptoms and allowed more patients to complete chemotherapy.
The evolutionary biologist, Stephen Jay Gould, who smoked marijuana to alleviate the nausea and other symptoms caused by the chemotherapy he underwent for cancer,
stated:
Absolutely nothing in the available arsenal of anti-emetics worked at all. I was miserable and came to dread the frequent treatments with an almost perverse intensity. . . Marijuana worked like a charm. The sheer bliss of not experiencing nausea – and not having to fear it for all the days intervening between treatments – was the greatest boost I received in all my year of treatment, and surely the most important effect upon my eventual cure.
Statements on the medicinal effects of marijuana by reputable scientific organizations In 1997 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) convened
a conference “to review the scientific data concerning the potential therapeutic uses for marijuana and the
need for and feasibility of additional research”. At this conference, a group of experts in anesthesiology, internal medicine, neurology, oncology, ophthalmology, pharmacology and psychiatry concluded that:
For at least some potential indications, marijuana looks promising enough to recommend that there be new controlled studies done. The indications in which varying levels of interest were expressed are the following: Appetite stimulation and cachexia; nausea and vomiting following anticancer therapy; neurological and movement disorders; analgesia, and; Glaucoma.
Similarly, in 1998,
a meeting sponsored by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science concluded that marijuana could be a valuable agent in the treatment of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, HIV-related gastrointestinal disorders, AIDS wasting, severe pain, and some forms of spasticity. And the American College of Physicians (ACP) issued
a position paper in which they cited scientific data and stated that “preclinical, clinical, and anecdotal reports suggest numerous potential medical uses for marijuana”.
Federal government obstructionismDespite the vast amount of evidence for the beneficial medical effects of marijuana and the fact that as of May 2011 medical marijuana had been
legalized in 16 states (with similar legislation pending in 10 additional states), our federal government, in accordance with its “War on Drugs”, continues to pose substantial barriers to the use of marijuana for medical purposes.
Under the federal
Controlled Substances Act of 1970, marijuana continues to be classified as a Schedule I drug, which means that it has no medicinal purpose and is illegal. The
U.S. Supreme Court Decision of
Gonzales v. Raich in 2005 confirmed the right of the federal government to over-rule state law with regard to the criminalization of marijuana, even when used for medicinal purposes. In that case, Angel Raich sued the federal DEA for destroying marijuana plants which she relied upon for the relief of excruciating pain. California had legalized medical marijuana in 1996, but the DEA claimed the ability to overrule that decision, and the Supreme Court agreed with them.
Because of the federal illegal status of marijuana for any purpose, research into its medicinal effects has long been retarded. NIH has accordingly refused to make it available to researches, despite the fact that many individual NIH scientists have testified to its great promise for medicinal purposes, as noted above. Such decisions are backed up by federal government statements that willfully ignore evidence of the medical effectiveness of marijuana, such as
this statement by the Department of Health and Human Services:
A past evaluation by several Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA), concluded that no sound scientific studies supported medical use of marijuana for treatment in the United States, and no animal or human data supported the safety or efficacy of marijuana for general medical use.
Similarly, DEA spokesman Steve Robertson
stated that “the government maintains that no sound scientific studies exist to support marijuana’s medical value”.
Peter Cohen summed up the role of federal government obstruction of progress into the use of medical marijuana, near the end of his article noted earlier in this post:
Thus, in the face of several well-controlled studies demonstrating marijuana’s safety and efficacy in relieving both pathologic and experimentally induced pain as well as the often-incapacitating symptoms of nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, and depression, the recommendations of several scientific groups (some with the support of the federal government) that research should be unrestrained by political considerations, and the finding by an administrative law judge as well as well regarded scientific committees that its designation as a Schedule I controlled substance was unjustified, marijuana remains a Schedule I medication and there have been no realistic attempts to bring about a change in this situation. Legislators rather than “experts qualified by scientific training and experience” have acted to deny marijuana admission to legitimate medical practice.
CONCLUSIONThus it is that the manufacturer of a poison that kills 443,000 Americans every year enjoys legal status (though with some restrictions), while a drug that could be of great benefit to many thousands or millions of Americans remains illegal, and those who use, possess, sell, or prescribe it risk prosecution as criminals.
It’s not difficult to understand why such an absurd situation exists. It’s very simple. The tobacco industry is composed of powerful corporations that have habitually, by means of their great wealth, exerted great “influence” over our federal government. Marijuana, on the other hand, being a readily available plant, poses little potential for corporate profit. To the contrary, several corporate sectors of our economy stand to suffer a decrease in their profits if marijuana is decriminalized, or even if only medical marijuana becomes legal. Those corporate sectors include the alcohol industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the prison industry, and the manufacturers of various fabrics that would suffer if hemp became readily available. Largely because of the influence of our private prison industry, the United States now
has the highest incarceration rate of any nation in the world.
The importance of this issue goes way beyond the deaths caused by tobacco products and the unavailability of marijuana for medical use. Similar issues apply to any legal case that pits adversaries against each other who are highly unequal in the wealth and power that they wield.
When we are young we are told that all Americans have the right to equal justice under the law. I believed that – when I was young.
Our
Fourteenth Amendment to our Constitution explicitly – though in theory only – guarantees equal justice under the law:
nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
But when one party in a legal case has so much wealth and power that it is able to intimidate witnesses from testifying for the other side, and pay huge sums of money to encourage its own witnesses to prostitute themselves, justice cannot be served. That is not “equal protection of the laws”.
Worse yet, because numerous efforts at campaign finance reform have been overruled by our highest courts, bribery of our elected officials is essentially legal in this country, as long as the bribe is called a “campaign contribution” and as long as there isn’t an express written statement or audio recording as to the terms of the bribe. The terms are merely
understood by the involved parties. If a candidate for high office receives money from a powerful corporation, it is well understood what is expected of that candidate.
Until this kind of bribery of our elected officials is criminalized in our country we will continue to see absurd situations in which it is perfectly legal to sell poisons, while medicines that pose a challenge to our corporate power structure are criminalized. It’s difficult for me to see how a country where such a situation exists can be called a democracy.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
- Always follow the money.....
