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发帖数: 29846 | 1 Think Smoking Pot Is No Big Deal? Data Proves Otherwise
November 26, 2014 - 9:48 AM
By Cully Stimson
With the Colorado state capitol building visible in the background,
partygoers dance and smoke pot on the first of two days at the annual 4/20
marijuana festival in Denver, Saturday April 19, 2014. The annual event is
the first 420 marijuana celebration since retail marijuana stores began
selling in January 2014. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)
At first blush, it may appear that the fight to thwart marijuana
legalization is a lost cause. Pot pushers want you to believe that
legalization is inevitable. They point to legalization successes this
November in Alaska, Oregon, and the District of Columbia.
But Big Pot lost in Florida, and five cities in pot-crazy Colorado outlawed
the sale of marijuana, including Lakewood, Canon City, Palisade, Palmer Lake
and Ramah. And now comes the latest Gallup poll from Nov. 6, which shows
that support for marijuana legalization is down seven points from last year,
from 58 percent to 51 percent. Even liberal support for legalization
dropped four points from last year.
So why did the pot pushers lose a large state like Florida, and why is
support for legalization falling?
That’s a tough question. But perhaps the public is starting to pay
attention to scientific data and the actual dangers of marijuana, and the
negative stories coming out of Colorado and Washington State since those
states legalized marijuana.
The science is clear and unambiguous – pot is a dangerous substance. It is
not like alcohol at all. There is a reason it is classified as a Schedule I
controlled dangerous substance, right along with heroin, LSD and ecstasy.
The American Medical Association, the American Lung Association and other
reputable doctors and scientists all reject legalization.
As Dr. Kevin Sabet, former senior advisor to President Obama’s drug policy
office, states in his book “Reefer Sanity ‘Seven Great Myths About
Marijuana,” the average strength of today’s marijuana is five to six times
what it was in the 1960s and 1970s, and upwards of 10 to 20 times stronger
than in the past.
Even the liberal editorial pages of The Washington Post urged voters not to
legalize pot in the ballot initiative this past Nov. 4. The Post noted that
“the rush to legalize marijuana gives us – and we hope voters – serious
pause.”
The data coming out of Colorado is exhibit A on why voters should reject
legalization efforts. Even the Democratic governor of Colorado, John
Hickenlooper, said that legalizing marijuana in Colorado was “reckless.”
As I have written at Heritage, pot-positive traffic fatalities have gone up
100 percent since voters legalized pot in Colorado. This is true despite the
fact that overall traffic fatalities in Colorado have gone down since 2007.
A report by a federal grant-funded agency in Colorado found seven specific
negative side effects that pot legalization has caused in Colorado:
1) the majority of DUI drug arrests involve marijuana;
2) youth consumption of marijuana has increased;
3) drug-related suspensions/expulsions increased 32 percent over a 5-
year period and a majority was for marijuana;
4) an increase in college users;
5) almost 50 percent of Denver arrestees tested positive for marijuana;
6) marijuana-related emergency room visits increased 57 percent from
2011-2013; and
7) marijuana-related hospitalizations has increased 82 percent since
2008.
Perhaps people are also aware of new scientific studies pointing to the
inherent dangers of marijuana. For example, the British health research
journal The Lancet Psychiatry recently concluded that teens who smoke
marijuana are “also 60 percent less likely to graduate college and seven
times more likely to attempt suicide.”
Others have picked up on the recent findings by the Journal of Addiction
from Kings College London that found that marijuana is highly addictive,
causes mental health problems and is a gateway drug to other illegal and
dangerous drugs. That report found that regular adolescent marijuana users
have lower educational attainment than non-using peers, that they were more
likely to use other illegal drugs, the use produced intellectual impairment,
that use doubled the risk of being diagnosed with schizophrenia, and
increased the risk of heart attacks in middle-aged adults.
Add to that the recent study where 9.7 percent of respondents reported that
they had smoked marijuana before coming to work, and you can see why
responsible citizens, including employers and parents, are starting to
question the pro-pot canard that smoking marijuana is no big deal and
actually good for you.
Charles Stimson, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee
Affairs, is a Senior Legal Fellow at The Heritage Foundation (heritage.org)
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