cannabisnews.com: End The Overkill for Marijuana





End The Overkill for Marijuana
Posted by CN Staff on August 15, 2004 at 08:12:51 PT
Editorial 
Source: Daily Herald
You don't swat flies with 16-pound sledge hammers. The hammer might kill the fly, but it will also do a lot of damage to the furniture.The so-called war on drugs involves similar overkill that needlessly, and expensively, puts people in prison for minor marijuana offenses. A big part of the problem is mandatory sentences, statutes designed to remove discretion from judges in an effort to show we're tough on drug dealers. Instead, we often end up sending low-level marijuana offenders to prison when a less expensive therapy program would be more appropriate.
At the root of overkill in drug sentencing is how marijuana is classified. As illicit drugs go, marijuana is innocuous. You don't hear of people becoming violent after smoking pot, though at the same time you wouldn't want them flying commercial aircraft, driving cars or operating heavy machinery.Yet the legal classification of marijuana puts it on par with LSD, heroin and mescaline -- Schedule I drugs that are defined by statute as highly addictive and lacking any medicinal value.But statutory definitions don't always reflect reality, and they certainly don't in the case of marijuana. The classification ignores the positive benefits of marijuana's active ingredient, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, which eases symptoms of glaucoma and enables cancer and AIDS patients to overcome nausea and regain their appetites. By contrast, methamphetamine, which any Utah law enforcement officer will tell you is far more dangerous and damaging than marijuana -- both in its manufacturing and use -- is a Schedule II drug. Meth is in the same category as Lortab, Oxycontin and PCP, all of which have some medicinal value.Because of marijuana's classification, crimes involving it often result in harsher sentences than is really warranted.Mere possession of less than an ounce of marijuana in Utah can land a person in jail for up to six months and result in fines up to $1,000. Selling any amount can get you up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.The punishments clearly do not reflect the true effect of marijuana in society. It's just not particularly dangerous. While it has been argued that marijuana is a gateway to other more serious drugs, marijuana in and of itself appears less harmful than alcohol. Unlike the meth lab operator, a marijuana grower doesn't turn his home and yard into a toxic waste dump that requires a hazardous materials team to dismantle and decontaminate.We're not suggesting that marijuana be legalized, though that would not be catastrophic. What we are saying is that punishments should be proportional to the damage, or potential damage, inflicted on society. People may have gotten a little overwrought about marijuana during the youth rebellions of the 1960s and '70s.Locking people up for marijuana crimes only adds to prison overcrowding, which can result in some truly bad people being released to make room for the new arrivals. Incarceration doesn't help with rehabilitation efforts either.A better approach is to refer low-level marijuana offenders to drug courts, with an emphasis on rehabilitation. The courts would save money: It costs between $20,000 and $50,000 to incarcerate an offender for a year, while a drug court system only costs $2,500-$4,000 per year.Marijuana should be reclassified to be viewed more like alcohol and tobacco, which its effects on a user more closely match. In Utah, illegally serving someone more than one alcoholic drink is only a class-C misdemeanor, which is half the punishment that a marijuana user gets for possessing less than 1 ounce of the stuff.It's just not worth it. We should reserve legal sledge hammers for bigger bugs and save ourselves a lot of money.This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A7.Newshawk: Nicholas Thimmesch IISource: Daily Herald, The (Provo, UT)Published: Sunday, August 15, 2004Copyright: 2004 The Daily HeraldContact:  rwright heraldextra.comWebsite: http://www.harktheherald.com/CannabisNews -- Cannabis Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/cannabis.shtml
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Comment #8 posted by freedom23 on August 16, 2004 at 16:01:57 PT
Pot rehab joke
There was some pot movie a few years ago that had one of the main characters in rehab. They were doing the "Hi, I'm blah and I'm here for pot" session at which point some guy jumps up and says something like "Pot? Pot? I sucked dick for crack and you're here for pot?"Rehab for pot is a joke. Better start with rehab for tobacco first.
"Bullshit: Penn & Teller" vs the War on Drugs
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Comment #7 posted by The GCW on August 15, 2004 at 20:09:44 PT
CANNABIS;
helps get rid of the brain cancer; they don't want it...helps keep cancer from forming to begin with; they don't want it...helps clean up the toxic dumps that created the cancer problems; they don't want it...helps do the job better than what replaced cannabis to begine with, with out causing the cancer; they didn't want it...They want money; no matter what.They seem to be killing Our children.& It upsets me.TooThere is a deep sense of insecurity for Your remaining children when one of them dies.When there is a chance that the military murdering government is responsable for that childs death; the anger is increased.When anger combines with education... 
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Comment #6 posted by FoM on August 15, 2004 at 15:39:13 PT
Jose
I have made the connection years back. When my young friend told me his son had brain cancer it wasn't long until another very young child developed the same brain tumor. A lady who came into our business regularly also developed a similar brain tumor. The town is very small and the only industry was Alcoa. We searched further and discovered they had a toxic dump near this small town. They all died.
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Comment #5 posted by Jose Melendez on August 15, 2004 at 15:24:31 PT
make the connection
Seemingly unrelated, but not:http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040815-032724-4871r.htm Marijuana chemical may fight cancer                                                                       Madrid, Spain, Aug. 15 (UPI) --     Spanish researchers from Madrid have said an ingredient in marijuana may be useful for treating brain cancers, the BBC reported Sunday. http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,11381,1283588,00.html The numbers of sufferers of brain diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and motor neurone disease, have soared across the West in less than 20 years, scientists have discovered. The alarming rise, which includes figures showing rates of dementia have trebled in men, has been linked to rises in levels of pesticides, industrial effluents, domestic waste, car exhausts and other pollutants, says a report in the journal Public Health.
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Comment #4 posted by afterburner on August 15, 2004 at 15:14:50 PT
LSD: addictive? Mescaline: addictive?
' Yet the legal classification of marijuana puts it on par with LSD, heroin and mescaline -- Schedule I drugs that are defined by statute as highly addictive and lacking any medicinal value. 'LSD: addictive? Mescaline: addictive? This classification is "highly" suspect. Both are psychedelics, not narcotics and not stimulants. Their interaction with both dopamine and seratonin does not indicate an addictive tendency."To rank today's commonly used drugs by their addictiveness, we asked
experts to consider two questions: How easy is it to get hooked on
these substances and how hard is it to stop using them? Although a
person's vulnerability to drug also depends on individual traits --
physiology, psychology, and social and economic pressures -- these
rankings reflect only the addictive potential inherent in the drug.
The numbers below are relative rankings, based on the experts' scores
for each substance:Nicotine				100
Ice, Glass (Methamphetamine smoked)	 99
Crack					 98
Crystal Meth (Methamphetamine injected)	 93
Valium (Diazepam)			 85
Quaalude (Methaqualone)			 83
Seconal (Secobarbital)			 82
Alcohol					 81
Heroin					 80
Crank (Amphetamine taken nasally)	 78
Cocaine					 72
Caffeine				 68
PCP (Phencyclidine)			 57
Marijuana				 21
Ecstasy (MDMA)				 20
Psilocybin Mushrooms			 18
LSD					 18
Mescaline				 18[Research by John Hastings][From: _In Health_, Nov/Dec 1990; eye-balling by Harel Barzilai;
relative rankings are definite, numbers given are (+/-)1%]
--Erowid Addiction Vaults : Addictiveness Ratings of Various Drugs
http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/addiction/addiction_journal1.shtmlNotice that all the psychedelics listed including cannabis "marijuana" are rated less than 25% and that meth, heroin, cocaine, and the legal nicotine, caffeine and alcohol are all rated over 50%.
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Comment #3 posted by FoM on August 15, 2004 at 12:55:05 PT
DeVoHawk
It's just so simple. I believe people are starting to get it but not everyone is there yet. The fact that Cannabis helps slow up brain tumors is a miracle and not on the news. I have a friend who is many years younger then I am. When he was about 20 he came to visit me and told me his 2 year old son had a brain tumor. I watched this young man's heart break over the treatment time of his son's illness and finally death. Maybe cannabis could have helped his son. It upsets me.
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Comment #2 posted by DeVoHawk on August 15, 2004 at 12:34:16 PT
FOM - I Agree
The author obviously believes marijuana use it wrong but wants to appear friendly "Locking people up for marijuana crimes only adds to prison overcrowding, which can result in some truly bad people being released to make room for the new arrivals. Incarceration doesn't help with rehabilitation efforts either." "We're not suggesting that marijuana be legalized" because of course that would take guts which the Daily Herald staff lack.
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Comment #1 posted by FoM on August 15, 2004 at 11:05:20 PT
Rehab Why?
Why would someone who uses Cannabis need re-hab? I don't understand this part of the article. How do they re-hab someone over cannabis use? Drug Testing? Drug testing is a way to catch a person but doesn't help anyone.****A better approach is to refer low-level marijuana offenders to drug courts, with an emphasis on rehabilitation. 
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