NY Times Calls on Feds to End Marijuana Ban

The New York Times editorial board put out a call for the federal government to end the ban on marijuana.

Their reasoning: “It has been more than 40 years since Congress passed the current ban on marijuana, inflicting great harm on society just to prohibit a substance far less dangerous than alcohol. The federal government should repeal the ban on marijuana.”

Obviously, I agree and there is a good chance that you do as well, being a Weedist reader. As with any strong statement, there are a bevy of supporters and denouncers alike.

On the side of denouncement, my old buddy Kevin Sabet felt he had to chime in (this guy is like Dee Snyder on those VH1 “Do you remember the [insert decade here]?” shows). He just can’t help but pop his ridiculous opinions into every instance where cannabis is being discussed near a media source.

This is Sabet’s latest bit of long-form garbage, “Do we really want another Big Tobacco industry that lives off addiction for profit? There are eight times as many liquor stores in poor neighborhoods in this country than upper-class, rich neighborhoods. The idea that this could help social justice is contrary to all of our experiences with alcohol and tobacco, two legalized drugs.”

While I can (almost) agree with him about not wanting another big lobby, regardless of the issue, he loses me when he tries to make this about class and wealth. Upper-class people don’t likely drink less booze simply because they don’t have the abundance of choices. They probably just buy their booze in bulk, at Costco, from high-end boutiques that don’t qualify as “liquor” stores or even online ordering.

Also, Sabet just loves to compare cannabis to alcohol and tobacco when discussing the potential for social harm but he never seems to want to delve into the differences in the substances themselves. The point isn’t that we’re really trying to have that third legal drug, the point is that if you are going to let tobacco and alcohol be legal when they cause a nearly infinite slough of problems, how do we justify keeping an empirically safer substance illegal?

As I’ve said before, when Project SAM starts to rally for the banning of alcohol and tobacco, I will begin to take them seriously. This is a marijuana witch hunt, plain and simple. Maybe Sabet’s former girlfriend was hopelessly seduced by a tie-die clad harpist at a James Taylor concert? I don’t know, but he’s rapidly losing this fight and I honestly think he runs the risk of politically crippling himself by looking like such a moron on a substance that will not be illegal for very much longer.

Joining Sabet in the dunces circle is newcomer (at least to me) Stuart Gitlow, president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. This Gitlow stated in response to the editorial board’s comments, “Their lead was that prohibition for alcohol failed, and yet when you looked back at the Prohibition, what you see is that per capita use of alcohol during Prohibition dropped more than 50%; as a result of that, alcohol-related deaths dropped considerably as well. From a public-health standpoint, prohibition was an enormous public-health success. We’ve gone over these past 30 to 40 years from about half the population smoking cigarettes to a much smaller figure. It’s no longer considered reasonable to smoke in the supermarket or the workplace or on an airplane and it’s no longer legal in those circumstances, and as a result, illness and death have dropped considerably. Now the public wants to start that cycle again with a different drug they consider safer.”

Here we are again trying to do an apples to apples comparison between apples and grapefruit. He’s citing the health toll that alcohol and tobacco have taken as his rationale for cannabis prohibition. However, just like Sabet, he is assuming they are all very similar. When looking at booze, tobacco and weed, it is not like looking at a shotgun, a rifle and a pistol. It’s more like looking at a shotgun, a rifle, and a roll of masking tape. Sure, you can probably find some dumb shit to do with masking tape that might imperil your safety; but the likelihood of that coming to fruition is miniscule while the likelihood of someone being hurt by a weapon is significantly higher than with a roll of tape.

The NY Times piece had some decent pro-legalization arguments as well, but they are nothing earth-shattering or new so I’ll let you peruse them on your own.