Marijuana legalization? A White House rebuttal, finally

Do CSMonitor

The Obama White House has finally laid out its most thorough, reasoned rebuttal to arguments for marijuana legalization – countering a campaign that is gaining alarming momentum at the state level.

The president’s tough position was delivered in early March by his “drug czar,” Gil Kerlikowske, in a private talk before police chiefs in California – which is ground zero for this debate.

“Marijuana legalization – for any purpose – is a nonstarter in the Obama administration,” said Mr. Kerlikowske, a former police chief himself.

It’s almost certain that California voters will be asked in a November ballot initiative whether to allow local governments to regulate and tax marijuana (similar to taxes on sales of alcohol). Other states are considering similar proposals, which are really a backdoor way to legalize pot.

(For a Monitor news story on the California ballot initiative, click here)

Thirteen states have decriminalized the use or possession of small amounts of marijuana, which is not the same as legalizing it. Selling it is still illegal except in states where it is used for medical purposes. And under federal law, any sort of marijuana use or sale is a criminal offense.

The drug czar’s remarks are worth notice for two reasons. First, they provide needed talking points for those who oppose legalization but who can’t seem to make their message resonate in the face of a well-financed, well-organized pro-marijuana effort. Second, they help clear up confusion about the White House policy on legalization.

When Attorney General Eric Holder announced last year that US law enforcement officials would neither raid nor prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries or those using them, states got mixed signals. Mr. Holder explained it as a matter of the best use of scarce federal law enforcement resources, which he didn’t want to expend in the now 14 states that have approved some use of medical marijuana.

But “a lot of people believe the administration is somewhat in favor of the decriminalization of marijuana,” says Scott Kirkland, police chief for El Cerrito, in the San Francisco Bay area. In California, the public, city council members, city managers, even police chiefs have “misinterpreted” the administration’s position, says Mr. Kirkland, the spokesman for marijuana issues for the California Police Chiefs Association.

The drug czar couldn’t have been more plain. On medical marijuana, which has strong public backing in opinion polls, the former Seattle police chief said that “science should determine what a medicine is, not popular vote.” As Kerlikowske pointed out, marijuana is harmful – and he has the studies to back it up. Read the footnotes in his speech; they’re sobering, especially No. 8.

(For a previous Monitor editorial on the perils of legalizing pot, click here)

Legalization supporters argue that no one has ever died from an overdose of this “soft” drug. But here’s what “science” has found so far: Smoking marijuana can result in dependence on the drug.

More than 30 percent of people who are 18 and over and who used marijuana in the past year are either dependent on the drug or abuse it – that is, they use it repeatedly under hazardous conditions or are imparied when they’re supposed to be interacting with others, such as at work. This is according to a 2004 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Pot is also associated with poor motor skills, cognitive impairment (i.e., affecting the ability to think, reason, and process information), and respiratory and mental illness.

The recent “Pentagon shooter,” John Patrick Bedell, was a heavy marijuana user. The disturbed young man’s psychiatrist told the Associated Press that marijuana made the symptoms of his mental illness more pronounced. Mr. Bedell’s brother, Jeffrey, told The Washington Post that marijuana made his brother’s thinking “more disordered” and that he had implored him to stop smoking pot, to no avail.