Decriminalize Marijuana - for Justice and Humanity

by Joe DeRaymond

The New Jersey legislature is considering a bill that would allow the medical use of marijuana. The bill is labeled the "New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act." On May 29, to their credit, the Express Times supported passage of the bill in an editorial with the headline, "N.J. Legislature should find a way to help those in pain."

The bill does address one well-established aspect of the irrational criminalization of marijuana, namely, that it is an excellent palliative drug for nausea and pain relief. However, it fails to get to the core of the matter, which is that marijuana has been shown to have specific medical properties to treat and cure serious human maladies, including gliomas, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, and hypertension (see the abstract "Recent Research on Medical Marijuana, by Paul Armentano of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws").  

I recently was stricken with a glioma, which is a tumor arising out of the glial cells of the central nervous system. The glial cells support and facilitate the function of the neurons that transmit our nervous system messages in the brain and spinal cord. My tumor was the result of a form of malignant brain cancer called glioblastoma multiforme. It was hanging behind my right eye, a golf ball sized growth that threatened my life by compressing my brain and causing inflammation, desperate headaches, vomiting and general misery. The remnants of the cancer remain, and need to be beaten back with chemotherapy and radiation treatments on a daily basis.

I am denied the legal use of marijuana here in Pennsylvania for the palliative purposes supported in the New Jersey legislation. There are 12 states that allow the use of marijuana with a doctor’s prescription; New Mexico, Rhode Island, Montana, Vermont, Hawaii, Colorado, Nevada, Maine, Oregon, Alaska, Washington, and California. The federal government continues to maintain marijuana as a Schedule I drug, the most dangerous drug classification that includes heroin - cocaine is Schedule II, because it is judged to have legitimate medical uses. The states that pass medical marijuana laws do not enforce the federal laws, and allow those with a prescription the right to possess and grow marijuana for their personal use. At times the feds have attacked those who grow marijuana and support the medical marijuana movement.

However, even more vicious have been the federal government’s actions in burying the research that shows the medical value of marijuana in the treatment of serious illnesses, including the brain cancer that has attacked me.  

In 1974, the federal government commissioned a study of the effects of marijuana by the Medical College of the University of Virginia. There was, I believe, an expectation that the study would reveal the dangers of the illegal drug marijuana. What the study concluded was that administration of tetrahydracannibol "slowed the growth of lung cancers, breast cancers and a virus-induced leukemia in laboratory mice, and prolonged their lives by as much as 36 percent."(see Cannabinoids as Cancer Hope, by Paul Armentano).

This discovery did not lead to more research. Rather, it horrified the bureaucrats of the drug war, and the research was hidden from public view. No further research was done till the 1990’s, when European doctors uncovered the research and pursued the lines of study. Today, in Milan and Madrid, there are research teams performing clinical studies using the metabolites of marijuana to treat deadly diseases.

The failures of US drug policies and the decades-long war on drugs are evident in the following tables. The War on Drugs long ago became a war on people who use drugs. There are many "users" in this United States. For example, here is a chart of drug use in the US in the years up to 2000:

Total Amounts Consumed, 1994-2000 (in metric tons)

                  1994        1995         1996        1997        1998        1999        2000

cocaine:      323         321           301          275          267           271          259

heroin:                                                                                                         17.9

meth:          34.1        54.2          54.3          35.3       27.2           8.3           19.7

marijuana:   874         848           874          960         952           1028         1047

Total Expenditures, in billions of US dollars

                   1996        1997         1998         1999         2000

cocaine:      39.2        34.7           34.9          35.6          35.3

heroin:                                                                              ~ 9

meth:           10.1          9.3             8.0            5.8              5.4

marijuana:     9.5        10.5            10.8          10.6            10.5

(source: Office of National Drug Control Policy "What America’s Users Spend on Illegal Drugs" 1988-2000, December 2001, from a White House Drug Policy report)  

In the years since this report, there have been some changes in demographics of users and minor fluctuations in usage, but the overall patterns and gross amounts of use have not changed appreciably. In fact, the constant demand in the United States for heroin and cocaine, which approaches $50 billion a year, is an engine of disequilibrium for nations that serve this demand, i.e., Afghanistan and Colombia, nations embroiled in wars fueled by both desperate social conditions and the cash of the drug wars (see National Drug Threat Assessment 2007).

The war on drugs here in the US long ago became a war on drug users, who fill our prisons with non-violent offenders of a prohibition that creates a black market that generates billions of dollars in cash for drug traffickers, and for those who launder these billions through banks and businesses. For example, one of the reasons New Jersey is interested in decriminalizing marijuana is the $310,000,000 a year it costs to incarcerate nonviolent drug offenders each year.

The war on drugs has a long foreign policy reach as well. Throughout the Americas, the United States arms repressive militaries, police and paramilitary forces that both fight and participate in the drug wars that are more and more clearly wars of control and oppression of civilian populations. For example, the medieval attitudes that created marijuana prohibition have morphed into policies of fumigation in Colombia that have only insured supply, and have destroyed legitimate crops, injured innocent people, and polluted invaluable rainforest. The paramilitaries that were created in Colombia by the United States, starting in the early 1960’s, have become key players in the drug trade and crucial supporters of a status quo that keeps half the population in poverty.

There is a potential for abuse with any drug. Alcohol and tobacco are dangerous drugs that our government has chosen to regulate and tax rather than criminalize. In 2000, tobacco caused 435,000 deaths, alcohol 85,000, and marijuana, 0 (see Drug War Facts http://www.drugwarfacts.org/causes.htm). Recent studies that seek to show how dangerous marijuana can be only point to the need for regulation and de-mystification of this potentially life-saving drug for many people. As with any drug, its use should be judicious and at times supervised. To throw people in jail for using marijuana is wasteful and counter-productive. In the case of a person using the drug for medical purposes, its criminalization is simply cruel and violative of essential civil rights.