MarijuanaNews.com : Science, Democracy, Ideology and the Prohibitionist Police State. Marijuana Use Doesn’t Hurt “Thinking Skills” But Prohibition Does. Analysis by Richard Cowan

Posted June 30, 2003
Analysis by Richard Cowan

Last Thursday’s Press Release from

NORML had two stories that demonstrated the ever-increasing disconnect
between DEAland’s prohibitionist ideology and the American people.

The first story reported that
according to a “national poll of 1,204 likely voters by Zogby International
and commissioned by the Drug Policy Alliance, forty-one percent of respondents
agree that ‘the government should treat marijuana more or less the same way it
treats alcohol: it should regulate marijuana, control it, tax it, and only make
it illegal for children.’ That figure is up significantly from the 34 percent
of Americans who said they supported legalizing marijuana in a 2001
USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll, and is almost three times as
high as the percentage who supported legalization in 1972.”

These numbers are all the more
remarkable when one considers the extraordinary level of prohibitionist
propaganda to which DEAland has been subjected. Moreover, other polls have shown
that over 70% of the American people support “decriminalization” and over 80%
favor medical access to cannabis.
See

Democracy, Cannabis and the Drug Czar. Arrests Remain Close to Record Levels.
Support for Medical Cannabis Now Up to 80%. And 34% Favor Full Legalization. We
Are Winning, But The People Are Suffering.

Nonetheless, NORML’s second story reported that in 2000, marijuana
offenders (over 59,000) comprised almost 20 percent of all felony drug
offenders, according to a report by the US Department of Justice (DOJ), Bureau
of Justice Statistics.
(The full text of the report, “Felony Sentences in State Courts, 2000,” is
available online at:

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/fssc00.pdf.)

In addition, there were almost 700,000 arrests for misdemeanor marijuana
possession in 2000.

In short, the war on cannabis has
lost the support of the American people at the very time that the Bush regime
has made it the focus of its “war on drugs.” One may get a little insight into
how this is happening from a seemingly unrelated story from Cuba. Recently, it
was reported that the Castro had replaced the “ideologist” for the Cuban
Communist party. The term “ideologist” is not widely used in the politics of
democracies, which may be the one point on which the Communists were more
candid. DEAland Presidents and their counterparts in the democracies have
political and economic advisers, of course, but their focus is generally more
pragmatic advice on getting reelected. Ideologists are more like theologians,
and Communist ideologues, like the prohibitionists, have the task of justifying
an ever-greater commitment to unworkable and unjust policies.

The great disadvantage of the totalitarian police states is that they have the
impossible task of controlling everything. The result is that they simply stifle
everything, especially the economy. Fascist and proto-fascist regimes have
narrower focuses, but they still have the problem of keeping the police from
overextending their reach. Prohibitionism as an ideology allows the police to
have enormous power, but it keeps them focused on selected minorities, and
provides a reserve force that can be used elsewhere if needed.

In DEAland, the chief ideologist is
the Drug Czar, currently John Walters, who may be the perfect ideologue,
inasmuch as he is utterly indifferent to the truth.
See

Walters Tells a New Lie. Oh Happy Day! People Need Treatment If They Are Sent to
Treatment, By Definition. And How Do They Treat “Marijuana Addicts?” We Couldn’t
Make This Up, But They Did.
and

Dan Forbes Documents Walters’ Lies About Potency. Understanding That The War On
Cannabis Is Built On Lies Is Key to Understanding More Than Just Drug War.

Recently, I saw him on Canadian television “advising” the Canadian government to
ignore “fringe groups” which support decriminalization. Is there any other
position with such high levels of support that would be called “fringe?”

The week that the Canadian government
finally released its phony “decrim” bill, a very knowledgeable observer told me
that the poor level of the discourse on the subject caused him to “despair of
democracy.” Sadly, I agreed, but the quality of the debate in Canada was still
far superior to that in DEAland.
See

D’oh! Canada? Proposed Marijuana “Modernization” Equals The Sum of All Their
Ignorance. The Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy of Canadian Cannabis
Prohibition. Analysis by Richard Cowan

Although democracy means “rule by the people,” the poll numbers on cannabis
prohibition indicate that the people are doing their part. The problem is with
the media and the politicians, who seem more beholden to the police apparatus
than to the electorate. And the media did not report these poll results, so many
politicians may actually believe that legalization is still a fringe position.

On Friday, there was another story that perfectly demonstrated the problem
with the media. The University of California San
Diego’s Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research is trying to do state
sponsored research, but it had to begin with a safety study, and what they found
did not fit the party line.

From The San Diego Union-Tribune

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/uniontrib/fri/metro/news_7m27pot.html

Study: Pot doesn’t hurt thinking skills
Recreational use appraised
By Jenny Diamond
June 27, 2003
(MarijuanaNews note: The San Diego Union-Tribune
seems to have been the only paper to carry this story even though Reuters
carried its own version on its wire service. The Union Tribune is very
prohibitionist, but they could not very well ignore a local story, but everyone
else did.)
See

The San Diego Union-Tribune Poisons Its Readers. The Albany Times Union Offers
An Antidote.

Marijuana does not substantially harm thinking
skills of long-term recreational users, according to researchers at the
University of California San Diego.
(MarijuanaNews note: The study is now
available online at

http://www.hnrc.ucsd.edu/publications_pdf/348art2003.pdf other related
studies are linked from
http://www.cmcr.ucsd.edu/geninfo/marijuana.htm .)
Also see

American Journal Of Epidemiology Report That Long-Term Use Of Marijuana
Does Not Lead To A Decline In Mental Function Got Minimal Coverage,
Perhaps Because Scores Actually Fell More Among Non-Users Than Among Heavy
Users!
and links

They analyzed 15 previously published research
studies, and the only side effect found was a minimal reduction in learning and
memory.

“In the case of cannabis, there is a back-and-forth in literature about
brain damage,” said Igor Grant, M.D., the study’s senior author and director of
UCSD’s Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research. “We found that marijuana users
were surprisingly intact.”

UCSD researchers evaluated the neurocognitive
abilities of 704 cannabis users and 484 nonusers. In addition to learning and
memory, UCSD researchers looked at participants’ simple reaction time, attention
and motor and language skills.

While the studies included a wide range of marijuana users, Grant defined
recreational marijuana users as those who smoke a couple of times a month to a
couple of times a week.

The marijuana group was slightly more likely to have minor memory
problems, said Grant, who is also a professor of psychiatry at UCSD.

It’s unlikely that the problems identified in the lab would significantly
affect the users in the real world, he said.

The study will be published today in the July issue of the Journal of
the International Neuropsychological Society.

UCSD’s Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research is a state-supported program
between UCSD and UC San Francisco that oversees studies of medicinal cannabis.

Grant emphasized that only marijuana’s residual effects on the brain were
studied, not the short-term effects of a marijuana high.

He called the analysis’ conclusions “curious.”
(MarijuanaNews note: His bias is obvious. In
the Reuters version he is quoted as saying, “If it turned out that new
studies find that cannabis is helpful in treating some medical conditions,
this enables us to see a marginal level of safety.” Emphasis added)

“You would expect that a group of heavy marijuana users would have more
difficulties,” he said.

From a neurological standpoint, the analysis
suggests that there is a fair amount of safety in short-term medicinal marijuana
use, Grant said.
(MarijuanaNews note: Of course, this
contradicts the party line.)

In 1996, California voters adopted Proposition 215, which permits the
seriously ill to use marijuana for medicinal purposes. A Medical
Marijuana/Cannabis Task Force was created to help advise the San Diego City
Council on regulating medicinal marijuana.

“It’s one more factor for policy-makers to look at and consider,” said Ed
Plank, a task force member. “This will be one more piece of information to help
weigh the potential negative impacts versus the benefits.”

The task force is searching for $35,000 in funding to begin a new
medicinal marijuana program. The City Council approved the Voluntary
Verification Card Program last year. It will allow people with a card to legally
possess up to 1 ounce of marijuana.

Humbolt County, Marin County and the city of San Francisco have active
verification card programs.

Marijuana use, however, remains against federal law.
See

Federal Prosecution of Activist Steve McWilliams For Just 25 Plants Relevant to
American Refugees In Canada. Being Outspoken Is The Real Crime. Being Deprived
Of Medication Is The Real Punishment.

“I don’t think people should read into the
results (of the study,)” Grant said. “The study was not designed to address
issues of legalization of marijuana or whether it’s appropriate to use
recreationally.”

Grant noted that there were significant limitations in the researchers’
evaluation.

Complications in the individual studies, such as lingering traces of
marijuana in the body and the accuracy of the subjects’ self-reporting, posed
problems. It was also possible that the participants in the studies used other
drugs.
(MarijuanaNews note: Of course, if the marijuana
users also used other drugs, this would not hide any damage done by marijuana.)

Despite the specific focus of the evaluation, Grant said he knows that
people will interpret the study to their liking.

“I’m sure people will spin this in various ways,” he said.
(MarijuanaNews note: Actually, the “spin” seems to be
invisibility.)

Jenny Diamond is a Union-Tribune intern.
(MarijuanaNews note: As noted, the Union Tribune
is goofily prohibitionist in its editorial policy so it is ironic that they had
an intern do this story. She did a better job than most reporters.)