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a column
a couple of weeks ago (right before I left for vacation), Don Feder
accused me of trying to appear cool by advocating the decriminalization
of marijuana. Feder doesn't give me much credit — I at least
have enough of a notion of what constitutes "cool" to
know that writing about marijuana decriminalization isn't it. But
there are a couple of points in Feder's op-ed that are worth addressing,
and are symptomatic of the slippery arguments often employed by
overzealous drug warriors.
Feder
argues that marijuana must be harmful because the drug "accounted
for 79,088 emergency-room visits" in 1999. Emergency-room visits
are one of the favorite stats of drug warriors, but they are easily
misrepresented. A government outfit called SAMHSA, the Substance
Abuse and Mental Health Administration, keeps
track of emergency-room "mentions" of various drugs.
But the criteria
used in this report mean, for instance, that if you smoked some
marijuana and then proceeded to overdose on cocaine, your emergency-room
visit would be counted as a marijuana "mention." If you
smoked some marijuana, drank 18 margaritas, then proceeded to cut
your finger with a knife while slicing up more limes, that too would
constitute a marijuana "mention."
Feder is right
to suggest that there are about 80,000 marijuana emergency-room
"mentions" for marijuana per year, but it is misleading
to imply that marijuana causes each and every one of these
visits. In fact, according to SAMSHA, "marijuana/hashish is
likely to be mentioned with other substances, particularly alcohol
and cocaine." This, Feder neglects to mention.
That leaves
probably a couple of tens of thousands of marijuana-only mentions
(for things like panic attacks). By comparison, as Richard Cowan
points out on his exhaustive Marijuananews.com,
there are about 50,000 "mentions" of aspirin, acetaminophen,
and ibuprofen a year. In short, the emergency-room figures hardly
paint a picture of marijuana as the dangerous drug that Feder suggests.
Feder
trots out the gateway theory, arguing that using marijuana disposes
kids to using harder drugs, and also that marijuana helps make kids
into juvenile delinquents. There's no doubt that kids who smoke
a lot of dope are likelier to use other drugs and get into trouble.
Nothing Feder writes, however, shows any causal connection between
marijuana and harder drug use or misbehavior. In fact, most of the
serious literature on drugs reports that such a connection simply
doesn't exist.
Here, for instance,
is the federally funded, highly credible Institute of Medicine on
the gateway idea: "Because underage smoking and alcohol use
typically precede marijuana use, marijuana is not the most common,
and is rarely the first, 'gateway' to illicit drug use. There is
no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally
linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs."
As for marijuana
making kids go bad, Feder cites as evidence the fact that "parent
after parent" tells him marijuana caused their kids' problems.
But the Institute of Medicine report cites research suggesting exactly
the opposite. "Although parents often state that marijuana
caused the children to become rebellious, the troubled adolescents
[in
one study — you can look it up on Institute for Medicine
site if you're interested] developed conduct disorders before
marijuana abuse." And another study "recently concluded
that it is more likely that conduct disorders generally lead to
substance abuse than the reverse."
Finally,
Feder paints a picture of a devastated Netherlands, which has more
or less legalized marijuana use, as evidence for the folly of liberalizing
drug laws. He makes an amusing gaffe by first dismissing Peter Reuter
and Robert MacCoun (two authors I quote as reporting that decriminalization
doesn't increase marijuana use) as a "drug lobby source"
— and then relying on a Reuter-MacCoun number to show that
adolescent marijuana use has increased recently in the Netherlands.
So what gives?
Reuter and MacCoun — two well-respected drug-war skeptics,
who aren't outright legalizers — report that mere decriminalization
(i.e., stopping arresting people for possession of small amounts
of marijuana) has not increased use in the Netherlands, the U.S.
(in the 1970s), or Australia. But as the Netherlands further loosened
their regime in the 1980s, use did increase (there are arguments
over the figures, but we'll let that go for the moment).
Feder also
claims that violent crime increased in the Netherlands from 1991
to 1996. But this is a meaningless fact — unless Feder can
adduce some causation between marijuana and violent crime, and he
can't. In the U.S., marijuana use increased in the '90s, but violent
crime dramatically declined — by Feder's reasoning, this would
mean marijuana use must diminish crime. But the fact is the
two numbers have nothing to do with each other, and there is no
evidence that marijuana causes violence.
In any case,
I'll avoid questioning Feder's motives. I don't know whether he
wants to appear cool or uncool, but I do know that his figures are
misleading and his arguments make no sense.
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