CrimLaw

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Wow! Never thought I'd see a San Fran paper in favor of States' rights.

Of course, the right in question is the right to smoke marijuana.

Before I get the numerous, though always polite, e-mails about how wrong I am about marijuana let me say this: I think the marijuana laws are stupid. It's like prohibition was for alcohol or making alcohol illegal is currently for college students; it romanticizes a relatively harmless drug in which people do not see the harm and leads to a willingness to ignore the law.

On the other hand, for years I've heard arguments for legalization because of all the wonderful uses of hemp which used to be summarized pretty well by the good ol' hemp shirt (thanks, but I'll stick to cotton). Now I hear all the time that marijuana is the new wonder cure - it is the new laudanum. Does marijuana have valid medical uses? Almost undoubtedly. Can it do everything claimed? Maybe. Are there better suited drugs out there? Not sure.

There's the rub. I don't know. And I don't trust the people who keep telling me how wonderful it is¹. It's not that they are evil or stupid; it's that I very, very, very strongly suspect that they have an ulterior motive (or at the very least they strongly desire to justify). I see healthy, pro-marijuana adults arguing this point behind a screen of very desperate, very ill people who are willing to grasp at any straw. If you were to actually begin manufacturing laudanum again you could probably get these people to use it (and, who knows, it might help with the pain).

Since I know I'll get several e-mails from this, can some of you who are pro-use tell me why it has not been developed into pill form²? For instance, my understanding is that aspirin was originally tree bark but I no longer have to chew on bark or eat willow leaves to get curative effects. Have there been attempts to develop the same thing for the useful ingredients in marijuana so that dosage, contaminants, etc can be controlled? And the argument for legal use would ring much truer if it was about prescribed pills rather than smoking.



¹ No matter how many studies and statistics are cited in pages like this what keeps popping into my mind is the old Twain quote that "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."

² Yes, thanks for the info, but I do already know about brownies.

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