This just in from the Drug Czar, John Walters:
MIAMI, April 14 (Reuters) – Canadian production of high-potency marijuana is partly to blame for a doubling of pot-related emergency room cases in the United States, the head of U.S. drug policy said on Wednesday.
Reiterating U.S. criticism of a more relaxed Canadian attitude to marijuana, White House drug czar John Walters urged Ottawa to recognize the problem of hydroponically grown pot, which is grown in nutrient-rich solutions rather than soil.
It is often grown inside under lights, and Walters said it sold for as much as cocaine.
Hmm, I wonder why a weed that can grow freely in just about any climate costs as much as cocaine? Oh, yeah, because it is illegal. It is not the marijuana that is dangerous, it is the prohibition of marijuana that is dangerous.
He could have just as easily said that it is sold for as much as gold. Actually, some of the Canadian varieties are more valuable than gold, fetching up to $450/ounce. Now, if you had thousands or millions of dollars worth of gold stored at your home, and someone broke in to steal it, you could always call the cops and they’d hunt down the perpetrator. You could file an insurance claim and get reimbursed for your loss. You could store your gold in a bank.
But pot is illegal, so you’re not going to call the cops. Instead you stock up on weapons to protect your millions, and fight the would-be thieves with violence, not courts. The prohibition brings the violence.
“Canada is exporting to us the crack of marijuana and it is a dangerous problem,” Walters told reporters in Miami, where he kicked off a campaign to cut marijuana use by Hispanic youths.
The crack of marijuana? See, this is a rhetorical device by which you tie one issue to another completely unrelated issue. Pot sells for as much as cocaine. They are exporting the crack of marijuana. Crack = bad, Marijuana = Crack, therefore Marijuana = bad.
“We need to have political leadership in Canada that recognizes the problem,” he said. “Addiction is going to spread in Canada dramatically. It has in many places.”
Oh, yeah, watch out for that dreaded wave of marijuana addicts! You know what terrible consequences will arise from that! Why, we might have a critical shortage of Cheetos! Record sales for guitar-noodling jam-bands will skyrocket!
Addiction has risen in many places. But addiction to marijuana is not a physical thing. No one goes through the D.T.’s if they can’t get a spliff. No one spends four days wracked with violent spasms and dry heaves trying to kick pot (unlike, say, heroin). No one in the history of mankind has ever overdosed on marijuana – it is not physically possible.
When was the last time you heard a news report about pot junkies breaking into homes to steal stuff to pawn so they could get a weed fix? How many “pot whores” are there who will sell their bodies just for another hit from the pipe? Who do you know who drained their bank account, sold their possessions, and lost their families just so they could score some more ganja?
A longtime critic of Canadian plans to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana, Walters said that while the pot the hippie generation knew contained on average 1 percent of psychoactive Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, Canada’s high-potency marijuana contained 20 to 30 percent THC.
How many times have you heard the “this is not your father’s marijuana” argument? First of all, it is a complete myth that 60’s & 70’s pot was just 1% THC. Those studies tested weak strains of government pot (yes there is such a thing) grown at the University of Mississippi, and then only tested the THC content of the leaves, which are only smoked by the desperate. The buds of the cannabis flower, which is what is usually smoked, have always been in the 10%-12% THC range.
Also, Walters conveniently ignores the fact that there are different strains of marijuana. Your average street marijuana (“Mexican Dirtweed”) fetches about $100/ounce and contains 7%-10% THC. Good mid-grade weed costs $300/ounce and is about 12%-15% THC, and the killer “BC Bud” Walters is excoriating costs $450/ounce and contains the 20%-30% THC. Comparing pot leaves from dirtweed in the 60’s to the hydroponic bud of today is like comparing O’Doul’s near-beer to Bacardi 151.
But even that analogy falls flat because THC won’t kill you like alcohol will. You know what happens when a stoner has a bag full of dirtweed? He smokes a whole lot of it and gets stoned. What happens when he has a bag full of BC Bud? He smokes very little of it and gets stoned.
“It is extremely dangerous. It is one of the reasons why we believe … we have seen a doubling of emergency room cases involving marijuana in the last several years from 60,000 to 120,000,” Walters said.
Ah, yes, the emergency room visits. This data comes from the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) survey of metropolitan hospital emergency rooms. The statistics merely measure each time marijuana use was mentioned by an ER patient. The DAWN survey allows for up to four drugs to be tracked per visit.
So, for example, a man could smoke a joint in the morning, shoot heroin at night, go to the hospital for his heroin overdose, and when he tells the doctor he’s had pot and smack, there’s another “marijuana-related emergency room visit.” Or he could go to a party, smoke some weed and get drunk, get in a car wreck, mention he’s had pot and whisky, there’s another “marijuana-related emergency room visit.” Or snort some lines of coke or crank, toke up a spliff, go to the hospital for the powder overdose, there’s another “marijuana-related emergency room visit.”
The only thing the rise in “marijuana-related emergency room visits” tells us is that more people are willing to admit to smoking marijuana. There’s no causality in the DAWN statistics — the marijuana may have had nothing to do with the emergency room visit. You could accidentally cut yourself while slicing a tomato for dinner, go to the emergency room, and when you tell them you had some ganja at a party the night before, there’s another “marijuana-related emergency room visit.” You could be attacked by a mugger, go to the emergency room, mention that you smoked some herb that night, there’s another “marijuana-related emergency room visit.”
Disagreements over drug policy, combined with differences over the Iraq war, are among several issues that have chilled relations between Canada and its powerful southern neighbor.
While maintaining that improving ties with Washington was a priority, new Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin said in December he intended to press ahead with plans to end jail terms for people caught with small amounts of marijuana.
And there’s where the real problem lies. Canadians are willing to look at the facts. They see that in every study from the 1894 Indian Hemp Commission, to the reports authorized by New York mayor Fiorella LaGuardia, US President Richard Nixon, and every unbiased scientific look at marijuana have all shown that prohibition of marijuana is more costly and harmful to society than the marijuana itself.
America’s War On [Some Americans With Certain] Drugs is completely propped up by the prohibition of pot. So if the Canadians decriminalize and their society still functions with relatively little change, it is a death blow to the drug-warriors arguments demonizing weed. Many have pointed out that societies that have decriminalized marijuana, like The Netherlands, have much lower incidences of marijuana use, both among adults and teens. But that was easy to ignore. The drug warriors could offer excuses like “their society and culture is different than ours, their population is lower,” whatever would distract the US public. Besides, how many people in the US even know where The Netherlands is?
But if Canada, a society very similar to ours, sharing the largest unguarded border in world history with us, goes for decriminalization and shows no ill effects, it will be very hard to justify the prohibition in America.
And Ottawa has said that Washington’s own data shows that of all the illegal pot seized by U.S. agents only 1.5 percent came from Canada.
From the DEA’s own stats, in 2002, there were 2,400,000 pounds of marijuana seized in the US. Of that, 7,000 pounds were Canadian.
You can tell the government that this war on pot is ridiculous. This Saturday, May 1st, is the Million Marijuana March all around the world. Check Cures-Not-Wars website for the details on a march near you. For those of you in the Portland area, I’ll be gathering with the hundreds who will march through our downtown streets. Meet at Pioneer Square at 11:00AM this Saturday. The march is at high noon (pardon the pun). I’ll be the guy with the large American Flag / Marijuana Quotes poster.
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