{"id":11524,"date":"2016-03-01T14:21:54","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T14:21:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=11524"},"modified":"2016-09-21T08:32:24","modified_gmt":"2016-09-21T08:32:24","slug":"patrick-kennedy-say-no-to-marijuana-legalisation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2016\/03\/patrick-kennedy-say-no-to-marijuana-legalisation\/","title":{"rendered":"Patrick Kennedy: Say No to Marijuana Legalisation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note: This commentary is by Patrick J. Kennedy, who is a former member of Congress from Rhode Island and an honorary adviser to SAM, Smart Approaches to Marijuana.<\/em><\/p>\n

The epidemic of drug addiction and overdoses gripping Vermont, and our country at large, cries out for reform. We must change the perception that jail is an effective treatment for the disease of drug addiction, and give mental health issues the attention and funding they deserve, an opinion I know many Vermonters share.<\/p>\n

But the legalization and commercialization of another addictive drug \u2014 marijuana \u2014 is precisely the wrong way to address this critical problem. Legalization has nothing to do with whether we lock up pot users, and everything to do with making money. Marijuana industry lobbyists that are pushing legalization to the Vermont Legislature disingenuously conflate the two issues, claiming that the only way to stop imprisoning marijuana users is to legalize the drug. They also make sweeping claims about how commercialization will control the black market and make the drug \u201csafer.\u201d<\/p>\n

But both claims are demonstrably false. First of all, we can stop jailing marijuana users without letting big business sell marijuana at corner stores. Vermont has already decriminalized marijuana use for adults, and will not arrest or jail you if you possess an ounce or less of marijuana for personal use. And our Congress is already debating broader criminal justice reforms that may reduce the burden of arrests and imprisonment for drug offenses, especially on minority and low-income communities.<\/p>\n

Second, and more broadly, we know from other states\u2019 experiences that the billion-dollar marijuana industry \u2014 the folks behind the legalization effort \u2014 is more interested in profits than our health and safety. Legalization means inviting a powerful lobby into Vermont that pushes hard against regulations. Pot lobbyists in Colorado defeated restrictions on pot ads aimed at children. They have opposed restrictions on marijuana potency. And they are fighting laws keeping pot shops away from schools, parks, and day care centers in Oregon. Vermont legislators may think they have cracked the code on how to implement legalization \u201csafely,\u201d but it will not be long until industry forces expose and exploit any openings they see for the sake of profits.<\/p>\n

Now, I put the call out to the Vermont Legislature: Please learn from the experiences of other states, and heed the warning signs \u2014 marijuana legalization does not reduce the toll drug addiction takes on our communities.<\/p>\n

In other words, commercial marijuana behaves just like another large American industry peddling addiction \u2014 Big Tobacco. It may surprise Vermonters to know that the large tobacco companies have been studying the marijuana business since the 1960s, seeing it as a natural extension of their product line. And like tobacco, the marijuana business can only profit when it creates and cultivates heavy users. Just 20 percent of pot users consume 80 percent of all marijuana. Those heavy users, many of whom are addicts, are the target market for the pot industry, not the casual smoker.<\/p>\n

This profit motive is why legalization and commercialization has yielded more pot use, not less, among children and adults. After legalizing pot, Colorado took the dubious honor of having the highest past-month marijuana use rates in the country in both age groups. A host of related problems have accompanied this dubious honor, including a surge in marijuana poisonings \u2014 up 148 percent overall, and up a shocking 153 percent<\/p>\n

among children 0 to 5 years old \u2014 and a 32 percent spike in marijuana-related traffic fatalities. Even without legalization, Vermont already ranks No. 2 in past-month consumption. Commercialization will only push those numbers higher.<\/p>\n

Moreover, legalization has not blunted Colorado\u2019s black market. The state\u2019s attorney general told the press last February that \u201cThe criminals are still selling on the black market. \u2026 We have plenty of cartel activity in Colorado. \u2026\u201d Colorado law enforcement officers have even indicated that black market activity may have increased, as people illegally export pot to other states.<\/p>\n

Finally, like the tobacco companies, who once boasted that they targeted \u201cthe young, the poor, the black, and the stupid,\u201d the marijuana industry has had an outsized impact on poor and minority communities in Colorado. A recent expos\u00e9 showed that Denver\u2019s pot business was highly skewed towards poor areas, with one neighborhood having one marijuana business for every 47 residents. A strategy of \u201cprofits before public health\u201d is not the way to serve socioeconomic and racial justice.<\/p>\n

Now, I put the call out to the Vermont Legislature: Please learn from the experiences of other states, and heed the warning signs \u2014 marijuana legalization does not reduce the toll drug addiction takes on our communities. It represents burning down the village in order to save it, by handing Vermont\u2019s public health over to Wall Street and the marijuana lobby. Rather, I urge you to focus on solutions we know will work \u2014 sensible criminal justice reform and serious investments in drug prevention.<\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0\u00a0 http:\/\/vtdigger.org\/2016\/02\/03\/patrick-kennedy-say-no-to-marijuana-legalization\/<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note: This commentary is by Patrick J. Kennedy, who is a former member of Congress from Rhode Island and an honorary adviser to SAM, Smart Approaches to Marijuana. The epidemic of drug addiction and overdoses gripping Vermont, and our country at large, cries out for reform. We must change the perception that jail is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,90,25,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cannabis-marijuana","category-global-drug-legalisation-efforts","category-law","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11524\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}