{"id":9643,"date":"2014-08-23T18:37:40","date_gmt":"2014-08-23T18:37:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=9643"},"modified":"2016-09-20T17:57:11","modified_gmt":"2016-09-20T17:57:11","slug":"a-letter-was-published-by-the-ny-times-re-alcohol-marijuana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2014\/08\/a-letter-was-published-by-the-ny-times-re-alcohol-marijuana\/","title":{"rendered":"A letter was published by the NY Times re Alcohol, Marijuana"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: Calibri, serif;\"><b>This letter was published by the NY Times on 7\/30\/14:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-US\">\u00a0\u201c<span style=\"font-family: Calibri, serif;\">To the Editor:<\/span><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-US\">\u00a0<span style=\"font-family: Calibri, serif;\">Your opinion, in \u201cRepeal Prohibition, Again,\u201d that marijuana should be legalized is based in part on an assumption that during Prohibition \u201cpeople kept drinking.\u201d Prohibition reduced the public\u2019s alcohol intake considerably. The rate of alcohol-associated illness dropped in similar fashion. Prohibition was perhaps a political failure, but an impressive success from a public health standpoint.<\/span><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-US\">\u00a0<span style=\"font-family: Calibri, serif;\">Both alcohol and marijuana can lead to the chronic disease of addiction, directly affect the brain and negatively affect function. As more than 10 percent of our population has addictive disease, your statement that marijuana is \u201cfar less dangerous than alcohol\u201d doesn\u2019t reflect decades of research demonstrating risks associated with both of these drugs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-US\">\u00a0<span style=\"font-family: Calibri, serif;\">Why would we possibly wish to add to the alcohol- and tobacco-driven personal and public health catastrophe with yet another substance to which some people will become addicted?<\/span><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-US\">\u00a0<span style=\"font-family: Calibri, serif;\">Some people use marijuana currently. Legalize it, and more people will use more marijuana, leading to more addiction, lower productivity and higher societal costs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-US\">\u00a0<span style=\"font-family: Calibri, serif;\">STUART GITLOW<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Calibri, serif;\">President, American Society<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Calibri, serif;\">of Addiction Medicine<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Calibri, serif;\">New York, July 27, 2014\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-US\">\u00a0<span style=\"font-family: Calibri, serif;\"><b>Stuart Gitlow, MD, MPH, MBA, is a psychiatrist and Executive Director of the Annenberg Physician Training Program in Addictive Diseases at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He is also President of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, and the author of <\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Calibri, serif;\"><i><b>Practical Guides in Psychiatry: Substance Use Disorders<\/b><\/i><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Calibri, serif;\"><b> (2006, Lippincott Williams &amp; Wilkins).<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This letter was published by the NY Times on 7\/30\/14: \u00a0\u201cTo the Editor: \u00a0Your opinion, in \u201cRepeal Prohibition, Again,\u201d that marijuana should be legalized is based in part on an assumption that during Prohibition \u201cpeople kept drinking.\u201d Prohibition reduced the public\u2019s alcohol intake considerably. The rate of alcohol-associated illness dropped in similar fashion. Prohibition was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,64,14,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global-drug-legalisation-efforts","category-health","category-social-affairs","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9643","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=9643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}