The conventional wisdom is that even the slightest weakening of marijuana prohibition will increase teen drug abuse. In fact, marijuana prohibition is our biggest obstacle to preventing drug abuse among teenagers. Why?
First, marijuana prohibition for adults hasn't curbed marijuana use by teens or adults.
U.S. government data shows that of youths born prior to the first federal marijuana ban in 1937, less than two percent tried marijuana before age 21.(1) For three decades, surveys have shown 40 percent or more trying marijuana before 21 (and often before 18) -- an over 2,000 percent increase.
The April 2001 National Research Council a report, “Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us,” found “little apparent relationship between severity of sanctions prescribed for drug use and prevalence or frequency of use.” The main evidence cited was the large body of studies looking at marijuana “decriminalization.”(2)
In the Netherlands, where personal use and possession by adults has been effectively legal since the 1970s, teen marijuana use rates remain about one-third lower than in the U.S. No European country which has decriminalized adult marijuana possession has higher rates of adolescent use than the U.S. (3)
Second, marijuana prohibition forces prevention workers to lie.
Teenagers are smarter than we give them credit for being. Marijuana prohibition pressures drug-abuse prevention workers and programs to exaggerate marijuana's dangers by taking facts out of context and presenting rare occurrences as everyday . Materials describe marijuana as “addictive” but fail to mention that far larger percentages of alcohol or cigarette users become dependent on their drug of choice. (4) Recent Office of National Drug Control Policy-sponsored television commercials suggested that teens who smoke marijuana will commit date rape, run over little girls on bicycles and shoot their friends.
Kids laugh at such claims because they see them contradicted everyday in the real world, concluding reasonably that adults who lie to them about marijuana also lie about other drugs. It is no surprise that the latest national PRIDE Survey -- conducted as ONDCP carpet-bombed the airwaves with the ads cited above, found sharp increases in teen use of marijuana and hard drugs --including, a near-doubling of cocaine use among 6th and 9th graders.(5)
Third, prohibition puts the marijuana trade in the hands of criminals with no incentive not to sell to kids.
Regulated merchants who sell tobacco and alcohol can lose their businesses if they sell to teens. No such regulations affect marijuana sellers. For 28 years running, 82 percent or more of high school seniors have told the Monitoring the Future survey that marijuana is “easy to get.” (6)
Fourth, prohibition promotes the "gateway effect."
There is no evidence that marijuana causes a craving for other drugs. (7) But thanks to prohibition. Marijuana is sold exclusively by dealers who happily (and more profitably) sell cocaine or speed. Marijuana prohibition may also encourage hard drug use by causing teens who smoke marijuana to think of themselves as “illegal drug users.' (8)
Like alcohol prohibition, marijuana prohibition is a failed experiment that now impedes real progress.
Bruce Mirken is a longtime health journalist whose work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including California Hospitals, AIDS Treatment News and Men's Health.
REFERENCES:
1) Johnson, R. et al, “Trends in the incidence of drug use in the United States, 1919-1992,”Susbtance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Office of Applied Studies, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1996,, p. 83.
2) Manski, C. et al, “Informing America's policy on illegal drugs: What we don't know keeps hurting us,” National Research Council, 2001, pp. 192-193.
3) Bjarnason, T. et al, “European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Drugs,” Feb., 2001, figure 6.
4) Joy, J. et al, “Marijuana and medicine,: Assessing the science base,” Institute of Medicine, 1999, p. 95 and p. 98.
5) PRIDE Surveys, “PRIDE questionnaire report for grades 6 through 12; 2002-2003 PRIDE Surveys national summary/total,” Aug. 29, 2003.
6) Johnston, L. et al, “Monitoring the future: National results on adolsecent drug use: Overview of key findings, 2002,” National Institute on Drug Abuse, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, April 2003, p. 56.
7) Joy et al, p. 99.
8) Earleywine, Mitch, “Understanding marijuana,” Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 59-60.
