[420 Girl]

As everyone knows, Michael Phelps was busted for pot and just recently issued a statement of apology, more or less, saying that he was stupid. It was done to keep sponsors and get everyone off his back. But to be honest, I would have had more respect for him if he’d just said, “Yeah, I’m a 23-year-old guy who smoked a bong at a party. Can we move on to something else?”

Unfortunately, the fact that this “controversy” of a college-aged person doing – shocker! – what a college-aged person might do to unwind at a party in their spare time is so huge that it just reflects the outdated and hypocritical views our country still holds when it comes to marijuana.

I feel that if marijuana should be banned, then so should alcohol. Let us compare and contrast the two.

First of all, alcohol is more addictive. Quite a bit more. There are 10 million alcoholics in America, with 200,000 new alcoholics each year. The risk of dependence for someone who consumes alcohol is 15 percent. Compare that to marijuana’s dependence risk of nine percent. But how do those compare to the rest of the drugs out there? From the most risky to the least, here are your chances of developing a dependence to the drugs listed below:
32 percent chance of addiction to nicotine, 23 percent for heroin, 17 percent for cocaine, 15 percent for alcohol, 11 percent for stimulants, and a mere nine percent for marijuana. (Can someone remind me why pot is illegal?)

What does this mean? It’s kind of funny. You have a higher chance of becoming clinically addicted to Mountain Dew and Krispy Kreme (both fortified with stimulants) than you do with weed. So why don’t we see commercials that tell us to “just say no” to caffeine or sugar? Maybe for the same reason you don’t see episodes of “Intervention” dealing with potheads. Maybe?
Marijuana and alcohol are both classified as drugs, and when we think of drugs, don’t we think of bad behavior, like crime and violence? Well, when it comes to violence, marijuana cannot compare with alcohol’s effect. Around 90 percent of all assaults, 50-60 percent of all murders and over 50 percent of the rapes and sexual assaults on children are alcohol-related. On college campuses, 90 percent of sexual assaults and rapes are attributed to alcohol. What about pot? Oddly enough, the government’s studies all agreed that marijuana has no link with violent behavior, and even admitted that instead of rage, most users will experience “physical relaxation and sedation.”

What about getting behind the wheel? The height of irresponsibility is to get into a car and drive while under the influence. But if I had a choice, I’d much, much rather be in a car with someone who’s been smoking than drinking. Why? Excluding crime and traffic accidents, alcohol kills over 125,000 people a year. If you want to include traffic accidents, add another 16,000 deaths to that toll, which adds up to alcohol being involved in 37 percent of yearly traffic fatalities. (And this isn’t even including those injured (directly or indirectly) by alcohol, which is almost impossible to calculate.)

When analyzing traffic accidents, marijuana is found in the driver’s bloodstream a mere 2.5 percent of the time. However, this was a flawed study, as 40 percent of those who tested positive for pot also had high blood-alcohol content, and hair tests were used, which can only prove that pot was consumed in the last month, not at the time of the crash. Numerous studies have shown that those who smoke pot and drive actually tend to drive more slowly and carefully.

What about overdosing? You cannot overdose on pot. It’s physically impossible. Scientists calculated that the amount of cannabinoids needed to induce an overdose to be 1 in 40,000. This means that in order to die, you would need to smoke 40,000 times as much marijuana as you would need to get stoned. Sadly, it’s much easier to overdose on alcohol. As anyone who has barfed from a night of a little too much fun has learned, your body starts to reject alcohol as poison after a certain amount is surpassed. The ratio for alcohol overdose is 1 in 4. Compare that to 1 in 40,000. No one’s ever had to get their stomach pumped because they ingested 40,000 “magic” brownies.

There’s also this whole “gateway drug” business. Pot is often accused of leading our nation’s children to bigger, badder drugs, like cocaine and heroin. This is difficult to answer, since there has shown to be a relationship between using cannabis and using cocaine and heroin. But when dealing with a black-market commodity, you’re much more likely to encounter hard drugs, and again, one’s basic personality cannot be ignored. Whatever compulsion drives someone to abuse enough pot to the point that it isn’t enough anymore isn’t unlikely to drive them to start harder drugs.

Marijuana is not physically addictive. Yes, some people can develop a dependence (and it’s important to remember that “addiction” and “dependence” are different) on it, but it’s a personality thing. Some people have addictive personalities. It’s far less likely for someone to become “addicted” to marijuana than it is for them to become addicted to caffeine. (And it’s far less dangerous.)

We spend too many of our resources on catching and prosecuting those caught with pot and/or pot paraphernalia. To illustrate this, I have a quiz. Which of the two people in the stories below was issued a ticket for $700? And who will have to pay a $250 ticket?

Person #1 has had a little too much to drink and has come back to the dorms. He’s not ready to go to bed and is letting the entire floor know it, as loud as he can. He’s being disruptive, unruly and intimidating enough to the point that cops must be called. When informed that the cops are on their way, he punches a table and a door, and still refuses to settle down. He is angry and uncooperative enough that the cops have to be called back after they leave. He is issued a ticket. The RAs are up until 5 a.m. dealing with this kid.

Person #2 has some friends over in her dorm room. They’re all being quiet, and someone decides to light a bowl. The marijuana fumes leak out through the door and someone decides to call the cops. She is cooperative and compliant, but is still given a ticket.

Quiz time! Who was given a ticket for $250 and who got a ticket for $700? Person #2, despite quietly staying in her dorm, minding her own business and cooperating with everyone involved, will now have to pay $700. Did I mention that those were both true stories, with two people I know? Can you argue that this amount is proportional to the crime committed?
In the United States in 2007, there were 872,720 marijuana-related arrests, meaning that someone was arrested every 36 seconds. Eighty-nine percent of those were for possession alone – not manufacturing or selling. Also, consider that there were more arrests for marijuana possession than for all violent crimes combined.

Is this not ridiculous? Don’t we have better things for our police to be doing, and aren’t our prisons too crowded already to be spending all of this time and money on?

And why doesn’t anyone see the cash potential here? Replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation similar to that used for alcoholic beverages would produce combined savings and tax revenues of between $10 billion and $14 billion per year, finds a June 2005 report by Dr. Jeffrey Miron, visiting professor of economics at Harvard University.

So, in conclusion, I feel that the major objections to the legalization of marijuana are unfounded, and, like I said, supporting the illegal status of marijuana is hypocritical if you do not also support alcohol being banned. In the case of Michael Phelps, he’s being punished unfairly, but I would like to make one last point: The real victim in this situation was the poor soul who had to take the hit of the bong right after Phelps’ “able to inhale twice the normal amount of air a human can take” lungs had been there first.

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