Medical marijuana advocacy groups are howling that a new memo from the Justice Department on medical marijuana enforcement represents a major and unfair policy shift. But they are being disingenuous.
That’s from an op-ed by Professor Jonathan Caulkins that puts paid to the hysteria over the revised Department of Justice guidance. As he makes clear, the new guidelines pose no threat at all to seriously ill people who patronize medical marijuana dispensaries.
The experience of medical marijuana in the Obama Administration illustrates the principle that every public policy decision is really two decisions: (1) What is the policy going to be? and (2) How will it be communicated? I have no inside information on how DOJ made these two decisions regarding their 2009 change in medical marijuana policy, but the first was more skillfully handled than the second.
I suspect DOJ didn’t realize that it would lose control of its message the moment the policy was introduced half-formed to the media without a developed policy and communication strategy to immediately follow on. The new, minimally-elaborated policy was spun for more than half a year by media-savvy, deep-pocketed legalization advocates as a sign that the administration in its heart was comfortable with large-scale marijuana production and use (Yes we cannabis!).
That misunderstanding more than anything cued state legislators to act, creating the medical marijuana industry in the United States. DOJ now clearly rues that development, but it might have been avoided by changing the enforcement practice without making a press announcement seven months before the written, detailed policy was ready. There aren’t that many federal prosecutors and all of them have telephones…why not reach out and touch your key people and leave it at that until you have all the details worked out for public consumption? That might have been easier than trying to put so much toothpaste back into the tube.
In fairness, perhaps a more careful rollout would have met the same fate. No policy issue plays the game of “telephone” on the Internet faster than anything related to marijuana. When the Department of Veterans Affairs announced it would not penalize veterans legally receiving medical marijuana from state sources, that policy transmuted into “VA is now providing medical marijuana” in less than 24 hours. That this was ludicrous on its face (the federal government would not pay federal employees to commit a federal felony) did nothing to stem the spin or the genuine misunderstandings.
We may be at a place in a our social and political discussion of marijuana that the federal government can’t take any moderate policy steps. One meme about President Obama is that he has flip-flopped on marijuana decriminalization, endorsing it as a senator and opposing it as President. But another equally likely scenario is that at this cultural moment, if a President said that he favored marijuana decriminalization, advocacy groups and the press would be touting the President’s full-throated endorsement of complete legalization of all drugs, with generous federal tax breaks to help the new industry get off the ground.
Those legalizers and their deep pockets! Much deeper than the prohibition lobby, unless you count the entirety of the federal government, the UN, and police unions.
Just one footnote: the Federal government was paying Federal employees to commit Federal felonies at least from the establishment of Abu Ghraib to the departure of Don Rumsfeld as SecDef in 2006; torture is in direct violation of 18 U.S.C. 2340, and the orders to commit torture came from the top.
So they’ve accidentally performed an experiment in partial decriminalization. What were the calamitous results, I wonder?
media-savvy, deep-pocketed legalization advocatesguys in clown shoes who can’t appear in a news story without being the butt of “up in smoke” jokes
Fixed it for you.
Arg, thought the <s> tag would work, sorry.
Legalize it and get the feds out of my private life. True freedom is not pissible without the end of drug prohibition.
True freedom is not pissible without the end of drug prohibition.
Well said. I want drugs so I can piss away my freedom!
Keith, seeing as you’re very fond of facts, here is a new Study proving that Marijuana is not linked with Long Term Cognitive Impairment:
* Nearly 2,000 young Australian adults (aged 20-24) were followed for eight years. It was found that marijuana had little long-term effect on learning and memory, and any cognitive damage that did occur as a result of cannabis use was reversible.
* Researchers categorized them as light, heavy, former or non-users of cannabis based on their answers to questions about marijuana habits.
* Prior studies have found that drug users do accurately report their consumption levels in surveys like this as long as anonymity is guaranteed and there are no negative consequences for telling the truth.
* Participants took tests of memory and intelligence three times over the eight year period the study. They were also asked about how their marijuana use had changed. When the results were at last tabulated, researchers found that there were large initial differences between the groups, with the current marijuana smokers performing worse on tests that required them to recall lists of words after various periods of time or remember numbers in the reverse order from the one in which they were presented.
* However, when the investigators controlled for factors like education and gender, almost all of these differences disappeared. The lower education levels of the pot smokers — and their greater likelihood of being male — had made it look like marijuana had significantly affected their intelligence. In fact, men simply tend to do worse than women on tests of verbal intelligence, while women generally underperform on math tests. The relative weighting of the tests made the impact of pot look worse than it was.
* Researchers then explored whether quitting cannabis would affect the one difference that remained, which was poorer performance by heavy users on a test that required immediate recall of a list of nouns. They found that heavy users who had quit by the end of the study were no longer distinguishable on this measure from those who had never used.
The authors, who were led by Robert Tait at the Centre for Mental Health Research at Australian National University, conclude:
“Cessation of cannabis use appears to be associated with an improvement in capacity for recall of information that has just been learned. No other measures of cognitive performance were related to cannabis after controlling for confounds.”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2011.03574.x/abstract
The research was published in the journal Addiction.
I think the fundamental problem is that the federal policy is based on a lie- that there’s no way smoking marijuana can have any medical benefits, and the state policies are based on a different lie- that medical marijuana is solely about medical treatment.
The result is that you have a fundamental disconnect between what goals of the federal government and the goals of the state marijuana law reformers.
On the federal side, the “hardline” position is no marijuana for anyone under any circumstances, and the “moderate” position is to retain the government’s prohibition on marijuana and its lie that smoking marijuana has no medical use, while also agreeing to let states slide on the issue of enforcement against sympathetic users such as cancer and glaucoma patients.
On the state side, the “moderate” position is that bona fide medical users should be completely free from legal threats and should be able to purchase their medicine in a straightforward manner, and the “hardline” position is full legalization.
The problem here is that even the “moderate” positions don’t overlap (and of course, the hardliners on each side help ensure that they never do). To satisfy the moderate state reformers, the federal government would need to take marijuana off of schedule I, allow free and unimpeded medical research on smoked marijuana, and stop enforcement of any laws against medical distributors or users. To satisfy the moderate federal types, states would need to seriously police against anyone not using marijuana for a medical purpose, medical marijuana would need to be very difficult to get, and the drug would have to stay on schedule I and there will be no research that might expose the government’s lie about it not having a medical use.
The Obama Administration wanted to take the “moderate” federal approach. That’s not acceptable, short term or long term, to even the moderates who are pushing the reform of state marijuana laws. No amount of communication could change that- the only thing that could really change that would be a federal commitment to actually LEGALIZE the medical use of marijuana. And that means no more schedule I, no more lies about it not having any medical benefits, no more bans on research, and no more raids on medical distributors.
Dilan - I think you hit it quite well with the federal government’s hardline vs. moderate positions. The problem is that their moderate position isn’t really a position — it’s an attempt to show themselves to be “moderate” and not the horrible ogres who would put cancer patients in jail. However, they to it without giving any kind of clear line as to where that position falls (or how those cancer patients are supposed to obtain their medicine). Thus, the states have no way to utilize that information in any practical way, making the federal “moderate” position almost indistinguishable from their “hardline” position in practical application.
Footnote number two: the federal government has, apparently, been paying federal employees to commit the felony of production and distribution of cannabis: it’s called the Compassionate Investigational New Drug program, and it has been supplying cannabis since 1976 or so.
. The problem is that their moderate position isn’t really a position — it’s an attempt to show themselves to be “moderate” and not the horrible ogres who would put cancer patients in jail.
I think it’s partly that, but I think it is partly something else.
The reality is that the medical marijuana laws ARE, in part, not simply a way to distribute marijuana to the desperately ill who have been screwed over by federal prohibition, but also an attempt to undermine federal marijuana enforcement. That’s one reason why the Oakland Cannibis Cooperative and Raich cases were litigated all the way to the Supreme Court. The people who wrote these initiatives selected some of the most compelling cases for marijuana use and passed laws that basically dared the feds to continue maximalist enforcement, but the ultimate goal was not simply to get a few cancer patients access to marijuana but to poke some holes in federal policy that would allow for wider distribution of pot, either by changing public opinion about marijuana, forcing the federal government to lift some its more draconian policies, or creating channels through which recreational pot could also flow.
The federal government knows this. So their response is to try and do the absolute minimum to try and ensure that, as you said, they don’t look like ogres, while also trying to ensure that the medical marijuana laws don’t actually have their intended effect of undermining the more general system of marijuana prohibition.
Of course, there is no actual way to thread this needle. The only way to ensure that there is no spillover and nobody without a serious medical need obtains medical marijuana is to crack down very hard on dispensaries and basically exercise forbearance only in those cases where you have a seriously ill person who manages to obtain marijuana through a distribution channel that is not likely to result in any distribution to recreational users.
Because, in the end, just like any other drug that both has legitimate medical uses and recreational uses, there’s no way to ensure access for medical users without at least some spillover into recreational users. You can look at any prescription drug that has both sorts of uses (e.g., morphine, oxycontin, erectile dysfunction medications) and you can see this happening.
A reasonable accommodation of state medical marijuana laws requires federal acceptance of at least some crossover usage. And for various reasons (because they desperately want to avoid doing anything that might undermine their broader recreational marijuana policy), the federal government does not want to take that step. So we have a standoff. As I said, no better communication from the Obama Administration could have bridged this gap. Only the acceptance that making sure that good channels of medical distribution outweighs whatever increase in recreational use that might result would have bridged the gap, and the federal government is not there yet.
“it’s an attempt to show themselves to be “moderate” and not the horrible ogres who would put cancer patients in jail. ”
You have to really give the feds the benefit of the doubt to call their policy an attempt to not look like ogres. The most recent DOJ memo said straight out they were leaving cancer patients alone because of their limited resources. I interpret that to imply that they would happily arrest every single person who ever smoked a joint, if only they could. In no way could I interpret anything that was said in any memo to mean that not arresting terminal patients was the right thing to do.
The feds need to remove Cannabis from Schedule I forty years ago. They must remove it from CSA scheduling altogether, and place it in the same schedule as tobacco. To keep Cannabis illegal while tobacco and alcohol are dispensed freely would be PATENTLY UNACCEPTABLE.
“Because, in the end, just like any other drug that both has legitimate medical uses and recreational uses, there’s no way to ensure access for medical users without at least some spillover into recreational users. You can look at any prescription drug that has both sorts of uses (e.g., morphine, oxycontin, erectile dysfunction medications) and you can see this happening.”
Yeah, that’s obviously terrible. Sure providing relief to terminally-ill cancer or AIDS patients suffering unbearable agony is fine (I guess), but is it really worth the risk that some people will find a way to get a hold of medical marijuana simply for *shudder* fun?
Seriously, could someone please explain to me why recreational marijuana use is not “legitimate”? Is recreational use of alcohol “legitimate”? If so, why? After all, alcohol is a toxic substance and responsible for hundreds of acute alcohol-poisoning deaths each year. (In contrast, it is physically impossible to fatally overdose on marijuana.) In addition, alcohol’s long-term health risks are estimated to be responsible for 35,000 deaths each year. (In contrast, the use of marijuana, even long-term, is not associated with higher levels of mortality.) The U.S. government estimates that alcohol contributes to 25 to 30 percent of all violent crime in America, including 30 percent of homicides and 22.5 percent of sexual assaults. It’s also estimated that alcohol abuse plays a role in close to 70% of cases of domestic and partner violence. (In contrast, marijuana use is not associated with increased violence. If anything marijuana use has a tendency to REDUCE the risk of violent behavior by pacifying the user.) Finally, alcohol is physically addictive. In extreme cases of alcoholism, the withdrawal symptoms can be so severe that they can lead to delirium tremens, which may be fatal. (In contrast, marijuana use is not physically addictive. At worst, marijuana-associated “withdrawal” is described by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences as “mild and subtle.”)
Some well-earned paranoid responses regarding what governments and politicians say, and then do, regarding marijuana policy is not a misinterpretation. Rather, it’s an attempt to read between the lines, to test the phraseology, to find loopholes the government can use to blur an originally stated position. It’s not as if activists haven’t been lied to before.
In fact, if there is anyone likely to be deceitful or useless at English interpretations of drug science, it’s the prohibitionist. The dysfunction is a clue to the persona and culture of the prohibitionist, and it depicts an individual who is often steeped in superstitions and junk ideologies which oppose science. Source checking is critical, as these ideology junkies tend to distort and censor the database.
Francis:
I agree that recreation is a perfectly legitimate reason for someone to smoke marijuana. The federal government, however, does not, and that explains why they are unwilling to take the steps necessary to actually ensure that medical users obtain their medication.
Another way of stating this is that in theory, medical marijuana is something where there is some common ground between the feds and the marijuana reform movements in the states. But in practice, unless the feds accept that it’s OK to do something that will also supply pot to some recreational users as well, they will never be able to actually do what is necessary to ensure medical users can obtain it.
Dilan:
Thanks for the response. Maybe I’m cynical but I don’t think the feds’ problem with medical marijuana is that such programs will facilitate recreational use. I think it’s their (correct in my view) assessment that such programs will ultimately erode support for continued criminal prohibition of recreational use. Admitting that marijuana has substantial medical benefits for some individuals undermines their attempts to demonize the substance. The widespread medical use also tends to normalize pot use and make it less scary to those folks (e.g. social and religious conservatives) who are most opposed to legalization.
“That this was ludicrous on its face (the federal government would not pay federal employees to commit a federal felony) did nothing to stem the spin or the genuine misunderstandings.”
As someone else above pointed out, this is flagrantly false. The federal government grows and distributes tens of thousands of marijuana joints every year and has for decades to a handful of lucky patients. The reason the previous poster didn’t point out is WHY they do this. It’s because a court ruled that since these people will die if they are denied their life saving medicine the government must continue to grow and distribute them their medicine. There is an interesting contradiction here - for those who the government provides medicine, they can not be denied their medicine because of the essential life saving property of that medicine. For everyone else, they can be denied the very same medicine and they are denied the very same medicine.
Prohibition = murder.
Francis:
Ir’s both. They don’t want to erode support for prohibition, sure, but they also want to “make sure” that any exceptions that are made for medical users don’t make pot available for any recreational users. The problem is, that’s unrealistic.
The following text is taken directly from the US government’s National Cancer Institute website:
* ANTI-TUMOR EFFECTS
One study in mice and rats suggested that cannabinoids may have a protective effect against the development of certain types of tumors. During this 2-year study, groups of mice and rats were given various doses of THC by gavage. A dose-related decrease in the incidence of hepatic adenoma tumors and hepatocellular carcinoma was observed in the mice. Decreased incidences of benign tumors (polyps and adenomas) in other organs (mammary gland, uterus, pituitary, testis, and pancreas) were also noted in the rats. In another study, delta-9-THC, delta-8-THC, and cannabinol were found to inhibit the growth of Lewis lung adenocarcinoma cells in vitro and in vivo. In addition, other tumors have been shown to be sensitive to cannabinoid-induced growth inhibition.
Cannabinoids may cause antitumor effects by various mechanisms, including induction of cell death, inhibition of cell growth, and inhibition of tumor angiogenesis and metastasis. Cannabinoids appear to kill tumor cells but do not affect their nontransformed counterparts and may even protect them from cell death. These compounds have been shown to induce apoptosis in glioma cells in culture and induce regression of glioma tumors in mice and rats. Cannabinoids protect normal glial cells of astroglial and oligodendroglial lineages from apoptosis mediated by the CB1 receptor.
In an in vivo model using severe combined immunodeficient mice, subcutaneous tumors were generated by inoculating the animals with cells from human non-small cell lung carcinoma cell lines. Tumor growth was inhibited by 60% in THC-treated mice compared with vehicle-treated control mice. Tumor specimens revealed that THC had antiangiogenic and antiproliferative effects.
* ANTI-INFLAMMATORY EFFECTS
In addition, both plant-derived and endogenous cannabinoids have been studied for anti- inflammatory effects. A mouse study demonstrated that endogenous cannabinoid system signaling is likely to provide intrinsic protection against colonic inflammation. As a result, a hypothesis that phytocannabinoids and endocannabinoids may be useful in the prevention and treatment of colorectal cancer has been developed.
* ANTIVIRAL PROPERTIES
Another study has shown delta-9-THC is a potent and selective antiviral agent against Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV), also known as human herpesvirus 8. The researchers concluded that additional studies on cannabinoids and herpesviruses are warranted, as they may lead to the development of drugs that inhibit the reactivation of these oncogenic viruses. Subsequently, another group of investigators reported increased efficiency of KSHV infection of human dermal microvascular epithelial cells in the presence of low doses of delta-9-THC.
* APPETITE STIMULATOR
Many animal studies have previously demonstrated that delta-9-THC and other cannabinoids have a stimulatory effect on appetite and increase food intake. It is believed that the endogenous cannabinoid system may serve as a regulator of feeding behavior. The endogenous cannabinoid anandamide potently enhances appetite in mice. Moreover, CB1 receptors in the hypothalamus may be involved in the motivational or reward aspects of eating.
* AS A PAIN KILLER
Understanding the mechanism of cannabinoid-induced analgesia has been increased through the study of cannabinoid receptors, endocannabinoids, and synthetic agonists and antagonists. The CB1 receptor is found in both the central nervous system (CNS) and in peripheral nerve terminals. Similar to opioid receptors, increased levels of the CB1 receptor are found in sections of the brain that regulate nociceptive processing. CB2 receptors, located predominantly in peripheral tissue, exist at very low levels in the CNS. With the development of receptor-specific antagonists, additional information about the roles of the receptors and endogenous cannabinoids in the modulation of pain has been obtained.
Cannabinoids may also contribute to pain modulation through an anti-inflammatory mechanism; a CB2 effect with cannabinoids acting on mast cell receptors to attenuate the release of inflammatory agents, such as histamine and serotonin, and on keratinocytes to enhance the release of analgesic opioids has been described.
The American Public Health Association, American Nurses Association, Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, National Academy of HIV Medicine, two former U.S. surgeon generals, and hundreds of other medical professional groups all say that marijuana should be available to patients whose doctors recommend it.
The DEA’s current position is that a plant containing THC (Marijuana) is so dangerous that it must be classified as a Schedule I substance and that even the ill & dying must not be allowed to use it. Yet the same compound, when isolated and manufactured by a pharmaceutical company, is a relatively safe drug, warranting placement in Schedule III. This is clearly analogous to allowing the sale of pure caffeine while banning coffee.