Study Refutes Marijuana as Gateway Demon

This study - which we read about first at Drug War Rant via TalkLeft - will no doubt be discredited by those who insist marijuana is more dangerous than WMD (real or imagined), but it comes up with some interesting points. For example, marijuana is not a gateway drug, and can only be interpreted as such since we ramped up efforts to wipe out its use.

Now, pot is still a drug and like any drug, its use should be kept in check. But this is true for aspirin, for prescription anti-anxiety agents and painkillers, and certainly true for the ever-present alcohol. In the best possible world, no one should "need" a drug to get through their day.

But I've known cancer patients who were able to keep their weight from falling too low or their pain in check from its use. I've also known people who were life-long casual smokers of pot who go to work everyday, raise decent families, pay their taxes, and contribute otherwise to society. Yes, even I've partaken in my past (I inhaled, too).

I've felt for a very long time that the only reason we as a country have demonized pot so egregiously is that it threatens pharmaceutical companies that would far rather sell you some Xanax or Ativan or one of the other "feel good" drugs. In fact, the Partnership for a Drug Free America, last I knew, is largely funded by drug and alcohol companies.

IMHO, it's way past time to legalize pot for a number of reasons, including cost, the fact that legalization might actually make it more rather than less difficult for those under 18 to obtain it, and just a better use of our law enforcement resources.

We spend an outrageous amount of money putting simple users and small, personal-use-only growers away for decades, while heroin is running rampant in this country. Even here in bucolic, rural Vermont, heroin is at epidemic levels. Our state is finally realizing that although the prison population has dramatically risen over drugs, usage has done nothing but climb. So they're (supposedly) going to begin to approach drug use more as a social problem than a legal one. I hope it works.