I highly recommend the book "Understanding Marijuana" by Mitch Earlywine, from Oxford University Press. It's a little pricey at $34, but the local library likely has a copy. It's an academic work, but highly (pun intended) readable just the same. Discusses the history of human use of marijuana, as well as providing an overview of the science that has been done on the herb's effects on human health and behavior. The book isn't 'pro-pot', it simply presents the evidence - and the evidence is that marijuana is not generally harmful to human health.
I used to work in the American criminal (in)justice system, and while I was a prosecutor for a number of years, I was a member of LEAP, law enforcement against prohibition. Check out their drug policy here:
Drug Policy – Law Enforcement Action Partnership
The War on Drugs has been an abysmal failure, destroyed millions of lives and families, cost $1 trillion+, and yet drugs are MORE readily available than EVER before. The "war" is lost, because it cannot be won in the fashion we have waged it.
Marijuana is simply NOT addictive in the sense that other substances are HIGHLY addictive. Nicotine, opiates, methamphetamine are HIGHLY addictive substances upon which the body becomes physically dependent within hours (at most days) of initial use. Heck, even SUGAR is highly physically addictive, as it acts on the same receptors in the brain that opiates do.
Marijuana's only 'addictive' potential is based in the psychological dependency that SOME users form after habitual use. This level of dependency occurs in a relatively low percentage of users - I believe estimates are around 15%, though in the USA these figures are often guesses because federal law & policy (prohibition) has prohibited (pun again intended) scientists from gathering totally reliable data.
Here's what I know from my 32 years of personal and professional experience with marijuana:
It's possible to use marijuana as a teenager and yet still develop high intelligence and accomplish great things in life. I first used at 14, my IQ was measured age 34 at 136, I earned 4 university degrees including a law degree from a premier US law school and I had a successful career practicing public interest law for a number of years.
My 32 years of recreational marijuana use didn't destroy my motivation or keep me on the sofa eating Cheetos all day; furthermore, during my years in academia and then the professional world, I knew dozens upon dozens of productive professionals who used marijuana recreationally & regularly. Some people simply prefer to smoke a joint or a bowl after a hard day at work than to drink alcohol. Alcohol is FAR more damaging to one's health; the AMA recommends no more than 2 drinks/day for men and 1 for women, because of the ill effects of habitual alcohol use on the body's organ systems.
I can tell you that in my personal experience as a prosecutor and a defense attorney, I saw that alcohol was involved in the VAST majority of violent crimes, while marijuana was involved in only a tiny fraction - and almost always with alcohol also involved.
Marijuana-related crime was almost always simply because marijuana was prohibited. Marijuana-only DUIs were also a small fraction of the DUIs I saw, in a state with a very high rate of DUIs relative to the national average. In my personal and professional experience, people using marijuana tend not to be motivated to beat the shit out of other people or murder them, or to rape women/children, or to go on reckless road trips.
I don't condone or encourage regular or habitual use of marijuana by young people whose brains are still developing; personally I only used marijuana about 4-5 dozen times between age 14-20. I knew people who used it a lot more and still turned out fine, but I'm aware that some studies have shown a link between early use of marijuana and mental illness. However, I'm also aware that those studies aren't clear as to whether the use causes the development of mental illness, or if incipient mental illness causes the subjects to self-medicate with marijuana.
Marijuana should be legal, regulated, taxed, and available to all 21 years of age and older. The biggest opponents of legalization are Big Pharma and the alcohol lobby, because the market share of both would be significantly reduced by the legalization of marijuana; and the majority of law enforcement officials and the private prison industry, because SO much funding is predicated on the continued loss of the War on Drugs.
1 in 8 Americans are already admitted marijuana users, there are likely more, and many more who WOULD use it if prohibition ended. Some of those people use for the pure pleasure of getting buzzed, some use because they can replace Big Pharma meds (with all their ugly side effects) by use of marijuana, whether for anxiety, depression, pain, wasting syndrome, etc. Marijuana can be safely ingested via edibles and vaporizing, and legalizing marijuana will allow the user to access product that is reliable in quality and potency.
For a number of years as a prosecutor I endured a self-imposed prohibition, because I was forced to enforce prohibition on defendants and would not engage in the hypocrisy of using myself. FYI, there are MANY lawyers & judges who use marijuana - there are also many professionals in other fields who are high-functioning recreational marijuana users. It makes me very, very angry that these people generally get away with their illegal use of marijuana, while so many others have their lives ruined by prohibition.
A couple of years ago, no longer a prosecutor, I began using marijuana again to treat the pain associated with a chronic, incurable illness. I found it to be far more effective than any Big Pharma options offered to me, and with far fewer ill effects on my body. I enjoyed the ability to obtain it from a licensed and regulated dispensary, always getting a high quality product and having the ability to choose specific strains to address specific aspects of my illness - some work better for pain, others for assisting with sleep, others for addressing anxiety. None of it was ditch weed, and I didn't have to worry about anything bad befalling me in the process of obtaining that medicine.
Anybody 21+ should have that same privilege, whether sick, or just needing to mellow out now and then in a screwed up world - life is hard. For the life of me I can't understand how anybody could argue that marijuana should be illegal while millions upon millions of Americans drink themselves stupid, violent and/or dead on a regular basis. It's illogical. There has never been a single documented case of overdose leading to death due to marijuana; it happens ALL THE TIME with alcohol and other drugs.
That's a really long post, I'm sorry to bore, but this is a subject about which I am very passionate.
Now watch this interview with a LEAP member:
And go smoke a fattie!
