Thread: Booker introduces bill to legalize marijuana nationwide

Big Marijuana Claims	Scientific Facts
Legalization is about getting rid of the “War on Drugs”	Legalization is about one thing: making a small number of business people rich. If it were about ending the War on Drugs, recent law changes would be limited to decriminalization. Rather, a host of business interests are getting involved with the legal marijuana trade in Colorado and elsewhere. They have set up private equity firms and fundraising organizations to attract investors and promote items such as marijuana food items, oils, and other products.We also know these industries target the poor and disenfranchised[i] – and we can expect the marijuana industry to do the same in order to increase profits.
Marijuana is not addictive.	Science has proven – and all major scientific and medical organizations agree – that marijuana is both addictive and harmful to the human brain, especially when used as an adolescent. One in every six 16 year-olds (and one in every eleven adults) who try marijuana will become addicted to it.[ii]
Marijuana MIGHT be psychologically addictive, but its addiction doesn’t produce physical symptoms.	To your brain, addiction is addiction. Different addictions have different symptoms, but whether its food, sex, marijuana, or heroin – your brain knows it wants more of that feeling of pleasure. Just as with alcohol and tobacco, most chronic marijuana users who attempt to stop “cold turkey” will experience an array of withdrawal symptoms such as irritability, restlessness, anxiety, depression, insomnia, and/or cravings.[iii] This signals that marijuana can be addictive. Science has shown that 1 in 6 kids who ever try marijuana, according to the National Institutes of Health, will become addicted to the drug. Today’s marijuana is not your “Woodstock weed” – it can be 5-10 times stronger than marijuana of the past.[iv]
Lots of smart, successful people have smoked marijuana. It doesn’t make you dumb.	Just because some smart people have done some dumb things, it doesn’t mean that everyone gets away with it. In fact, research shows that adolescents who smoke marijuana once a week over a two-year period are almost six times more likely than nonsmokers to drop out of school and over three times less likely to enter college.[v] In a study of over 1,000 people in 2012, scientists found that using marijuana regularly before the age of 18 resulted in an average IQ of six to eight fewer points at age 38 versus to those who did not use the drug before 18.[vi] These results still held for those who used regularly as teens, but stopped after 18. Researchers controlled for alcohol and other drug use as well in this study. So yes, some people may get away with using it, but not everyone.
No one goes to treatment for marijuana addiction.	More young people are in treatment for marijuana abuse or dependence than for the use of alcohol and all other drugs.[vii]
Marijuana can’t kill or hurt you.	Marijuana may not produce direct overdoses, but tobacco rarely, if ever, does either. But we would not say tobacco can’t kill or hurt you, and we would not say marijuana cannot do these things either. Emergency room admissions for marijuana use now exceed those for heroin and are continuing to rise.[viii] The link between suicide and marijuana is strong, as are car accidents – too many of which result in death.
Marijuana does not affect the workplace.	Marijuana use impairs the ability to function effectively and safely on the job and increases work-related absences, tardiness, accidents, compensation claims, and job turnover.[ix]
Marijuana simply makes you happier over the long term.	Regular marijuana use is associated with lower satisfaction with intimate romantic relationships, work, family, friends, leisure pursuits, and life in general.[x]
Marijuana users are clogging our prisons.	We shouldn’t give marijuana users criminal records nor deprive them of a second chance, but it’s far from the truth to say they are clogging our prisons. A survey by the Bureau of Justice Statistics showed that 0.7% of all state inmates were behind bars for marijuana possession only (with many of them pleading down from more serious crimes). In total, one tenth of one percent (0.1 percent) of all state prisoners were marijuana-possession offenders with no prior sentences. Other independent research has shown that the risk of arrest for each “joint,” or marijuana cigarette, smoked is about 1 arrest for every 12,000 joints.[xi]
Marijuana is medicine.	Marijuana may contain medical components, like opium does. But we don’t smoke opium to get the effects of morphine. Similarly we don’t need to smoke marijuana to get its potential medical benefit.[xii] We need more research.
The sick and dying need medical marijuana programs to stay alive.	Research shows that very few of those seeking a recommendation for medical marijuana have cancer, HIV/AIDS, glaucoma, or multiple sclerosis;[xiii] and in most states that permits the use of medical marijuana, less than 2-3% of users report having cancer, HIV/AIDS, glaucoma, MS, or other life-threatening diseases.[xiv]
Marijuana should be rescheduled to facilitate its medical and legitimate use.	Rescheduling is a source of major confusion. Marijuana meets the technical definition of Schedule I because it is not an individual product with a defined dose. You can’t dose anything that is smoked or used in a crude form. However, components of marijuana can be scheduled for medical use, and that research is fully legitimate. That is very different than saying a joint is medicine and should be rescheduled.[xv]It is important to note, too, that rescheduling does not generally correspond with criminalization or penalization. So if your target is to reduce penalties for use, focusing on rescheduling is the wrong target.
I smoked marijuana and I am fine, why should I worry about today’s kids using it?	Today’s marijuana is not your Woodstock Weed. The psychoactive ingredient in marijuana—THC—has increased almost six-fold in average potency during the past thirty years.[xvi]
Marijuana doesn’t cause lung cancer.	The evidence on lung cancer and marijuana is mixed – just like it was 100 years ago for smoking – but marijuana contains 50% more carcinogens than tobacco smoke[xvii] and marijuana smokers report serious symptoms of chronic bronchitis and other respiratory illnesses.[xviii] True, there is no definitive evidence right now to claim that marijuana causes lung cancer.
Marijuana is not a “gateway” drug.	We know that most people who use pot WON’T go onto other drugs; but 99% of people who are addicted to other drugs STARTED with alcohol and marijuana. So, indeed, marijuana use makes addiction to other drugs more likely.[xix]
Marijuana does not cause mental illness.	Actually, beginning in the 1980s, scientists have uncovered a direct link between marijuana use and mental illness. According to a study published in the British Medical Journal, daily use among adolescent girls is associated with a fivefold increase in the risk of depression and anxiety.[xx] Youth who begin smoking marijuana at an earlier age are more likely to have an impaired ability to experience normal emotional responses.[xxi]The link between marijuana use and mental health extends beyond anxiety and depression. Marijuana users have a six times higher risk of schizophrenia[xxii], are significantly more likely to development other psychotic illnesses.
Marijuana makes you a better driver, especially when compared to alcohol.	Just because you may go 35 MPH in a 65 MPH zone versus 85 MPH if you are drunk, it does not mean you are driving safely! In fact, marijuana intoxication doubles your risk of a car crash according to the most exhaustive research reviews ever conducted on the subject.[xxiii]
Smoking or vaporizing is the only way to get the medical benefits of marijuana.	No modern medicine is smoked. And we already have a pill on the market available to people with the active ingredient of marijuana (THC) in it – Marinol. That is available at pharmacies today. Other drugs are also in development, including Sativex (for MS and cancer pain) and Epidiolex (for epilepsy). Both of these drugs are available today through research programs.[xxiv]
Medical marijuana has not increased marijuana use in the general population.	Studies are mixed on this, but it appears that if a state has medical “dispensaries” (stores) and home cultivation, then the potency of marijuana and the use and problems among youth are higher than in states without such programs, according to research by RAND scientists.[xxv] This confirms research in 2012 from five epidemiological researchers at Columbia University. Using results from several large national surveys, they concluded, “residents of states with medical marijuana laws had higher odds of marijuana use and marijuana abuse/dependence than residents of states without such laws.[xxvi]
Legalization is inevitable – the vast majority of the country wants it, and states keep legalizing in succession.	The increase in support for legalization reflects the tens of millions of dollars poured into the legalization movement over the past 30 years. Legalization is not inevitable and there is evidence to show that support has stalled since 2013.
Alcohol is legal, why shouldn’t marijuana also be legal?	Our currently legal drugs – alcohol and tobacco – provide a good example, since both youth and adults use them far more frequently than illegal drugs. According to recent surveys, alcohol use is used by 52% of Americans and tobacco is used by 27% of Americans, but marijuana is used by only 8% of Americans.[xxvii]

Colorado has been a good experiment in legalization.	Colorado has already seen problems with this policy. For example, according to the Associated Press: “Two Denver Deaths Linked to Recreational Marijuana Use”. One includes the under-aged college student who jumped to his death after ingesting a marijuana cookie.The number of parents calling the poison-control hotline to report their kids had consumed marijuana has risen significantly in Colorado.Marijuana edibles and marijuana vaporizers have been found in middle and high schools.[xxviii]
We can get tax revenue if we legalize marijuana.	With increased use, public health costs will also rise, likely outweighing any tax revenues from legal marijuana. For every dollar gained in alcohol and tobacco taxes, ten dollars are lost in legal, health, social, and regulatory costs.[xxix] And so far in Colorado, tax revenue has fallen short of expectations.
I just want to get high. The government shouldn’t be able to tell me that I can’t.	Legalization is not about just “getting high.” By legalizing marijuana, the United States would be ushering in a new, for-profit industry – not different from Big Tobacco. Already, private holding groups and financiers have raised millions of start-up dollars to promote businesses that will sell marijuana and marijuana-related merchandise. Cannabis food and candy is being marketed to children and are already responsible for a growing number of marijuana-related ER visits.[xxx]Edibles with names such as “Ring Pots” and “Pot Tarts” are inspired by favorite candies of children and dessert products such as “Ring Pops” and “Pop Tarts.” Moreover, a large vaporization industry is now emerging and targeting youth, allowing young people and minors to use marijuana more easily in public places without being detected.[xxxi]

Legalization would remove the black market and stop enriching gangs.

Criminal enterprises do not receive the majority of their funding from marijuana. Furthermore, with legal marijuana taxed and only available to adults, a black market will continue to thrive. The black market and illegal drug dealers will continue to function – and even flourish[xxxii] – under legalization, as people seek cheaper, untaxed marijuana.

https://learnaboutsam.org/the-issues...s-the-science/

"Despite enormous progress in reducing smoking, tobacco use is still the leading cause of preventable death in the United States and imposes a terrible toll on families, businesses and government. Tobacco kills more than 480,000 people annually – more than AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders and suicides combined. Tobacco costs the U.S. approximately $170 billion in health care expenditures and more than $150 billion in lost productivity each year."

https://www.tobaccofreekids.org/problem/toll-us

Colorado governor won't rule out banning marijuana again. Here's why

By Scott McLean and Sara Weisfeldt, CNNUpdated 6:00 PM ET, Fri April 20, 2018

Denver (CNN)Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper has two facts in front of him: Since 2014 crime has been rising in his state, outstripping the national trend, and since 2014 recreational use of marijuana has been legal.

Whether the two are connected is hotly debated -- and if they are, then what? For the first time publicly, Hickenlooper told CNN he doesn't rule out recriminalizing recreational marijuana, even if that's a long shot.

"Trust me, if the data was coming back and we saw spikes in violent crime, we saw spikes in overall crime, there would be a lot of people looking for that bottle and figuring out how we get the genie back in," he said. "It doesn't seem likely to me, but I'm not ruling it out."


Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper opposed legalizing marijuana, but embraced the choice of his state.

Data is now coming back. In 2016, the state's crime rate was up 5% compared with 2013, while the national trend was downward. Violent crime went up 12.5% in the same time while the national increase was less than 5%. But Hickenlooper isn't yet ready to pin the blame on the legalization of weed -- a step he opposed but has since embraced as the choice of his constituents.
"This is one of the great social experiments of the last 100 years. We have to all keep an open mind," he said.

Conflicting interpretations

Denver, the state's capital and largest city, is home to the lion's share of Colorado's recreational marijuana dispensaries. It has more than 170 of them -- more than the number of Starbucks, McDonald's and 7-Eleven stores combined.
Since 2013, Denver has seen its crime spike, too; the 2016 crime rate increased 4%, with violent crime up 9%.
The Denver Police say the data is inconclusive.

"[Property crime is] the biggest driver of our [overall] crime, and of our increases. So, can you attribute that to marijuana? I don't think you can," said Denver Police Commander James Henning. "The data isn't there."
The force has added more officers to police the illicit weed market that Henning says continues to grow.


Lt. James Henning, of the Denver Police Department, says there is too much gray area for a valuable assessment of the impact of legalization.

But, Henning said, there is plenty of gray area when it comes to cataloging crimes that may or may not have a nexus to marijuana -- legal or otherwise.

"If a marijuana dispensary is burglarized, is that because it was a marijuana dispensary or ... if it were a liquor store or a stereo store would it have been burglarized as well?" he said. "The data is so tough to nail down and say this crime happened because of marijuana. It's just almost impossible to do that."

Two years ago, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock blamed legal marijuana for drawing people to a pedestrian mall downtown where violent incidents were happening. In one case, a transient swung a PVC pipe at people nearby. Police did not classify that crime as "marijuana related."


Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith, photographed at the county jail, is a longtime opponent of legalized marijuana.

In Fort Collins, Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith is one of the few law enforcement leaders in the state to publicly blame legal marijuana for rising crime.

He doesn't claim that smoking a joint makes you more likely to rob a bank. The connection between cannabis and crime is often indirect -- and not captured by official statistics, he said.

"It's not a causal thing," he said, arguing instead that legal weed is attracting a growing seasonal transient population -- a population that he said is more likely to commit crime. "Every third inmate in the [Larimer County] jail is a transient and you go by and ask them, and they'll tell you, we came here because of marijuana."

Smith -- a longtime opponent of legal weed who once led a lawsuit against Colorado's legalization -- also said the theory that legalization would end the black market in marijuana has not been borne out.

"That was one of the big promises [of legalizing marijuana] that if you regulated it, you would get rid of the problems that had traditionally been there with the illegal grows, but it's been really the opposite," he said.

Mason Tvert, a well-known pro-marijuana activist, sees things very differently, arguing it's irresponsible to even suggest there's a connection between rising crime and marijuana without hard evidence to prove the link.

"The only story here is that the evidence does not show marijuana or marijuana legalization are to blame for this increase in crime," he said.

Did marijuana bring a killer to town?

Smith's frustration reached a boiling point last summer when the body of 23-year-old Helena Hoffmann was pulled out of a lake in Fort Collins. Police said she had been raped and murdered walking home from an overnight shift at a nearby McDonald's. The man convicted in the case, Jeffrey Etheridge, is just the kind of person Smith is warning against.

Etheridge is a registered sex offender from Kentucky. From jail, he told CNN that he moved to Colorado in 2017 with his then-girlfriend because her brother worked at a marijuana dispensary. At the time of his arrest he was a transient, living out of his car in the park where Hoffmann's body was found. Etheridge pleaded guilty but now says he is innocent.


Helena Hoffmann and her daughter, Mary, in a family photo. A transient man was convicted of killing Hoffmann as she walked home.

Hoffmann left behind a then-4-year-old daughter named Mary, now being raised by her father, Zach Denton.
"I remember Mary looking at us, and she goes 'did my mom die?' and that's really when it set in," Denton said about the day he broke the news of Hoffmann's death to his daughter.

He said Hoffmann would not want all homeless or transient people blamed for problems caused by just a few.
Denton thinks the bigger issue is that Etheridge, an out-of-state sex offender, was able to register his overnight address as Fort Collins' City Park, a place that is supposed to close at 11 p.m. and attracts children who come to play and swim.
From a bench in City Park built in remembrance of Hoffmann, Denton said there's a lot that could change: sex offender laws, transient laws, or even the rules on park access at night. Whatever does change, he said, will be Hoffmann's legacy.


Zach Denton at a memorial for Hoffmann, the mother of his child, in the park where she was killed in Fort Collins, Colorado.

In downtown Denver, the large -- and growing -- homeless population often gathers in Civic Center Park, next to the Statehouse.
The state's rate of homelessness rose 5.3% from 2013 to 2017, according to data from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Nationally, the rate of homelessness dropped 8.6% in the same period.


Homeless men look toward the Colorado state capitol in Civic Center Park, Denver. The rate of homelessness in Colorado has risen in recent years, despite falling national numbers.

Tom Luehrs, the executive director of Denver's St. Francis Center homeless shelter, said he sees many people who came to Colorado hoping to work in the legal marijuana industry, only to find out it's not that easy. But he said there is another, smaller, group of seasonal transient people who seem to prefer life on the streets to an apartment and a job. While their presence predates marijuana legalization, it has increased since it became legal, he said.

"A lot of the people that we work with are wanting to get jobs, wanting to get housing, wanting to move out of homelessness, so then you have this other group that's kind of even belligerent and certainly not engaging and sometimes just very disrespectful. They don't care," Luehrs said.

Hickenlooper is skeptical that legal weed is to blame for increasing the homeless population.
"We're trying to get data on it. That's a difficult one to measure," he said.

The need for real data

The lack of solid evidence one way or another weighs on Hickenlooper, who can point to other things that have changed since legalization on January 1, 2014 -- like an economic hot streak -- without being able to say exactly what impact that has had.




"When you have that kind of [economic] growth, you attract all kinds of people and a lot of them are unsavory. Do they come for the marijuana? Or do they come because there are so many young people coming, there's a lot of money in the community and this is a great place to try and rob somebody? Again, more data. More data is the only way we're going to figure this out," he said.

That was his advice to California lawmakers last year ahead of that state's legalization of recreational marijuana.
"Spend the money to get a good baseline so that you can help guide the discussions and the real facts around this huge transformational shift in the way we address marijuana," he told CNN, explaining his message to lawmakers.
Case in point: Colorado's traffic fatalities where the driver tested positive for the active form of THC known as Delta 9 more than quadrupled from 18 in 2013 to 77 in 2016, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation. But those numbers are likely very misleading, because, according to Hickenlooper, the state didn't often test for marijuana in fatal crashes prior to legalization.
"That's not real data," he said. "We didn't use to measure it and now we're trying to measure something, so of course we see a lot more."

If and when the data does come in -- from Colorado, from California and elsewhere -- it will be studied intensively. And if the haze clears and there are strong signals that state legalization has hurt the community, Hickenlooper said Colorado's legal marijuana experiment may have to end.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/20/us/co...ime/index.html

JD2, can you put a carriage return after your link so it will activate with a click? I think that will solve the problem. The post about the tobacco death statistics.

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

"Despite enormous progress in reducing smoking, tobacco use is still the leading cause of preventable death in the United States and imposes a terrible toll on families, businesses and government. Tobacco kills more than 480,000 people annually – more than AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders and suicides combined. Tobacco costs the U.S. approximately $170 billion in health care expenditures and more than $150 billion in lost productivity each year."

https://www.tobaccofreekids.org/problem/toll-us

This discussion isn't about tobacco or alcohol. Obfuscation doesn't really add anything to the discussion (IMO). We know all about tobacco and alcohol ... we're discussing the legalization of marijuana. Just saying. Let's stay focused.

Hickenlooper's second term ends this year and he can't run again. Teen use of weed is down, teen use of hard drugs is down, homelessness is down, homicides, property crimes and burglaries are down.

Originally Posted by MW

This discussion isn't about tobacco or alcohol. Obfuscation doesn't really add anything to the discussion (IMO). We know all about tobacco and alcohol ... we're discussing the legalization of marijuana. Just saying. Let's stay focused.

Weed is legal in Colorado for medical and recreational use.

Such a silly article. Hickenlooper's second term ends this year and he can't run again. Teen use of weed is down, teen use of hard drugs is down, homelessness is down, homicides, property crimes and burglaries are down.

I guess that depends on who you're talking too or where you're getting your information. The article is less than one month old (20 April 201). As for teen use of marijuana, even if the rate of use doesn't show a rise, Colorado marijuana use among teens is the highest in the nation and Washington State did see an actual increase in teenage use since legalization. Honestly, I don't see how any of these numbers can actually be gauged. I suspect a lot of teens are going to be less than honest when surveyed. Actually, I believe Colorado also had the highest adult use of marijuana in the nation prior to legalization. I remember reading somewhere it was #1 or #3, can't remember for sure which but I believe it was #1. I also recall reading that homelessness was up due to transients moving into the state specifically because marijuana was legalized. Supposedly a lot of those folks wanted to work in the marijuana industry but found jobs were hard to come by.

Originally Posted by Judy

Weed is legal in Colorado for medical and recreational use.

Yes, and that's what we're talking about, marijuana legalization.

Originally Posted by MW

I guess that depends on who you're talking too or where you're getting your information. The article is less than one month old (20 April 201). As for teen use of marijuana, even if the rate of use doesn't show a rise, Colorado marijuana use among teens is the highest in the nation and Washington State did see an actual increase in teenage use since legalization. Honestly, I don't see how any of these numbers can actually be gauged. I suspect a lot of teens are going to be less than honest when surveyed. Actually, I believe Colorado also had the highest adult use of marijuana in the nation prior to legalization. I remember reading somewhere it was #1 or #3, can't remember for sure which but I believe it was #1. I also recall reading that homelessness was up due to transients moving into the state specifically because marijuana was legalized. Supposedly a lot of those folks wanted to work in the marijuana industry but found jobs were hard to come by.

Well, based on the article I posted about Colorado, teen use of weed is down by 13.5%. Teen use of hard drugs is down 9%. And homelessness is down by 7%, based on the federal study released in December of 2017. And crime is down in homicides, property crimes and burglaries in Colorado, but still above national average as Colorado has been for a long time, so crime rate data is still a "mixed bag" according to that article, not up, not down.