Show Me the Facts

The goal of this website is to create a useful tool that can be applied to relevant, current events. All information is great information, but applicable information is powerful information. In this case, a reader, @MaryJCannabian, found the transcription to the video for me so I could show her the facts. Well, @MaryJCannabian, I would love nothing more than to de-filter this segment for you and my other readers.

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On May 6th, 2009, Anderson Cooper did a segment regarding marijuana legalization on his show, AC 360. In the segment, he did a short “debate” between Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, and John Walters, former Drug Czar for President George W. Bush.

As you will see in the video clip (which I hope stays up), the information war starts before the debate even begins with a curious statement made by John Coleman, director of the pro-prohibition group Drug Watch International. In response to the question of whether or not marijuana has gotten stronger in comparison to decades ago, Coleman claims:

No question about it. I mean, it’s the difference between having maybe a 4 ounce glass of beer versus an 8 ounce glass of Jack Daniels.

He completed his sentence with a bit of a chuckle, but to be honest, the only thing I find funny is the idea that he somehow became the director of an international non-profit organization while lacking the ability to do simple conversions in math.

The purpose of his claim is to illustrate just how much more potent “today’s marijuana” is when compared to marijuana from, say, the 1960’s. To do so, he needed to use something that is more tangible to viewers (such as comparing it to one of America’s most popular drugs, alcohol). The problem is, however, that the comparison is completely misleading when you look at the numbers.

According to Brewery.org, your average beer contains about 5% alcohol by volume, meaning if you drank a four ounce glass of an average beer, you would be drinking .2 ounces of pure alcohol. Now, according to Jack Daniels’ website, their Tennessee Whiskey is 40% alcohol by volume, meaning if you drank an eight ounce glass of it, you would be consuming 3.2 ounces of pure alcohol. This means that an eight ounce glass of Jack Daniel’s is 16 times stronger than a four ounce glass of beer.

Marijuana Potency - Source: University of Mississippi Potency Monitoring Project

Let’s take a look at marijuana potency now, shall we? According to the US Department of Justice (via the University of Mississippi Potency Monitoring Project), in 1985, marijuana had an average THC content of approximately 3.48%. In 2005, the average had increased to a THC content of approximately 8.14%. This means that “today’s marijuana”, on average, is only about 2.34 times more potent than it was in 1985.

In fact, if I were to take the time to help and do the math for Coleman (which I shall), then it would take an average potency of 55.68% THC in modern marijuana to make Coleman’s comparison valid (it’s worth noting that the most potent marijuana available today is in the mid- to upper-20% THC range). In other words, a more valid (i.e. honest) comparison would be four ounces of beer compared to four ounces of a typical barley wine (which has between 8 and 12% alcohol by volume). Not as exciting, is it?

It is also worth noting that this style of argument is fairly disingenuous when you consider that the most potent delivery system for THC is legal, physician prescribed Marinol®, which is 100% synthetic THC. I suppose the argument here is that a massive amount of THC is not harmful so long as it is supported by the government and paid for out the nose?

Now let’s move on to the main event…

Let’s start out with Walters’ opening comments:

(Walters): Well, I don’t think the facts sustain that. I mean, the fact is that marijuana is the single biggest cause of treatment need among illegal drugs in America based on the same — on the same studies you talked about.

The studies Walters is referencing do show that marijuana use is one of the most treated “addictions” in the United States; what he doesn’t mention, however, is that the numbers touted as evidence for marijuana being harmful are artificially inflated due to the method used in recording them. For example, if you were caught with marijuana and faced a judge, many times you will be offered the choice between “treatment” and a fine or some other comparatively harsher punishment. Which would you choose? Further, when it comes to teenagers being caught with marijuana, the choice is up the the guardians/parents. Which do you think a parent would prefer? Having to pay a fine or possibly have their child locked up for a certain amount of time? Or signing them up for “treatment”? The only thing the studies accurately reflect is the amount of desperation by prohibitionist to invent ways to call marijuana harmful and the amount of Americans who are not daring enough to take a harsher sentence when given the option of “treatment”.

(Walters):We just ran an earlier piece on this show about violence in Chicago and the killing of kids that are students in elementary school and middle school and high school. Police made the point, drugs are a factor in this. Guns, violence, and out-of-control behavior that fuels and is made worse by drugs.

Let’s take a peek at the story Walters is referencing to try and figure out if his point has any legitimacy whatsoever. According to CBS News, there is indeed a large amount of violence facing students in Chicago… the only problem is, however, that I can find no reference or mention of drugs having anything to do with the violence. The reality, as it turns out, appears to be more a factor of gun-control issues and gang-violence than marijuana. And while you may be tempted to claim that “marijuana funds gangs/violence”, that is why the drug war should be stopped. If anything, if it is drug-funded gangs causing violence in Chicago, then it is a direct result of people like Walters and their failed drug policies. Allow me to rephrase that point: Marijuana isn’t hurting our children, Mr. Walters, you and your peers who keep perpetuating a war built on lies are hurting our children.

(Walters): We already have too many people who suffer from dependency and addiction. Having more people who use only makes that worse. And would the country be better if, instead of 14 million users, as you talked about in the setup piece, you had 20, 30, 40, 50 million users?

Walters is correct once more when he claims that there are many people in this country that suffer from dependency and addiction. What he fails to mention, again, is that much of the dependency and addiction is from the use of alcohol, tobacco, and prescription pharmaceuticals. Aside from being much safer when compared to other substances, marijuana does not cause chemical dependencies in its users.

(Walters): Studies have now shown 60, 70, 80 percent of the people who are arrested for violent crime have drugs in their body. One of the most prevalent drugs they have in their body are marijuana.

There’s this view that people who smoke marijuana are kind of cute Cheech and Chong characters from old-time movies. In fact, it’s a source of agitation. It’s a source of impaired judgment. It’s a source of, in some cases, making people whose behavior already erratic get more erratic. So the greater potency has something to do with that.

I love nothing more than vague references to studies, as they usually turn into fun Googling expeditions; indeed, this one did not deviate far from this fact. As it turns out, Walters is just as bad as Coleman when it comes to numbers and details. The only mention of a study (yes, non-plural) finding any relation between violent criminals and marijuana use was in an anti-marijuana article by Richard Stanek. According to Stanek, the study was conducted by Hennepin County Adult Detention Center and found that “45% of males arrested for violent crime test posistive for marijuana”. Not 80%, not 70%, not 60%. 45 percent. What’s the difference? Well, one of those numbers doesn’t sound as good on TV.

Now that we have found where the correlation has originated, let’s examine the merits of the study and see if it is possible that the numbers could be a bit off at best and completely useless at worst. One factor that affects the legitimacy of this study has to do with the common methods used to detect marijuana in an individual’s system. The effects of marijuana use in an individual can range from a few to several hours depending on the individual and method of ingestion (be it inhaled, eaten, or other).

While the effects last a matter of hours, marijuana metabolites, unlike harder and dangerous drugs, can remain in the body for months (depending on repeated use, amounts used, and body type). This means someone can quit using marijuana one day and weeks later be arrested for a crime only to test positive for marijuana use. If we are going to use arbitrary metrics to draw correlations then practically anything can be used. How many criminals watch TV daily? How many use prescription drugs? How many are religious?

So we have found that in reality (i.e. that place where the rest of us live), the numbers are far from being close to Walters’. Further, we have found that the method used to “detect” marijuana is inherently flawed due to the large window of time marijuana remains detectable in an individual’s system. The only thing left now is to get to the root of the claim: Does marijuana have an affect on a person’s aggression? The answer is: Yes.

Don’t get too excited, Walters, as I wasn’t going off your cherry-picked, misconstrued studies study. Rather, I am referring to a 1972 study by the National Commission on Marhuana and Drug Abuse. They concluded that:

“Rather than inducing violent or aggressive behavior through its purported effects of lowering inhibitions, weakening impulse control and heightening aggressive tendencies, marihuana was usually found to inhibit the expression of aggressive impulses by pacifying the user, interfering with muscular coordination, reducing psychomotor activities and generally producing states of drowsiness lethargy, timidity and passivity.”
[Source: Shafer, Raymond P., et al, Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding, Ch. III, (Washington DC: National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, 1972) via DrugWarFacts.org #27]

In other words, the NCMDA found that marijuana actually made people, on average, passive and less agressive. They are not the only government figure to come to this conclusion, either. In fact, even Harry Anslinger (the father of marijuana demonization) testified in front of congress in 1948 that because marijuana users become so passive and peaceful, they would be more susceptible to “Communist influences”.

(Walters): The revenue that you would get from having tens of millions of more marijuana users is going to be offset by the cost of this to society. The cost not only in addiction treatment, but also the lost productivity of those individuals, the damage.

I don’t think I need to point out the humor presented by a man who can’t even remember simple details of a study attempting to tell a Harvard economist how legalization may or may not cost society. Realistically, the only studies done, as mentioned by Miron in his article about ending the drug war, show that legalization would not only save lives, but save billions of dollars. People like Walters disregard this, yet offer no counter-research to prove their point passed trusting their word and believing their baseless, fear-mongering myths about marijuana-related violence. Show me the facts, Walters.

(Walters): Well, in fact, there is an old wives’ tale view that possession offenders are a big part of the jail system. In fact, there are 0.3 percent of those in the state prisons, the largest prison population, are there for simple possession of marijuana. Most people are there for violent crimes. Drugs and violence do fit together.

If by “old wives’ tale” Walters means “statistically factual”, then he is correct. Sadly, it appears he did not mean that and, even worse, he is up to his antics of using vague statistics. Even more upsetting is that after a long adventure through the Internet by way of Google searching, I can not find any study, reference, or footnote to support his .3% claim. What I did find, however, was a statistic from WhiteHouseDrugPolicy.gov that doesn’t seem to agree with Walters’ paltry figure:

According to a 2004 Bureau of Justice Statistics survey of state and Federal prisoners, approximately 12.7% of state prisoners and 12.4% of Federal prisoners were serving time for a marijuana-related offense. This is a decrease from 1997 when the figures were 12.9% and 18.9%, respectively.
(Source: “Marijuana Facts and figures“)

Granted, “marijuana-related” and “simple possession” are not the same, but due to the vagueness of Walters’ attempted point, it is the best I can do. Nevertheless, it is a hefty figure that comes at a hefty price (both monetarily, as well as socially).

(Walters): But let me go back to the professor’s point about there won’t be more use. In California, where medical marijuana has been used as a kind of a wedge issue, or kind of phony effort to try to say, “It’s only going to go to people who are sick.” It’s not going to people who are sick. In fact, in San Francisco it has been reported in the news there are now more marijuana dispensaries than there are Starbucks in downtown San Francisco.

Why does Walters come to the conclusion that more dispensaries equates some how to sick people not getting medication? If anything has been proven by our pharmaceutical obsessed country it is that there is a huge market for medications. Knowing this, isn’t it logical to assume that a product as successful and effective as marijuana would require more facilities to satisfy supply and demand? The real kicker to Walters’ comment is not the sheer lack of reasoning skills, but the fact that it is not true at all. Indeed, the part about there being “more marijuana dispensaries than there are Starbucks” is completely fabricated and has been debunked since November of 2008.

In the end, I couldn’t have said it any better than Mr. Miron:

(Miron): Well, the mere fact that these medical marijuana dispensaries may be dispensing widely to people who are using for reasons other than medicinal is undoubtedly valid. But if there’s been an increase in use, then where’s the surge in violence? California is just as peaceful and just as normal a place as it’s been for a long time, despite this alleged surge in use from the medicinal marijuana. So then, doesn’t support the claims being made by the prohibitionist in any way, shape or form.

It is obvious that Walters feels no need to waste his time on things like “research” and “fact checking”. Those things just get in the way of forcing your ideology mercilessly onto innocent civilians.

A very special thank you to Jeffrey Miron for doing an excellent job in handling a man who proves that apparently “reality” is what you make of it… literally.

Related Posts:

• Prohibition Spawns Drug Violence
• U.S. asked to stop ‘false information’ on medical pot – Los Angeles Times
• Ron Paul Advocating for Legalization of Drugs on CNN
• Libertarian Perspective: Respond to Medical Pot Raids with Legalization
• Harvard Economist: Legalize Drugs to Stop violence
• Stephen Baldwin vs. Ron Paul