Big Weed by Christian Hageseth Read Free Book Online Page B

that task to a committee for investigation. Two years later, in 1972, that commission—much to its credit, considering the politically charged atmosphere surrounding drugs in the Vietnam years—announced thatit found no reason to enact strong laws for marijuana. Some points the commission made:
“[C]annabis does not lead to physical dependence.”
“The overwhelming majority of marihuana users do not progress to other drugs.”
No “substantial evidence existed of a causal connection between the use of marihuana and the commission of violent or aggressive acts.”
“[M]arihuana was usually found to inhibit the expression of aggressive impulses by pacifying the user.”
    Basically, the commission said what every marijuana activist has tried to say since: The drug wasn’t addictive, or a gateway drug, or an instigator of violence. If anything, it mellowed people out and caused them to relax.
    As I was learning now, there is little evidence to support the oft-touted gateway drug hypothesis, even today. Yes, some Americans do indeed move on to harder drugs, but the vast majority do not. Marijuana is the world’s most popular illicit drug, and certainly the most popular in the United States, but once you move beyond marijuana, the statistics show that use of heavier drugs quickly declines rapidly. Marijuana has tempted four out of ten Americans. About 15 percent of Americans have tried cocaine; fewer still have tried crack or heroin. I’ll bet you know tons of people—friends, acquaintances, family members, perhaps even yourself—who have used marijuana without ever switching to stronger drugs. Interestingly, in the Netherlands, the statistics are even more striking. The Dutch found that when they permitted marijuana sales in private cafés—effectively taking marijuana out of the hands of street drug dealers and giving it to the baristas—the rate at which Dutch citizens moved to harder drugs like cocaine and heroin dropped markedly. The percentage of Dutch folks who have tried cocaine is 2 percent, as compared toabout 15 percent in the United States. I daresay that there is nothing intrinsic to the marijuana plant that forces its users to crave more dangerous highs. If marijuana is a gateway drug, then so are caffeine, alcohol, and tobacco. The real issue probably has something to do with how often marijuana users hang out with street dealers of hard illicit drugs.
    Back in the 1970s, the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse recommended decriminalizing the drug. If the federal government wanted to set a reasonable precedent for the states, then perhaps users could be hit with a nominal fine.
    Such a permissive policy did not sit well with President Richard M. Nixon, arguably the twitchiest fellow ever to hold that office. Nixon ignored every point in the commission’s report and made marijuana the top priority for his new creation—the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Thanks to Nixon, every one of the bullet points in the commission’s report would be systematically ignored, distorted, and perverted to serve the agency’s own goals.
    By the time I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, kids like me were being taught by school nurses and visiting cops that marijuana was a gateway drug. Anyone you asked told you that marijuana would kill infants in the womb, shrink a boy’s testicles, blot out your intelligence, and lead inevitably to cocaine, heroin, murder, and madness.
    It was as if we had returned to the days of Reefer Madness.
    Only later, when I was older and thinking about investing in marijuana as a business, did I learn how some very powerful people were suspected of having manipulated marijuana laws for their own benefit. After all, if marijuana was dangerous, then bureaucrats like Harry Anslinger were guaranteed government jobs for life. If marijuana was illegal, then law enforcement agencies had a new weapon for crushing those