With the exception of 13 years during Prohibition, alcohol has always been an accepted part of American culture — the three-martini lunches among midcentury businessmen, the champagne toasts at weddings, Budweiser ads during the Super Bowl.
Marijuana, on the other hand, has been demonized: “Reefer Madness,” the war on drugs, its Controlled Substance Act labeling as Schedule 1 on par with heroin.
“It does seem illogical, doesn’t it?” said Gary Wenk, an Ohio State University behavioral neuroscience professor who studies drugs’ effects on the brain. “It had nothing to do with marijuana’s effects. It had everything to do with the people bringing it into the United States. They were people of color, people from Mexico. Puritan America saw this inebriant which essentially got you high without a hangover, and they said, ‘This is all wrong.’”
In Yakima County, which banned marijuana businesses two years ago and last month began to enforce that ban, voters have twice opposed legalization — first in the 2012 statewide vote that legalized recreational pot, and again last year in an advisory vote that county commissioners held to get policy guidance from voters. To advocates and those involved in the 28 marijuana businesses operating illicitly under the county’s ban, that reeks of cognitive dissonance.
“It’s highly ironic that the county supports wine, beer and alcohol as much as they do,” said Jeffrey McPhee, a local marijuana-industry consultant and the chief operating officer of MLM Entertainment, a marijuana grower and processor that does business as Sticky Budz. “Marijuana has been proven time and time again to be less dangerous than alcohol.”
About 88,000 people nationwide die alcohol-related deaths every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Marijuana-related deaths are more difficult to quantify, with virtually all of them coming from traffic crashes and very little national data to go on. But by all accounts, there are far fewer pot deaths than booze deaths.
“You know people will be driving high if it’s available,” said Wenk, who in addition to his academic study of marijuana was appointed by Ohio Gov. John Kasich to that state’s Medical Marijuana Advisory Committee. “But there are people driving drunk now. Could it be any worse?”
As Indiana University pediatrics professor Aaron Carroll wrote in a 2015 New York Times op-ed, it seems clear that marijuana is the lesser of these particular evils.
Daniele Piomelli, a University of California at Irvine neuroscientist and director of UC Irvine’s Center for the Study of Cannabis, agrees with Carroll. While he believes sales of marijuana should be well regulated, he doesn’t think criminalization has worked.
“From a medical perspective, there are benefits and risks in every substance we use as a society,” Piomelli wrote in an email interview. “For example, we know that the moderate use of certain alcoholic beverages can have a positive health impact. But we also know that alcohol abuse and alcoholism are extremely harmful (actually, a LOT more than cannabis is).”
The difference isn’t confined to personal health risks, either. An oft-cited 2010 study by the medical journal The Lancet graded a range of common drugs based on 16 potential harms to users and society, and found marijuana far safer than alcohol to individual users and to society. Alcohol, the study found, was the most harmful drug overall, beating even heroin and crack.
It’s not quite as clear-cut as that, though, Wenk said. Comparing the potential harm of alcohol and marijuana is an apples-and-oranges prospect, he said. Nobody can predict what a specific drug will do to a specific person. It is clear, though, that neurogenesis — the production of new brain cells within the hippocampus — is decreased by binge drinking, while evidence from animal studies suggests it may actually be increased by marijuana use, he said. And, contrary to the notion of marijuana as a gateway to harder drugs, there’s evidence that it can lessen people’s reliance on opioids, he said.
Still, the county celebrates its local craft beverage industry, while banning the marijuana industry. In 2011, the county dedicated $70,000 in economic development funding to directional signage to help tourists find wineries. The county’s economic development agency — a public-private partnership whose board includes representatives from county and city governments — touts the industry on its website, and last year awarded its annual $10,000 Enterprise Challenge grant to a brewery. That money came from sponsors, not taxpayers, but it’s just one example of the county’s tacit endorsement of its alcohol industry.
Those actions serve “the best interests of the county,” according to County Commissioner Mike Leita. It’s not a matter of weighing the relative dangers of marijuana and alcohol, he said; it’s a matter of responding to the wishes of the citizens who voted in favor of the ban.
“The voters twice did not support recreational marijuana in Yakima County, so it’s pretty straightforward from the commissioners’ perspective,” Leita said.
This despite all three county commissioners generally holding small-government views that prioritize private rights. That ethos, which includes a disdain for over-regulation of business, isn’t the only thing at play, Leita said. It has to be balanced by a practical approach that allows for community input, he said.
“We’re private-rights advocates,” he said. “We’re conservative in terms of protecting private rights. But we’re also elected representatives, and in this matter the voters have spoken.”
Advocates, however, argue that the jobs created by having 28 pot businesses and the tax revenue associated with the industry are in the true best interests of the county. If the ban were lifted, those numbers would likely increase based on the county’s geographically advantageous marijuana-growing conditions, McPhee said.
“It’s a massive industry,” he said. “And the county commissioners are throwing it away.”
In a decade or two, the question may be made moot. Wenk believes the end of the federal marijuana prohibition may come as soon as that. The reasons for allowing it are just more compelling than the reasons for banning it, he said.
“I think it’s inevitable,” Wenk said. “It’s going to be made recreationally available throughout the United States.”
credit:yakimaherald.com
