San Jose Mercury News Editorial: Vote Yes on Prop 19

Opinion: Decriminalize marijuana: It's far less harmful than alcohol

By Larry A. Bedard, MD
Special to the Mercury News


The California Medical Association in October declared the criminalization of marijuana to be a failed public health policy. Its assessment is appropriate.

Marijuana prohibition is a classic case of the so-called cure (criminalization) being worse than the disease (the private recreational use of marijuana).

Consider the questionable efficacy of our present policy. Forty-three percent of Americans over the age of 12 admit to having used marijuana, and nearly one in 10 Californians use it now. At an estimated $15 billion, marijuana is California's largest cash crop.

Now let's consider the costs of prohibition. In the Golden State, taxpayers spend $300 million annually to arrest and prosecute 60,000 people — largely Latinos and African-Americans — for possessing minor, recreational amounts of marijuana. Prohibition is also empowering drug cartels, particularly criminal enterprises in Mexico, which now reap between 60 percent and 70 percent of their total revenue from the exportation of marijuana to America and threaten to turn Mexico into a "narco" state.

So what's the alternative? In my opinion, it is the passage of Proposition 19, which would legalize, regulate and tax the adult possession, use, production and distribution of marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol.

I do not come to this position cavalierly. I am a board-certified, career emergency physician who witnesses the adverse health effects of licit and illicit drugs daily. Yet the recent RAND report on the financial impact of Proposition 19 reaffirmed my belief that the legalization and regulation of marijuana would make our communities safer and more just.

According to RAND, fewer than 200 total patients were admitted to California hospitals in 2008 for "marijuana abuse or dependence." This relatively low number did not surprise me. In my 35-plus years as an emergency physician in busy ERs in Northern California, I have never needed to admit a patient due to an adverse reaction or medical problem caused by marijuana.

Personally, I have taken care of fewer than 10 patients during my entire professional career whose chief complaint was related to marijuana. Mostly these were parents who were cajoled to smoke by their teenage kids and then experienced an anxious reaction.

Publish Post

More at SJ Mercury >>