I’m a strong supporter of legalizing marijuana in Minnesota, and nationally. As I’ve written before, legalized marijuana “will make Minnesota a more sensible, just, fiscally sound, humane and free state.” The evidence is overwhelming.
But let’s not be naive or dishonest here. As with any vice, there are also huge problems associated with legalization that need to be alleviated. To me, the most troubling downside of legalization is harms to minors, transportation users, and seriously ill patients.
Disadvantages of Ending Marijuana Prohibition
Damaging Minors’ Brains. First, credible researchers are finding that marijuana use by minors appears to be much more damaging than it is for adults. For an example, an article in an American Psychological Association publication reports numerous alarming research findings:
Heavy marijuana use in adolescence or early adulthood has been associated with a dismal set of life outcomes including poor school performance, higher dropout rates, increased welfare dependence, greater unemployment and lower life satisfaction.
Duke University psychologist Terrie Moffitt, PhD, and colleagues… found that persistent marijuana use was linked to a decline in IQ, even after the researchers controlled for educational differences. The most persistent users…experienced a drop in neuropsychological functioning equivalent to about six IQ points (PNAS, 2012). “That’s in the same realm as what you’d see with lead exposure,” says Weiss. “It’s not a trifle.”
There are some reasons to think that adolescents may be uniquely susceptible to lasting damage from marijuana use. At least until the early or mid-20s, “the brain is still under construction,” says Staci Gruber, PhD, a neuroscientist and director of the Cognitive and Clinical Neuroimaging Core and the Marijuana Investigations for Neuroscientific Discovery (MIND) Program at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School…
Also immature in teens is the endocannabinoid system. As its name implies, this system comprises the physiological mechanisms that respond to THC. That system is important for cognition, neurodevelopment, stress response and emotional control, and it helps to modulate other major neurotransmitter systems, says Krista Lisdahl, PhD, director of the Brain Imaging and Neuropsychology Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
Repeated exposure to marijuana can dial down cellular activity in the endocannabinoid system. Such interference might be a bigger problem for immature brains, says Lisdahl. “That sets the stage for why adolescents may be more sensitive to the effects of repeated marijuana exposure, from a neuroscience perspective.”
So, should we oppose legalization of marijuana? Not unless we also want to bring back alcohol prohibition, because alcohol also is extremely damaging to the brain and many other parts of the body, and alcohol leads to countless more deaths than marijuana.
Still, in the rush to legalize marijuana, these kinds of findings shouldn’t be shrugged off by legalization enthusiasts. We need to shine a light on these findings to encourage young people to delay marijuana usage until later in life, and to encourage everyone to not overdo it.
More Traffic Fatalities. Second, legalization of marijuana also will increase the number of impaired drivers, which will likely lead to more traffic injuries and fatalities. USA Today reports the expert findings from states where the drug is now legal:
According to research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the Highway Loss Data Institute, the frequency of collision claims filed to insurers were higher in four states where marijuana is legal: Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.
The Highway Loss Data Institute study focused on collision claims between 2012 and October 2017, and compared against four control states where marijuana remains illegal: Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming.
A separate study conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety focused on police-reported crashes before and after retail marijuana was allowed found Colorado, Oregon and Washington saw a 5.2 percent increase in the rate of crashes per million vehicle registrations, compared with neighboring states.
Law enforcement officials and others are using these kinds of findings as a reason to oppose legalization. That’s absurd. No one, including law enforcement officials, wants to bring back alcohol prohibition because of the staggering number of serious drunk driving problems, so we shouldn’t keep marijuana illegal because stoned driving problems are in the mix.
At the same time, we also shouldn’t deny the existence of the problem, and be passive about harm reduction.
Destroy Medical Cannabis Program For Patients. Finally, ending marijuana prohibition could inadvertently harm or destroy Minnesota’s fledgling medical cannabis program, and consequently harm the seriously ill Minnesota patients benefiting from it.
According to Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) patient surveys, many Minnesota patients are benefiting from precisely dosed, tested, and customized cannabis-based capsules, oils, tinctures, and topicals. Across a wide variety of qualifying conditions, two-thirds of patients report significant benefits, while only 10% report little to no benefit.
When it comes to chronic pain patients, the MDH surveys show that 63% of patients who had been on highly lethal, addictive opioid medications were able to reduce or eliminate their use of opioids after moving to much less addictive, lethal cannabis-based pain relief medicine.
Many seriously ill patients desperately want to hold onto those successful medicines, but worry that the post-legalization availability of cheaper, unprocessed raw marijuana plant material will put the manufacturers of their precisely dosed and formulated medicines medicine out of business.
Many Minnesotans probably won’t care too much that those manufacturers would go out of business. But the problem is, if they do go out of business, patients would suffer. That is, patients who are currently benefiting from those precisely formulated and dosed medicines would be forced to use raw plant material that they and their caregivers consider to be less safe, pure and customized form of medicine.
Mitigating the Harm
We can’t wish these problems away. Therefore, the law ending marijuana prohibition should set aside a reasonable amount — for the sake of argument, let’s say five percent to ten percent of the revenue raised from legalizing marijuana — for a Marijuana Harm Reduction Fund. The lion’s share of the revenue raised by legalizing marijuana still could be allocated however lawmakers and their constituents see fit. But a mitigation fund could be used for harm reduction projects like:
- Medicine Affordability Assistance. Some type of patient-friendly sliding scale subsidy to make precisely dosed, tested and formulated cannabis-based medicines available and affordable to all Minnesota patients who, according to medical caregivers, need them.
- Youth Brain Impact Public Education Campaign. A multi-media public education campaign aimed at teens, young adults and parents to raise awareness about the heightened dangers of marijuana use at an early age.
- Stoned Driving Public Education Campaign. A multi-media public education campaign aimed at raising awareness about the very real dangers of driving while under the influence of marijuana.
A couple of important caveats about this fund:
- Evidence-based campaigns. The content of the public education campaign should be overseen by inter-disciplinary experts to ensure campaigns don’t become Reefer Madness-like misinformation campaigns, and are instead based on the consensus of the best available scientific evidence.
- Subsidy oversight. The subsidies of patients using cannabis-based medicines should be monitored to ensure physicians are verifying that patients are benefiting from the medications and the amount of patient subsidies are kept at a reasonable level.
Again, cannabis is much less addictive and deadly than already legalized alcohol. Again, marijuana prohibition has been horrific for communities. of color. Again, marijuana prohibition is very bad, and legalization is much better. Don’t get me wrong.
But that can’t be the end of the debate. Citizens like me who are advocating to end marijuana prohibition must own these problems, and do what we can to reduce the associated harm.
Disclosure: The author is a public relations consultant who helps one of Minnesota’s two manufacturers of cannabis-based medicine share patient success stories with the news media. He doesn’t lobby for that company, and the public policy opinions expressed here are his own, not the company’s.
This is a good summary and it all sounds very reasonable. I think it would address the concerns of most people I know who are against legalization.
Very thorough, dude. Mind if I do a J?
I completely concur, and confess I know nothing about the impact on our (absurdly convoluted) medicinal marijuana industry here in Minnesota. A fraction of the revenue could also be used for a 21st century version of Reefer Madness school education. The usual helicopter conservative parents would howl about “encouraging drug use”, and an administration like Walz’ would likely defer to “local jurisdictions”. But enough less medieval school districts could, I think, accept updated, classroom alcohol/drug education.
Do you have any information on acid flashbacks?
Acid flashbacks often described. In 50 years I never met anyone who I think actually had any re-occurance of the sensations or perceptual experience of LSD that so resembled the true experience as to be indistinguishable from it—so they didn’t know if they were tripping or not. On the other hand, PTSD flashbacks apparently are all too real, and typically experienced by former military persons who went into combat. My report is totally subjective, but it’s fair to conclude that the myth greatly exceeds the truth about acid flashbacks–if there’s any truth at all.
Did acid long ago, and semi-regularly. Not ever a flashback in 50 years.
I’m thinking more of a just-the-facts, direct-to-student and -parent campaign — online as, streaming service ads, etc. — not going through schools. Schools are bound to screw it up in translation, and it’s about impossible to do quality control to head off the hyperbole.
I’m under no illusion that a campaign will stop youth use, but if it slowed it down and/or delayed it a bit it would be worth it.
“As bad as lead exposure” got my attention. Users have a right to know that before they make their decisions about if, when, and how much. If we learned tomorrow that, say, milk containing growth hormones was as bad for the brain as lead exposure, I promise you my weed smoking friends would not be shrugging it off. They’d be earnestly picketing The Wedge Coop and demanding the government disclose to consumers.
At the point of my life when I was heavily overusing, I was heavily underachieving. Might be a correlation there? I can’t blame acid for underachievement though.
You’ve got a legislature willing to put firearms into kids’ hands and to let citizens prance around packing heat and spraying lead in all directions; you’ve got one political party enthralled by the fascistic lying megalomaniac they put in the White House so he could pander to their prejudice and pack the courts with corporate stooges. Joe, worry less about “adolescent brain development” and more about adult brain disappearance.
I don’t want the wrong model of legalization here–and the precedent of our seriously defective medical cannabis program makes me doubtful that the lawmakers can do a good job. DFL leadership has decided to exclude, really to reject, consultation and advice from experienced Minnesota advocates for reform, and that decision might not serve them well, nor is it likely to produce a good bill.
But there’s no need to panic about the brain development studies. The prohibitionists WANT you and other opinion makers to panic. Use your mature brains to keep calm. Let’s ask, what ARE the implications? Immature, developing brians until age 26? OK, logically, ALL influences that may be harmful should be avoided. Does that mean they should be banned? If so, how is the ban to be enforced?
And what are we thinking of? Cannabis, alcohol, narcotics, stimulants (and a tip of the hat to LDS–let’s include caffeine!); all risk-taking activities potentially injurious to brain development such as physical-contact sports or so-called recreations like skiing, bicycling, scuba-diving, etc., or where an immature brain’s judgement presents a danger to other persons, for instance driving a car, truck, or heavy machinery or power tools; and how can an immmature brain assume such responsible roles as that of schoolteacher, physician, or for gosh sakes—legislator!
On the basis of empirical observation–and bound to be confirmed by science–the ubiquitous presence of electronic entertainment and communications devices manifestly appears to induce addicitve behavior patterns and may very well cause significant alterations in physical brain development and such essential mental processing indicia of maturity as, for instance, critical thinking ability. Why quibble over cannabis, which most people young or old are NOT going to partake of, when 99% of the populace from pre-school on up is exposed to–and nearly all are already habituated to–these pervasive purveyors of electronic hypnotism?
Joe, think it through. Now that we know so much about brain development, by what right does society allow ANYONE under the age of 26 to vote, to serve in the military, to sign binding contracts, to marry, to assume any of the duties and responsibilities that society reasonably could require be performed only by adult human beings with healthy, properly matured and organically sound brains in their skulls?
Already, we’ve retreated towards prohibitionism with alcohol age raised to 21, leaving citizens three years in which to vote or to get shot in the uniform of their country, with out being able to legally buy a beer. Ditto with tobacco, and now with the non-tobacco nicotine vapor stuff. Shall we blame these aberrations on occult cannabis interference with lawmakers’ mental development, or what? You tell me.
The basic problem here is NOT brain development, nor how society ought or ought not revise its entire social, legal, and economic benchmarks of certifiable maturity. The basic problem is NOT the endangerment of themselves or others by persons under influence of psychoactive strains of hemp. The basic problerm is NOT by any means the possible revision of the MN medical cannabis program, from which the real but minuscule benefits are vastly outweighed by its extremely exaggerated expense, unneeded restrictions, monopolistic organization, lack of actual herbal products for patients, bureaucratic process to include or exclude “qualifying conditions”—and for what other aspect of medical treatment is there such a statutory requirement?
The problem is prohibition. In a word.
Cannabis is one of the oldest domesticated plants. Joe, there’s no need to freak out about it. How, one wonders, did politicians claim, as they did, scientific justification for suppressing cannabis–even and especially for medicinal uses–before they even knew there WAS such a thing as the body’s endocannabinoid system?
It’s just a plant. Let science proceed. Sure, try to establish science-based educational programs to honestly describe hazards, risks, and dangers of the plant. Good luck. Our Republican friends at the urging of their religiously-demented core constituency, want to suppress the teaching of biological science if it mentions organic evolution, and at the urging of corporate planet-poisoners want to suppress the teaching of natural physical sciences in order to perpetuate global warming denial . . . don’t get me started. But at any event, you are more likely to be able to teach young people to “say no” and refrain from experimenting with cannabis (or other psychoactive substances) than you are going to be able to teach them to successfully dodge bullets, as heavily-armed, wild-shooting gangs proceed to settle their frequent disputes about the drug distribution business in the standard manner.
A few more years of Trump and his minions, of the rise of white nationalism, of the denial of icecap melting and insect extinction . . . we’ll all need something a lot more escapist and obliterative than cannabis.
Oh, we already have it: alcohol. Drink up.
Is this a prepostperous question? It’s only couched in the same identical terms as that
. . . to continue where previous comment was truncated by errant key stroke:
So, now that the prohibitonists are flourishing the results of brain-development studies, as a pretext for perpetuating the greater social evil of narco-totalitarianism, I invoke the principle of Equal Protection of the Law, and suggest that the legislature raise to age 26 the legal age of consent; driving license; military enlistment or conscription; office-holding; voting; all professional licensing/certification from barrister to barber; tobacco or alcohol consumption; and while we’re at it—hunting and fishing licenses.
Fair is fair.
The issue on the table is what’s relevant, not those other issues that are not being debated by the Legislature.
The issue on the table is “should we legalize another vice.” You’ll increase the likelihood of legalization if you’re open to mitigating the undeniable downsides of the vice.
Even if you don’t care about the downsides — and I do, because there is significant human harm involved — you should care about winning enough legislative votes to pass legalization. Mitigating downsides will win you votes you need to succeed.
Drawbacks? What drawbacks?