Question: Should marijuana be legalized?Carl Hart: So my opinion on legalization of marijuana is complicated because when we think about a society in general, if we think about these things honestly, every society has their intoxicant. We have alcohol. That’s our primary. We also have tobacco. And we have caffeine, which is not as intoxicative.
Now, the question becomes, should we make another intoxicant legal?
We know all the problems that we have with alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine. We know the problems that we may have. So that means if you have marijuana be more widely available, you can also expect that maybe have some more problems. Some of those similar types of problems, on the one hand.
On the other hand, in New York City for example, we’re arresting hundreds of thousands of people every year for marijuana and, as a result, they have a record or they have some sort of blemish and that might retard their ability to make a contribution. So we are also having some consequences from our current legal status of the drug.
So the society has to balance what is more important to the society, but they should do so with their eyes open. You will have problems either way. The point becomes, which problems are we willing to tolerate as a society on the one hand. Now, that’s the legalization issue that you’re talking about. That’s more available.
When we think about medical marijuana, the Institute on Medicine did a report, tried to study this issue comprehensively, and suggested that we should probably continue to investigate the therapeutic potential of marijuana; and I clearly support that position. That we certainly need to if people are suffering and we have potential medications that will help relieve their suffering; absolutely we should go full forth with that, and we should do it in a responsible way, in a similar way, in which we look at in which we use drugs like morphine which is essentially heroin. We do that responsibly and we certainly do it in a restricted and a controlled manner; and we should probably do the same with marijuana.
Recorded on: Feb 26, 2009.
Discuss
Sofia Elizondo on May 6, 2009, 8:34 PM
Professor Hart failed to discuss a very important corollary of marijuana legalization (or lack thereof): its impact on drug traffic.
As long as there is demand for marijuana in the United States – illegal, or for medical purposes only - the effects of its violent traffic through Latin America will be suffered.
What will happen to cartels if marijuana is legalized? Who knows…
But in this matter – like many other matters these days, it seems - the decision, discussion and conversation should be multilateral.
merritt olsen on June 30, 2009, 6:30 PM
in response to sofia elizondo..as long as any drug is illegal there will be criminal activity behind it…these activities will range from manufacture to distribution of said substance…in the manufacture of drugs many times they are made from substandard materials…lets take for example methaamphetamine….it is a big problem in the mid west and many labs are also located there…one of the chemicals they use to manufacture meth is anhydrousammonia (very strong base)…anhydrousammonia is used by farmers to put nitrogen in the ground just before planting their crops, but this chemical is also very toxic…people who do meth made this way can become very ill …this problem also afflicts many other drugs such as ecstasy…when you hear of someone getting sick or dying from taking ecstasy you can bet that there were other things in the mix that they are not telling you…as an example i was at a festival in canada and 2 people died and 47 got sick from taking ecstasy pills (as per the official government news report) but a chemist got ahold of the pills and tested them and guess what he found? they were cut with drano…hmmm i wonder i guess the drano was not what killed them….this happens because they are illegal and therefor criminals see a way to make lots of money just like prohibiton in the early 1900"s…and on the distibution end it is fighting over lucrative markets for these substances…if the government would just make it legal and the pharmeceutical companies made pure stuff there would be very few deaths and the government could tax it and the criminals would be out of business…
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