Second Opinions

A s Colorado and Washington state approve the sale of marijuana for recreational use and other states consider following suit, [the head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Bethesda, Md., Nora] Volkow says, the notion that legalization represents a modest, cost-free move is dangerously overblown. The evidence on the supposed safety of marijuana - particularly marijuana in its modern, far more potent form - is far from clear enough to take this leap.

"I think that what we are seeing is a little bit of wishful thinking in the sense that we want to have a drug that will make us all feel good and believe that there are no harmful consequences," she said. "When you are intoxicated, your memory and learning are going to go down. When you are intoxicated, your motor coordination is going to go down. When you are repeatedly using marijuana, there is an increased risk for addiction. And if you are an adolescent and you are taking marijuana, there is a higher increased risk for addiction and there is also a higher risk for long-lasting decreases in cognitive capacity - that is, lowering of IQ."

Adolescents are a chief focus of Volkow's worry, to the extent that when I observe that tobacco use is clearly worse for teens, she challenges that easy assumption.

"Wait a second. . . . Nicotine does not interfere with cognitive ability. So if you are an adolescent and you are smoking marijuana and going to school, it's going to interfere with your capacity to learn. So what is worse, as an adolescent right now? To have basically something that is jeopardizing your development educationally or to smoke a cigarette that, when you are 60 years of age, is going to lead to impaired pulmonary function and perhaps cancer? . . . I would argue that you do not want to mess with your cognitive capacity, that that is a very large price to pay."

~Excertp from Editorial by Ruth Marcus, Syndicated Columnist

S ales of recreational marijuana begin [Tuesday] in Washington state, bringing to two the number of states where adults are allowed to legally buy pot whether or not they have a medical condition (real or feigned) for which it might be helpful. The experience of Washington and Colorado is going to accelerate the acceptance of legalization, and make it more likely to pass elsewhere.

Don't be surprised if within a decade we saw legal pot in half the states.

That's true even though even though there have been problems in Colorado and there will be problems in Washington as well. Indeed, an accelerating trend in legalization may take place partly because of those problems. We're getting two different case studies in how to go about legalizing, and every state that considers it from this point forward will be able to learn from what they did right and what they did wrong.

Meanwhile, those who oppose legalization are going to continue to be undermined by the hyperbole in their own arguments, a problem that has existed as long as there has been a debate about illegal drugs. When the head of the DEA can't bring herself to admit that crack and heroin might be worse for a person to use than pot, it makes it harder for the millions of Americans who have been exposed to the latter to take seriously the case being made by anti-legalization advocates. As the years pass and more and more of the older generations who had little exposure to pot die off, the proportion of Americans who view it as something evil and terrifying will grow smaller and smaller.

~ Excerpt from Editorial by Paul Waldman, The Washington Post