Does decriminalization encourage marijuana use by teens?

To follow is an excerpt from the CQ Researcher report "Teen Drug Use" by Peter Katel on June 3, 2011.

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Politicians and drug-policy experts have been arguing since the 1970s about whether softening laws against marijuana possession would increase drug consumption by teenagers. Linking decriminalization and rising use seemed plausible because teen consumption was at a record high during the '70s.

However, teen use declined during the 1980s, when the same laws were in effect. And after 1996, when California voters approved what is still the nation's most open-ended medical-marijuana law, researchers found no evidence of increased teenage drug consumption.

The researchers, who run an annual survey of middle and high school students for California's attorney general and the state's departments of Education and Alcohol and Drug Programs, wrote in 2008 that alcohol and drug use rose in the early and mid-1990s but leveled off in 1997. “In 1999, overall prevalence of use … mainly declined, markedly for some of the most commonly used substances,” Gregory Austin and Rodney Skager reported. [Footnote 12]

Since that report was issued, however, California was embroiled in 2009-2010 in an intense debate over legalizing marijuana outright, — and several more states enacted medical-pot or decriminalization measures.

“We have predicted, indeed, that there would be increases in marijuana consumption in surveys because of the significant attention that the potential use of marijuana as a medication has generated in the public,” Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), told a press conference last December at which the most recent MTF results were announced. [Footnote 13]

“We cannot but wonder,” she said, “if the concept of marijuana as medicine could have harmful effects.” And, in fact, “we're seeing a decrease in the number of teenagers perceiving marijuana — regular marijuana use — as harmful.” [Footnote 14]

Yet Beau Kilmer, co-director of the drug-policy research center at RAND, a nonpartisan think tank based in Santa Monica, Calif., says no data confirm that more teens are using pot because they believe that if it's safe for sick people, it must be safe for them. “There is very little research, and none of it is definitive,” he says. “We don't have solid, peer-reviewed evidence to say that that's happening.”

A major reason for the lack of data, Kilmer adds, is that MTF and the National Household Survey don't include questions on where respondents live. That information would allow researchers to examine connections between drug use and, say, the enactment of a medical-marijuana law in some respondents' states, and the absence of such a law where other respondents live.

Like Volkow, many who support prohibition in one form or another concede the absence of hard evidence. But Dr. Andrea Barthwell, an addiction specialist, says her talks with young people back up the thesis that the medical-marijuana boom has led to more consumption. She recalls, “One of the things I heard from kids was, ‘Of course marijuana is safe. It helps sick people; why would it be harmful to me?’” Barthwell, CEO of Two Dreams Outer Banks, a private addiction-recovery center in Corolla, N.C., was a deputy director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) in the George W. Bush administration, which took a hard-line anti-marijuana stance.

Now that the medical-marijuana cause has gained greater traction, Barthwell says, advocates have gone further, claiming that marijuana is not associated with domestic violence and traffic fatalities and therefore is safer than alcohol. For teens, she says, the logical conclusion is that pot “is not only helpful but safer than something that's out there and legal.”

Legalization proponents see a strategy at work in attempts to connect marijuana decriminalization with increased teen usage. “The bottom line is always ‘the kids,’” says Marsha Rosenbaum, former San Francisco director of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), a national organization advocating decriminalization. “That's why we can't reform our drug policy.”

A medical sociologist and former researcher on heroin addiction and other issues, Rosenbaum argues that teen drug consumption rises and falls for reasons that have little to do with policy developments. But she adds, “Teenagers today have basically grown up in a country where legal medical marijuana has been a reality since they were born, even if not in their state. So of course their views on this substance are going to reflect a kind of growing acceptance that marijuana is not the demon drug it has been portrayed as for decades.”

The Issues:

• Does decriminalization encourage marijuana use by teens?
• Are anti-drug advertising campaigns effective?
• Is “zero tolerance” an effective anti-drug approach?

Click here for more information on the CQ Researcher report on "Teen Drug Use" [subscription required] or purchase the PDF.

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Footnotes

[12] Gregory Austin and Rodney Skager, “Twelfth Biennial Statewide Survey of California Students in Grades 7, 9 and 11, 2007-08,” California Attorney General's Office, Fall 2008, pp. 3, 16, www.adp.ca.gov/Prevention/pdf/CSS_12th_Compendium_Tables.pdf.

[13] “National Institute on Drug Abuse Holds News Conference on Teenage Drug Abuse,” CQ Newsmaker Transcripts, Dec. 14, 2010.

[14] Ibid.

Medical Marijuana Industry Growing in Popularity

Posted 10/21/09 by Emily DeRuy
Editorial Intern, CQ Researcher
Senior, UC, San Diego,
Political Science/Communications

The founder and president of Med Gro Cannabis College, in Southfield, Mich., hopes to capitalize on the growing medical marijuana industry. Nick Tennant opened the trade school in September to teach state-qualified caregivers how to treat specific chronic medical conditions with cannabis.

Botanists and lawyers teach the students -- a diverse mix ranging from recent high school graduates and ministers to everyone in between -- the legal and business issues surrounding medical marijuana, including pot history, cultivation, cooking and caregiving procedures. Tennant hopes that the market for medical cannabis will continue to grow nationwide, as it has in California, where it is estimated to be a $14 billion industry. Tennant also plans to sell related supplies and services to increase revenue.

The school is advertising through alternative publications such as Metro Times, a Google Adwords campaign and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. “We're trying to do whatever we can to make a name for ourselves,” said Tennant. Since Michigan voters approved a law last November allowing the state-regulated therapeutic use of marijuana, a number of symposiums on proper medical use of cannabis have been held, and The Hemp and Cannabis Foundation has opened a clinic that pairs qualified patients with physicians.

Tennant and others in the medical marijuana business say they want to counter the stigma associated with using marijuana. “Professionalism goes a long way. Our teachers are not just some stoner off the street. These are degreed botanists and attorneys teaching classes,” Tennant says. He says he hopes the school will help educate people about the benefits and proper usage of medical marijuana, as well as provide a source of income in a steadily growing market.

Source: Shea, Bill, “Cannabis on the Syllabus: Entrepreneur Trains Caregivers on Issues of Medical Marijuana,” Crain’s Detroit Business, October 11, 2009 http://www.crains detroit.com/article/20091011/FREE/310119950#

For more information see the CQ Researcher report on "Legalizing Marijuana" (6/12/09) [subscription required] or purchase the CQ Researcher PDF

Is prescription-drug abuse as serious as illegal drug abuse?

Below is an excerpt from the "Overview" section of the October 9, 2009 CQ Researcher report on "Medication Abuse" by Marcia Clemmitt

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The use of legitimate prescription drugs like opioid painkillers and stimulants to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has soared in the United States over the past two decades. But along with increased legitimate use of opioids like Vicodin and OxyContin and stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall has come extensive abuse.

In recent years, prescription drugs have outpaced illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine as the cause of overdose deaths, according to both federal statistics and data from many states. “The number of deaths … that involved prescription opioid analgesics increased from 2,900 in 1999 to at least 7,500 in 2004,” up “150 percent in just five years,” with painkiller deaths more numerous than heroin- and cocaine-related deaths put together, said the CDC's Paulozzi. [Footnote 8]

While the CDC has not analyzed data beyond 2004, the trend is likely to continue, said Paulozzi. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), has found that “the number of emergency department visits for opioid overdoses increased steadily through 2007,” so that “the mortality statistics through 2005 probably underestimate the present magnitude of the problem.” [Footnote 9]

Considering the high rate at which Americans consume prescription drugs, there should be little surprise in such numbers, some analysts say.

Indeed, frequently abused Vicodin is the most-prescribed drug in the United States, with 117 million prescriptions written in 2008, says David S. Kloth, a Danbury, Conn., anesthesiologist and past president of the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians (ASIPP). By comparison, another heavily used drug, the cholesterol-lowering medicine Lipitor, was prescribed 61 million times last year, Kloth says.
Marijuana and Vicodin Are Most-Abused

Ninety-nine percent of the world's hydrocodone — Vicodin's opioid component — and 80 percent of the world's supply of narcotics, generally, are consumed in the United States, he says. “The actual, indirect societal costs [of prescription-drug abuse] are so huge that the problem can no longer be ignored,” says Kloth. “We have doctors assisting patients in abuse.”

There also has been a dramatic increase in deaths from methadone — in the wafer form prescribed as a pain medication, not the liquid form used as maintenance for former heroin addicts, says Hazelden's Seppala. “The pill is a lethal drug because it's so slow going out of one's system,” he says. But unwary people “take a whole bunch because it acts so slowly that they don't realize they're getting high,” and they end up dying from the drug's toxicity, he explains.

Today there is more abuse of prescription opiates than marijuana, says Kosten of Baylor College of Medicine. “The average first-time user is 15 years old,” and, unlike with most drug epidemics, females are as likely as males to abuse prescription medications. With illegal drugs, “boys are more likely to go out to find a dealer and get them,” but boys and girls can get prescription opiates on their own, for free, from their families' medicine chests, he says.

“Illicit drugs come and go,” but abuse of prescription drugs is likely to keep on expanding because of their availability, says Western Law School's Liang. “It's a growth industry for our kids, and addicted children become addicted adults.”

Among his students, “it's a normal thing to buy on the Internet,” Liang says. “This is the health-care system for kids today. And when you hear the justifications of college students — like, ‘I'm using [Adderall] because I'm trying to get into med school,’ followed by the admission that ‘I couldn't really cope with the test because I was so buzzed from the drug’ — you understand how serious substance-abuse-related problems can quickly grow,” he says.

Furthermore, “there's a real synergy between opioids diverted to illegal use and heroin, since many people get hooked on the diverted opioids” and then shift to illegal drugs or add them to the mix, says Robert G. Carlson, director of the Center for Interventions, Treatment and Addictions Research at Wright State University's Boonshoft School of Medicine in Dayton, Ohio. Abuse of prescription drugs also likely brings sellers of illegal drugs like heroin into areas where illegal-drug pushers haven't previously operated. “Sellers follow the drugs,” Carlson says.

Nevertheless, some observers say that facts on the ground may not warrant the alarms some substance-abuse specialists are sounding. “I haven't seen any communication from anyone indicating we're near a crisis mode or things have gotten a lot worse … in the recent past,” said Ron Petrin, vice president of the Board of Pharmacy in New Hampshire, a state in which some analyses find a surging epidemic of prescription-drug addiction. [Footnote 10]

Just as with illegal drugs, the number of people who initially abuse prescription drugs is far higher than those who actually become dependent, says Kosten. For both kinds of drugs, “eight people try opiates and one becomes dependent,” he says. For that reason, “it's a good bet that a substantial proportion [of prescription-drug abusers] will outgrow” the habit. Nevertheless, Kosten adds, “a lot of damage can happen in the meantime,” including education setbacks, such as poor grades, that take years to overcome, he says.

Abuse of prescription “opioids hit a peak in 2006, and it's still staying there, not really on the rise, but not dropping either,” says Michael H. Lowenstein, co-director of the Waismann Institute, a detoxification center in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Still, an alarming story making the media rounds may be more legend than fact, says Hazelden's Seppala. Beginning in the early 2000s, some news reports described “pharm parties,” in which teenagers scrounge up all the prescription drugs they can find, get together, toss all the drugs into a bowl, and grab and consume random handfuls of the medications. The story reached the mainstream with a USA Today account on June 13, 2006.[Footnote 11] But while some “pharm parties” probably do occur, “I don't think it's a common phenomenon,” says Seppala, who has researched them.

Similarly, while prescription sleeping pills are addictive, “the vast, vast majority of people never have a problem with them,” says Leslie Lundt, a psychiatrist in Boise, Idaho, who is the author of Think Like a Psychiatrist: Understanding Psychiatric Medicines. “Nearly 100 percent of the people who have issues with the ‘sleepers’ have had another substance-abuse or gambling issue.”

Some aspects of prescription drugs may ultimately make them easier for society to control than illegal drugs. As compared to alcoholics and heroin addicts, for example, “We see opioid pill addicts a lot earlier” in their substance-abusing lives, says Seppala. For all opioids, including heroin, “the addiction starts more quickly” than with most other substances, but pill addicts often find it harder to get a daily supply of their drug than street-drug addicts, and so fall into the pain of withdrawal sooner, which brings them to treatment, he says.

Unlike with illegal drugs, if abuse becomes a problem with a legal medication, “we can just make less of it, or make it a lot harder to get” by limiting the places at which the drug can be dispensed, requiring buyers to fill out certain forms, or the like, says Kosten.

The Issues:
* Is prescription-drug abuse as serious as illegal drug abuse?
* Is enough being done to combat medication abuse?
* Are patients in pain suffering because doctors fear prosecution for medication abuse?

For more information see the CQ Researcher report on "Medication Abuse" [subscription required] or purchase the CQ Researcher PDF

Footnotes
[8] Testimony before House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, July 12, 2007.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Quoted in Elaine Grant, “Pharmacy Board Stalls Drug Abuse Prevention Efforts, Advocates Say,” New Hampshire Public Radio, July 27, 2009, http://www.nhpr.org.

[11] Donna Leinwand, “Prescription Drugs Find Place in Teen Culture,” USA Today, June 13, 2006, p. 1A. David Emery, “Are Pharm Parties for Real?” David Emery's Urban Legends Blog, About.com, March 24, 2009, http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/2009/03/24/are-pharm-parties-for-real.htm.

Medication Abuse

Is tighter regulation of prescription drugs needed?
By Marcia Clemmitt, October 9, 2009

Michael Jackson's shocking accidental death in June was only the latest in a string of high-profile fatalities from multiple prescription medications. Actor Heath Ledger and the model and sex symbol Anna Nicole Smith died recently in comparable circumstances. But celebrities aren't the only abusers of painkillers, sedatives and stimulants. Prescription drug abuse has become a growing problem in the United States, even as illegal drug use has gradually declined. In 2005, for example, more people ages 45 to 54 died from drug overdoses — mostly prescription painkillers — than in car crashes. Many people believe prescription drugs are safer than illegal drugs, so changing public attitudes is a challenge. Also, many prescription narcotics are being diverted to dangerous, recreational use, but doctors, dentists and nurses are poorly informed about the potential for abuse. Meanwhile, government drug-education programs focus on illegal drugs while largely ignoring the risks of prescription abuse.

The Issues:
* Is prescription-drug abuse as serious as illegal drug abuse?
* Is enough being done to combat medication abuse?
* Are patients in pain suffering because doctors fear prosecution for medication abuse?

An excerpt from this article can be found on the CQ Researcher Blog.

For more information see the CQ Researcher report on "Medication Abuse" [subscription required] or purchase the CQ Researcher PDF

Legalizing Marijuana

Should pot be treated like alcohol and taxed?
By Peter Katel, June 12, 2009

From statehouses to the White House, attitudes toward marijuana laws are changing. California's top tax collector is endorsing proposed state legislation to legalize and tax pot, and Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says he'd like the idea debated. More than a dozen other states have enacted or are considering laws to permit medical-marijuana use or remove criminal penalties for possession. In Congress, Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia — a hard-nosed Marine combat veteran — wants marijuana legalization considered in a top-to-bottom review of sentencing and drug laws. Full-scale, nationwide legalization still seems distant, but the Obama administration has declared a hands-off approach toward California's medical-marijuana outlets, unless the state-sanctioned sites are determined to be trafficking operations. Opponents of marijuana legalization object on moral and health grounds, but the opposition appears to be weakening, especially in a time when the economic crisis is cutting into police and prison budgets nationwide.

The Issues:

*Should marijuana be legalized and taxed?
*Would pot legalization spur a big increase in consumption?
*Would legalizing marijuana help the criminal-justice system?

To view the entire report, login to CQ Researcher Online [subscription required], or purchase the CQ Researcher PDF.

Mexico's Drug War : Overview from the December 12, 2008 CQ Researcher Report

Is the violence spilling into the U.S.?

By Peter Katel

Down in Baja California, people in Rosarito Beach have quit worrying about rowdy Americans on spring break ruining the ambience. The once-bucolic getaway on Mexico’s Pacific Coast — just an hour south of San Diego — has other concerns.

“We’re betting against getting hit by a stray bullet, against our daughter being kidnapped,” says a frightened local businessperson, who spoke by phone on condition of not being identified by name, occupation or gender. “We’re living through a war.”

As drug traffickers mow down rivals and government forces all along the border, law-abiding citizens — American and Mexican — find some relief in the fact that most of the killing takes place among members of Mexico’s major drug cartels.

In Tijuana, a barrel of industrial acid left on a street in October apparently contained the dissolved remains of rival drug dealers. Bodies with the tongues cut out, or heads cut off, have been left in public places. Most recently, a headless body was left hanging from a busy bridge in Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.

But citizens’ fears are well-founded as well. The Rosarito Beach businessperson knew a real estate broker who sold some property to gangsters and was kidnapped and killed despite a ransom payment.

“We came here because it was so peaceful,” the businessperson says. “But now the entire economy is based on the narcos’ spending.”

Even the cops are scared. Last May, three Mexican police chiefs sought asylum in the United States.

For Americans, “war on drugs” is a catchy slogan. But in Mexico, where traffickers fight each other for territory using automatic weapons, the metaphor hits close to the mark.

During the first 11 months of this year alone, more than 5,300 people have been killed — traffickers, police, soldiers and ordinary civilians — about 1,000 more than the number of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq. The number of Americans included in the toll is unclear. In recent weeks, an American citizen and two U.S. residents were killed, one standing in front of a house, and two driving in a funeral procession. And more than 40 American citizens and residents have been kidnapped in the Tijuana-Rosarito Beach area since last year, the FBI reported.

As in the early 20th century, when smugglers began running opium and marijuana to Americans from the mountains of Sinaloa — still a major drug center — Mexico remains the main foreign supplier of marijuana to the United States. Mexican traffickers are also major suppliers of methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine. Since the demise of the Colombian drug cartels in the 1990s, the four major drug cartels operating in Mexico have become even more powerful, garnering billions of dollars in revenue and keeping American gun sellers busy.

Now the Mexican gangs are expanding. In September, U.S. law-enforcement agencies announced they had arrested 507 people and seized more than $60 million after an 18-month investigation of cartel operations in the United States. Gang activities included killing and kidnapping people with debts to traffickers.

Recognizing the deep American connection to the Mexican drug war, Congress voted this year to send $400 million worth of aid to Mexico, and the Bush administration started a program to reduce the weapons traffic into Mexico.

The money is the first installment of the Mérida Initiative, an anti-drug gang program drawn up by both countries that includes anti-trafficking operations in Central America and the Caribbean.

But some critics say the United States needs to do more. A blue-ribbon commission on U.S.-Latin America relations lays the blame for Latin American drug violence largely on the United States and what the panel called the “failed war on drugs.” Only a new, rehabilitation and treatment-oriented policy in the United States can lower drug demand, said the Brookings Institution’s Partnership for the Americas Commission, headed by former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo and former U.S. Undersecretary of State Thomas R. Pickering.

“Drug use in the United States has not declined significantly,” the commission said recently, arguing that continuing the present course will maintain the profits that fuel drug trafficking and its wars. “This violence already threatens to spill into the United States and to destabilize Mexico’s political institutions,” the commission said.

When Mexican President Felipe Calderón took office in 2006, he quickly moved to crush the drug gangs. As of July, government forces had arrested 26,000 drug suspects, including at least two kingpins, according to authorities.

No one sees victory at hand, however, largely because of the huge fortunes at stake — estimated at from $8 billion to $23 billion.

There is also deep concern about corruption. Many experts say the traffickers have penetrated the Mexican government and military more deeply than U.S. and Mexican officials had realized.

“When we took office we knew we had an organized-crime problem, but we thought it was like a tumor that was well-identified and easily excised,” a top Mexican law-enforcement official last year told U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Mexican counterpart, Patricia Espinosa, according to Undersecretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon. “But when we opened up the body, we realized it had metastasized, and the kind of treatment we needed was far beyond what we had expected.”

In recent months, as part of Operation Clean House, Mexican investigators have arrested the former chief of the federal anti-organized crime unit for allegedly taking $450,000 from cartels in return for information and arrested or fired 35 members of an elite anti-drug unit accused of spying for drug gangs. In addition, charges have been filed against Mexico’s former liaison to Interpol, the international law-enforcement network; against a former top officer of the federal investigative agency and against 10 other military and law-enforcement officials suspected of working for cartels. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) office at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City may have been penetrated as well.

In a letter to the Mexican Senate on Nov. 27, Calderón acknowledged that half of 56,000 federal, state and municipal police recently evaluated were “not competent” to serve, after investigations of their assets, as well as psychological evaluations and drug tests. In Baja California, where Tijuana and Rosarito Beach are located, only 10 percent of police passed muster.

To a leading academic specialist on the drug war, the revelations of widespread corruption vindicate the Mérida Initiative’s strategic approach. “A lot of intelligence and counter-intelligence work is needed because the government has been infiltrated,” says Raúl Benítez Manaut, a sociologist and political scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Research Center on North America.

For cops both honest and dishonest, working amid so much corruption can be fatal. Edgar Eusebio Millán Gómez, Mexico’s national police chief, was assassinated outside his apartment building in Mexico City by a squad of killers wearing rubber gloves. Others assassinated include the Sinaloa state police commander, the organized crime division chief of the Public Security Ministry and a high-ranking officer of the State Investigative Agency of Chihuahua.

On Nov. 4, Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mouriño and veteran anti-drug official José Luís Vasconcelos died in a spectacular airplane crash in Mexico City. The official preliminary report on the crash blames the pilot of their Learjet for following an airliner too closely and getting caught up in its wake. 12 But many experts scoff at that assessment. “It certainly makes me a doubting Thomas,” says Thomas Cash, former special agent in charge of the DEA’s Florida and Caribbean Division.

And even if cartels didn’t cause the crash, it still serves their goal of intimidating the country, Cash and many others say, because most Mexicans won’t ever believe the event was an accident.

On the border, where the conflict is at its most intense, the cartels still seem to have the initiative. For the Rosarito Beach businessperson, the occasional sound of gunfire at night, the daily sight of heavily armed bodyguards escorting politicians, the worry over a child befriending narcos’ offspring at school all add to the mental and emotional toll.

Would it be better to leave, even at the cost of starting from the bottom somewhere else? Perhaps, but selling house and business in a war zone is next to impossible. “All we have,” the businessperson says, “is hope.”

To view the entire report, login to CQ Researcher Online [subscription required], or purchase the CQ Researcher PDF