If Tobacco Regulation Works, Why Not Regulate Marijuana?

[Caduceus Mercurius]

Not that I fully agree with this, but an interesting article nonetheless.

From: http://www.alternet.org/story/71504/

If Tobacco Regulation Works, Why Not Regulate Marijuana?

By Rob Kampia

President Bush recently touted new survey results showing a modest drop in teen use of marijuana and other drugs, but he failed to mention the drug for which prevention efforts have had the most spectacular success -- tobacco. If he had, he might have had to make some troubling comparisons.

Citing the results of the annual Monitoring the Future survey, Bush noted that drug use has declined from its recent peak in 1996, but sidestepped the longer-term picture that doesn't look nearly so rosy.

If you go back 15 years, to 1992, drug use is up almost across the board. For example, in 1992, 3.7 percent of eighth-graders were current marijuana users, compared with 5.7 percent in 2007. For 12th-graders, the figures were 11.9 percent and 18.8 percent, respectively.

This contrasts sharply with the figures on adolescent cigarette use. Here, too, there was a bit of a rise in the mid-1990s, but overall, the trend is much more encouraging.

While marijuana use is higher among all age groups than it was 15 years ago, cigarette smoking has dropped remarkably. Among 12th-graders, current cigarette smoking has dropped from 27.8 percent in 1992 to 21.6 percent this year. For eighth-graders, the drop is even more dramatic, from 15.5 percent down to 7.1 percent.

And here's a figure that may be shocking: Among 10th-graders, 14.0 percent currently smoke cigarettes, while 14.2 percent smoke marijuana. That's right: Slightly more 10th-graders now smoke marijuana than cigarettes.

The sharp drop in cigarette use is not attributable to changing attitudes about smoking. Teen disapproval of smoking is only marginally higher than it was in 1992, for all age groups.

So what accounts for the drop in tobacco use? The regulation of cigarette sales and marketing. As part of the Master Settlement Agreement with 46 states, cigarette companies agreed to stop outdoor advertising and to banish kid-friendly characters such as Joe Camel. Even more important, we as a nation got serious about reducing tobacco sales to kids.

In 1992, Congress passed the Synar Amendment, requiring states to enact and enforce laws prohibiting sale of tobacco products to youth under the age of 18, and setting up unannounced inspections of retail outlets. The program has worked spectacularly well. In 1997, inspectors found that over 40 percent of retailers were violating the ban on cigarette sales to kids. By 2006, the violation rate had dropped to just 10.9 percent, and it's still dropping.

So what does this have to do with marijuana?

Simply put, we have leverage over tobacco sellers that we don't have with marijuana dealers. Because tobacco retailers and producers are licensed and regulated, we have some control over them. If they want to keep their lucrative businesses, cigarette merchants have a strong incentive to follow the laws -- even laws they don't like.

Consider this: As part of their reaction to the Synar Amendment, tobacco retailers adopted a "voluntary" program called "We Card." Today, virtually any store that sells cigarettes posts a large, brightly colored sign saying, "Under 18, No Tobacco. We Card."

Have you ever seen a marijuana dealer with a "We Card" sign?

If we want to control teen access to marijuana, it's time to learn a lesson from our success with tobacco. Contrary to the mythology put out by Drug Czar John Walters and his ilk, the complete prohibition of marijuana for adults not only doesn't help to keep marijuana away from kids, but it actually hampers such efforts.

Regulation works. Prohibition deprives authorities of the best tools available to successfully regulate sales and marketing. Prohibition has handed the entire, annual $113 billion marijuana industry over to unregulated criminals, with entirely predictable consequences.

If we really want to control marijuana and keep it away from our kids, it's time to bring it within the law and regulate it as we do tobacco.

 

[No-Key]

You keep your cattle better when you give them a large field to graze.
I never had a lot of older friends, but it was siginificantly harder for me to get cigarettes than marijuana before I turned 18. I might get in less trouble for tobacco, but when was the last time that stopped anybody from doing what they wanted?

Now I'm under 21 and can't get alcohol, and the problem is even more apparent: I have several people I can call and get marijuana from, but it's actually pretty damn tough by comparison to get liquor from a government ABC store. It's actually a lot more dangerous too, since ABC stores potentially have cops inside or in the parking lot looking for people buy for underage folks.

Outright abolition is probably the dumbest strategy for substance control ever conjured by the imaginations of politicians that were raised with the belief that people would follow their god damn rules no matter how many and how little sense they made.

 

[spice]

Caduceus Mercurius- I don't think that they are really all that worried about limiting teens access to marijuana, when you cut through all their propaganda and jabber.

The success of the ad campaigns against tobacco was unforeseen and unintended. They aren't smart enough to figure out the mechanics of how to do that intentionally. Long ago, the tobacco companies underwent a sea-change in their philosophy about their industry....I love to listen to them whine about 'the freedom of the individual' and how the government needs to mind its own damn business'.....when their cigs are attacked....


Politically, the people who are in control of the fortunes of BIG TOBACCO are entrenched....entire regions of this country are dedicated to it, on the Atlantic seaboard ( east coast ) farming millions of acres for the industry. These are also government subsidized ( taxpayer paid) and are TRUE monopolies, in the real sense of the word. That power is conservative, politically, as the states where these
crops are produced are in the south part of the USA, politically conservative republican, and VERY loathing of change.
That power isn't going anywhere, and its predictable as to what influence it exerts, culturally, on the regional area it is located in.

Tobacco is not grown widely in this country, understand. It is grown in massive amounts, true, but in a relatively concentrated area. The power, therefore, derived from it is concentrated in this area as well.
But tobacco isn't psychedelic ( to me, anyway) and it doesn't spur introspective thought... it exerts no 'push' upon the individual to think in different ways.

Its effects are understood very well.....there is a reason why the indians introduced the white man to tobacco when the pilgrims were trying to colonize the new world......

The same cannot be said for marijuana, in any respect. It would be impossible for them to build a monopoly on mj the way they have on tobacco. For one thing, we know more about cultivating it than they ever would, or could. It would take them 20 years to even catch up to where we are now. Seriously, this is one of the real resons they cant just legalize and regulate it....for one, who would buy weed if it was legal?

Not me, I tell you that....weed, also, is a psychedelic. Mild, true, but vastly under-rated in its power. Because of this, it's hard to label, which scares them....because it isn't physically addicting, you cant build a dominator market on it, like cigs, and they don't like that, either.

In the time it would take them to set up a facility, I'd be retired, amillionaire, from growing and selling it.....if it were legal.

People they don't have control of growing fortunes, that scares them.


I tell you something else, here in this country, judges smoke weed, cops sell weed, and nobody thinks the laws need to be messed with....
I personally know a district attorney (cop)who does ecstasy and smokes weed on a regular basis.

Hows that?

Well, even though I am in my 40's... I was in college twelve years ago, and met a lot of people....my point is that they are just paying lip service to the weed prohibition....many of the straightest people are weed smokers, and are totally in the closet. ( and they all smoke hydro,too)

The cops know that alcohol is a bigger factor in accidents than weed too....in my hometown, all the cops there now are guys I went to school with, or that my little brother went to school with...they're all harder on booze that weed.

Now, true, these same cops all of a sudden get wacko when a truck full is pulled over...they're like watch dogs thrown a steak....

 

[cosmicdeep]

are you from texas? but thats not funny at all :x

 

[spice]

Close.

Think Katrina and legalized cockfighting.