Canada Legalizes Recreational Marijuana Use Nationally – A First Step in Ending the Drug War

October 17, 2018 – Uruguay and Canada as of today are the two nations in the world that have put an end to marijuana’s illegal drug status for recreational use. Is the move in Canada a good thing or a mistake? What does it mean for the future legalization of other illicit drugs and for the treatment of addiction?

The war on drugs to which my country is a participant has largely failed. Seizures of cocaine, heroin, and other illegal drugs represent only a small percentage of the product that crosses international boundaries from points of origin in Developing World countries. From Central Asia to Central and South America, plants yielding psychotropic drugs, are grown by farmers who have little alternative choices to plant if they wish to feed their families and survive. Illegal drug cartels pull the purse strings of nations from the source to supply chain. Billions of dollars are made. And billions of dollars are spent trying to stem the flow.

Of all the psychotropic plants, marijuana is seen as the least illicit. It is grown for medical purposes and is considered legal for such purposes in parts of Argentina, Australia, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Israel, Jamaica, Mexico, Northern Macedonia, Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, and Turkey, in addition to Canada and Uruguay. In the United States where individual states have jurisdiction over the legalization of the drug for medical purposes, 30 have taken steps to make marijuana legit. And the latest U.S. polls show that 68% of Americans believe marijuana for medical and recreational purposes should no longer be a criminal offense.

It is interesting that of all the psychotropic drugs commonly ingested by humans, other than alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine, marijuana has now been given special status – somewhat recreationally legal, and medically useful and legal. So why marijuana and not the others that fuel the ongoing drug war?

Marijuana: The Soft Drug

Marijuana is considered a soft drug when compared to heroin or cocaine. Soft drugs are deemed to be less addictive although many scientists and medical professionals argue that this is not true for marijuana. Studies continue to show that marijuana usage is a growing problem because the psychotropic agents in the plant are indeed addictive and can lead to drug abuse.

But are they more or less addictive than nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol, all socially acceptable in most places around the world?

So if we aren’t fighting a drug war to stop socially acceptable addictive substances, why have we been fighting one over marijuana?

The contributions to the economy of the world’s nations from alcohol can be measured in trillions of dollars. Although I seldom drink alcohol, my wife and I just came back from Portugal where we went to a port wine tasting in Gaia. After that experience, I could get used to drinking a glass of port wine occasionally after dinner. Noone would consider this behaviour to be illicit.

As for caffeine, and its delivery agents coffee and tea, these mildly addictive substances are responsible for hundreds of billions of dollars in business activity annually. Perfectly socially acceptable, beverage empires have been launched on the back of this drug.

And then there is nicotine derived from tobacco plants. One wonders if it weren’t for the association of this soft drug with its negative medical implications including cancer, emphysema, pleurisy, heart disease, and many other illnesses, I would imagine many of us would be lighting up with impunity. Nicotine is highly addictive and an industry worth many billions of dollars has arisen just to help addicts cope with weaning themselves from the drug. And to mitigate the worst medical effects of nicotine from its delivery mechanism, cigarettes, cigars, pipe, and chewing tobacco, e-cigarettes have arisen designed to deliver nicotine without killing the user.

One wonders why our human societies have chosen to single out some addictive substances from others, declaring one illegal while the other is socially acceptable? And one also wonders why we then spend billions of dollars annually on these substances, some of the money to promote usage, while the rest spent in fruitless wars to stop it.

The resistance to marijuana legalization has come from the belief that is is a “gateway” drug, the beginning of an escalating process by which users first get addicted to its psychotropic effects, and then move on to the hard stuff, drugs deemed to be more dangerous. Marijuana for medical purposes reduces nausea for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. It reduces tremors in patients with Parkinson’s Disease. It is a pain relief alternative to opioids, legal addictive drugs that the medical profession have dispensed to a point where they have created a prescription addiction pandemic in many countries. The notion of marijuana as the ultimate gateway drug to harder stuff is no more valid than stating that alcohol or nicotine are equal gateways.

What can be bad about marijuana?

It can slow physical response, impair movement and coordination, impact memory, cause or relieve anxiety, contribute to hallucinations, cause male sexual dysfunction, and even increase the risk of a heart attack or stroke. And of course, with repeated use, it can be addictive with all of the potential social implications one can derive from that state. But one thing is for sure, there is no evidence that using marijuana turns you into a heroin or cocaine addict. In fact, marijuana is being used in some California rehabilitation facilities to wean addicts off cocaine and heroin.

Other Psychotropic Drugs

I grew up as a teenager in the 1960s, a period when youth were experimenting with all kinds of psychotropic substances from magic mushrooms to LSD. The list of substances above and beyond all those already mentioned include prescribed drugs such a morphine, codeine, benzodiazepine, amphetamines, ketamine, and barbiturates. Add to this the illicit ones including methamphetamine, MDMA (Ecstasy), PCP (Angel Dust), and mescaline (Peyote). Interestingly, whether prescribed or illicit, all of these substances are defined as in the same category as heroin, and cocaine, hard drugs. And many are classified as prescribable for medical use in countries around the world despite their “hard” designation.

Fighting a Futile War

The war on drugs consumes billions of dollars annually. In the United States, more people are arrested for marijuana use than for all violent crimes combined. Back in the era of Prohibition, hundreds of millions were spent annually to stop illegal trafficking of alcohol from outside the country. Today substitute marijuana, cocaine, and heroin where alcohol once stood. It should give you some perspective on how wrong-headed current policy is towards these singled out hard and soft drugs. With marijuana now legal in Canada and recreationally legal in 9 U.S. states, and medically legal in 30, it is only a matter of time before Americans stop spending tax dollars on suppressing this soft drug’s usage. And as for the ones deemed to be illicit and hard, it makes sense to see the futility of continuing to fight an unwinnable conflict. Regulating, taxing, and managing marijuana, heroin, and cocaine is preferential to the spending of billions to stop their usage while other soft and hard drugs are deemed medically or socially acceptable.

So What’s In Our Drug Future?

The saying attributed to Albert Einstein, “doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result” is apt when talking about the war on drugs and our ultimate acceptance of the psychotropic compounds we currently spend billions on trying to stop. The war on alcohol was fought throughout the 1930s in the United States with more than half of the citizenry finding ways to consume the stuff. The war on marijuana has been a losing cause as consumption has remained steady or grown over the last three decades. Americans are only now recognizing, that in marijuana, there should be no more war. Certainly as of today Canada has.

Expect within the next two federal election cycles in the U.S., that marijuana will move from being medically acceptable to becoming a legal recreational drug which is more than can be said for alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine. And maybe it will take another two decades after that to see the wall of resistance come down for heroin and cocaine. There are better uses for these drugs than getting a recreational high and we need to do the necessary research to learn how to use them to help solve biomedical issues. In the meantime, we might want to look to Portugal for guidance on how to regulate and manage soft and hard drugs without fighting a war of resistance to their existence.