ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, February 15, 1997 TAG: 9702170073
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOYCE A. ARDITTI
I READ your Feb. 8 editorial (``We can see the political ads now'') praising Salem Del. Morgan Griffith for his vote against repealing Virginia's Compassionate Use Statute. The statute had allowed doctors to prescribe marijuana for patients with cancer or glaucoma without prosecution. Virtually unused as a defense because there is no legal marijuana supplier in Virginia, it had been on the books for more than 20 years.
I smiled as I read the newspaper. I had already called Griffith's office in Richmond, to praise his intelligent and well-informed vote.
Griffith has been a guest speaker in my Family Law and Public Policy class. I found out about his vote when a student told me ``the guy from Salem" had voted against repealing the medicinal statute. Griffith had cited recent evidence from the New England Journal of Medicine in support of this vote.
Griffith's vote also reflected his constituency's preferences. Typically one of the more conservative districts, 67 percent of Roanoke County and Salem citizens indicated in surveys that they felt favorably toward medicinal use of marijuana in certain circumstances.
As a professor who teaches family studies at Virginia Tech, I can see how drugs are increasingly becoming an important issue for families and children today, but for reasons beyond whether people are using them. Drug laws are affecting more of our population, given greater attempts to enforce prohibition of controlled substances and longer sentences for violators.
According to journalist James Bovard, for the first time in 1990 the number of people sentenced to prison for drug crimes exceeded the number of people sentenced for violent crimes. In Virginia, says the Department of Criminal Justice Services, 15,706 individuals were arrested for marijuana violations in 1995, more than double the arrests in 1992.
Marijuana arrests in Virginia increase each year, and, no surprise, so do the nonviolent offenders in our prisons. Besides burdening taxpayers with tremendous costs, we're deterring valuable resources from effectively dealing with violent crime and other pressing state needs.
Scientific evidence supports marijuana as a useful substance to treat pain and other disorders. Harvard University professor and psychiatrist Lester Grinspoon, author of more than 140 articles in scientific journals and 12 books on marijuana use, has documented some of its more obvious medicinal benefits. It has been found to be an effective analgesic helping AIDS, cancer and even migraine sufferers with pain relief. Studies also uncovered its antinausea and anticonvulsant properties.
Overall, marijuana has been found to be a relatively benign substance when ingested in low to moderate doses, with important therapeutic properties. Marijuana has also not been found to be physically addictive like so many other prevalently used substances, including nicotine, caffeine, alcohol and many prescription medications.
I encourage all citizens to educate themselves on the issue. Upon doing so, they will see how ineffective and damaging this country's drug policy is, along with how expensive the "war" on drugs has become.
In 1994, nearly 500,000 Americans were arrested on marijuana charges; 84 percent of the arrests were for possession, not sale. These are real people, many with families and children, who suddenly are jailed as criminals because of a substance they chose to use. None of the above should concern you, of course, if you're a part of the corrections industry. In that case, the drug war is your bread and butter.
Rational drug policy should be focused on harm reduction, with regulations based on pharmacology and solid, scientific evidence rather than economic interests, cultural prejudices and propaganda. For example, it's well-documented that alcohol, nicotine and prescription drugs are potentially far more dangerous than marijuana. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration's recent sampling of metropolitan hospitals, about 705,000 people die each year from ingesting prescription drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Deaths from all illegal drugs combined: about 8,500.
There have been no reported deaths from ingesting marijuana. Yet since 1970, more than 8 million people have been processed through the justice system for possession or sale of this substance. Should we lock up all alcohol users, prescription-drug users, their suppliers and their doctors?
The General Assembly is currently considering legislation to implement harsher sentencing for marijuana offenders. This is an opportunity to ``just say no'' to insanity and ``yes'' to rational drug policy. Virginia does not have to follow the example of our federal government.
What makes it even crazier is that harsher sentencing and enforcing prohibition have not been demonstrated to decrease rates of drug use. In fact, decriminalization tends to be related to lower rates of use. And evidence shows that prohibition is ineffective, gives rise to a thriving black market, and is a significant contributor to violent crime.
My students hesitate to speak out for fear of incarceration. They tell me they're afraid they will end up on some FBI list. Is that the kind of state government we want? One that frightens its people into silence?
Prohibiting medicinal-marijuana use and implementing harsher sentencing for marijuana violators will only hurt our state, not help it. Virginians must educate themselves on drug policy, and make their voices known to their political representatives. Unfortunately, except for the rare example like Griffith, our legislators are certainly not educating us. They are too worried about getting re-elected.
Joyce A. Arditti is an associate professor in the Department of Family and Child Development at Virginia Tech.
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