Last week anti-pot activist
Kevin Sabet, in the midst of a seven-city “marijuana
education” tour of Oregon, complained that he is “extremely
misunderstood.” In an
interview with The Oregonian, Sabet, a former drug
policy adviser in the Obama administration, emphasized that he is
not one of those crazy pot prohibitionists who say marijuana is an
inevitably addictive “devil’s weed” that leads to heroin. Instead
he is one of those slippery pot prohibitionists who likens cannabis
consumption to drunk driving:
I am not here on a “reefer madness” tour. I am here to talk
about the truth, which is most people who try marijuana will not
become addicted—just like most drunk drivers won’t get into a fatal
car crash and most people who don’t wear helmets won’t get into a
bicycle crash.
If Sabet really wanted to put the addictive potential of
marijuana into perspective, he would compare the percentage of pot
smokers who become heavy users to the percentage of drinkers who
become alcoholics. But since the latter percentage is
higher, such a comparison would have raised uncomfortable
questions about why booze is legal but pot is not. Likewise, if
Sabet wanted to talk about the
danger of stoned driving in an honest way, he would have
compared it to the danger of drunk driving. But since alcohol
impairs driving ability more dramatically than marijuana does, that
comparison also would have cast doubt on the fairness and
rationality of the policy Sabet favors. So instead Sabet compared
cannabis consumption to drunk driving, thereby insinuating that all
marijuana use, no matter the dose or context, puts other people at
risk.
A little more subtly, Sabet worries that “there has been a lot
of misinformation about marijuana, mainly because people tend to
focus on their own experiences or the experiences of others they
know.” Who are you going to believe, Kevin Sabet or your lying
eyes? Sabet says the truth about marijuana can be found not in the
actual experiences of typical consumers but in the opinions of “the
American Medical Association or the American Society of Addiction
Medicine or the National Alliance on Mental Illness.” Yet all
these groups specialize in detecting, describing, and dealing with
marijuana abuse. Like cops and prosecutors, physicians,
psychiatrists, social workers, and addiction treatment specialists
do not see a representative sample of cannabis consumers in the
course of their work. They see a sample that is strongly skewed
toward excessive use and antisocial behavior, which may help
explain why Sabet so casually compares pot smoking to driving while
intoxicated.
Sabet’s tour, which concluded less than two weeks before Oregon
voters will start receiving ballots that include Measure 91, a marijuana legalization
initiative, originally was supposed to include 13 stops. It was
scaled back after critics
complained that money from federal anti-drug grants was being
improperly used for what looked like part of the No on 91 campaign.
Sabet insisted “these
are educational events, not political events.” The Oregon Health
Authority’s Addictions and Mental Health Division disagreed,
deciding not to participate in the events to avoid running afoul of
a state law barring public servants from politicking on the
taxpayer’s dime.
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