Last week White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer suggested that marijuana legalization contributes to opioid abuse. “When you see something like the opioid addiction crisis blossoming in so many states around this country,” he said, “the last thing we should be doing is encouraging people” by allowing recreational use of marijuana. As critics such as NORML’s Paul Armentano and Washington Post drug policy blogger Christopher Ingraham pointed out, Spicer had things backward: The evidence suggests that loosening marijuana prohibition results in less consumption of opioids.
No way, says Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who seems to be planning a crackdown on state-licensed marijuana businesses. During a speech to the National Association of Attorneys General yesterday, Sessions mocked the notion that “marijuana is a cure for opiate abuse”:
Give me a break. This is the kind of argument that has been made out there. It’s just almost a desperate attempt to defend the harmlessness of marijuana or even its benefits. I doubt that’s true. Maybe science will prove I’m wrong. But at this point in time, you and I have a responsibility to use our best judgment, that which we’ve learned over a period of years, and speak truth as best we can.
While the evidence that marijuana works as a treatment for opioid abuse is inconclusive, several studies have found an association between medical marijuana laws and reductions in opiod prescriptions, opioid-related deaths, and fatally injured drivers testing positive for opiods. These results make sense to the extent that marijuana can be substituted for narcotics as a way of relieving physical or emotional pain, a switch than can be expected to reduce serious side effects because marijuana is safer.
Although Sessions claims he is open to refutation by science, he clearly has not bothered to look at the research. Such incuriosity is consistent with the former Alabama senator’s history as a diehard drug warrior who knows lots of things that aren’t so. Consider his outrage a few years ago when President Obama publicly conceded that marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol. Although there is plenty of evidence to support that conclusion, it did not jibe with Sessions’ anti-pot prejudices, so he could not accept it:
I have to tell you, I’m heartbroken to see what the president said just a few days ago. It’s stunning to me. I find it beyond comprehension….This is just difficult for me to conceive how the president of the United States could make such a statement as that….Did the president conduct any medical or scientific survey before he waltzed into The New Yorker and opined contrary to the positions of attorneys general and presidents universally prior to that?
Sessions tried to rebut Obama’s statement about the relative hazards of marijuana and alcohol by declaring that “Lady Gaga says she’s addicted to [marijuana] and it is not harmless.” Putting aside the merits of treating Lady Gaga as an expert on the effects of marijuana, or of extrapolating from this sample of one to the experiences of cannabis consumers generally, Sessions did not seem to understand that Substance A can be less dangerous than Substance B without being harmless. To say that marijuana is less hazardous than alcohol by several important measures (including impairment of driving ability, the risk of a fatal overdose, and the long-term damage caused by heavy use) is not the same as saying that marijuana is 100 percent safe.
Either Sessions does not grasp that basic point, or he is so determined to justify marijuana prohibition that he deliberately obscures it. Is this what he means by “speak[ing] truth as best we can”? Sessions claims supporters of legalization are “desperate” to “defend the harmlessness of marijuana.” But it’s Sessions who is grasping at straws to defend a policy built on a mountain of lies.
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