The Great Debate

Recent voting in Colorado and Washington exposes a striking discrepancy in the national legal status of marijuana. Under current federal law, marijuana is classified as a Schedule I Controlled Substance, which places it in the same category as heroin, peyote, LSD and Ecstasy. To be qualified as a Schedule I Controlled Substance, a drug must have no currently accepted medical use in the United States, a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision, and a high potential for abuse.

The clause regarding medical benefits should immediately eliminate cannabis from this schedule, because numerous studies have proven its medical effectiveness, from glaucoma to pain relief to hunger stimulation during chemotherapy and in AIDS patients. For these precise reasons, 18 states and the District of Columbia have legalized the use of medical marijuana: It is a viable alternative to prescription medication that can often cause side effects more detrimental than the illness they are treating. For federal law to say that cannabis has no accepted medical use is to contradict the work of many doctors, studies and the actions of many state legislatures.

As for the second clause, it is surprising that a substance commonly used without medical supervision and that has reported zero deaths under current records would be deemed unsafe when used by patients under the care of a physician. Many of the drugs classified alongside marijuana would prove to be dangerous even with such care. It borders on absurd to say that a person using cannabis is at the same risk of dying as a person injecting heroin or using methamphetamines. No side effects of marijuana suggest a person is fatally at risk while using it.

The clause regarding the potential for abuse is more arguable. Although marijuana contains no addictive chemicals, it is regarded as a possible habit-forming substance. It can be difficult to define abuse in a legal sense, but the Virginia government defines substance abuse as “the chronic use of any chemical substance used with the intention of altering states of body or mind for other than medically warranted purposes,” while the World Health Organization sees the use of a substance as abuse if it affects a user’s daily life in a negative manner. But even those arguing that marijuana might be addictive would have difficulty making the case that it is more addictive than widely available drugs, including alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, over-the-counter sleep remedies, etc. And with the definition set forth by Virginia, any use of alcohol beyond a glass of red wine every once in a while with dinner or taking an extra aspirin for a severe headache would constitute substance abuse. Marijuana may be considered a habit-forming substance, but to say that it has a high potential for abuse seems to be a stretch.

One need not argue for marijuana’s widespread legalization to recognize that it should be reconsidered, and the schedule of the drug should be changed. There are many avenues to take that could lead to the reconsideration of the schedule of marijuana, but since the Drug Enforcement Administration is the agency that defines and classifies different schedules of drugs, an effort toward them would be the most fruitful. Recently Americans for Safe Access, an organization formed in 2002 for the safe and legal access to medical marijuana, has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia to force the DEA to reconsider the schedule of marijuana. While legal avenues are useful, it would be best if the federal government could take a page from the referenda in Colorado and Washington and formulate its drug policy with at least some democratic input from the American people.

By Federico Varese
The opinions expressed are his own.

Hillary Clinton had many “hard issues” to tackle during her recent visit to Myanmar. Yet there was no mention of one of the most, if not the most, difficult issue Burma faces: their lucrative drug trade.

Northern Burma is the home of the “Golden Triangle,” a hub for opium production and the location of hundreds of heroin and amphetamine refineries. So how do political leaders and the international community plan to tackle this problem in the event that Burma truly becomes  a democratic country?

The totalitarian regime which has ruled Burma since 1962 has been, to a point, successful in keeping the production of illicit substances under control. In 1999, Burma’s notorious military junta (which is now dissolved) started a ruthless elimination plan of opium in the Golden Triangle (the Shan State, the Wa Region and the Kachin State). The region produced one-third of the world’s opium in 1998, but that figure was down to about 5% nine years later. From 2006 to 2007, the army eradicated 8,895 acres of opium fields. A 2007 United Nations Report trumpeted that “a decade-long process of drug control is clearly paying off.”

Between 1971, when Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs, and 2008, the latest year for which official figures are available, American law enforcement officials made more than 40 million drug arrests. That number roughly equals the population of California, or of the 33 biggest U.S. cities.

Forty million arrests speak volumes about America’s longest war, which was meant to throttle drug production at home and abroad, cut supplies across the borders, and keep people from using drugs. The marathon effort has boosted the prison industry but failed so obviously to meet its objectives that there is a growing chorus of calls for the legalization of illicit drugs.

In the United States, that brings together odd bedfellows. Libertarians in the tea party movement, for example, and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), an organization of former police officers, narcotics agents, judges and prosecutors who favor legalizing all drugs, not only marijuana, the world’s most widely-used illicit drug.

During a visit to Mexico a year ago, President Barack Obama promised he would urge the U.S. Senate to ratify an international treaty designed to curb  the flow of weapons to Latin American drug cartels. It remains just that – a promise. Prospects for ratification are virtually zero.

Top officials in the Obama administration have called the cartels, and the extreme violence tearing apart Mexican cities on the U.S. border, threats to U.S. national security. Joining 30 other countries in the Western Hemisphere in an anti-arms smuggling accord would therefore seem a perfectly sane and logical thing to do. But logic often ends where American gun ownership begins.

The treaty in question is called the Inter-American Convention Against Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Materials. Known as CIFTA for its Spanish acronym, it was adopted by the Organization of American States in 1997. All but four of its 35 members have ratified it. Bill Clinton signed the convention but did not get the Senate to bless it.

The trouble with moving big amounts of cash, from a criminal’s point of view, is threefold. It’s bulky, it’s heavy and it smells.

A stash of $1 million in mixed bills weighs around 100 pounds (50 kilos). Specially-trained dogs can sniff out bulk cash in a heartbeat.

All of which helps to explain why drug cartels and financiers of terrorism appear to have been making increasing use of what FBI chief Robert Mueller calls a shadow banking system.

— Peter J. Pitts is president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and a former FDA associate commissioner. The views expressed are his own. —

On Tuesday, House Democrats released the Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, their comprehensive health reform package. As expected, the proposal to create a brand new government insurance program designed to directly compete with private plans is getting a great deal of attention.

An important power of this “public option” has yet to receive much scrutiny, though. The secretary of Health and Human Services will be given the authority to “negotiate” prescription drug prices for the public option.

— Peter J. Pitts is president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and a former FDA associate commissioner. The views expressed are his own. –

On Thursday, as part of the Department of Homeland Security funding bill, the Senate voted to make us less secure by allowing Americans to purchase prescription drugs from Canada over the Internet. The measure is now headed to conference, where House and Senate lawmakers will hammer out a final piece of legislation.

When he introduced the measure to his fellow Senators, Louisiana Republican David Vitter described it as a “re-importation amendment.” And over the next few weeks, as lawmakers deliberate on this, you’re likely to hear that phrase quite a bit. Supporters of foreign drug importation believe that such wording makes this policy more palatable to the American public.

– James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. –

(Correcting name of academic to Peter Reuter on Feb 27)

Want to help fund the bank bailout, ease California’s budget crisis and shore up strained U.S. finances? Legalize drugs, tax the trade and save on interdiction, domestic enforcement and the prison and court system.

I’m only partly joking.

It won’t solve all of the U.S.’s problems and lord knows will cause some new ones, but the money is undeniably big enough to make a dent.

– Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. –

Last year, around 2,500 Mexicans died in the twin wars drug cartels are waging against each other and against the Mexican state, using weapons smuggled in from the United States. In the first 11 months of this year, the death toll was 5,367, according to the Mexican attorney general. Next year?

There is no end in sight. At least two of the lethal ingredients in the toxic brew that fuels Mexico’s ever-widening violence are unlikely to change: lax American gun laws and a Mexican border that barely controls north-south traffic. On many of the crossing points along the 2,000-mile frontier, travelers coming in from the United States, by car or on foot, are routinely waved through without even having to show identity papers.