The March of Marijuana

Interesting to observe, over time, how various drugs are managed by a large democracy. By drugs I mean tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, morphine, heroin, and the like—thus substances we do not need —but they cause various changes in our physical and mental state we view as desirable. These substances fall into three categories: permitted, marginal, and prohibited. Before the substances became widely used and were therefore “recognized,” they were easily obtainable, witness Sherlock Holmes’ use of cocaine. Cocaine’s progress has been from sold, to marginal (in Dr. Watson’s opinion), to prohibited. Alcohol was prohibited but then, what with the impossibility effectively to control so widely-used a drug, was once more permitted and continues to be a source of state revenues. Nicotine is halfway into the marginal category now. It is officially frowned upon and major propaganda is deployed to reduce its usage. At the same time, in the form of nicotine gum, lozenges, and e-cigarettes, it is trying to recapture its earlier permitted status. And marijuana…?

Marijuana is certainly in transition. It is in transition from an illegal substance to at least a tolerated drug, thus from prohibited to marginal—with the future probably holding full permission to use by all. Where it is permitted, it is becoming a major source of revenues for the states involved. Herewith I show a graphic from Wikipedia’s article titled “Legality of cannabis by U.S. state” (link).

Anything that changes human behavior by chemical means, other than through intake of ordinary food and water, produces strange ambiguities. I read somewhere a rather wise statement long ago. It asserted that laws to which the public does not uniformly assent are ultimately unenforceable. Drug regulation introduces this ambiguity—clearly seen in the prohibition of alcohol (1920-1933); what surprises me about alcohol is that it took 13 years to repeal Prohibition. Perhaps that experience taught the collective that a direct prohibition—say of all tobacco products—would just produce a massive (and difficult to tax) black market. Marijuana is teaching us is that legalizing it produces a massive increase in tax revenues—and its decriminalization saves the money necessary to enforce the law.

As for the relative dangers of, say, alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana, such things are very difficult to measure. How many deaths are associated with alcohol use? In that case two sets of data must be meshed somehow: deaths from drunken driving and deaths from liver failure. Tobacco? Inhaling cigarette smoke is definitely a killer, but nicotine is not considered to be a carcinogen and may be ingested in other ways than through smoke. Now as for marijuana, Brigitte I learned this morning from the New York Times that it may be eaten as well as smoked. Indeed, says the Times, “Major New York publishing houses and noted cookbook authors are pondering marijuana projects.” It’s just a short step from pondering to action. Soon, in a store near you, those cannabis cup cakes will be ready for purchase. Meanwhile one can still chew on a cigar…

Industrialized Alkaloids

What do caffeine, cocaine, nicotine,  and morphine have in common? They all come from plants in which they form a relatively small part of plant tissues. The psychoactive effects of ingesting these molecules have caused humanity to harvest them long before anything like civilization dawned. The first three help us manage stress by acting simultaneously as stimulants and as relaxants; the last, along with codeine, alleviates pain. All belong to the chemical family of alkaloids; thus the molecules feature ring-formations in which nitrogen is dominant but linked to other elements.

Recently Brigitte and I were talking about nicotine, and the subject of people in the Andes chewing coca leaves came up. Didn’t that help those living in high altitudes where oxygen is thin? That got me to thinking about the sometimes disastrous consequences of human ingenuity. These plants were used in pre-industrial times—indeed as some are still used today, like coca leaves still are, like coffee still is—in a form that does very little harm. Egyptian doctors used to tell their patients to eat poppy seeds to lessen pain. I recall my mother telling us that Hungarian peasant women used to tie poppy seeds in a bit of cloth and give it their babies to lick in order to keep them quiet; these were ordinary poppies, not the opium variety, but all poppies contain the drug. The American Indians chewed tobacco or smoked it in ritual settings—but that smoke was far too harsh for inhalation. The strongest of these drugs, morphine, was the first to be industrialized as smoked opium—and thus it began to harm its addicts. Extracted and purified cocaine is also a wildly addictive drug—but it requires highly developed industrial processing to extract it in concentrated form. And in the case of tobacco, its transformation into cigarettes is the chief reason why lung cancer ranks so high as a killer. Cigarettes are mild, the inhalation of the smoke is easy—and the nicotine reaches the brain almost instantaneous and thus releases hormones and neurotransmitters in such magnitudes that the effects are very rapid and highly desirable.  

In some areas, a lot of knowledge is a dangerous thing; chew on a leaf and ponder this while the coffee brews. A lot of knowledge mixed with a highly commercialized culture—now that becomes really dangerous.