Arguments Against Decriminalization Fail

To the editors:

Kevin Sabet’s recent letter (“Staff Position on Pot Ignores Growing Cost,” April 17) criticizing decriminalization of marijuana is typical of drug warriors who are willing to manipulate the facts in order to perpetuate a self-interested political agenda.

Sabet’s claim that drug use has gone down in the past 20 years is based on a government survey that asks people to admit to illegal activity. Perhaps a more accurate measure of the effect of drug use on this country is the number of overdose deaths and emergency room visits, which the government’s own Department of Health and Human Services reports has escalated since the early 1980s and is currently at a record high. The same is true for Sabet’s ridiculous claim that the Dutch saw an exorbitant rise in marijuana use after decriminalization. The conclusion is drawn from a survey, and of course teens will be more willing to admit to an act once its legal.

Rates of marijuana use are lower in the Netherlands than they are in the U.S. This is especially true for younger teens, where 7.2 percent of Dutch children age 12-15 have tried marijuana compared to 13.5 percent of U.S. children the same age.

The prevalence of marijuana use among teenagers and hard drug use overall in our country is largely a product of prohibition and not the drugs themselves. High school students have easier access to marijuana than alcohol because there is a black market for marijuana that targets kids. Why doesn’t the federal government—as the original Crimson editorial suggested—regulate marijuana like alcohol so kids don’t have such easy access to it?

Sabet downplays the damage that marijuana prohibition causes to society. In the U.S. last year, approximately 734,000 people were arrested for marijuana offenses. That is 734,000 people who dealt with the humiliation, anguish and monetary damage that entails being handcuffed, fingerprinted, forced to appear before a judge, making bail and serving probation. Would we tolerate this treatment for the use of alcohol or cigarettes?

Is it such a stretch of the imagination to conceive of drug warriors—like Sabet, McCaffrey and many politicians on Capitol Hill—as playing into the hands of the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries which benefit from cannabis prohibition? The public has been manipulated far too long for the benefit of corporate America. It’s time we put this government back in the hands of the people.

Thomas J. Scaramellino ’05

April 23, 2002

The writer is president of The Harvard Coalition for Drug Policy Reform.