Pacifist Cannabis minister Reverend Roger Christie has been The American Society of Addiction Medicine, which bills itself as “The Voice of Addiction Medicine,” has come out with a position paper regarind: State-level Proposals to Legalize Marijuana
About all one needs to do is look at the writing team to discover what this is about:
ASAM Writing Committee to Develop a Response to State-Level Proposals to Legalize Marijuana:
Robert L. DuPont, M.D., Co-Chair
Andrea G. Barthwell, M.D., Co-Chair
Mark Kraus, M.D.
Kevin Sabet, Ph.D.
Richard Soper, M.D.
Scott Teitelbaum, M.D.
Right off the bat, you’ve got two phenomenally discredited quacks as the co-chairs. DuPont was the White House Drug Chief in the 70s and has since made his living from getting people to pee in cups. He once equated marijuana legalization with legalizing speeding and drunk driving.
Andrea Barthwell has made a career out of lying, from her Illinois Marijuana Lectures, where she was caught red-handed falsifying sponsors, to her bogus Coalition to End Needless Death on our Roadways, which took NHTSA data and blatantly lied about the data before sending out to news media.
And Kevin Sabet — apparently a hired gun for anybody who needs him on the prohibition side. He’s not even a doctor.
The content is the standard prohibitionist nonsense, dressed up in footnotes and cherry-picked studies. As usual, Portugal and the Netherlands are dismissed because it’s not true legalization, while fantasy guesses plucked out of the air by RAND writers are considered fact. Every dishonest trick in the book is used from bemoaning drivers who “test positive” for marijuana, to marijuana being “associated with” all kinds of negative outcomes.
Here was the funniest statement in the whole document:
Increased incidence and prevalence of marijuana-related substance use disorders, including marijuana addiction, would lead to increased demand for treatment services. Today’s treatment systems are inadequate for meeting the current treatment needs in our nation.
Why is it, then, that I can’t seem to get rid of all the treatment ads on my site? I’ve listed dozens of treatment organizations on the blocked list for Google ads and more keep coming without end. I get contacted weekly by treatment organizations that want to pay me to stick links into my posts to improve Google rankings (I always turn them down). And treatment organizations offer me articles and infographics all the time. And I’m just one little blog.
Treatment is a hugely profitable industry. To the extent that current treatment needs are not met in our nation, it has nothing to do with marijuana treatment, but rather the fact that these addiction medicine “professionals” want nothing to do with the less profitable real addiction problems of poor people.
Dean Becker nailed it in comments:
Dean Becker 30 Jul
No surprise here, that doctors who make millions from marijuana addiction whether real or reefer madness would be opposed to marijuana legalization. This objection to the lack of science is a revelation of the failure of these same doctors and scientists to do the studies in the 40 years since the declaration of eternal drug war by Richard Nixon. Insofar as potential harms to users this study displays a glaring and ugly lack of recognition of the harms of the drug war itself. Because of ASAM’s failure to actually do their job, more than 20 million Americans have been arrested and their futures fractured for smoking marijuana like their President and his “Choom Gang” did in their youth. Claims of harm from marijuana use to the young and to the populace in general are frivolous at best and downright ugly when compared to the massive health problems of alcohol and tobacco use. Ignorance can only serve ASAM for so long and the end of reefer madness is fast approaching. Best get on the side of truth or your “stature” is soon to disappear.
