Studies: Legalizing marijuana reduces alcohol and opioid use

The myth: Pot is a “gateway drug” that will send users spiraling into drug addiction, forcing them to turn tricks to pay for their next heroin fix.

The reality:

A new working paper by researchers at the University of Connecticut and Georgia State University found that in some states that had legalized medical marijuana, alcohol sales had fallen up to 15%.

[…]

This finding is significant, as the consequences for alcohol use are generally considered to be more severe than for marijuana use. This past summer, in a survey of their consumers by Eaze, a cannabis technology company that facilitates delivery of medical marijuana, the company found that many people who used medical marijuana decreased their alcohol use.

Of the respondents that consumed alcohol, 87% said they had reduced their drinking because of their cannabis use and 13% said they had replaced alcohol completely with cannabis.

And it’s not just alcohol being replaced. Fewer people are using opiates, with fewer deaths as a result, and that’s also traceable to marijuana legalization:

A recent study in the American Journal of Public Health concluded that marijuana legalization in Colorado had resulted in short-term reductions in opioid-related deaths. Other research has corroborated this trend, noting that fewer prescription painkillers are prescribed in states where cannabis is legal.

Why, it’s almost as though “drug warriors” were talking out of their ass, and that removing arbitrary and historically racist restrictions on a substance that’s only fractionally as dangerous as drugs that are already legal were an idea that made sense.

(via @fark)

Daily Links: 01/23/18 – Pennsylvania top court throws out gerrymandered district maps

Pennsylvania’s gerrymandered 7^th District

• Pennsylvania Supreme Court throws out the state’s Republican-favoring gerrymandered district maps ^[pictured], giving the legislature a month to redraw them.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• Montana governor signs executive order blocking ISPs from securing state contracts if they violate net neutrality.

• New Jersey’s Asbury Park Press has an in-depth, multi-part investigation into state police departments that allow rogue cops to abuse and murder citizens without losing their jobs.
  (via @davidminpdx; retweet by @radleybalko)

• Vermont kinda, sorta, becomes the ninth US state to legalize marijuana, but Vermonters still can’t sell it or smoke it in public.
  (via retweet by @radleybalko)

• Big Horn County, Montana lawyer announces a “crackdown” on pregnant women who consume drugs or alcohol, intends to issue restraining orders and then imprison women who violate them.
  (via @radleybalko)

• Preventing felons from voting is one of the most common and uncontroversial acts of voter suppression, and it shouldn’t be. Now Florida will vote on restoring voting rights to over 1.5 million citizens in November.
  (via @FullFrontalSamB)

• The sham-tastic Republican-controlled House Science Committee wants to investigate a scientist for writing in support of science.

• Finally, the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins lays bare the religious-Right’s hypocrisy: Evangelicals are happy to ignore all of Trump’s lying and adultery so long as he supports their agenda.
  (via @HashtagGriswold; retweeted by @Popehat)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Edit (01/31/18 @ 6:46 AM ET): Fixed a typo.

Headline of the day

Source: High Times | full size (984×502)]

(via @KrangTNelson)

Norway to decriminalize all drugs, focus on treating addiction

In 2001, Portugal took a radical approach to combating its epidemic of drug abuse by decriminalizing all drugs, opting to treat addiction not as a criminal problem but as a health issue. The results are more than clear: The country now has one of the lowest drug overdose and death rates in the world, soundly obliterating the prohibitionist argument that only ever-tougher laws can defeat the scourge of drug abuse. (Incidentally, countries where this mindset prevails never seem to reduce their drug use and overdose rates.)

Other countries are taking notice, though. Norway is set to become the first Scandinavian nation to remove all criminal penalties for drug use and focus on helping addicts rather than punishing them.

The majority of the Norwegian parliament, the Storting, backed the historic shift which was supported by the Conservatives (Hoyre), Liberals (Venstre), the Labor Party (Ap) and the Socialist Left (SV).

They directed the national government to reform its policies on drugs.

Sveinung Stensland, deputy chairman of the Storting Health Committee, told Norwegian publication VG: “It is important to emphasise that we do not legalise cannabis and other drugs, but we decriminalise.[” …]

Nicolas Wilkinson, the SV party’s health spokesman, told VG that parliament’s goal was to “stop punishing people who struggle, but instead give them help and treatment”. He added the aim is to transfer responsibility for drug policy from the justice system to the health system.

This isn’t happening on a whim. Norway has one of the highest drug overdose rates in Europe, with 2015 statistics placing the country’s drug-related deaths at 69.6 per million, third to Sweden (69.7) and Estonia (a whopping 126.8). (Meanwhile, Portugal is sitting pretty with only 3.) Norwegians caught in the grip of addiction can feel thankful their government has chosen to treat their illness and rehabilitate them rather than throw them behind bars and destroy their future prospects with a criminal record, as some countries are doing.

It sure seems like “liberal” policies always bring out the best in a nation.

(via @ggreenwald)

Edit (01/16/18 @ 7:04 PM ET): Added the missing article link and fixed the bottom attribution link.

Daily Links: 11/29/17 – This NSA don’t stop (leaking)

• NSA: You can trust us with national security secrets and all our (il)legally collected surveillance data. Also NSA: We just suffered the n^th leak of classified data this year.

• Hawaii requires that medicinal marijuana users be registered. It’s also the only state that requires registration for gun owners. Oh, and it bans marijuana users from owning guns. Guess what happens next.
  (via RT by @Popehat)

• The American Family Association wants Republican leaders to “quit protecting perverts in Congress”, focus instead on protecting perverts running for Congress.
  (via Right Wing Watch)

• Radley Balko has another roundup of criminal-justice- and civil-liberties-related stories in the age of Trump, including a couple already mentioned here.

• Finally, I had a little exasperated meltdown on Twitter on Facebook over all these celebrity creeps.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.