The Medical Marijuana Debate Continues

“I believe that with drug abuse in America, you look back over time, and drugs never go away, but it gets out of control. It creates a huge societal wave of criminal, social, medical, legal [and] family-related mayhem. Society organizes itself in desperation, but the drugs and alcohol are always there,” General Barry McCaffrey (Ret.), former Drug Czar under President Bill Clinton, told Behavioral Health Central (www.behavioralhealthcentral.com) in a recent interview.

According to BHC, 13 states have enacted laws that legalize medical marijuana, and California’s current budget crisis has provided an opportunity for those in favor of legalizing marijuana to promote it’s cause as a way to bring revenue to the cash-strapped state.

 “We have dramatically reduced drug abuse from 1979 through today,” McCaffrey says. “Thirteen percent of the population were past-month drug users and we’ve gotten it down to, I believe, around 6 percent. So here we are now, headed into the next decade, and I worry that we are seeing something that’s surprising to me. Given our enormous reduction in drug abuse in America, the enormous increase in the number of people having access to drug and alcohol treatment, the enormous success we had with public advertising and public service commercials and forming thousands of community anti-drug coalitions.”

Medical Marijuana Supporter Arguments

McCaffrey told BHC that he is worried that the effort to legalize or decriminalize marijuana is very well funded. “They’ll say, ‘We fought a failed ‘War on Drugs’, we’ve got hundreds of thousands of people in prison for the possession of a joint. Let’s open the prison gates, let’s get realistic, get mature and by the way, there’s nothing wrong with most of these drugs, they’re far less dangerous than alcohol,’” McCaffrey says.

While McCaffre admits the argument about alcohol can seem pretty compelling, he says he worries that as a nation we’re about to enter a period in which we’ll be telling teens that behaviors like binge drinking, smoking pot and experimenting with drugs isn’t all that dangerous.

When it comes to the issue of medical marijuana, McCaffrey has even stronger words. “[It’s] a complete farce. We’ve got in the city of Los Angeles 400 or more places selling pot to anybody that walks in off the street. So it’s not decriminalized. It’s been falsely ‘medicalized.’”

“I see California kind of leading the way, but all across the country now, states are passing medical marijuana laws, in violation of two generations of building the most safe and effective Food and Drug Administration system in the world,” McCaffrey continues. “We have this system and they bypassed it with medical pot. So, this farce of medical marijuana, where you can get the THC synthetic Marinol prescribed by your doctor right now in a pharmacy, … but that’s being ignored and we’re peddling home-grown marijuana all over in large parts of the country.”

Substance Abuse Help

Obviously, the issue of medical marijuana will continue to be hotly debated for months and years to come. In the meantime, if you or a family member is struggling with a substance abuse problem, call La Paloma at our toll-free number, 877-345-1887. Someone is here to take your call 24 hours a day and answer any questions you have about treatment, financing or insurance.