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Written by Jason Whited
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Thursday, 06 August 2009 |
Can a nation drowning in drink return to drug-law sanity?For a plant that’s never caused a single human death in the tens of
thousands of years it’s been with us, marijuana still faces a
gargantuan social stigma.
Government propagandists and some
social conservatives, in their quest to proscribe our behavior, and
consumption, are quick to cite anecdotal evidence and piles of bogus
liquor- and prescription-drug-industry-funded studies that warn of the
dangers of firing up even that first joint.
Yet these crusaders
invariably fail to cite a little thing we call the truth: That alcohol,
tobacco and prescription drugs kill or maim hundreds of thousands of
Americans each year while marijuana kills, oh, no one; that marijuana –
still this nation’s leading cash crop, with estimated sales of $35.8
billion in 2006 – was legal in this country until almost 1940 (long
after Prohibition had come and gone); that legalizing, and taxing, the
sale of a plant that’s been legal for most of our history could help
pull state governments, including Nevada’s, out of recent budgetary
sink holes; that’s it not the government’s (or anyone else’s) business
to tell Americans what they can and cannot put into their own bodies.
Luckily,
a growing number of legal, medical and policy experts are changing
perceptions through the intellectual and logical force of their
arguments that the time has come to re-examine and change our failed
drug policies. Policies which will cost us more than $15 billion this
fiscal year alone.
Steve Fox, director of State Campaigns for
the Marijuana Policy Project (the nation's largest organization
dedicated to reforming marijuana laws) is one such expert. A former
congressional lobbyist and a longtime proponent of sanity in public
policy, Fox recently spent some time with CityLife talking about his
new book Marijuana is Safer and to hash out and contrast the relative
harms, and legal status, of this nation’s two most popular recreational
substances: alcohol and marijuana. |
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Written by Phil Smith
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Wednesday, 05 August 2009 |
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The student union at Oaksterdam University in downtown Oakland was buzzing yesterday afternoon as several dozen people gathered together with Marijuana is Safer authors Paul Armentano of NORML and Mason Tvert of SAFER to celebrate the brand new book's release. (Co-author Steve Fox of MPP was on the East Coast. The book also boasts a foreword by Norm Stamper, the former police chief of Seattle.)
After an hour or so of schmoozing, book selling, and signing,
Armentano and Tvert were joined by Oaksterdam's Greg Grimala for an
informal discussion about the book, whose thesis--that marijuana is
safer than alcohol--is an outgrowth of work originally done by Tvert as
he organized college campuses around the issue of inequality in
punishments for students got smoking pot as opposing to underage
drinking. Armentano, who has been keeping a keen eye on marijuana
research for years, supplies much of the hard science. |
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Written by Rachel Raskin-Zrihen
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Sunday, 09 August 2009 |
Paul Armentano is on a mission.
The 37-year-old Vallejo resident aims to convince the powers that be that smoking marijuana is less dangerous on a number of levels than drinking alcohol, and that laws should reflect that.
He has co-authored a book, "Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?," which is available on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and will soon be distributed to bookstores nationwide, he said.
"For those who may be initially skeptical of this message, 'Marijuana Is Safer' will change the way you think about cannabis," Armentano said. "And for those roughly 50 percent of Americans nationwide who already support reforming America's draconian pot laws, this book will change the way they talk about marijuana."
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Written by TrésSugar
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Sunday, 09 August 2009 |
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When Michael Phelps partied at the University of South Carolina last November, he was reportedly slamming beers and acting obnoxious. But it was smoking marijuana out of a bong that got him suspended from swimming and dropped by sponsors. In the forthcoming book Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?, authors Steve Fox, Paul Armentano, and Mason Tvert wonder if our country has it all backwards.
You can read an excerpt from the book,
which comes out in September, on Alternet. In it, the authors point out
that the Phelps bong photos hit the web on Super Bowl Sunday, as
millions of Americans were drinking beers and watching beer commercials
on TV — activities that are expected and encouraged.
Marijuana Is Safer looks at the laws governing both
substances and attempts to shatter many of the myths associated with
marijuana use. When you consider alcoholism and drunk driving, not to mention revenue that legalizing marijuana could bring, do you think our country has it backwards? Which substance do you think is safer? |
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