Pot Hypocrisy- Why Medicinal Marijuana Should Go

The marijuana issue has always puzzled me, especially concerning the so called medicinal use of the drug. There are a couple of news stories about it this week. The first concerns an auditor general's report that found Health Canada has been undercharging people for the drug. Another story involves an Oakville bar owner who has so far spent over $20,000 fighting in court because he would not allow a medicinal marijuana user smoke on his property. He said it was bothering other customers. It's illegal to serve intoxicated customers. It is also illegal to allow people to smoke pot in or near bars under the Ontario Alcohol and Gaming Commission's rules but the Human Rights Tribunal says this guy must allow it. Since the human rights people are federal, their ruling trumps the OAGC. 

For many people, marijuana is the drug of choice given that its relatively safe and non-addictive compared to other narcotics. Still, numerous reputable studies have come out showing that smoking pot is as carcinogenic as smoking several cigarettes at once, that it lowers brain power, and lowers sperm counts. It's also an intoxicating substance. The whole irony over the pot debate is how we treat people who smoke tobacco in our society. We rail against cigarette smokers for being dirty. Cigarettes cause cancer and therefore lead to an unjust burden on our health care system. Numerous bans have been put in place to the point where people won't be able to smoke tobacco in their own homes. However, when it comes to marijuana, party down man and let the high times roll. Does pot cause cancer? That's a big check. Does second hand pot smoke bother other people? Definitely. So why does out society treat it differently than cigarettes when it is just as bad as smoking tobacco? I suppose the primary difference if that marijuana is not physically addictive. It's certainly mentally addictive though. I knew people in high school who smoked several joints on a daily basis and "needed" their pot fix to relax. 

One of the big issues though in favour of legalizing pot it the huge amount of money we spend (and some argue waste) on fighting the war on drugs. If it is sold through the government legally, they argue, we won't have the problems we do now with crime associated with drug use. I don't really buy that since all it does is become another huge money maker, and we know that the government regulating tobacco certainly hasn't stopped illegal cigarettes from being sold. 

Now to the topic at hand I originally intended to discuss. Should medicinal marijuana be legal? I don't think it should be. The medicinal benefits of pot are dubious at best. The idea behind it is to give a natural alternative to people in pain who can't take harsher pain killers. We already know it can cause cancer. If someone like Pfizer made a drug that was carcinogenic, which the government knowingly sold, there'd be huge uproar in society. It has happened. You'd have every ambulance chaser from late night TV commercials on them like white on rice. Secondly, I have to question what pain killing properties pot has that a bottle of scotch doesn't. Surely modern medicine could develop a pain killer for people who can't take harder drugs without exposing them and others to the carcinogenic and intoxicating nature of marijuana. We're at the point where even the Netherlands, arguably the pot capital of the world, is beginning to scale back on the drug. Keeping it legal is just a prescription to play Chech and Chong. There is no need for marijuana to be legal, whether it is medicinal or not.

The second issue at hand is whether this is really a human right, as the Human Rights Tribunal is claiming? As far as I know, there is nowhere in the constitution that says people have a right to health care. There is also nowhere that says people have the right to take drugs, legal or otherwise, wherever they want. That's what makes the mentioned bar owner's case particularly obscene. If no right exists, then I have no obligation to allow you to do something on my property which I and my customers don't agree with. If what the lawyers for the marijuana smoker are arguing is true, then all laws preventing people from smoking in buildings would be trumped. I can't honestly see the tribunal making the same ruling if this man arguing against the bar owner were a cigarette smoker instead. There is definitely a double standard between cigarettes and pot in our government, despite them being essentially the same thing.