Panel
debates merits of legalizing marijuana use
Saturday, November 06,
2010
By Paula Reed Ward,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The cost to incarcerate
prisoners in the United States -- including nonviolent marijuana offenders
-- averages about $26,000 per year.
Certainly, said Federal
Public Defender Lisa Freeland, there are better ways to spend the government's
money.
Even so -- as part of
a panel at Duquesne University's Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science
and Law on Friday-- she was not willing to go so far as to say marijuana
should be legalized.
"I'm not here to advocate
for the legalization or decriminalization of marijuana or any other drug,"
Ms. Freeland said. But, she continued, the public must know, "There are
substantial costs -- both financial and human," to the continuing high
rate of incarceration in the United States.
About 500,000 people
in this country are currently incarcerated on drug offenses.
Those include tens of
thousands of people being held for crimes involving marijuana.
At the continuing legal
education seminar on Friday, medical and legal experts debated the issues
of legalizing either medical or recreational marijuana use.
None of the panelists
would go so far as to advocate legalizing recreational marijuana like Proposition
19 in California would have done had it not been defeated 54 to 46 percent
at the polls this week.
But Dr. Wecht did say
he found the idea of withholding medical marijuana from people suffering
from cancer, or neurological diseases "absurd."
He disputed a 2006 FDA
study which concluded there were absolutely no medical benefits from marijuana.
"That kind of unequivocal
statement simply flies in the face of reality," Dr. Wecht said. "It is,
indeed, a mixed bag. To say there are no benefits is simply fallacious."
He went on to say that
out of the 17,000 autopsies he's performed -- and another 36,000 that he's
reviewed --he's never once determined a cause of death to be from marijuana
toxicity.
Former U.S. Attorney
Frederick Thieman spoke about the increased potency of marijuana now, and
that emergency room visits for marijuana went up six-fold between 1990
and 2000.
He told the audience
that he believed that legalizing even medicinal marijuana could lead young
people to think of it as a harmless -- if not good -- product, and that
could be dangerous.
Further, he believes
there has not been enough research to suggest there is value to medicinal
marijuana, though it has been approved for such use in 14 states.
Even though he spoke
about the potential dangers of marijuana, Mr. Thieman also noted that as
a federal prosecutor, he rarely took on a case for pot.
"During the four years
I was U.S. attorney, we may have prosecuted one marijuana case, and if
we did, it was measured in tons, not kilos or ounces."
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