Landry must stop harmful ganja legislation
Blog: Between The Lines
The Louisiana Legislature seems on the way to compounding
a mistake it began making years ago, with perhaps only Republican Gov. Jeff Landry able at
this point to prevent that.
From the start
in 2015, medical use of marijuana in Louisiana began with dubious premises
and has gotten worse since. Since then, almost every control over it has
disappeared, step
by step
by step,
so now basically any doctor or nurse practitioner can "recommend" it in any
form for any ailment in quantities and often enough to keep one high or to distribute
some, whether exchanged for something of value, to others. About the only
bottleneck is the limit of dispensaries to 10 (currently nine in operation
although since 2022 they have been able to open "satellite" locations that make
for 15 physical locations), but they can deliver as well.
So, it's practically legalized such is the ease of
obtaining it. But there's another legal avenue for addicts added in the past
couple of years – hemp products, courtesy of an ill-constructed law that
allowed for excessive concentrations of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol that have
become so egregiously obvious that the Legislature
actually may rein in these products in permitting much lower
concentrations.
In this environment, why not go all the way and
legalize recreational marijuana? Some legislators have been advocating this for
years, with the latest and most notorious from long-time legalization advocate
Democrat state Rep. Candace Newell's
HB 978
which would allow selling by up to 10 manufacturers and 40 retailers of
recreational marijuana to anyone 21 or older a lid a day. It awaits House action
later this week.
The laws of the state wouldn't change currently
making recreational use illegal, but bills still continue to push towards decriminalization.
Democrat state Rep. Delisha Boyd's
HB 165
would decrease further penalties on possession of drug paraphernalia, for
example. It awaits only Senate approval to head to Landry's desk.
All of this activity operates in the context of
the Democrat Pres. Joe Biden
Administration recent rulemaking that proposes
to downgrade marijuana from the most dangerous Schedule I to III, further signaling
that the federal government won't stand in the way at the state level of
legalization and collection of tax revenues from it, sustaining the blind eye the
federal government has turned over the past decade towards the 24 states with
some form of legalization and the other 14, like Louisiana, that have legalized
it for medical purposes.
But the problem with all of this is that the
overwhelming majority of medical research demonstrates that marijuana use has
harmful health effects and conveys close to zero health benefits, even when
used with medical goals in mind. A meta-analysis
conducted by the World Health Organization documented scant evidence of
marijuana's medicinal benefits along with reams of research on its harms, from
cognitive impairment and psychosis to car accidents.
The medical literature notes that ganja use is more
addictive than many substances and more than twice that of booze; that it
remains in users' systems for extended periods and as it only slowly clears out
of the brain's white matter induces adaptation and negatively so; long-term use
elevates significantly risk of anxiety, depression, impaired memory, cycles of
severe vomiting, schizophrenia and other psychoses at rates actually higher
than other drugs considered more dangerous; and among pregnant women increases
preterm deliveries, admissions of newborns into neonatal intensive care units,
lower birth weights and smaller head circumferences, with these children having
reduced white and gray matter and who show an increased incidence of aggressive
behavior, cognitive dysfunction, and symptoms of attention deficit and
obsessive-compulsive disorders.
And of all the vast and overblown claims of using
weed medically, the randomized controlled trial literature finds only a single
instance where it has a positive impact: ameliorating neuropathic pain from damage
to nerve endings like in diabetes or with poor blood supply. For other types of
pain, and for all other conditions, there is no strong evidence from
high-quality randomized trials to support its use.
Given all this, Louisiana not only should rebuff
any attempts to decriminalize spliffs, but also should pull back severely if not
entirely on their medical use. Yet bills this year that are close to the finish
line would extend
the sunset date of the medical marijuana experiment another five years, privatize cultivation
and makes tax proceeds thereof available for more general use, and make it easier
for satellite dispensaries to justify operation.
It is, of course, the money that makes too many
legislators disregard science on this issue. Louisiana from the latest annual data
only pulled in about
$1 million in taxes reaped on medical marijuana, although the backdoor
hemp channel brought in four times that. But legalization
one source predicts would gather a whopping 116 times medicinal sales collections.
The good news is the hemp legislation looks on
course to reach Landry, which he needs to sign. The bad news is the current trajectory
of other legislation in this policy area suggests that any of it that reaches
Landry won't improve matters. Health and safety of Louisianans dictates that he
should veto any such bills.
