Washington, DC: Lawmakers could reduce Americans’ use of cannabis by regulating its sale in a manner similar to tobacco, NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano opined this week on The Hill‘s Congress blog. The Hill is one of the most influential publications among Washington DC lawmakers and their staff.
Armentano notes that Americans’ use of cigarettes has dropped dramatically since the 1960s, and is now at an all-time low. By contrast, Americans use of cannabis has risen dramatically during this same period, from an annual rate of 0.6 million new users in 1965 to some 2.5 annual new users today.
He writes: “There’s a lesson to be learned here, of course. Tobacco, though harmful to health, is a legally regulated commodity. … By contrast, marijuana remains an unregulated black market commodity. Sellers are typically criminal entrepreneurs who, for the most part, operate undetected from law enforcement and are free to sell their product to any person. Unlike tobacco, marijuana’s packaging carries no warning label, and government ‘education’ campaigns regarding cannabis’ use are based almost explicitly upon hyperbole, propaganda, and laughable stereotypes.”
Armentano concludes: “If federal lawmakers truly wished to address marijuana use, they would take a page from their successful campaign to reduce the use of cigarettes. This would include taxing and regulating cannabis with the drug’s sale and use restricted to specific markets and consumers.”
Full text of NORML’s commentary, “We’ve Cut Cigarette Smoking By Half and We Didn’t Have To Arrest 20 Million Americans To Do It,” appears online.
Previous posts by NORML to The Hill‘s blog have received hundreds of readers’ comments and are among the most frequently visited on the website.
For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director, at (202) 483-5500 or Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director, at: paul@norml.org.