Here is a transcript of a recent Diane Rehm Show: http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2014-04-21/business-legalized-marijuana-and-ongoing-health-concerns/transcript

Pay special attention to the remarks from Dr. Robert DuPont:

DUPONT
10:11:29
What we're seeing is the addition of a third drug to the two that we've had legal for a long time, alcohol and tobacco. Those two drugs are the leading cause of preventable illness and death in the country. We're now adding a third drug, marijuana, to that list. And we're watching this development in Colorado with much interest and high ambivalence and a sense that this is history being made, there's no question about it.


DUPONT
10:13:01
You know, the way we started this program it was kind of a joke about 4/20 and it's kids having fun. Well, I think it's more than that. It's really adding a very major drug, the drug that causes 60 percent of all the drug dependency in this country is from marijuana. It's more than all the other drugs put together. It's a serious step that we're taking with a kind of giggle and a wink and that's pretty scary.


DUPONT
10:28:38
Well, I think that there -- it's a very curious argument to look at the legal drugs and to say this one is less bad than those and therefore we should do it. That's a very weird argument to make. But I want to go back to what Beau said about alcohol use and marijuana use. There is no doubt in my mind how that's going to play out. The data -- we will see going forward.

DUPONT
10:29:04
Beau says are they substitutes or are they complimentary? The data is extremely clear that the more a population -- a person uses alcohol the more likely that person is to use marijuana. The more the person uses marijuana the heavier their alcohol use, not the less. So I think that -- to me the -- it's clear to me what's going to be found but we need to see it, and there are others who are not so convinced, and that is they are not substitutes. They are complimentary. Increasing marijuana use will increase alcohol use and tobacco use.

DUPONT
10:29:39
Marijuana is a gateway drug to cigarette smoking in the United States today. So rather than stopping smoking cigarettes, when you smoke marijuana the rates of smoking go up with marijuana use. But we'll watch that all and I agree with Beau, that's going to be a very important statistic to study.

as DuPont acknowledges.

At the moment it's just not taxed and regulated.

That's the difference.

At first I wondered if your post was ironic, with the whole history of the DuPont family opposing mj for their own purposes. I'll just assume this isn't a joke, tho, and respond with some other information.

The "gateway" claim is bullshit and this has been known for a while now. Anyone who employs it, to me, is a vile propagandist with nothing valid to add to the national conversation. The neuroscience journalist at Time magazine calls it : the myth that will not die. Why? Because propagandists use it over and over again... like they're, I dunno, addicted to lying. It's another one of those correlation/causation lies we get from govt. approved studies - that we've seen at least two of recently.

http://healthland.time.com/2010/10/29/marijuna-as-a-gateway-drug-the-myth-that-will-not-die/

Rates of cigarette smoking are declining overall in the U.S. To try to use marijuana as a scare tactic that it leads to cigarettes is just simply a joke. Rates of marijuana use, fwiw, have remained relatively stable since the 1980s.

Among teens - California, with the most liberal laws for the longest time, reports that:



Marijuana use is associated with better blood glucose and cholesterol levels and lower weight (obesity is one of the major killers of Americans and accounts for nearly one of every 10 American deaths, and drain our society of $223 billion a year.)

http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(13)00200-3/abstract

Alcohol consumption, but not marijuana, is linked to domestic violence.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140127112733.htm

anyway, that's all for now. Once I read that bullshit about marijuana as a gateway, it was obvious the person interviewed was either a liar or too stupid to discuss the topic.

eta: also anyone who doesn't understand the idea of harm reduction approaches (which is one reason why mj is compared to alcohol) doesn't seem to understand much about this issue either, from a medical/health stand point.

The other reason people compare, of course, is that mj is far less addictive than alcohol, yet receives far more scrutiny and societal disapproval from those in power. Maybe they should put down their shot glasses and deal with the reality that the majority of alcohol users are not alcohol abusers, either - even tho alcohol is a more addictive substance.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/156770/majority-drink-alcohol-averaging-four-drinks-week.aspx

The difference isn't just that one is taxed and one isn't. And what would be Dr. Dupont's motivation for lying?

I don't know DuPont's motivation for lying.

I assume Dr. DuPont may be like Sanjay Gupta before the "scales fell from his eyes."

As Gupta noted - he was propagandized by the DEA/NIDA propaganda mills with their filtering of information to deny reality about cannabis. When Gupta actually read research, rather than relying on the federal agency tasked with telling the truth - he realized our own govt. is lying to us about the facts concerning marijuana.

I assume DuPont hasn't taken this step yet.

Why do you defer to propaganda when research has indicated the things DuPont is saying are lies? If you have a youtube news program, which you claim in your profile - it would behoove you not to spread lies in defense of the indefensible.

Otherwise you, too, will be implicated, by those with more knowledge about this subject, who disdain those who continue to spread propaganda to, in effect, continue racially biased policies that serve as ways for Republicans to reduce voter rolls and give law enforcement agencies cheap and easy ways to fluff arrest stats.

You ought to consider your own reputation, if nothing else, and learn more about the topic rather than rely on a mouthpiece for the liars at the DEA.

And, on a personal level, I have known many people whose lives, by all appearances, have been ruined by marijuana and the related lifestyle. Conversely, I know of no one who appears to have benefited.

Maybe you just don't know the right people.

If all you want to do here is spout propaganda - you will find many others here know far more about this subject than you do.

You don't have a "smell test" because you don't know enough about the subject to have developed one, fwiw.

So allow me to share with you some of those who claim they benefitted from cannabis use

Louis Armstrong - inventor the the jazz solo
Hoagy Carmichael - who wrote the most recorded song in the American songbook, "Stardust Melodies"

...both mention their use of cannabis early in their musical careers - and after...plus tons of other musicians who use cannabis and find its ability to heighten sensitivity to music is a positive for their profession - this includes musicians from every genre - which you can seek out for yourself if you want to have a clue about the reality of who uses cannabis.

Carl Sagan noted this as well, when he said:

"The cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before," he wrote. "The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I’m down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse."

He also said:

I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high, in which I had an idea on the origins and invalidities of racism in terms of gaussian distribution curves. It was a point obvious in a way, but rarely talked about. I drew the curves in soap on the shower wall, and went to write the idea down. One idea led to another, and at the end of about an hour of extremely hard work I found I had written eleven short essays on a wide range of social, political, philosophical, and human biological topics. Because of problems of space, I can’t go into the details of these essays, but from all external signs, such as public reactions and expert commentary, they seem to contain valid insights. I have used them in university commencement addresses, public lectures, and in my books.

iow, he created original work that he acknowledges came about by the benefit of cannabis use.

http://marijuana-uses.com/mr-x/

Margaret Mead - one of the most famous cultural anthropologists in American history. She also gave testimony in favor of decriminalization before federal officials.
Francis Crick - who discovered the structure of the double helix with Watson (actually, Crick credits LSD with the actual visualization of the structure of DNA.)

Ralph Abraham - Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, since 1968. He has written over a dozen books and is an editor for the International Journal of Bifurcations and Chaos. Abraham is an acknowledged leader in the emerging field of "dynamical systems theory," also called "chaos math." - Who also talks about the benefits of LSD, fwiw.
Richard Feynman - physicist (He writes about this in his biography Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman. (Also LSD)

Kary Mullis - 1993 Nobel Prize in chemistry. In his biography he states: "I think I might have been stupid in some respects, it if weren't for my psychedelic experiences." He is, as you will note, YET ANOTHER AWARD WINNING, PATH BREAKING SCIENTIST who also thinks LSD has useful purposes for scientists.
Oliver Sacks - neurologist and popular science writer. He notes his marijuana use in his book, An Anthropologist on Mars (Sacks also has no problems with LSD usage within set/setting.)

Michael Pollan - UC Berkeley Prof. and one of the most highly regarded popular science writers working today. (His sister is married to Michael J. Fox, famous for MS - and, yes, MS responds well to cannabis to relieve spasticity.
Susan Blackmore - psychologist and mathematician and author of many articles and papers, and the book, The Meme Machine (and she has also appeared on camera smoking marijuana in a documentary about the same.)

Stephen J. Gould - scientist/writer who also wrote about marijuana here: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_marijuana.html Gould used marijuana medically, as an adjunct to cancer treatment - he claims it saved his life. During that time of his marijuana use (which he feared would blur his brain), he wrote The Structure of Evolutionary Theory - all 1400 pages.
Robert Hooke - friend of Newton who publicized the value of marijuana at a Royal Society meeting in the 1600s.

Steve Jobs (he also credits LSD for the design of Apple.)
Richard Branson - founder of Virgin Records, etc. one of the richest men in the world who is starting up a space shuttle tourism venture, last I heard.

Barbara Ehrenreich (biologist and feminist writer)

Rick Steves - travel writer and PBS tourism guy
Richard Burton - considered one of the finest linguists ever, he translated texts from Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and more - he had mastered 29 languages. He wrote about his cannabis usage in Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah

Aaron Sorkin (writer/producer - actually, marijuana use is so common among those working in creative industries it would take pages to list them all - and that's just the ones who publicly discuss it.

Not to mention all the Democratic officials who have admitted to use earlier in life - that would include the President - who, as far as I can tell, wasn't harmed - but the law could've harmed him if he had been arrested. The Clintons, The Gores, etc.. iow, just about anyone who has been alive since the 1960s and attended college... on both sides of the aisle.

The point, however, is that it is the USER, not the use, that determines the value of marijuana for themselves or their work. If someone isn't a scientist, getting high won't make them one - but getting high won't prevent them from becoming one, either.

These are only a few examples - and only those who choose to publicly talk about this issue.

I'm sick of the stoner stereotype - it's just a right wing lie. I don't expect to see it posted on a liberal site with the consistency that it is, frankly.

that are anti-drug, or even neutral.

who, even if they don't use something - are willing to look at evidence about usage and not immediately align with authoritarian thinking - authoritarian thinking is a personality trait of conservatism.

And more liberals have probably experimented in the past who don't turn around and become hypocrites once they're older. (Tho some do, of course - depending upon the political winds)

I'm an outlier at the moment - because I think all drugs should be legal and regulated. This is a harm reduction approach to the problem (b/c, yes, it can be a problem for a minority of people) who use illegal substances.

Rather than incarceration, I prefer medical treatment for people using harmful substances such as heroin or meth.

You know what's really tragic about meth use? So much of it is attributed to low-income people who are working two jobs, etc. - so, what's the problem at the bottom of such meth use? To me - it's that someone has to work two jobs to merely get by.

Some low income people in rural areas turn to producing meth to sell to other low income people with two jobs. It reminds me of Moore's documentary, Roger and Me, that noted when the factories closed in Flint, the town was often divided b/t those who got jobs in prisons and those who got arrested for one thing or another.

That's the drug war model.

in fact, the drug war redistributes populations from urban to rural areas (even tho felons lose the right to vote). This, however, increases population numbers in rural areas, while taking votes away from liberal areas. And, even tho there is no difference between groups for mj use - it's African-Americans and Latinos who are arrested at far greater rates than whites doing exactly the same thing.

iow, the drug war is racist to its core.

that was also its foundation.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta said:

(pssst - systematically misled means that the U.S. govt. has engaged in a propaganda campaign aimed at American citizens to make them stupid - it's the propaganda, not the marijuana, that has made people stupid regarding this subject.)



my journal here on DU is mostly devoted to this issue b/c I decided to follow it here on DU.