Obama’s statement to the New Yorker this week that “marijuana is no more dangerous than alcohol” was not only a powerful rebuke to the 40-year war on drugs, it also happens to be 100 percent true, as Paul Armentano has pointed out repeatedly. It was safe to assume that prohibitionists and right-wingers might have jumped on Obama’s quote, but attacks from a “liberal” like MSNBC’s Chris Matthews come as something of a surprise.
Matthews recently devoted an entire segment to going after Obama. His fellow Baby Boomer guests, Christopher Lawford and Patrick Kennedy, joined him in blatantly ignoring the bounty of scientific evidence to the contrary as they spewed ad hominem guesses as to what potential worries legalization might bring about. None offered more than speculation, and all echoed the stereotypes and fear-mongering of war on drugs propagators.
“The fact is I don’t think he’s right on this one because I think people have addictive personalities and some people react to freedom differently than others and we better be ready for it because it’s coming now,” Matthews said on the show.
Whether it’s possible to be addicted to marijuana depends on one’s definition of addiction. If we are defining addiction in terms that do apply to marijuana—which most likely means defining substance dependence, not actual physical addiction— the vast majority of users do not reach that point. Marijuana is the most popular drug in the U.S., and out of all of the most commonly used drugs it’s the least likely to cause dependence.
– Read the entire article at AlterNet.
