Sanjay Gupta Calls for Alcohol Prohibition

This is really stunning. Sanjay Gupta writes in TIME Magazine this week that we should return to alcohol prohibition (sort of)...

Why I Would Vote No On Pot

Maybe it's because I was born a couple of months after Woodstock and wasn't around when marijuana was as common as iPods are today, but I'm constantly amazed that after all these years--and all the wars on drugs and all the public-service announcements--nearly 15 million Americans still use marijuana at least once a month. California and 10 other states have already decriminalized marijuana for medical use. Now two of those states--Colorado and Nevada--are considering ballot initiatives that would legalize up to an ounce of pot for personal use by people 21 and older, whether or not there is a medical need.

What do voters need to know before going to the polls?

Sanjay Gupta is undoubtedly a tremendous physician and a respected expert on medical matters, but he paints himself into a corner with this and it's not pretty.

The first is that marijuana isn't really very good for you. True, there are health benefits for some patients. Several recent studies, including a new one from the Scripps Research Institute, show that THC, the chemical in marijuana responsible for the high, can help slow the progress of Alzheimer's disease. (In fact, it seems to block the formation of disease-causing plaques better than several mainstream drugs.) Other studies have shown THC to be a very effective antinausea treatment for people--cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, for example--for whom conventional medications aren't working. And medical cannabis has shown promise relieving pain in patients with multiple sclerosis and reducing intraocular pressure in glaucoma patients.

Alcohol is also not very good for you. In fact, alcohol has much fewer medical benefits than marijuana and is much more likely to result in addiction, cancer, or death.

But I suspect that most of the people eager to vote yes on the new ballot measures aren't suffering from glaucoma, Alzheimer's or chemo-induced nausea.

No, they're people who want marijuana to be treated just like another potentially dangerous drug that millions of Americans use responsibly and is already legal for people over the age of 21.

Many of them just want to get stoned legally. That's why I, like many other doctors, am unimpressed with the proposed legislation, which would legalize marijuana irrespective of any medical condition.

So then I assume that alcohol should also be illegal if there isn't a medical use? Many of the people who wanted to end alcohol prohibition just wanted to get drunk legally. That wasn't the main reason to end prohibition, but pointing to that as the reason for ending it was a good distraction for those who wanted to continue that failed policy.

Why do I care? As Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, puts it, "Numerous deleterious health consequences are associated with [marijuana's] short- and long-term use, including the possibility of becoming addicted."

Again, how is this any different than alcohol? The reality is that marijuana is no more addictive or dangerous than alcohol, but Gupta sadly trots out a few misconceptions about marijuana to back up his point.

What are other health consequences? Frequent marijuana use can seriously affect your short-term memory.

This is misleading at best. When under the influence of marijuana, short-term memory is affected, but this is not a permanent condition. Many studies have shown that the effects of marijuana on memory are temporary, and no worse than what alcohol can do. Sure, if someone is stoned all the time, they will forget a lot of things. Someone who's drunk all the time will too.

It can impair your cognitive ability (why do you think people call it dope?) and lead to long-lasting depression or anxiety.

This is simply not true. Most independent researchers have concluded that marijuana does not impair cognitive ability long term.

In October, researchers at Harvard University reported that regular marijuana smokers who abstain from pot for one week or more performed no differently on cognitive tests than non-smokers. According to findings published in The Archives of General Psychiatry, chronic daily smokers "showed virtually no significant differences from control subjects (those who had smoked marijuana less than 50 times in their lives) on a battery of 10 neuropsychological tests." The researchers concluded that their findings "do not support the hypothesis that long-term heavy cannabis use causes irreversible cognitive deficits."

A recent meta-analysis of neuropsychological studies of long-term marijuana smokers presented this summer at the NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse) Workshop on the Clinical Consequences of Marijuana also found no deficits in 7 of 8 neuropsychological ability areas. "The studies ... yielded no basis for concluding that long-term cannabis use is associated with generalized neurocognitive decline," the researchers concluded.

Additionally, a 1999 study of 1,300 volunteers published in The American Journal of Epidemiology found that marijuana smoking, even long-term, failed to significantly impact cognition. Researchers administered subjects Mini-Mental State Examinations (MMSE) in 1981 and 1982, and then measured their performance on follow up tests some 12 to 15 years later. In all, researchers found "no significant differences in cognitive decline between heavy users, light users, and nonusers of cannabis."
Large government-sponsored studies conducted during the 1970s in Jamaica, Greece and Costa Rica on marijuana smoking and cognition also reported no significant differences between long-term smokers and non-smokers.

As for depression, we are finding the opposite about the role between marijuana and depression, and in fact, approximately 30% of California's medical marijuana patients use the drug to ward off depression. I would hope that someone like Gupta would already know that since the federal government has been trying for years to stop research into marijuana, much of what passes for medical research is merely propaganda. Maybe he should actually talk to people who've used marijuana long-term to find out if it really causes problems with cognitive abilities or other aspects of mental health.

Back to the TIME article...

While many people smoke marijuana to relax, it can have the opposite effect on frequent users. And smoking anything, whether it's tobacco or marijuana, can seriously damage your lung tissue.

I guess Gupta is in the ever-expanding group of people who want to see cigarettes made illegal as well.

The Nevada and Colorado marijuana initiatives have gained support from unlikely places. More than 33 religious leaders in Nevada have endorsed the measure, arguing that permissive legalization, accompanied by stringent regulations and penalties, can cut down on illegal drug trafficking and make communities safer.

Perhaps. But I'm here to tell you, as a doctor, that despite all the talk about the medical benefits of marijuana, smoking the stuff is not going to do your health any good. And if you get high before climbing behind the wheel of a car, you will be putting yourself and those around you in danger.

And that's not the point, Sanjay. The same two things can easily be said about alcohol. So either you're advocating that we return to alcohol prohibition or you're a massive hypocrite. Which is it?