The SSDP at UH website has hit v3!

Many pages still have no content, but fear not for there shall be many updates in the coming days. If you’re interested in helping us write content for the site or for the organization in general, feel free to contact me.

Sincerely,

One of the most common arguments I hear against liberalizing our marijuana laws is that marijuana use leads people to use harder drugs like methamphetamine or heroin. The problem with this argument is that it is based mainly on myth and confusion; not backed up by real science.

The gateway theory for marijuana has been around since the 80’s and is based on a research study by Kandel and Yamaguchi showing how early drug use (especially alcohol and tobacco) made people more likely to use harder drugs. “The probabilities of initiating other illicit drug are very much reduced if marijuana is initiated at age 20 or over. . .” Drug warriors took this study out of context and starting saying how marijuana is a “proven” gateway drug, ignoring the authors conclusion pointing out it is the early age of first-use that leads to harder drug use.

With that said, let me point out some of the studies that have shown marijuana is not a gateway drug in and of itself:

From University of Pittsburgh 2006:

Researchers found that adolescents who used marijuana prior to using other drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, were no more likely to develop a substance abuse disorder than other subjects in the study.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is an article written by Josh Evans, a Student Government Senator at the University of Houston who is one of the most articulate individuals I know. I hope you enjoy his piece of prohibition.

Too often, money is equated with efficacy. And when it comes to halting the drug trade as we know it, this misguided notion is perpetuated blindly. Most people do not want to see problems, and few people bother to understand narcotic-smuggling. They just want our government to throw more money at the problem.

The clamor for morals tends to drown out any lone voice that dares to imagine a new idea. Some people want their morals to mean something so much, to others especially, that they continue to push their morals, hoping that one day they will become effective. It is both desperation and denial.
Read the rest of this entry »

Drug policy reformers, myself included, are always pointing out the similarities between Alcohol Prohibition of the 20’s and 30’s and the modern Drug Prohibition we’re still living under. Too often people pass off the comparison because we don’t experience the levels of violence from organized crime like the country did during Alcohol Prohibition. What they don’t realize is that all we’ve done is export the violence to countries like Columbia, Peru, and especially Mexico. Telegraph has a story up about the brutal drug war being fought in Mexico, and the deadly toll it is taking on Mexico’s citizens and businesses.

Mexico’s drug war death tally of more than 4,000 this year – 685 in Tijuana – makes it one of the most dangerous countries in the world, and the extreme violence has intensified since the federal government launched a crackdown against the cartels.

President Calderon vowed to take on the cartels when he was elected into office and dramatically increased the number of federal troops being used to fight the Drug War.  Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most common arguments I hear about marijuana is that if it is legal more people are going to use it, which is an understandable belief. The problem is there isn’t any evidence to support this claim, especially considering countries with looser drug laws tend to have lower drug usage rates [previous WHO post]. There’s also evidence that shows it is easier to control drug use in a legal market.

Thanks to a new Center for Disease Control study we know that it is easier to decrease drug use in a legal market. From the Reuters story on the study:

The number of U.S. adults who smoke [cigarettes] has dropped below 20 percent for the first time on record.

In the 1960’s that percentage was 42%, which means the smoking population has been cut in half.  All in a legal, regulated market, imagine that. Read the rest of this entry »