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.

Instead of wasting huge sums of money trying to make tobacco illegal, funding was directed as education and awareness programs designed to make people aware of the harms associated with tobacco smoke.  People have chosen to stop using this highly addictive drug because of knowledge, not out of fear of punishment. Just think, there’s proof that we can cut a drug’s usage rate in half over a 40 year period with the proper methods.

On the flipside, marijuana has seen huge spikes in usage during the same 40 years. We have arrested around 20 million Americans for marijuana law violations, and spent billions of dollars in an effort to reduce the supply of it. All of the “education” programs that involve marijuana use misleading and false information in an effort to convince people not to use it, but these have been proven not to work time and time again.

Moral of the story: maybe we should consider treating marijuana like tobacco. If we did we might be able to cut the usage rate down; it worked for the Netherlands.

Tags: legalization, marijuana, news, tobacco, usage rates