The Banana Peel Project

alternate title: “How to use statistics for good instead of evil”

So here’s a little experiment.  Statistics are a tool of governmentality, a broad and messy tactic for imposing order on a chaotic world.  But if technologies are inherently neutral, if tools and techniques and arts are ambiguous actors on the social stage, then can’t they be used for all kinds of things?  I’m starting to think that there are two kinds of statistics: bad statistics, and bad statistics that you agree with anyway.  Let’s see if we can make this work.

Let’s pretend for just a moment that marijuana is a gateway drug, that taxing pot won’t help improve the economy, that cannabis causes cancer, and that legalizing it won’t hamstring Mexican cartels.  Let’s pretend that the war on drugs has made some slight progress in reducing the number of people who use marijuana.  And—just for kicks—let’s pretend that pot makes otherwise conscientious citizens into fiendish psychopaths.

Since so many commentators these days seem incapable of distinguishing fiction from reality, let me take a moment to draw the line for them.  It’s a shame that I have to, but here we go anyway:

• Marijuana is not a gateway drug.  In a bumbling defense of current federal marijuana policy, FBI Director Robert Mueller pointed out that “if you talk to parents who have lost their children to drugs, they will inevitably say that they started off with marijuana.”  U.S. Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN) immediately responded by adding: “They probably started off with milk and then went to beer, and then they went to bourbon, and then they might have gone to marijuana.  The gateway theory doesn’t work.  It’s a reality.”  I might have added that they probably went to marijuana before they went to bourbon, since under current federal law it’s much, much easier for a minor to get weed than it is to get alcohol.  Even in Tennessee.

• Taxing pot will help the economy.  Prominent legislators like Betty Yee, Chair of the California Board of Equalization, have argued that legalizing and taxing marijuana would generate more than $1.3 billion a year in California alone.  Plus, according to a study by Harvard economics professor Jeffrey Miron, local and federal governments would save nearly $13 billion a year in criminal justice costs, a savings which does not include the $6.7 billion a year that would be gained in taxes and fees on marijuana sales at the federal level.

• Cannabis does not cause cancer.  In fact, an upcoming study in the peer-reviewed journal Pharmacological Research confirms previous research showing that endocannabinoids—chemicals occurring naturally in the human body which help to regulate appetite, moods, and memory that are functionally and structurally related to THC, the active chemical in marijuana—may have “significant potential in gastrointestinal disease models that involve inflammation and cancer, including potentially, anti-metastasizing efficacy.”  What this means is not only that people with ailments like inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) might be significantly helped by taking cannabis but that cannabis might actually help prevent intestinal cancer.  And besides, smoking pot (which does, over time, cause pulmonary damage) isn’t the only way to get its effects—there are actually many kinds of smokeless delivery systems.  A 2007 study in another peer-reviewed journal, Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, for example, demonstrated that vaporizers are “a safe and effective mode of delivery of THC.”

• Legalizing marijuana will cripple the cartels.  Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard recently testified in the Senate that “The violence that we see in Mexico is fueled 65 to 70 percent by the [illicit] trade in one drug: marijuana.”  And Sidney Weintraub, a senior political economist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has pointed out that marijuana accounts for an estimated 40% of all illegal drugs sold by criminal cartels in the United States.  That’s perhaps $10 billion that would be taken directly out of the cartels’ pockets if marijuana were legalized.  Need I even mention what happened the last time a popular drug was harshly criminalized?  I didn’t think so.

• The war on drugs has failed in every possible way.  Of course we all remember Ronald Reagan’s remarks way back in 1982 announcing the beginning of the newest war to end all wars.

We’re rejecting the helpless attitude that drug use is so rampant that we’re defenseless to do anything about it. We’re taking down the surrender flag that has flown over so many drug efforts; we’re running up a battle flag. We can fight the drug problem, and we can win.

Reagan and his fellow drug warriors were wrong that it was a war they could win. The war on drugs has clearly failed to keep kids away from marijuana—or any other drug, for that matter—as indicated by a 2008 survey showing that 84% of high school seniors say that marijuana is still “fairly easy” or “very easy” to get.  But Mr. Reagan was right about one thing: he was right that it is possible to do something about the drug problem.  Because the real “drug problem” is not “drug use” but (as it turns out) “drug policy.”

As far as the last part of our little fantasy goes—that marijuana transforms users into zombies, rapists, and murderers—what needs to be said?  If you, dear reader, haven’t tried marijuana yourself, chances are that you know someone who has.  In 2006, the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) estimated that over 10% of all Americans over the age of 12, and over 28% (yes, more than a quarter) of everyone between 18 and 25, had used marijuana in the previous year.  And almost 100 million Americans (yes, nearly a third of the entire country) have used marijuana in their lifetime.

But of course, most people know this.  Most people know that pot won’t kill you, that it makes some things easier (like intestinal cramps) and other things harder (like driving), that smoking pot doesn’t make you more inclined to shoot heroin, and that only George Romero can make a zombie.  So it’s still somewhat astounding to me that President Obama still hasn’t taken marijuana legalization seriously—even, as you must recall, going so far as to laugh at his most valuable constituency. The Prez:

There was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high [on the online poll] and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy and job creation.  And I don’t know what this says about the online audience, but [giggles and smirks] this was a fairly popular question.

Indeed.  Well, I think everybody knows what it says about the online audience—and that’s exactly my point.

Marijuana is no longer a mystery, if it ever was.  Check out TIME magazine’s recent photo essay on the “legally hazy” cannabis culture, or last year’s special report in The New Yorker on the marijuana trade, or Andrew Sullivan’s ongoing blog miniseries “The Cannabis Closet” for The Atlantic Monthly.   So, now, let’s stop pretending that prohibition works, let’s stop pretending that taxation isn’t a good idea, and let’s stop pretending that it’s really only slackers and deviants who use marijuana.  And now that we’re done pretending, maybe we can start to have a real conversation.

So, did it work?  Are you convinced?  Am I convinced?