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Economy Shell

Legalizing marijuana would cause a corporate takeover of the drug – results in huge harms to public health.

Richter and Levy, ‘14

[Kimberly (PhD and Professor at the University of Kansas) and Sharon (MD at Boston Children’s Hospital), “Big Marijuana — Lessons from Big Tobacco”, The New England Journal of Medicine, Perspectives, 6-14-14,

RSR]

In its current form, smoked marijuana is less deadly than tobacco. Although case–control studies have found increased mortality associated with heavy marijuana use — attributable to vehicle crashes from driving while high, suicide, respiratory cancers, and brain cancers1 — the nonfatal adverse effects of marijuana use are much more prevalent. These include respiratory damage, cardiovascular disease, impaired cognitive development, and mental illness. These harms are very real, though they pale in comparison with those of tobacco, which causes almost 500,000 U.S. deaths annually. Marijuana is also less addictive than tobacco. About 9% of cannabis users meet the criteria for dependence (according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) at some time in their lives, as compared with 32% of tobacco users.2 But tobacco was not always as lethal or addictive as it is today. In the 1880s, few people used tobacco products, only 1% of tobacco was consumed in the form of manufactured cigarettes,3 and few deaths were attributed to tobacco use. By the 1950s, nearly half the population used tobacco, and 80% of tobacco use entailed cigarette smoking; several decades later, lung cancer became the top cause of cancer-related deaths.3 This transformation was achieved through tobacco-industry innovations in product development, marketing, and lobbying. The deadliness of modern-day tobacco stems from product developments of the early 1900s. Milder tobacco blends and new curing processes enabled smokers to inhale more deeply, facilitated absorption by lung epithelia, and boosted delivery of nicotine to the brain. Synergistically, these changes enhanced tobacco's addictive potential and increased intake of toxins. In addition, the industry added other ingredients, including toxic substances that enhanced taste and sped absorption — without regard for safety. When tobacco was a cottage industry, cigarettes were either “roll-your-own” or expensive hand-rolled products with limited market reach; after industrialization, machines rolled as many as 120,000 low-cost, perfectly packaged cylinders daily. The burgeoning marijuana industry is already following the same successful business strategy by increasing potency and creating new delivery devices.The concentration of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), marijuana's principal psychoactive constituent, has more than doubled over the past 40 years.4 Producers are manufacturing strains that they claim are less addictive or less harmful to mental health, but no supporting scientific evidence has been published. New vaporizer delivery systems developed by some manufacturers may reduce lung irritation from smoking but may also allow users to consume more THC (the component most closely associated with euphoria, addictive potential, and mental health side effects) by enabling them to inhale more often and more deeply. The business community recognizes these innovations' economic potential: a recent joint venture between a medical-marijuana provider and an electronic-cigarette maker sent stock prices soaring. Marketing strategies go hand in hand with product innovation. The market for marijuana is currently small, amounting to 7% of Americans 12 years of age or older, just as the tobacco market was small in the early 20th century. Once machines began mass-producing cigarettes, marketing campaigns targeted women, children, and vulnerable groups by associating smoking with images of freedom, sex appeal, cartoon characters, and — in the early days — health benefits. There is reasonable evidence that marijuana reduces nausea and vomiting during cancer treatment, reverses AIDS-related wasting, and holds promise as an antispasmodic and analgesic agent.5 However, marijuana manufacturers and advocates are attributing numerous other health benefits to marijuana use — for example, effectiveness against anxiety — with no supporting evidence. Furthermore, the marijuana industry will have unprecedented opportunities for marketing on the Internet, where regulation is minimal and third-party tracking and direct-to-consumer marketing have become extremely lucrative. When applied to a harmful, addictive commodity, these marketing innovations could be disastrous. This strategy poses a particular threat to young people. Adolescents are more likely than adults to seek novelty and try new products. The developing adolescent brain is particularly vulnerable to the development of addiction. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), children who use marijuana are up to four times as likely as adults to become chronic, heavy users — the type that would generate consistent sales for the marijuana industry. Today, nearly one in five U.S. adults still smokes, despite extensive public health campaigns focused on reducing uptake and increasing cessation. The tobacco industry has provided a detailed road map for marijuana: deny addiction potential, downplay known adverse health effects, create as large a market as possible as quickly as possible, and protect that market through lobbying, campaign contributions, and other advocacy efforts. The tobacco industry, bolstered by enormous profits, successfully lobbied to be exempted from every major piece of consumer-protection legislation even after the deadly consequences of tobacco were established. With nothing to sell or profit from, health advocates had difficulty fighting a battle that was clearly in the best interest of the public. The marijuana industry has already formed its own advocacy organization — the National Cannabis Industry Association — to protect and advance its corporate interests. It took the medical and public health communities 50 years, millions of lives, and billions of dollars to identify the wake of illness and death left by legal, industrialized cigarettes. The free-market approach to tobacco clearly failed to protect the public's welfare and the common good: in spite of recent federal regulation, tobacco use remains the leading cause of death in the United States. Addictive substances with known harms may merit completely new policy approaches. For example, the government of Uruguay's marijuana program will restrict sales to government-produced strains, limit prices in order to undercut illicit markets, and closely monitor individual consumption. The effects and side effects of this approach, however, remain to be seen. At present, we should accelerate collaboration among the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, SAMHSA, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and other agencies to fully understand current harms and forecast the effects of industrialization. In theory, any revenues from sales of marijuana products should pay for all regulation and harms so that society will not have to pick up the tab for damage done by the product. However, we know from the history of tobacco that this is hard to implement in practice. History and current evidence suggest that simply legalizing marijuana, and giving free rein to the resulting industry, is not the answer. To do so would be to once again entrust private industry with safeguarding the health of the public — a role that it is not designed to handle.

Increased public health harms massively harm the US economy – we’re on the brink now.

CNBC, ’10 [“Legalizing Marijuana Not Worth the Costs”, 4-20-10, RSR]

With the United States still struggling through the recession, state governments are exploring convenient fixes for overcoming massive debts burdening their states. After years of heavy spending, California, for example, is facing a $42 billion deficit. To address this staggering shortfall, some legislators are proposing the legalization of marijuana to boost tax revenue. Certainly some states are in dire economic straits; however, we cannot allow social and law enforcement policy to be determined simply by revenue needs. Put plainly, marijuana was made illegal because it is harmful; citing revenue gain as reason to legalize the drug emphasizes money over health and ignores the significant cost burdens that will inevitably arise as a result. As former head of theU.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, I am intimately familiar with the many challenges marijuana legalization poses, and from my experience, the best economic policy for dealing with marijuana is to discourage use by enforcement and education rather than legalization and taxation. Legalizing the drug will swell societal ills, and this outweighs themonetary benefits that might be achieved from its lawful sale. This is not the first time legalization has come to the fore. In the 1970s, Alaskalegalized the drug—only to recriminalize it in 1990 after Alaskan teen marijuana use jumped to twice the national average. This is clear evidence that if legalized, marijuana use will increase (even among children). There are significant cost burdens that come along with increased marijuana use. For example, there will be a greater social cost from decline in worker productivity and school performance. Legalization will also lead to a greater need for drug education, rehabilitation and treatment. And there will be costs associated with selling the drug. Do we really want our governments to sell substances known to betoxic to the body, and which has no medical value that is recognized by the medical community, for the sake of sheer profit? If this were a corporation proposing such a thing, it would be taken to court. Consider these findings from a white paper by the California Police Chiefs Association’s Task Force on Marijuana Dispensaries: California legalized “medical” marijuana in 1996, and dispensaries where the drug is handed out – to pretty much whoever comes in with a doctor’s note – have become catalysts for serious crime. According to the white paper, dispensary operators have been attacked, robbed and murdered. Also, “drug dealing, sales to minors, loitering, heavy vehicle and foot traffic in retail areas, increased noise and robberies of customers just outside dispensaries” are all criminal byproducts resulting from California’s medical marijuana distribution. We can expect similar problems—but on a far grander scale—from full legalization. Given these cost burdens—not to mention health and societal burdens—we should continue to focus efforts to discourage drug use. We can do this in a variety of ways. On alcohol and cigarettes, we require warnings and education. With methamphetamine, cocaine and other harmful drugs, we prohibit and criminalize their sale and use. While marijuana may not be as harmful and addictive as methamphetamine, it is harmful nonetheless, and the best economic policy is to make its sale and use illegal.The additional costs of drug education and rehabilitation combined with the increased social costs associated with increased marijuana use and sale are all greater than the potential revenue gained through legalization. Even with the U.S. economy struggling, we should not buy into the argument that vices should be legalized, taxed and regulated—no matter how much revenue we think it may generate. Some things just aren’t worth the costs.

Economic crisis triggers war – best empirical evidence supports

Royal ‘10 – Jedediah Royal, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense, (Economic Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of Economic Crises, Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, ed. Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 213-215)

Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict. Political science literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defence behaviour of interdependent states. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First, on the systemic level, Pollins (2008) advances Modclski and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crises could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin, 1981) that leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation (Fearon. 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a declining power (Werner, 1999). Separately, Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level, Copeland's (1996. 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future expectation of trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However, if the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases, as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those resources. Crises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third, others have considered the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn. They write: The linkages between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict tends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour. Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflicts self-reinforce each other. (Blomberg & Hess, 2002. p. 89) Economic decline has also been linked with an increase in the likelihood of terrorism (Blomberg. Hess. & Weerapana. 2004). which has the capacity to spill across borders and lead to external tensions. Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government. 'Diversionary theory' suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting governments have increased incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1990, DeRouen (1995). and Blomberg, Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline and use of force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that the tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods of weak economic performance in the United States, and thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in the use of force. In summary, recent economic scholarship positively correlates economic integration with an increase in the frequency of economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with external conflict at systemic, dyadic and national levels.' This implied connection between integration, crises and armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves more attention. This observation is not contradictory to other perspectives that link economic interdependence with a decrease in the likelihood of external conflict, such as those mentioned in the first paragraph of this chapter. Those studies tend to focus on dyadic interdependence instead of global interdependence and do not specifically consider the occurrence of and conditions created by economic crises. As such, the view presented here should be considered ancillary to those views.

Gateway Drug Shell

Legalizing marijuana would cause a corporate takeover of the drug – results in increased use of the drug.

Richter and Levy, ‘14

RSR]