When President Obama commented that he thought cannabis was likely less dangerous than alcohol it generated headlines around the world. Why?
Cannabis is a relatively harmless therapeutic and recreational drug. It has been studied more exhaustively than any other therapeutic substance on earth. In recorded history there is not a single documented case of a person dying from cannabis toxicity. Last year, in Australia, there were no deaths attributed primarily to the use of cannabis. In 2014, the year that Obama publicly observed that cannabis is likely less dangerous than alcohol, there had been no deaths solely attributable to cannabis use in the US, or Australia, or the known universe.
In Australia, in 2014, there were more than five-and-a-half-thousand deaths caused directly by excess alcohol consumption. There were at least one-hundred-and-sixty-thousand hospitalizations directly attributed to abusing alcohol. Moreover, we are all aware that this is the case. Even if we do not know the precise death and injury toll, most everyone in our modern western society, regardless of their personal position or individual opinion, lives in an environment where there are alcoholic vagrants on the street. It is a sad fact of life. But there are no ‘cannabis vagrants’. In fact, such a proposition seems more than a tad silly.
In this manner, the personal experience of all the inhabitants of the western world is that cannabis is a relatively harmless therapeutic herb and recreational drug. Which makes it illuminating to consider precisely why President Obama’s comments were considered newsworthy.
President Obama spoke a simple truth that publicly contradicted ‘the big lie’. Which is that cannabis must always be typified as a ‘dangerous’ drug. The observation was considered newsworthy because it fails to adhere to one of the principal rules regarding talking about cannabis. A rule that is policed by all the right-wing media guardians, as well as the supine ‘progressive’ media outlets.
The rule that Obama broke was that cannabis must not be compared and contrasted with any other substance. It must be discussed in absolute and isolated terms. ‘CANNABIS IS DANGEROUS’ the right wing declare, and the perfectly pliant mainstream simply agree. (After all, everything and anything can be dangerous.) Medicinal cannabis (of course) is acceptable, but only because it is strictly regulated. Because big penalties apply to protect the Australian public against the scourge of cannabis being freely available, it is acceptable.
Yet journalists do not ask ‘why’ we are being protected, or from what particular harms. They removed all penalties attaching to cannabis in Thailand and the place seems to be booming, and despite searching high and low for any sort of a harm attaching to this free availability of cannabis, even the police and magistrates that I asked were unable to identify any particular harm.
Journalists also fail to ask why we aren’t being protected from even more dangerous things in a similar fashion? The discussion of cannabis and the potential harms that attach to its use never seem to contextualise the discussion by noting that fifty people die from a deliberate overdose of paracetamol each year in this country (and at least three times that number are hospitalized). Nor do they observe that even if cannabis was freely available – in huge piles in the street – it would not lead to the death of anyone as it is impossible to kill yourself by overdosing on cannabis. Unlike almost every other therapeutic substance (and many commonly available foodstuffs) cannabis is entirely non-toxic.
But even more startling, this ignorance also extends to all substances that have been deemed illegal by the authorities, regardless of its danger or actual toxicity. Cannabis is equated with methamphetamine and other dangerous illegal narcotics – even though nobody dies from the abuse of cannabis. Yet the largely mythical harms associated with cannabis are never equated with the toll directly levied on society by the abuse of alcohol. Even when considering actually dangerous illicit substances these comparisons are largely avoided, as they serve to illustrate that the current war on drugs is not just utterly illogical and irrational, it is utterly nonsensical.
Consider that in 2011, at the height of the amphetamine boom in Australia, there were one hundred and one methamphetamine related fatalities, every one of which was widely reported. Yet when the statistics are closely and impartially considered, during the whole of amphetamine craze there were at least fifty-five fatalities associated directly with the abuse of alcohol for every one death due to amphetamine overdose. Also consider that in 2011 almost twice as many people died from either a deliberate overdose or the incidental abuse of paracetamol as died from amphetamine abuse. So, in summary, in 2011, in Australia, there was one death from the abuse of methamphetamine for every fifty-five deaths from abusing alcohol, many more people died as a direct result of abusing paracetamol than died from abusing ‘ice’, and still nobody died from using cannabis.
Yet the sad sting in this tail is that Obama was misquoted. One sentence from this interview was lifted and used to depict President Obama as being ‘soft on drugs’. When the actual interview is considered in its entirety then it is obvious that Obama is actually doing his best to hew to the corporate line. He describes cannabis use as ‘bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life,’ before going on to add (seemingly accidentally and unthinkingly) that ‘I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol’.
Yet as soon as he notes that he is on thin ice, Obama at once slides back to addressing the topic as a civil rights matter, and turns to discussing the disproportionate numbers of black and Latino arrests for pot, and noting that ‘middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do’. Which all serves to underline the totalitarian nature of the ‘dangerous drug’ media narrative. Even the coolest President of the US has to toe this corporate media line. Even the President of the US is well aware that he has to be ‘careful’ when discussing these matters. If a politician accidentally says anything that is remotely truthful – they are toast. Every mainstream media outlet in the known universe will instantly label them as ‘soft on drugs’. Every politician knows that this is the case.
Thus, in Australia, cannabis will always be described as a dangerous drug. Full stop. It is a firm rule. If you want to say different (even if you are a politician) you can’t. Cannabis is dangerous and must not be compared and contrasted with any other substance. Full stop.
We have a ‘free press’ in this country. We are all free to shut up, toe the line, be vilified, or not be reported.
Have a nice day.
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