Marijuana is dangerous. Why legalise it?

If we’re going to turn nanny state on tobacco and ban junk food ads, as the Greens suggests, then we can’t green-out on marijuana.

It is clear that marijuana is a more dangerous public health problem than the sorts of issues that the Greens are championing restrictions for. (Pic: AFP/Jason Connolly)

The Greens have added another hot-button policy to their libertarian agenda — the legalisation of recreational drugs.

At a national conference last weekend, party faithful voted in favour of abandoning their opposition to the legalisation of illicit drugs, with Greens leader and former drug and alcohol doctor Richard Di Natale saying that “we have to have an open and honest conversation about drugs”.

The first drug up for debate will likely be recreational marijuana. With four more American States having just voted for legalisation of non-medicinal cannabis, I presume this is at the top of Di Natale’s list of conversation topics.

Why shouldn’t we legalise pot?

The pro-drug lobby typically argue that a “legalise and tax it” approach is a far more effective and, indeed, safer policy to adopt.

What’s more, a liberalisation of Australian law would be in line with supposedly successful transitions away from the prohibition model of drug control in countries such as the Netherlands, which has adopted a cautious model of regulated consumption.

Many people, even some experts, claim that weed when taken in moderate consumption is relatively harmless, and young Australians see smoking pot as an innocuous pastime.

Innocuous? Hmm. (Pic: AP/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

These arguments are more problematic than they seem. For one, the burden of proof is on the pro-drug lobby to disprove “the undeniable association”, to use the words of Australian Medical Association (AMA) president Michael Gannon, “between cannabis and mental illness”.

But even if marijuana proves less dangerous than thought, the pro-drug lobby need to address the tension between the liberal push for soft drugs and the moralistic crusade — typically championed by the Left — against smoking.

On the one hand, our Federal Government, with the blessing of the Greens, has placed draconian restrictions on the sale and consumption of tobacco. We’ve slapped heavy fines of smoking in certain public areas, we force tobacco companies to produce plain-paper packaged cigarettes, and we effectively berate smokers into submission through state sponsored (and I might add, particularly graphic) anti-smoking advertising campaigns.

Instead of the idyllic beachside vistas and gorgeous models that used to be found on cigarette packages, smokers now have a choice between packets with gangrenous limbs or cataracted eyes.

Heck, we’ve got to the point where smoking — particularly in an inner-city context — is seen as a kind of social sin. Smokers in the city and at university are shamed into submission by the death stares and general indignation of the eco-hipster police.

He’s smoking! And he’s a hipster! Lock him up. (Pic: iStock)

And yet the Greens political machine is slowly positioning itself behind the pro-drug lobby.

Pot isn’t the only drug on the Greens’ agenda. The Victorian Greens recently petitioned Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews into having pill-testing machines at music festivals. The devices will allow patrons who want to consume drugs such as ecstasy to have their pills checked for other harmful substances. Should the drugs in question test “clean”, then festival goers can pop away to their hearts’ content.

Perhaps it’s something about the association between marijuana and the social movements that gave birth to the Greens party. Or perhaps it’s got to do with the fact that a disproportionate number of Greens voters regularly smoke dope (hopefully not on election day). But for some reason they’ve adopted a schizophrenic approach in the tobacco and marijuana debates.

I don’t smoke, and I don’t intend to take up smoking. A 25-year-old friend of mine — a heavy smoker — was recently diagnosed with terminal oesophageal cancer. I’m no friend of smoking.

But therein lies the issue. When we ditch the ideological pseudoscientific drug research, it is abundantly clear that marijuana is a more dangerous public health problem than the sorts of issues that the Greens are championing restrictions for.

If we’re going to play nanny state on tobacco, and ban junk food ads as the Greens party platform suggests, we can’t green-out on marijuana.

Experience suggests we can’t expect ideological consistency in politics. Though with so manifest a contradiction, perhaps this will be an exception to the rule.

Xavier is a Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics and Society at the University of Notre Dame Australia

Twitter @unda_ethics