SUMMARY: With marijuana legal in some form in 26 states and the District of Columbia, the old script for talking to your children about pot is changing. Behavioral scientist Elizabeth D'Amico, who has researched drug and alcohol use among teens for more than 20 years, giver her humble opinion about what kids need to know.
In an address to law enforcement, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions made two dubious claims about marijuana and opioids:
Sessions made his claims on March 15 during an address to law enforcement at the Justice Department. He first discussed trends in violent crime, correctly noting that while “crime rates in our country remain near historic lows,” FBI statistics show that “the violent crime rate in the U.S. increased by more than 3 percent” between 2014 and 2015.
- Sessions said marijuana is “only slightly less awful” than heroin, an illicit opioid. Experts says heroin is three times more harmful than marijuana based on a rating scale that takes into account lethal overdoses, dependence potential, economic harm and other factors.
- He said he is “astonished to hear people suggest that we can solve our heroin crisis by legalizing marijuana.” While medical marijuana may not “solve” the epidemic, research suggests legalization may curb opioid overdoses, which have surged in recent years.
Sessions also said that it's his “fear” that the increase in violent crime is “the start of a dangerous new trend.” Later on during his speech, he added that to “turn back this rising tide of violent crime, we need to confront the heroin and opioid crisis in our nation.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 52,404 people died of drug overdoses in 2015, 63.1 percent of which involved an opioid. This includes illicit opioids, such as heroin, and prescription opioids, including oxycodone and hydrocodone.
The 2015 numbers are part of a larger trend. Opioid-related deaths have gone from around 3 per 100,000 people in 2000 to over 10 per 100,000 people in 2015, according to the CDC.
At the same time that opioid-related deaths have increased, the CDC also notes, “Sales of prescription opioids in the U.S. nearly quadrupled from 1999 to 2014, but there has not been an overall change in the amount of pain Americans report.”
So Sessions was on the mark when he said that “every three weeks, we are losing as many American lives to drug overdoses as we lost in the 9/11 attacks.” About 3,023 people die every three weeks of drug overdoses, while 2,977 died in the 9/11 attacks. But he made other claims about drugs that were questionable:
Sessions, March 15: I reject the idea that America will be a better place if marijuana is sold in every corner store. And I am astonished to hear people suggest that we can solve our heroin crisis by legalizing marijuana – so people can trade one life-wrecking dependency for another that's only slightly less awful. Our nation needs to say clearly once again that using drugs will destroy your life. In the '80s and '90s, we saw how campaigns stressing prevention brought down drug use and addiction. We can do this again.
We'll explain why Sessions' claim that marijuana is “only slightly less awful” than heroin contradicts expert opinion. We'll also lay out evidence that suggests medical marijuana may help curb the opioid epidemic, which includes heroin.
Marijuana Versus Heroin
Though Sessions' claim that marijuana is “only slightly less awful” than heroin is subjective, it runs counter to the opinion of experts.
In a study published in The Lancet in November 2010, David Nutt, a professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, and other members of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, a group of drug experts in the U.K., ranked 20 drugs based on 16 criteria.
The criteria took into consideration both the harm the drugs do to users and to society, including lethal overdose potential, abuse and addiction potential, damage to physical and mental health, economic cost, link to crime, environmental damage, and family dysfunction. The researchers also considered the extent to which a drug is used in the U.K.
On a scale of 1 to 100, marijuana ranked eighth most harmful with a score of 20. Heroin came in second place with a rating of 55. Alcohol was the most harmful drug, according to the experts, with a harm rating of 72, while mushrooms ranked last with a score of 6. A large chunk of alcohol's overall score came from harm it did to society, although alcohol also ranked fourth in terms of the harm it does to users. Heroin, on the other hand, was the second most harmful drug to users and the third most harmful to society.
To be clear, the researchers ranked drugs for the U.K. in particular. Since no ranking of this sort has been done for the U.S., we reached out to Nutt by email to ask him if the U.K. rankings could translate to the United States. He said largely yes, but “if anything with the legalization of medical [marijuana] in the USA, cannabis would be even lower in harm than in our ratings.” He added, “Heroin would stay about the same.”
When we asked why, he told us that marijuana legalization eliminates “black market harms,” which means that there would be less harm related to crime, for example. Marijuana is currently illegal in the United Kingdom. Heroin, on the other hand, would likely have a similar rating because the U.K. is also currently experiencing a heroin epidemic, he said.
However, some researchers, including Jonathan P. Caulkins, a professor of public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, have argued that ranking drugs under a single measure obscures the nuance behind how and why certain drugs are harmful.
So let's go over a few specifics.
First off, no one has ever died of a marijuana overdose, but nearly 13,000 people died of heroin overdose in the U.S. in 2015 alone. According to the National Cancer Institute, the receptors in the brain activated by marijuana aren't located in the brainstem regions that control respiration, while those activated by heroin and other opioids are. This means that “lethal overdoses” from marijuana don't occur, says the NCI.
Second, heroin is highly addictive, whereas only about 1 in 10 marijuana users become addicted, according to the CDC. Withdrawal symptoms of heroin include muscle and bone pain, sleep problems, diarrhea, vomiting, cold flashes and uncontrollable leg movements. Withdrawal symptoms of marijuana include grouchiness, sleep problems, decreased appetite and anxiety. In other words, marijuana withdrawal “symptoms appear to be mild compared with withdrawal symptoms associated with opiates,” adds the NCI.
Intravenous heroin use, which is the most common means of taking the drug, can also put people at risk for HIV, hepatitis C and other infections. Marijuana is typically smoked, but there isn't conclusive evidence to suggest that it can cause lung cancer, though there is some association with testicular cancer. However, studies have shown that smoking marijuana can impact heart rate and blood pressure, which means it may increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes, says the CDC.
Lastly, it's important to note that marijuana and heroin are both classified as Schedule 1 drugs by the Drug Enforcement Administration. This means the DEA sees them “as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” This is also despite the fact that Chuck Rosenberg, the head of the Drug Enforcement Agency in 2015, has said that “heroin is clearly more dangerous than marijuana.”
In short, marijuana isn't harmless, but experts agree it's considerably less harmful than heroin.
Marijuana and Opioids
Currently, 28 states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana in some form, while eight states and D.C. have legalized marijuana for recreational use.
We reached out to the Justice Department to ask if Sessions meant medical or recreational marijuana when he said he is “astonished to hear people suggest that we can solve our heroin crisis by legalizing marijuana.” But we have yet to receive a response. We'll update this article, if we do.
There's no research suggesting legalizing recreational marijuana will “solve” the heroin crisis, but there is evidence backing the idea that medical marijuana may help curb the opioid epidemic more broadly.
For example, Marcus A. Bachhuber, now a doctor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, and others found that states with medical marijuana laws had an almost 25 percent lower annual rate of opioid overdose deaths on average between 1999 and 2010 than states without such laws. Three states had medical marijuana laws prior to 1999 and 10 additional states implemented laws during the course of the study. The group looked at all 50 states.
Published in JAMA Internal Medicine in October 2014, the study also found that the association between medical marijuana legalization and reductions in opioid overdose deaths generally improved over time. There was a little less than a 20 percent reduction in deaths after the first year of the medical marijuana law's implementation and a more than 33 percent reduction after six years of implementation, the study found.
And when the researchers conducted additional analyses that included heroin overdose deaths, they got similar results — a 23 percent lower annual rate of deaths.
Another study published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence in February 2017 found medical marijuana legalization was associated with a 23 percent reduction in hospitalizations for opioid-related dependence or abuse and a 13 percent reduction in hospitalizations for opioid-related overdoses between 1997 and 2014, compared with states that hadn't legalized marijuana.
Conducted by Yuyan Shi, a professor of medicine and public health at the University of California, San Diego, the study did conclude that it's “premature to advocate medical marijuana legalization as a strategy to curb” opioid abuse and overdose. Shi argued this last point, in part, because the causal mechanisms to explain the relationship between opioid and marijuana use have yet to be fully fleshed out.
However, a study by Ashley C. Bradford and W. David Bradford, a master's student and a professor of public policy, respectively, at the University of Georgia, provides evidence for one causal explanation — people may be swapping opioids for marijuana.
Published in Health Affairs in July 2016, the study investigated whether medical marijuana laws affected “prescribing patterns” between 2010 and 2013 in “Medicare Part D for traditional (FDA-approved) drugs that treat conditions marijuana itself might treat.” Part D is the prescription drug program for Medicare, which is available to individuals 65 and older and certain younger individuals with disabilities. State medical marijuana legislation, which the researchers reviewed, also notes specific conditions that medical marijuana might be able to treat.
Generally, the pair found that “prescription drugs for which marijuana could serve as a clinical alternative” fell significantly between 2010 and 2013 once a medical marijuana law was implemented. This was particularly the case for pain medications, including opioids, which dropped by 1,826 daily doses filled annually by doctors after medical marijuana laws were implemented.
The researchers “haven't yet analyzed how many of those doses were opioid drugs versus other painkillers, but David Bradford suspects it's a large chunk,” reported Science in November 2016. “It's suggestive evidence that medical marijuana might help divert people away from the path where they would start using [an opioid drug], and of course if they don't start, they're not on that path to misuse and abuse and potentially death,” he told Science.
It's also important to note that the study estimated that, nationally, the Medicare program and its enrollees spent over $515 million less between 2010 and 2013 “as a result of changed prescribing behaviors induced by seventeen states and the District of Columbia — the jurisdictions that had legalized medical marijuana by then.”
One limitation of the study is that it looks at primarily older individuals, which may not be representative of marijuana and opioid users as a whole. However, the researchers also told Science that they're in the process of publishing a follow-up study that looks at medical marijuana legislation's effect on prescription patterns for Medicaid recipients.
Younger individuals are eligible for Medicaid, including those who are low-income or disabled. So far, the drop in pain medication prescriptions appears to be even more significant than that for Medicare, Bradford told Science.
An additional study backs up the Bradford study.
In June 2016, Daniel J. Clauw, the director of the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center at the University of Michigan, and others published research that looked at patterns of prescription opioid and medical marijuana use in 244 individuals with chronic pain surveyed between 2013 and 2015.
Published in The Journal of Pain, the study found that marijuana use was associated with 64 percent less opioid use in patients with chronic pain. The researchers also found marijuana use “was associated with better quality of life” in 45 percent of the individuals surveyed.
The CDC also states, “Although prescription opioids can help manage some types of pain, there is not enough evidence that opioids improve chronic pain, function, and quality of life.” The CDC adds that “long-term use of opioid pain relievers for chronic pain can be associated with abuse and overdose, particularly at higher dosages.”
And there is still more research that supports the idea that medical marijuana may help curb the opioid epidemic.
While these studies primarily looked at prescription opioids — that is, not heroin — there's a relationship between prescription opioid use and heroin use. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 79.5 percent of “recent heroin initiates” previously used prescription opioids and 31.3 percent previously abused or were addicted to prescription opioids.
For this reason, the CDC says that past “misuse of prescription opioids is the strongest risk factor for starting heroin use.” However, the CDC adds, “Increased availability, relatively low price (compared to prescription opioids), and high purity of heroin in the U.S. also have been identified as possible factors in the rising rate of heroin use.” For example, the DEA confiscated less than 500 kilograms of heroin between 2000 and 2008 on the southwest border of the U.S., compared with 2,196 kilograms in 2013.
So while marijuana may not be the silver bullet for the heroin crisis, or the opioid epidemic more broadly, there is some evidence that medical marijuana may help.
SUMMARY: Now legal in eight states, there are unanswered questions about the impact of recreational marijuana on public health. To maximize potency, pot can be purified for maximum THC, its psychoactive ingredient. But a lack of research and restrictions on these very high concentrations is raising concerns. Special correspondent John Ferrugia of Rocky Mountain PBS reports.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): With recreational marijuana now legal in eight states, a serious health and safety question about the potency of the psychoactive drug in cannabis, known as THC, are emerging. In Colorado, some marijuana products contain 90 percent pure THC, with little research documenting the physical and mental effects on consumers.
This week, the state's health department announced more than $2 million in grants to study the impacts on driving and cognitive functioning.
As John Ferrugia of Rocky Mountain PBS in Denver reports, there are concerns that the effects on some users could be deadly.
MARC BULLARD (user): 2016 is a year of something new.
JOHN FERRUGIA, Rocky Mountain PBS: In December 2015, Marc Bullard felt on top of the world. He had landed a good job in Denver after graduating magna cum laude from Southern Methodist University.
MARC BULLARD: It's been a good year.
JOHN FERRUGIA: He made video diaries to keep his family and friends updated on his life, looking forward to the New Year.
MARC BULLARD: It's time to start planning projects.
JOHN FERRUGIA: But just four months later, in April 2016, Marc Bullard took his own life. His written diary shows severe depression seems to have taken a quick hold on him.
MIKE BULLARD, Marc Bullard's Father: You know, December, he's fine, he comes home for the Christmas holiday.
JOHN FERRUGIA: And Mike and Ginny Bullard say he spent time with family and friends and showed no sign of being down.
MIKE BULLARD: And what we saw in the in the diary later, was by January the 16th, I guess, he's talking about suicide.
JOHN FERRUGIA: It was only after his death that his parents began reading his written diaries.
When did you first see the first entry about dabbing?
MIKE BULLARD: That was in the March the 5th. And that's where he talks about you know, I think I've been dabbing too much.
SUMMARY: On November 8, multiple states legalized the use of marijuana for either recreational or medicinal purposes -- thus marking a major shift in U.S. drug policy. William Brangham speaks with Taylor West of the National Cannabis Administration and Jonathan Hudak of the Brookings Institution about marijuana law and how it might evolve under President-elect Donald Trump's upcoming administration.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): Legalizing marijuana was on the ballot in nine different states in this past election. And except in Arizona, they all passed. Four states, Montana, North Dakota, Arkansas, and Florida, voted to legalize use of marijuana for certain medical conditions. And four other states, Maine, Nevada, Massachusetts, and California, legalized marijuana for anyone 21 years and over.
This means that millions more people will be able to purchase marijuana in sanctioned state-approved shops, but, according to federal law, the drug is still illegal, and the Trump administration could choose on day one to start enforcing that law.
To help us understand the complexity of all this, I'm joined now by Taylor West, who is the deputy director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, and John Hudak, who studies drug policy, among other things, at the Brookings Institution.
Welcome to you both.
Taylor, I would like to start with you first.
Election Day had to be an enormous day for your industry. Do you think of this as a tipping point going forward?
TAYLOR WEST, Deputy Director, National Cannabis Industry Association: Absolutely. This was a watershed day for the industry of cannabis, but also for cannabis policy in the U.S.
We saw, as you said, eight states vote for some form of legal, regulated marijuana program. We now have 20 percent of the country living in a state that has access to legal marijuana, and more than 60 percent of the country living in a state that has legal access to medical marijuana.
This is in line with what we have seen from public opinion polls, so it really does reflect the direction that the country is moving on these issues.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: John Hudak, tipping point? Do you think this is just the inevitable roll of this sort of policy going out across the country?
JOHN HUDAK, Brookings Institution: This was absolutely the biggest day of the marijuana reform hands-down.
In terms of it being a tipping point, it's a bit hard to tell. I think, in the short term, we're not going to see much movement at the federal level. What happened in this election was big for marijuana. But what also happened was the status quo in Congress, the same leadership in Congress, who, frankly, is opposed to reform.
But what this change in the landscape of marijuana policy can do is to start to embolden the industry, to start to get the industry having a stronger voice, a more powerful voice, and a more powerful economic voice to eventually move policy in the right direction toward their interests in reform.
SUMMARY: There are more than 150 ballot initiatives this year at the state level, capable of creating huge change for voters. Nine states are voting on the legalization of recreational or medical marijuana. Other measures concern gun control, the minimum wage, and the death penalty. John Yang learns more from John Myers of the Los Angeles Times and Josh Altic of Ballotpedia for more.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Let's focus now on a different election story, ballot initiatives and measures at the state and local level. It's a big year for it. There are more than 150 at the state level this year.
John Yang has the story.
JOHN YANG (NewsHour): Next Tuesday, legalizing marijuana for medical or recreational use is on the ballot in nine states. And voters across the country will also decide other contentious issues, including gun control, health care and prescription drug costs, the death penalty, and the minimum wage.
We take a look at some of these issues with two people who are following them very closely.
John Myers is the Sacramento bureau chief for The Los Angeles Times, and Josh Altic tracks ballot issues for Ballotpedia, a nonpartisan online political encyclopedia.
Josh, John, thank you both for joining us.
John, let me start with you.
California, as usual, has a long list of ballot initiatives that voters have to decide next Tuesday. And let's start with marijuana. California voters approved marijuana for medicinal use in 1996, and rejected it for recreational use in 2010. Why is it back? And what's different this time?
JOHN MYERS, Los Angeles Times: Yes, I mean, it's a good question. Why is it back?
We're the largest state in the country. And I think there has been the sense that there is a sea change in the way Californians view this, I think, in some ways mirrored in other parts of the country as well, and certainly efforts in Colorado and Washington state have gotten a lot of attention here in California.
This measure, I will tell you, is drafted much differently than the measure that failed in 2010. It's more detailed. It has more details about taxes that are imposed at the state and local level on marijuana. And it's backed by a couple of very big people.
The Lieutenant Governor of the State, Gavin Newsom; and Sean Parker, the impresario behind Napster and Facebook in Silicon Valley, a wealthy financier, have both gotten behind it. It has a lot of institutional support. And the polling shows that it is doing pretty well.
How you get to legalization, I think California is watching these other state, but at this point, it looks voters are probably going to say yes.
JOHN YANG: And, Josh, what other states is this on the ballot in? And this is — we see oftentimes ballot initiates leading the way for federal law, federal policy. It's still illegal at the federal level. Could this be the tipping point this year?
JOSH ALTIC, Ballotpedia: There has been a lot of discussion about whether this is the year that will really push towards removal of federal prohibition.
You have it — so, 80 million people live in states this year where marijuana laws could be basically made more accessible to every person. So, you have recreational marijuana in Nevada, Arizona. Those are the big ones. Maine, Massachusetts, and, of course, California.
And while California stands kind of above the rest as a really significant landmark for the tipping point idea, the fact that you have five other states, more than we have ever seen on the ballot at the same time, considering the issue is an indication that this could be a really key year for the policy.
SUMMARY: It was an unprecedented meeting of the minds and it happened at Harvard Medical School. The subject of April's confab? Medical cannabis. Researchers suspect cannabis can do so many things, from fighting cancer to easing concussions and Crohn's disease. There are still tight restrictions but weed is increasingly coming into the scientific mainstream. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports.
MILES O'BRIEN, Science Correspondent: It's a landmark place, and time, on the long road to bring medicinal marijuana into the scientific mainstream.
The New England Treatment Access, or NETA, dispensary in Brookline, Massachusetts, is housed in a Beaux-Arts bank building built in the 1920s, a cathedral of cannabis.
Paul Breeden has been coming here to treat chronic pain since the dispensary opened in February.
PAUL BREEDEN (NETA client): I have been praying for this day all my life. I have been fighting for this day all my life. I'm a son of a minister. I believe God created marijuana. Humans don't know how God works.
MILES O'BRIEN: Look at that thing.
NETA is a nonprofit, serving about 7,000 medical marijuana customers now. The goal is to supply 10,000 on an ongoing basis. Besides dried flowers and buds that can be smoked, they offer pills, vapor cartridges, creams, tinctures, brownies, chocolates and lozenges.
PAUL BREEDEN: It's really part of sort of the normalization of medical cannabis. The days of Ziploc baggies are over.
MILES O'BRIEN: Norton Arbelaez is a NETA consultant who turned to medical marijuana after he contracted a staph infection 10 years ago.
NORTON ARBELAEZ, New England Treatment Access: I had quite a bit of pain. I was prescribed opiate painkillers. And I made a decision, a very conscious decision to not take them. So, I had to find a way to medicate otherwise. I did some research, and cannabis seemed like a good choice for me.
SUMMARY: The synthetic drug Spice is known as "fake pot," but its effects are completely different from marijuana. The hard-to-detect substances are often made in foreign facilities with an ever-changing cocktail of chemicals, meaning you can never be sure of what you're taking. This year, poison control hotlines have seen a record number of calls across the country. William Brangham reports.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Tonight, we have a story on the rise of the drug synthetic marijuana, commonly known as Spice or K2.
This year has seen a record number of calls to poison control regarding the substance, and law enforcement around the country are learning how to cope with the unpredictable, dangerous drug.
We now learn more about this deadly cocktail from “PBS NewsHour” correspondent William Brangham.
MAN: Tonight, a local teen's personal account of his addiction to the synthetic drug K2.
MAN: But this legal weed can have extreme, dangerous medical side effects.
MOLLY: I hit it two times.
MAN: Wrappers that look just like this.
MOLLY: And then I don’t remember anything.
WOMAN: Just as dangerous as pot, cocaine or meth, but one scary difference: Your kids can buy it at local stores.
MOLLY: I remember, I woke up in the hospital. My throat hurt so bad, and I was like, why is my throat hurting? And that was because they had to put a tube down my throat, because I couldn’t breathe.
WOMAN: Synthetic marijuana.
MOLLY: Then my mom told me what happened, and, apparently, I had a seizure at the park.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): Sixteen-year-old Molly is a resident at the Mountain Manor Treatment Center in Baltimore, and she’s here because of her experience using so-called synthetic marijuana, or what they call fake pot.
MAN: Synthetic marijuana comes with a quick and powerful high, but it comes with a price.SCIENCE - Reusable Rockets
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: These drugs have been in the news a lot lately, but, despite their street name, they’re not at all like actual marijuana.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): This week, the District of Columbia became the latest jurisdiction to decriminalize possession of marijuana. It’s part of a growing national trend. For the latest about all this, we’re joined by Melanie Eversley, a reporter for USA Today.
So, what’s the new rule specifically in D.C., you can’t just walk down the National Mall smoking marijuana now, right?
MELANIE EVERSLEY, USA Today: Right, right. Essentially, this law took effect on Thursday. It basically decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce of marijuana. So what that means is if you are caught with that on your person, instead of being subject to criminal penalties, what you would get is a $25 ticket, which is less than the cost of a parking ticket here in New York City.
It also changes a couple of other things. If police smell marijuana while they’re on their beat or whatever, they can no longer search a person for it. If they also find up to an ounce of marijuana on a person, they can no longer automatically search them, so it drastically changes things.
HARI SREENIVASAN (Newshour): A new state law takes effect in Colorado today, making it the first state to let anyone over 21 walk into a shop and legally buy recreational marijuana.
They lined up in Denver today for the state's first legal retail sales of recreational marijuana. The first customer at the 3D Cannabis Center was Sean Azzariti, an Iraq war veteran. He appeared in a TV ad saying pot would alleviate his post-traumatic stress disorder.
SEAN AZZARITI, Iraq War veteran: I couldn't be happier. It's a huge stepping stone for other states as well. It's a huge honor, to say the least.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Colorado voters approved recreational marijuana on a ballot initiative in 2012. Opponents argued the industry will lead to an increase in drug abuse and crime. But legalization advocates say sales will help generate revenue.
MASON TVERT, Marijuana Policy Project: I'm confident that these businesses will perform and will be good examples of how we can regulate marijuana.
MAN: Got some legal weed.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Under the law, buyers must be at least 21 years old. They may not use marijuana in public, drive under the influence, or take it out of the state. Pot also remains illegal under federal law. With that in mind, Denver International Airport has banned the substance.
WOMAN: This space is shared by federal agencies. We have TSA here. We have FAA. It's illegal on the federal front, and so it just makes sense for us to also participate and comply with that rule.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Washington State will implement its own legal marijuana industry later this year.
SUMMARY: The new year ushered in Colorado's first day of legal retail sales of pot. Ricardo Baca, the first ever marijuana editor at the Denver Post, joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the details of the law, how its measures are -- or are not -- being enforced and what it means for the culture at large.
SUMMARY: On Election Day, Colorado voters approved a ballot initiative making recreational marijuana legal, to be regulated and taxed by the state. But law enforcement officials anticipate regulation will be difficult, even with legalization, because pot is still illegal at the federal level. Colorado Public Radio's Megan Verlee reports.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): And to a post-elect story.
Voters in two states, Colorado and Washington, approved ballot initiatives allowing recreational use of marijuana.
Megan Verlee of Colorado Public Radio reports from Denver, a city that currently has more medical marijuana stores than Starbucks and McDonald's combined. Her story is another in our new collaboration with public media partners across the country in a series we call Battleground Dispatches.
Officials say three San Diego County bus drivers who may have eaten marijuana-laced brownies acted properly by pulling off the road.
Metropolitan Transit System spokesman Rob Schupp says three drivers—not four as previously reported—became ill Sunday while on their routes, possibly after eating pot-laced brownies distributed by another employee.
Replacement drivers were called in.
The employees were placed on administrative leave and given drug tests.
KGTV-TV (bit.ly/QGv5WF) reports that the brownies were baked by an employee's roommate and the worker apparently didn't know they contained pot.
City News Service says the transit agency investigated and determined that all of the employees involved acted appropriately.
MTS chief Paul Jablonski says the drivers followed procedures to the letter and supervisors acted quickly to protect the public.
On Oct. 13, heavily armed Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided Northstone Organics, a medical marijuana cooperative in Mendocino County. The farm is part of a county-wide program that remains the only effort in California to impose local controls on marijuana production. The program has generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees for the sheriff's department and has become a model for other counties looking to bring order to the medical marijuana industry.
The Center for Investigative Reporting and KQED examined Mendocino's experiment in legalizing medical marijuana cultivation in this summer's PBS FRONTLINE episode "The Pot Republic" and has obtained exclusive access to footage from the Oct. 13 raid.
Watch The Pot Republic on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.
MEDICAL MARIJUANA USER: I used to be on approximately 14 different prescriptions, and I would still have up to 12 seizures a day. I used to have to take two handfuls of pills. No more.
ANNA RAU, Montana PBS: While this 27-year-old epilepsy patient in Montana is relieved to be taking medical marijuana...
WOMAN: I'm not using it to get any psychological effects off of it. I'm just eating the butter raw with bread.
ANNA RAU: ... she's considerably more anxious about showing her face, and has requested we conceal her identity.
Why do you not want to show your face?
MEDICAL MARIJUANA USER: I am not comfortable showing my face because of all of discrimination that has already happened.
ANNA RAU: She says both she and her husband have lost jobs when she spoke openly about using marijuana to treat her seizures.
Medical marijuana use has been legal in Montana since 2004, when voters there approved an initiative allowing doctors to recommend it to their patients. However, the federal government still classifies the plant as a schedule one drug. That makes it illegal for doctors to prescribe it, and it means state law doesn't protect patients from federal arrest and prosecution.
MEDICAL MARIJUANA USER: But the fact of the matter is, somebody has to speak up, or nobody will hear these stories.
ANNA RAU: She told us her story in her artist's studio. Here, she creates much happier works than she did even a few years ago, when her self-portraits plainly showed the toll epilepsy had taken since she was diagnosed at 15.
MEDICAL MARIJUANA USER: I have taken pretty much every anti-epileptic on the market, and some with a little bit more success than others.
ANNA RAU: None of them stopped her seizures, and, by her early 20s, the epilepsy had also spawned depression, anxiety and insomnia. She had to withdraw from college just a few credits short of a fine arts degree. Unable to hold a job, she was bed-bound for years while the epilepsy ruled her life.
MEDICAL MARIJUANA USER: It's not a life, to live like that.
ANNA RAU: Then she remembered reading stories about the potential of cannabis to treat epileptic seizures, and she desperately wanted to try it, but her home state doesn't have a medical marijuana law.
MEDICAL MARIJUANA USER: So, I did what I could do. I moved to a state where I could treat it myself.
ANNA RAU: But the potential of marijuana to mitigate epileptic seizures has been recognized by the U.S. Institute of Medicine. The institute has released two reports on the therapeutic potential of cannabis.
The first report, from 1982, found "substantial evidence from animal studies to indicate that cannabinoids are effective in blocking seizures." Scientists who wrote the 1999 report also found marijuana had anti-seizure effects, but doubted it could be developed into a pharmaceutical-grade epilepsy drug.
However, both reports detailed the promising ability of cannabis to treat pain and disease differently than conventional pharmaceuticals. That's exactly what scientists at the California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research found during several placebo-controlled clinical trials.
Dr. Igor Grant is the center's director, and he says marijuana is not just an anti-nausea drug.
DR. IGOR GRANT, University of California, San Diego: I can say that the cannabinoids are almost certain to be useful in pain, based on the research that we have done, and probably have a place in muscle spasm.
DR. DONALD ABRAMS, University of California, San Francisco: Marijuana contains anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant and probably anti-cancer compounds in it.
ANNA RAU: Dr. Donald Abrams is an oncology physician who conducted some of the center's clinical research. He agrees the cannabis plant is a complex mix of substances, but he believes this is a medical benefit, not a detriment.
DR. DONALD ABRAMS: I'm a cancer doctor, and I often suggest to my patients that they consider marijuana for their loss of appetite, nausea, pain, depression and insomnia. It's one medicine they could use, instead of five.
ANNA RAU: Critics like Dr. Voth are especially skeptical of these kinds of claims. How is it possible that one plant has the potential to impact so many different ailments?
Intriguing answers started appearing in the early '90s, when researchers pinpointed receptors in the brain and the body that bind with cannabis. Receptors can be described as locks on the surface of a cell, and when the correct key binds with the correct lock, or receptor, it opens the door and delivers messages. Sometimes, the messages are urgent, for example, that the body is feeling pain, or that there's an invader and the immune system must attack.
Researchers believe cannabinoids can turn down those messages, helping to temper chronic pain and autoimmune disorders. These special receptors are extremely abundant in the brain, but they are also found all over the body and in the major organs, the heart, the liver, kidneys and pancreas.
After finding all these locks that accepted the cannabis key, researchers made the next big discovery: The human body makes its own cannabinoids.
DR. DONALD ABRAMS: We have these circulating chemicals that we produce ourselves that really are very, very similar to the chemicals in the marijuana plant.
DR. PRAKASH NAGARKATTI, University of South Carolina: The only difference is that the cannabinoids that we produce are in such small quantities, and they're also rapidly degraded, so that, therefore, we are not high all the time.
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ANNA RAU: Dr. Prakash Nagarkatti is a professor of pathology and microbiology at the University of South Carolina. He's one of many scientists in a race to unlock the mysteries of the receptors by using newly created synthetic drugs, instead of tightly restricted whole cannabis.
These synthetics have made research much easier and potentially lucrative. The U.S. patent database shows numerous large pharmaceutical companies have filed recent patents, claiming their cannabinoid receptor drug has the potential to treat almost everything: multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, rheumatoid arthritis, Tourette's, epilepsy, heart disease, obesity, various mental illnesses and the Holy Grail of medicine, a cancer cure.
Dr. Nagarkatti and his team of researchers were one of the first labs to prove a cannabinoid key can seek out a cancerous cell in the immune system, unlock the receptor, and direct the cancer cell to self-destruct.
Fifteen years after California voters legalized medical marijuana, state lawmakers are still struggling with how to regulate and tax what has become a billion-dollar industry fueled by the growing number of pot dispensaries up and down the state.
Lawmakers took steps recently to ban pot shops from residential neighborhoods and give local governments the authority to shut down problem operators. They also rejected proposals to reduce penalties for illegal pot cultivation and protect medical marijuana patients from workplace discrimination.
Some legislators and others who favor the easing of marijuana laws say those actions reflect a political disconnect on an issue that many Golden State residents now consider mainstream. The Legislature's piecemeal approach, they say, has resulted in a murky regulatory climate that strains law enforcement resources and deprives state coffers of much-needed revenue.
"As usual, legislators feel like they've gotta get tough," said Dale Gieringer, state coordinator for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "If there's a problem, we have to pass more laws for people to break. It's classic legislative syndrome."
But many city leaders, law enforcement officials and lawmakers counter that some sort of crackdown is necessary, especially in Los Angeles, where hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries opened with no oversight after the city initially failed to enforce a moratorium it imposed in 2007. Across California, shops are suing cities that step up enforcement, challenging local governments' right to regulate an activity approved by voters.
