LIHU‘E — A group seeking to start a national dialogue on the consequences of legalizing marijuana was in Hawai‘i last week for community meetings on potential impacts that it would have on public health and policy. “Personally, I do not
LIHU‘E — A group seeking to start a national dialogue on the consequences of legalizing marijuana was in Hawai‘i last week for community meetings on potential impacts that it would have on public health and policy.
“Personally, I do not support legalizing marijuana,” Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. said. “As with any issue, I believe that respectful and productive dialogue is always helpful, and education on all aspects of an issue is absolutely essential.”
Kevin Sabet, former senior advisor to the Obama Administration on national drug control policy, is the co-chairman of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, known as Project SAM.
Sabet, who has a doctorate in social policy from University of California, Berkeley and Oxford University, was on O‘ahu, Lana‘i and the Big Island to speak with community and lawmakers about practical solutions to problems that may occur by legalizing marijuana.
He didn’t come to Kaua‘i on this trip — SAM’s first official visit to the Hawaiian Islands — but The Garden Island caught up with him during a phone interview.
SAM is a nonpartisan alliance of lawmakers, scientists and concerned citizens who want a broader marijuana discussion than “incarceration versus legalization.” They see practical problems from legalization and criminalization and want dialogue on the unintended consequences of policies that lead to lifelong stigmas of marijuana-related arrests.
Marijuana proponents say state and local governments would have a strong tax base from municipal marijuana sales to fund public education. The same rationale was used to legalize gambling and create municipal liquor stores and it hasn’t worked, Sabet said.
“For every dollar we would gain in taxes we would lose 10 more in social costs,” he said.
Rather than promoting medical marijuana through smoking, SAM promotes research of medical properties to produce non-smoked, non-psychoactive pharmacy-attainable medications.
“People who need morphine don’t need to smoke opium,” Sabet said. “The science is better today and they can extract the medicinal qualities of marijuana without the THC.”
A marijuana growing industry on Kaua‘i would require massive amounts of fertile ground and water, he said. The chemicals that growers use to grow marijuana to high potency would have a negative impact on the environment and resources, he said.
Adults who had an experience with marijuana at a young age, reflect on the drug as harmless in small amounts, according to Sabet. They are misled, he said, because the potency of marijuana today is much stronger than the “weed” they were introduced to decades ago.
“We want to reverse the misconceptions about a drug that does not resemble what marijuana was 30 years ago,” Sabet said. “There are 400,000 people who went to the emergency room after using marijuana, and there are more kids in treatment for marijuana than for any other drug.”
Project SAM says that a “big marijuana” establishment would become the tobacco industry of the 21st century. Just as tobacco marketed to children, they claim a marijuana industry would work around regulations to attract the next generation of users.
Sabet came to Hawai‘i with former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, of Rhode Island, who became the Project SAM chairman after the two brainstormed their concern that the legalized marijuana movement was outpacing a rational debate on public health and policy.
“Kennedy called me and said we need a new conversation on marijuana in this country,” Sabet said. “We took a common sense approach and just looked at the science.”
“We decided to bring SAM to Hawai‘i to spur discussions about marijuana use and misuse,” said Kennedy in a press release. “The legalization of marijuana is moving fast in parts of the United States and it looks as though the domino effect could quickly move to other states such as Hawai‘i.”
Project SAM has concerns that legal marijuana is incompatible with children, the tourism industry, and the military in Hawai‘i.
Marijuana is the No. 1 drug of abuse for kids in school, Kennedy said. In Hawai‘i, 53 percent of high-school and middle-school teens who receive drug treatment, do so for marijuana. Youth who smoke marijuana have a one-in-six chance of becoming addicted and have significantly lower levels of IQ later in life.
“Hawai‘i’s rates of marijuana use are significantly higher than in the rest of the country,” he said. “And fewer kids in Hawai‘i think smoking marijuana is harmful compared to kids in the United States as a whole. I have seen firsthand the debilitating effects of marijuana addiction. It’s more than just the addict, it’s the families who suffer, too.”
Methamphetamine use has devastated families and communities like no other drug, Sabet said. Illegal prescription drug use has become a deadly pastime that is killing more people every year, with opiate overdoses and crime.
This has served to downplay marijuana but he said people who are predisposed to using substances tend to suffer from low-self esteem, have underlying mental health issues and will move on down a path to other drugs.
“I care about the health of children and the future of our society and a competitive workforce,” Sabet said.
Project SAM says marijuana legalization would impact Hawai‘i’s tourism industry by sending a message to visitors that the state embraces marijuana, Sabet said. This would be detrimental to attracting people from communities and countries that don’t share that view, and its use is still against military regulations and Hawai‘i has the highest per capital military spending in the country.
“Hawai‘i will become less family-friendly if marijuana is legalized, tourism will suffer and so will Hawai‘i residents’ quality of life,” Kennedy said.
• Tom LaVenture, staff writer, can be reached at 245-0424 or by emailing tlaventure@thegardenisland.com.
