Opinion: Regulate marijuana in accordance with risk, not fear

Intoxication of any kind must be treated seriously.

When people in altered states of mind engage in public activities that require a clear head and sharp reflexes, like driving, we are all at risk.

We have collectively acknowledged this problem and written laws to keep us safe — and that’s a good thing — but we continue to unnecessarily delineate our legal and social approaches toward alcohol and marijuana, two drugs with the potential for both sensible use and harmful abuse.

As far as the public good goes, there is little distinguishing the pernicious effects of alcohol from those of marijuana. They both exist, certainly, but do not differ enough in degree to justify an outright ban on one and not the other.

Studies have shown the addictive properties of both alcohol and caffeine to be generally stronger than those of marijuana.

Either both marijuana and alcohol should be legal or neither should.

This legal discrepancy is reinforced by social norms wherein social drinking is encouraged while the idea of responsible marijuana use is rarely entertained. Such a double standard is again reflected in our laws, which attempt to regulate alcohol’s effects ex post facto and marijuana’s by banning it outright.

These norms themselves are rooted in relatively recent myths pertaining to marijuana’s supposed effects. It was falsely linked to, among other things, infertility, insanity and the more vaguely defined “reefer madness.”

Alcohol, on the other hand, has deep historical roots stretching back millennia in most dominant western cultures. It is often associated with friendship, relaxation and general enjoyment of the surrounding atmosphere.

Even extreme drunkenness tends to be viewed with a respect rarely afforded to the stoned. Where binge drinking is dealt with as a crisis of public health, drug addiction seems to be perceived as one of criminality or moral failure.

To understand why this double standard is harmful, it is necessary to consider intentional efforts in the latter half of the 20th century to criminalize drug use, particularly in predominantly black communities. This had the effect of binding drugs like marijuana to racially coded fears of gang violence and breakdowns in law and order — all while powder cocaine enjoyed immense popularity in wealthy white communities.

Between 2001 and 2010, white and black people used marijuana at similar rates, yet black people were more than three times as likely to be arrested for marijuana-related offenses. This suggests that the law’s enforcement mechanism, in addition to the law itself, is fundamentally flawed.

Legalizing marijuana will not solve the problem of mass incarceration — it might indeed lead to an uptick in use and incidents of driving under marijuana’s influence.

But if safety is our goal, we must do our best to remove ourselves from our cultural, racial and legal prejudices and legislate mind-altering substances in ways that do not unfairly punish users of one drug or fail to take the effects of others seriously enough.

Given historical precedent and cultural inertia, a return to the outright prohibition of alcohol will not occur.

As long as this is the case, marijuana should be legalized and regulated. Nothing about the drug or its effects suggest regulation efforts would be more or less successful than efforts to regulate alcohol.

Trends in this direction are promising. In the meantime, towns like Chapel Hill and Carrboro should choose, on a municipal level, to police drug use more equitably.

On an unrelated note, Chapel Hill town officials should also consider granting more food truck permits.