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CNN Sunday Morning
Interviews With Ethan Nadelmann, John Walters
Aired October 06, 2002 - 11:14 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: The state of Nevada is known for its tolerant stands on prostitution and gambling. Both are legal there. Now, the state is about to take a gamble on another taboo issue -- marijuana. This election day, state voters will decide if pot should be legalized for private use. So far, Nevadans are split on the issue. A recent poll by the "Las Vegas Review" journal found that 55 percent of likely voters oppose the proposal. Only 40 percent favor it.
Ethan Nadelmann supports the measure, and he is executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a group that promotes alternatives to the war on drugs, and he joins us from New York. Good to see you, Nathan (sic).
ETHAN NADELMANN, DRUG POLICY ALLIANCE: Good morning, Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: All right. So if Nevadans agree, it would mean that Nevadans could have three ounces of marijuana, and it would be perfectly legal. They wouldn't be sent to jail. Why is that amount the agreed upon amount to be on the ballot, and why even make this push, Nathan (sic)?
NADELMANN: Well, my name is Ethan, Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: Ethan, I'm sorry.
NADELMANN: That's OK. I think basically what you see happening in Nevada is something we're going to see more and more around the United States. It is a lot like what happened during alcohol prohibition in the United States in the late 1920s. You know, a number of states started to repeal their own alcohol prohibition laws on the weight of the repealing the 18th Amendment, the national alcohol prohibition amendment, and at the same time internationally, the United States was increasingly isolated. We were almost alone in alcohol prohibition, and other countries either never adopted it or were turning their back.
It's the same thing today. You look around the world, you see Switzerland is probably going to legally regulate marijuana next year. Last week, the Canadian prime minister said it's time to decriminalize. In England two months ago, the home minister said let's do the same thing. It's not just the Netherlands anymore, it's a range of countries, and what you see in the United States, in Nevada especially, is more and more people saying that this war on marijuana, it doesn't make any sense, that half of the drug arrests in this country for marijuana doesn't make any sense. I mean, we live in a country where half of all Americans between the age of 20 and 50 have smoked marijuana. We can't even find a presidential candidate who will say that he never smoked marijuana, so the notion of locking people up, having the police waste resources in this area really makes no sense.
WHITFIELD: But isn't the argument also if you allow the legalization of marijuana, then what stops you from the decriminalization of any other narcotic? Why stop at marijuana if you allow the legalization of one drug, and that means it opens the floodgates for the arguments of all the others?
NADELMANN: Fredricka, it's hard to imagine that there's any kind of slippery slope here. I mean, one could have said, you know, 80 years ago that if you legalized alcohol, the next thing you would be doing is legalizing heroin.
The advantage in Nevada is that this is a ballot initiative. It means that the voters have a chance to vote on this. It is a very clear choice for them. Shall marijuana continue to be subjected to criminal prohibitions with people being arrested and thrown behind bars, or not? Will the state government be charged with trying to set up a responsible way for regulating this, or not? Will the medical marijuana initiative that was implemented and voted into effect a few years ago in Nevada, will that be implemented honestly or not?
I mean, I think that's the real question here. Fredricka, the other question, by the way, though, is over the last number of year, almost every state in the West voted to make medical marijuana legal, that marijuana should be legal for medical purposes.
Now, this is something where 70 percent of Americans believe that marijuana should be legal for medical purposes, and the tragedy is that the federal government has refused to abide by the will of the people. Just a few weeks ago in California, federal police agents raided a hospice, 85 percent of the people are terminally ill, arrested paraplegic patients. You know, President Bush likes to talk about compassion and compassionate conservatism -- we don't see any evidence of that. (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
WHITFIELD: Well, is the bottom line of this argument that you feel as though the decriminalization of this amount of marijuana would also help to promote some relief in what are now overcrowded jails and prisons, because a good more than half of the inmates in many of these jails, particularly in your state as well, are dealing with, you know, drug offenses, and is this really the bottom, you know, line of your argument?
NADELMANN: Yeah, because you have to understand most of the people supporting this, this is not a pro-marijuana initiative. This is an initiative to say it's stupid, it's crazy, it's a waste of money, a waste of lives, a waste of police resources to be locking people up.
You know, there's going to be other initiatives as well in Ohio and in Washington, D.C.. They are initiatives that have nothing to do with marijuana. They are simply about substituting treatment for incarceration for non-violent drug possession charges (ph).
WHITFIELD: Critics of this issue are also arguing that it's certainly sending -- the legalization of marijuana in any amount is sending the wrong message to young people.
NADELMANN: Well, I'll tell you this, it seems to me that the current policy of, you know, the federal drug czar and the other people in Washington waving the flag and yelling how dangerous marijuana is, I mean, the bottom line is, nobody has better access to marijuana in America today than teenagers. It is true today; it was true 10 and 20 years ago, and in all likelihood, it will be true 10 years from now.
So those who say that it is sending the wrong message to kids, I say the current policy is sending the wrong message to kids. We're telling kids that somehow alcohol and cigarettes are safer? I think we're sending kids a message that it's OK to be hypocritical about drug policy because of the moral prejudices and biases of those people in Washington.
WHITFIELD: All right, Ethan Nadelmann, thank you very much. I appreciate it.
NADELMANN: OK.
WHITFIELD: Well, the legalization of marijuana does not have the support of the Bush administration. And joining us live from Washington is John Walters, the U.S. drug czar. He heads the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Good to see you.
JOHN WALTERS, HEAD, WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY: Nice to be with you.
WHITFIELD: All right, well, is it going to be your concern that if Nevadans do agree that it is OK to possess at least three or no more than three ounces of marijuana, that perhaps this is going to set the tone for the ongoing battle on the federal level, and that perhaps with one state going on board, this might weaken federal law?
WALTERS: I think our concern is that it's going to weaken the situation in Nevada for people who live there. The federal government's not going to repeal its laws because they are protecting young people, especially. I think we have a lot of ignorance here that I'm trying -- my office is responsible for correcting.
Today, of the six million people who need treatment for drug dependency or abuse, 65 percent are dependent on marijuana. Most baby boomer parents, most Americans don't know that. And the charge that our jails are all full of people with marijuana possession -- 20 percent of the people in state prisons, the largest system in the country, are there for drug charges. Most of them are dealers, and those who are there for marijuana possession who largely pled down are less than .5 percent.
There is a con going on here about, one, marijuana is safe, that we're not controlling it, that it's not a threat. Today, more young people are seeking treatment for marijuana than for alcohol. Today, 60 percent of the people who are teenagers seeking treatment are seeking it for dependency on marijuana. It's more dangerous. The potency of marijuana today, when it was less than 1 percent THC content, the psycho-active ingredient in the '70s, today it's 7 percent to 14 percent, and with new hydroponically developed strains, it goes up to 30 percent. This is not your father's marijuana. And that's what's causing the problem.
WHITFIELD: You heard Ethan Nathanson (sic), who said that, you know, this mandate is archaic, and at this point the wrong message is being sent to young children because nothing has changed. How do you respond to him when he says that already, you know, there is access, whether you're a teenager or whether you're a young adult, and access is certainly not the problem, but you're sending the wrong message by not allowing the law to evolve with the lifestyles that are evolving?
WALTERS: Well, I think there's two points. One is, first of all, yes, we think that the availability of marijuana is too great, but it's not as available as I think some people like to say. There's a lot of concern that, yes, it's too available, but it's not like alcohol and, yet, today we have a serious problem with marijuana. If we made it more available, do we think the pathology would get smaller, the number of people addicted, the number of teens involved would be smaller? No, it would be larger.
But secondly, it's the attitude. We have to correct the attitude that this is medicine, that this is simply as safe as alcohol and tobacco. I mean, we already have 55 million people who are cigarette smokers and over 100 million who are users of alcohol. We have problem drinkers and certainly are concerned about the health consequences of cigarettes, but we have 16 million people who are users of drugs, most of that is marijuana. Now, would the 16 million grow or would it shrink if we decriminalized it? And secondly...
WHITFIELD: Well, isn't it -- go ahead, sorry, make your second point.
WALTERS: And secondly, I mean, we try to control cigarettes and alcohol, but still many more kids have access to cigarettes and alcohol. So the way in which the disease of addiction is spread is by non-addictive users. They're the carriers of this disease. If we unleash non-addictive use, we are going to increase the spread of the disease of addiction, so instead of six million people, we'll have something more approximate to the 55 million smokers or the number of problem drinkers we have.
WHITFIELD: Well, how do you respond to those who say that a mixed message is being sent, if some are allowed to use marijuana for medicinal purposes, then those are going to -- you know, those people are going to argue that it's not hurting their bodies. There's nothing wrong with it. It doesn't impair their ability. Then why address this issue to the majority of the population and say, it does impair your abilities, it is dangerous and no one should be using it?
WALTERS: Yeah, I think that's part of the con here that's frankly going on here. Marijuana is not medicine, and I wish it was because we could eliminate the dispute. We regulate variants of cocaine, variants of opium for medical purposes that are proven.
There is one ingredient in marijuana that is medically efficacious and is allowed to be prescribed, but smoked marijuana is not a medicine. It's failed to meet the criteria we use to have efficacious medical treatment, and we have the best medical system in the history of humankind.
I wish we could say it was, but it's not and it's misleading to tell people that because some people claim it helps them or some people say it makes them feel better when they're dying it's medicine. A lot of people feel better with many things when they're dying. That is snake oil.
Many people who are dying of smoking-related cancers smoke up to the end because cigarettes make them feel better, but it would be outrageous for cigarette companies to claim that makes tobacco medicine and we ought to give it to people.
The fact is, I would like to save smoked marijuana -- we're doing research to isolate elements of it that are medicine. But there is a dimension of this issue that is the con and it's extremely cruel, using suffering people to suggest that this is efficacious medicine. It has three to five times as much tar and carbon monoxide as cigarettes, smoked marijuana does. It suppresses the immune system. It is a dangerous carcinogenic substance, and it's not medicine.
WHITFIELD: All right, well, John Walters, drug czar, thank you very much. And we will find out whether Nevadans are agreeing with you or not because they will be voting on that ballot on the issue, question number nine and it is November 5. All right. Thanks very much. I appreciate it.
WALTERS: Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired October 6, 2002 - 11:14 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: The state of Nevada is known for its tolerant stands on prostitution and gambling. Both are legal there. Now, the state is about to take a gamble on another taboo issue -- marijuana. This election day, state voters will decide if pot should be legalized for private use. So far, Nevadans are split on the issue. A recent poll by the "Las Vegas Review" journal found that 55 percent of likely voters oppose the proposal. Only 40 percent favor it.
Ethan Nadelmann supports the measure, and he is executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a group that promotes alternatives to the war on drugs, and he joins us from New York. Good to see you, Nathan (sic).
ETHAN NADELMANN, DRUG POLICY ALLIANCE: Good morning, Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: All right. So if Nevadans agree, it would mean that Nevadans could have three ounces of marijuana, and it would be perfectly legal. They wouldn't be sent to jail. Why is that amount the agreed upon amount to be on the ballot, and why even make this push, Nathan (sic)?
NADELMANN: Well, my name is Ethan, Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: Ethan, I'm sorry.
NADELMANN: That's OK. I think basically what you see happening in Nevada is something we're going to see more and more around the United States. It is a lot like what happened during alcohol prohibition in the United States in the late 1920s. You know, a number of states started to repeal their own alcohol prohibition laws on the weight of the repealing the 18th Amendment, the national alcohol prohibition amendment, and at the same time internationally, the United States was increasingly isolated. We were almost alone in alcohol prohibition, and other countries either never adopted it or were turning their back.
It's the same thing today. You look around the world, you see Switzerland is probably going to legally regulate marijuana next year. Last week, the Canadian prime minister said it's time to decriminalize. In England two months ago, the home minister said let's do the same thing. It's not just the Netherlands anymore, it's a range of countries, and what you see in the United States, in Nevada especially, is more and more people saying that this war on marijuana, it doesn't make any sense, that half of the drug arrests in this country for marijuana doesn't make any sense. I mean, we live in a country where half of all Americans between the age of 20 and 50 have smoked marijuana. We can't even find a presidential candidate who will say that he never smoked marijuana, so the notion of locking people up, having the police waste resources in this area really makes no sense.
WHITFIELD: But isn't the argument also if you allow the legalization of marijuana, then what stops you from the decriminalization of any other narcotic? Why stop at marijuana if you allow the legalization of one drug, and that means it opens the floodgates for the arguments of all the others?
NADELMANN: Fredricka, it's hard to imagine that there's any kind of slippery slope here. I mean, one could have said, you know, 80 years ago that if you legalized alcohol, the next thing you would be doing is legalizing heroin.
The advantage in Nevada is that this is a ballot initiative. It means that the voters have a chance to vote on this. It is a very clear choice for them. Shall marijuana continue to be subjected to criminal prohibitions with people being arrested and thrown behind bars, or not? Will the state government be charged with trying to set up a responsible way for regulating this, or not? Will the medical marijuana initiative that was implemented and voted into effect a few years ago in Nevada, will that be implemented honestly or not?
I mean, I think that's the real question here. Fredricka, the other question, by the way, though, is over the last number of year, almost every state in the West voted to make medical marijuana legal, that marijuana should be legal for medical purposes.
Now, this is something where 70 percent of Americans believe that marijuana should be legal for medical purposes, and the tragedy is that the federal government has refused to abide by the will of the people. Just a few weeks ago in California, federal police agents raided a hospice, 85 percent of the people are terminally ill, arrested paraplegic patients. You know, President Bush likes to talk about compassion and compassionate conservatism -- we don't see any evidence of that. (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
WHITFIELD: Well, is the bottom line of this argument that you feel as though the decriminalization of this amount of marijuana would also help to promote some relief in what are now overcrowded jails and prisons, because a good more than half of the inmates in many of these jails, particularly in your state as well, are dealing with, you know, drug offenses, and is this really the bottom, you know, line of your argument?
NADELMANN: Yeah, because you have to understand most of the people supporting this, this is not a pro-marijuana initiative. This is an initiative to say it's stupid, it's crazy, it's a waste of money, a waste of lives, a waste of police resources to be locking people up.
You know, there's going to be other initiatives as well in Ohio and in Washington, D.C.. They are initiatives that have nothing to do with marijuana. They are simply about substituting treatment for incarceration for non-violent drug possession charges (ph).
WHITFIELD: Critics of this issue are also arguing that it's certainly sending -- the legalization of marijuana in any amount is sending the wrong message to young people.
NADELMANN: Well, I'll tell you this, it seems to me that the current policy of, you know, the federal drug czar and the other people in Washington waving the flag and yelling how dangerous marijuana is, I mean, the bottom line is, nobody has better access to marijuana in America today than teenagers. It is true today; it was true 10 and 20 years ago, and in all likelihood, it will be true 10 years from now.
So those who say that it is sending the wrong message to kids, I say the current policy is sending the wrong message to kids. We're telling kids that somehow alcohol and cigarettes are safer? I think we're sending kids a message that it's OK to be hypocritical about drug policy because of the moral prejudices and biases of those people in Washington.
WHITFIELD: All right, Ethan Nadelmann, thank you very much. I appreciate it.
NADELMANN: OK.
WHITFIELD: Well, the legalization of marijuana does not have the support of the Bush administration. And joining us live from Washington is John Walters, the U.S. drug czar. He heads the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Good to see you.
JOHN WALTERS, HEAD, WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY: Nice to be with you.
WHITFIELD: All right, well, is it going to be your concern that if Nevadans do agree that it is OK to possess at least three or no more than three ounces of marijuana, that perhaps this is going to set the tone for the ongoing battle on the federal level, and that perhaps with one state going on board, this might weaken federal law?
WALTERS: I think our concern is that it's going to weaken the situation in Nevada for people who live there. The federal government's not going to repeal its laws because they are protecting young people, especially. I think we have a lot of ignorance here that I'm trying -- my office is responsible for correcting.
Today, of the six million people who need treatment for drug dependency or abuse, 65 percent are dependent on marijuana. Most baby boomer parents, most Americans don't know that. And the charge that our jails are all full of people with marijuana possession -- 20 percent of the people in state prisons, the largest system in the country, are there for drug charges. Most of them are dealers, and those who are there for marijuana possession who largely pled down are less than .5 percent.
There is a con going on here about, one, marijuana is safe, that we're not controlling it, that it's not a threat. Today, more young people are seeking treatment for marijuana than for alcohol. Today, 60 percent of the people who are teenagers seeking treatment are seeking it for dependency on marijuana. It's more dangerous. The potency of marijuana today, when it was less than 1 percent THC content, the psycho-active ingredient in the '70s, today it's 7 percent to 14 percent, and with new hydroponically developed strains, it goes up to 30 percent. This is not your father's marijuana. And that's what's causing the problem.
WHITFIELD: You heard Ethan Nathanson (sic), who said that, you know, this mandate is archaic, and at this point the wrong message is being sent to young children because nothing has changed. How do you respond to him when he says that already, you know, there is access, whether you're a teenager or whether you're a young adult, and access is certainly not the problem, but you're sending the wrong message by not allowing the law to evolve with the lifestyles that are evolving?
WALTERS: Well, I think there's two points. One is, first of all, yes, we think that the availability of marijuana is too great, but it's not as available as I think some people like to say. There's a lot of concern that, yes, it's too available, but it's not like alcohol and, yet, today we have a serious problem with marijuana. If we made it more available, do we think the pathology would get smaller, the number of people addicted, the number of teens involved would be smaller? No, it would be larger.
But secondly, it's the attitude. We have to correct the attitude that this is medicine, that this is simply as safe as alcohol and tobacco. I mean, we already have 55 million people who are cigarette smokers and over 100 million who are users of alcohol. We have problem drinkers and certainly are concerned about the health consequences of cigarettes, but we have 16 million people who are users of drugs, most of that is marijuana. Now, would the 16 million grow or would it shrink if we decriminalized it? And secondly...
WHITFIELD: Well, isn't it -- go ahead, sorry, make your second point.
WALTERS: And secondly, I mean, we try to control cigarettes and alcohol, but still many more kids have access to cigarettes and alcohol. So the way in which the disease of addiction is spread is by non-addictive users. They're the carriers of this disease. If we unleash non-addictive use, we are going to increase the spread of the disease of addiction, so instead of six million people, we'll have something more approximate to the 55 million smokers or the number of problem drinkers we have.
WHITFIELD: Well, how do you respond to those who say that a mixed message is being sent, if some are allowed to use marijuana for medicinal purposes, then those are going to -- you know, those people are going to argue that it's not hurting their bodies. There's nothing wrong with it. It doesn't impair their ability. Then why address this issue to the majority of the population and say, it does impair your abilities, it is dangerous and no one should be using it?
WALTERS: Yeah, I think that's part of the con here that's frankly going on here. Marijuana is not medicine, and I wish it was because we could eliminate the dispute. We regulate variants of cocaine, variants of opium for medical purposes that are proven.
There is one ingredient in marijuana that is medically efficacious and is allowed to be prescribed, but smoked marijuana is not a medicine. It's failed to meet the criteria we use to have efficacious medical treatment, and we have the best medical system in the history of humankind.
I wish we could say it was, but it's not and it's misleading to tell people that because some people claim it helps them or some people say it makes them feel better when they're dying it's medicine. A lot of people feel better with many things when they're dying. That is snake oil.
Many people who are dying of smoking-related cancers smoke up to the end because cigarettes make them feel better, but it would be outrageous for cigarette companies to claim that makes tobacco medicine and we ought to give it to people.
The fact is, I would like to save smoked marijuana -- we're doing research to isolate elements of it that are medicine. But there is a dimension of this issue that is the con and it's extremely cruel, using suffering people to suggest that this is efficacious medicine. It has three to five times as much tar and carbon monoxide as cigarettes, smoked marijuana does. It suppresses the immune system. It is a dangerous carcinogenic substance, and it's not medicine.
WHITFIELD: All right, well, John Walters, drug czar, thank you very much. And we will find out whether Nevadans are agreeing with you or not because they will be voting on that ballot on the issue, question number nine and it is November 5. All right. Thanks very much. I appreciate it.
WALTERS: Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
