“I oppose marijuana legalization because I worry about stoned drivers”
On Wednesday I pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming while I was reading a news report about Sen. Dianne Feinstein telling the Associated Press that she opposed the legalization of marijuana. To my surprise, I was not dreaming.
Sen. Feinstein gave two reasons for her opposition to the legalization of pot:
(1) Feinstein is concerned about stoned drivers. "The risk of people using marijuana and driving is very substantial."
(2) Feinstein said that during the ‘60s, when she served on the California Women's Board of Terms and Parole, she saw how marijuana led to bigger problems for many women inmates. "I saw a lot of where people began with marijuana and went on to hard drugs."
Proponents of pot legalization were quick to label Feinstein as wrong-headed and they accused her of being a DINO (Democrat in name only). They claim that legalization of pot would actually make driving safer:
In fact, since alcohol impairs driving ability more dramatically than marijuana does, legalizing pot might actually reduce traffic fatalities, to the extent that more pot smoking is accompanied by less drinking.
And of course, the proponents of pot also discredited Feinstein’s concern about pot as a gateway drug:
The "gateway drug" theory espoused by Feinstein is at least 63 years old, and it is no more credible today than when Federal Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner Harry Anslinger was citing it as a reason to fear marijuana.
The preposterous contention that legalizing pot could reduce traffic fatalities indicates the people who came up with this outrageous fairy tale were stoned when they made it up. And the gateway drug theory is a good reason to be concerned about marijuana because that theory has been discredited only by the proponents of pot. While it is true that many marijuana users do not graduate to the use of harder drugs, it is also true that almost all hard drug users began their use of drugs with marijuana.
Based on my experience as a former law enforcement officer and criminal justice educator, I say Sen. Feinstein is absolutely correct on both counts. And to the pot legalization advocates who labeled her wrong-headed, I say better a wrong-head than a pothead.
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