A former head of the FDA, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, made comments on the record regarding cannabis recently, and it’s full of stale old “ideas” about OFP. If the idea of this thread is to talk sense to people (who think) like him, I’m going to highlight the things we need to be prepared to counter.
Gottlieb said the caller’s comment raised the importance of differentiating legalization and decriminalization, arguing that legal cannabis systems pose public health concerns due to the potential impact of THC on brain development.
“I do think that we’re conducting a very large and potentially unfortunate national experiment in this country by making THC and marijuana so widely available, particularly seeing the rapid rise in youth use of THC,” he said. “There are going to be long-term effects from that on developing brains, seeing so many kids now using THC because of the legalization of these products and the retraction of any stigma associated with the use of these products.”
Right off the bat, Gottlieb gets busy churning up the legalization/decriminalization worm pot, and sounds confused doing it: he laments the risks of our “very large, uncontrolled experiment” - as if that same experiment hasn’t been running for 90 years, we get the danger to developing brains meme, and an imaginary increase in youth use...will no-one think of the children????
Then he goes in head-first on the legalization-decriminalization-regulation confusion:
But while Gottlieb made his opposition to legalization clear, he said the country “could look at decriminalizing marijuana, and there are valid reasons why we ought to do that from a public policy standpoint.”
“That discussion should be separate from legalization, particularly around recreational use,” he said.
“Two things: one, I think we ought to look at decriminalizing it,” he added. “People are arrested for possession of marijuana and face sentences that are oftentimes in excess of what they would receive for offenses that I think are far more significant and serious. You do see too many people I think developing significant criminal records for small possession charges of marijuana.”
He does at least make it clear he views decriminalization as an LEO stance, not as a change of law, which is much more than just ‘problematic’. For one thing, his remarks seem completely oblivious to the importance of the school-to-prison pipeline in maintaining the intergenerational balance of political power in the US.
He does end up showing us he’s not totally asleep, before slipping back into what are now anti-scientific prejudices:
While the former FDA official said that the country’s marijuana reform efforts should be limited to decriminalization, he also conceded that “ultimately we’re going to have to have a federal reckoning around” questions about differing state marijuana programs in contrast to federal law and the varying accessibility to cannabis that results.
“We’ve seen so many states move forward with different laws, many of which I believe are far too permissive from a public health standpoint in terms of making THC available to young people and making it available too widely that we’re going to want to have a federal regime that probably standardizes this and maybe puts in place more stringent safeguards around keeping these kinds of products out of the hands of particularly kids, where you have the biggest public health concerns and the biggest concerns around long-term implications of THC use,” he said.
Just for the record, Gottlieb is the only one talking about kids (explicitly and laboriously excluded from every from every cannabis ‘liberalization’ effort so far), his ‘reasonable public health concerns’ are found to be counterfactual and misplaced, and attempting to use “legalization” as a hammer with which to force more oppressive regulations has arguably failed overall (my opinion, based on news and opinions from the ‘legal’ states).
A single page rant might be satisfying, but most satisfying would be this person, this set of junk notions, actually getting it, so how do I do that? Probably by keeping it to ONE solid point per call/email/whatevs.
Try to boil it down:
- legalization, decriminalization, regulation
- outdated, unsupported unscientific consensus
- a reckoning between popular ignorance v science in law and in fed/state discrepancies
Okay, 3 is a good number, but I want to make sure I’m ‘slicing the pie’ properly and that last one seems hincky/off-balance...so I review again and add:
- doubling down on greater restrictions, ‘for the kids’
- the dangers of an “unregulated public experiment with cannabis“
...which makes five, but it feels tighter now (imagination?)
This gives me 5 well defined topics drawn from his recent comments. Each one can be addressed simply, briefly, and pointedly (yes, and politely). Each can be sent to each of my representatives, can be reinforced over time. They can be enhanced and elaborated at will as long as I stay focused on each point. Stay on message.
It’s not that this man is so important: it’s that we have to get through to people who aren’t on our side and who have their own plans, so I hope you’ll pardon this breakdown of an interview for rebuttal, it helps me clarify when I take things out and dust them off....
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Below is the full text of the MariMo article:
The former head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said that the country should consider decriminalizing marijuana and create a federal regulatory framework to “standardize” state-level cannabis markets. But he doesn’t personally back full-scale legalization.
During an appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal on Wednesday, Scott Gottlieb took a call from a Washington State viewer who said legalization was working well for the state and that it was a better system than incarcerating people for marijuana offenses.
Gottlieb said the caller’s comment raised the importance of differentiating legalization and decriminalization, arguing that legal cannabis systems pose public health concerns due to the potential impact of THC on brain development.
“I do think that we’re conducting a very large and potentially unfortunate national experiment in this country by making THC and marijuana so widely available, particularly seeing the rapid rise in youth use of THC,” he said. “There are going to be long-term effects from that on developing brains, seeing so many kids now using THC because of the legalization of these products and the retraction of any stigma associated with the use of these products.”
(Recent studies, including one published in JAMA Pediatrics last month, have indicated that
youth consumption actually decreases in states where cannabis is legalized, possibly due to regulations that keep underage consumers from purchasing marijuana.)
But while Gottlieb made his opposition to legalization clear, he said the country “could look at decriminalizing marijuana, and there are valid reasons why we ought to do that from a public policy standpoint.”
“That discussion should be separate from legalization, particularly around recreational use,” he said.
“Two things: one, I think we ought to look at decriminalizing it,” he added. “People are arrested for possession of marijuana and face sentences that are oftentimes in excess of what they would receive for offenses that I think are far more significant and serious. You do see too many people I think developing significant criminal records for small possession charges of marijuana.” The comments go further in support of decriminalization than when Gottlieb
signaled he supported the policy position last year, though they still fall short of an explicit endorsement.
The host asked Gottlieb if he’d discussed decriminalization with the White House during his time at FDA. He said he hadn’t “because my domain was largely public health and the discussion that I would typically get drawn into was the question around legalization and particularly around the youth use of these products.”
While the former FDA official said that the country’s marijuana reform efforts should be limited to decriminalization, he also conceded that “ultimately we’re going to have to have a federal reckoning around” questions about differing state marijuana programs in contrast to federal law and the varying accessibility to cannabis that results.
“We’ve seen so many states move forward with different laws, many of which I believe are far too permissive from a public health standpoint in terms of making THC available to young people and making it available too widely that we’re going to want to have a federal regime that probably standardizes this and maybe puts in place more stringent safeguards around keeping these kinds of products out of the hands of particularly kids, where you have the biggest public health concerns and the biggest concerns around long-term implications of THC use,” he said.
“I suspect we’re a couple of political cycles away from doing that—not because of a Republican or a Democratic issue, this is not necessarily a partisan political issue,” he said. “I think it’s just going to take the federal government more time to catch up to what’s going on in the states.”
