NORML: 'This Week in Weed: March 7th-11th (New Hampshire Moves Towards Decriminalizing Marijuana)'

Source:NORML- New Hampshire is supposed to be the live free or die state.

"This week in weed: new research looks into how availability and legality of alcohol effects cannabis use and New Hampshire is on its way to decriminalizing marijuana possession." 

From NORML 

"Denver, CO: Many adolescent consumers of cannabis increase their use of alcohol and decrease their use of marijuana shortly after turning 21 years of age, according to data published in the Journal of Health Economics.

A team of international investigators from the United States and Mexico estimated the causal effect of legal access to alcohol on marijuana consumption.

They reported: "Our results show that alcohol and marijuana are substitutes. At age 21, we observe a sharp increase in alcohol consumption but a decrease in marijuana consumption. … Our estimates suggest that the MLDA (minimum legal drinking age) at age 21 decreases the probability of having consumed alcohol in the past 30 days by 16 percent and increases the probability of having consumed marijuana by 10 percent. … This suggests that policies that restrict access to alcohol cause an increase in marijuana consumption."

Authors stated that this purported substitution effect "is substantially stronger for women than men."

They concluded, "Our results show that legal access to alcohol causes a significant decrease in marijuana use among young adults close to the age of 21."

Separate studies of older cannabis consumers in states with limited legal access to both marijuana and alcohol yield a less consistent trend, with data indicating that many subjects that consume cannabis use reduced levels of alcohol or other intoxicating substances. For example, a 2011 study of qualified medicinal cannabis consumers in California found that respondents’ "prevalence of alcohol use was significantly lower" than that of the general population.

Most recently, authors of November 2011 Institute for the Study of Labor paper, "Medical Marijuana Laws, Traffic Fatalities, and Alcohol Consumption," determined: "[The] legalization [of cannabis] is associated with a nearly nine percent decrease in traffic fatalities, most likely due to its impact on [reduced] alcohol consumption."

For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director, at: paul@norml.org. Full text of the study, "The effect of alcohol availability on marijuana use: Evidence from the minimum legal drinking age," appears online in the Journal of Health Economics." 

Source:Toronto Star- with a report about marijuana.

From NORML

If it wasn't for the frigid winters in New Hampshire where you can get 6 months of winter there, I would consider living in New Hampshire, assuming I'd consider ideology when deciding where I should live. Because of New Hampshire's live free or die motto, I'd fit in very well there ideologically as a Classical Liberal (or real Liberal) where it's if anything it's considered to be cool to be a Constitutional Conservative, Classical Liberal, Libertarian even, instead of feeling like you were looked at like you're from Planet Mars, if you were in Greenwich, New York or San Francisco, just because of your constitutional beliefs. 

Decriminalization of marijuana in any state is a good first step, especially considering the alternative would be arrest, jail, conviction, prison, and perhaps leaving prison being addicted to other drugs or getting an extended sentence because you commit further felonies that are probably drug related as well. 

The first step is never a completion or the end of the story. It means you've taken the first step in the right direction. We should be treating marijuana like alcohol, tobacco, and other narcotics that are currently legal in America, simply because all these narcotics have similar consequences. Actually, tobacco might be the worst of them. But also because we shouldn't as a country arrest people for what they do to themselves, or what they might do in the future. We should only be arresting people when they hurt innocent people.