(Alexandria, VA) -
Today, a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing entitled “Cannabis Policies for the New Decade.” Witnesses included government officials skeptical of the widespread normalization of marijuana. By contrast, marijuana industry supporters in Congress are using the hearing as a springboard for industry-backed legislation that would bypass the research process entirely by legalizing the drug at the federal level.
Dr. Kevin Sabet, president of
Smart Approaches to Marijuana
(SAM) and a former senior drug policy advisor to the Obama Administration, submitted
written testimony
to the committee and released the following statement in response to the hearing:
“Today, Congress should listen hard to the serious concerns about marijuana that our government’s top scientists will entail. The move to legalize marijuana has gone far ahead of the science surrounding the drug. This is evident by the ongoing marijuana vaping crisis and should be cause for concern for lawmakers at both the state and federal level. Of course, we should also favor expanded research to further the scientific knowledge of marijuana, especially since today’s highly potent products have not been adequately studied. Given what we already know about low potency marijuana, it’s time to hit pause on advancing the commercialization and use of this drug.
“The National Academies of Science
reviewed
thousands of studies on low-potency marijuana use and found significant links to serious mental health issues – including schizophrenia, anxiety, depression and suicide. Prolonged use has also been shown to lower IQ and motor function and can cause particular damage to the developing brains of young people. As it stands, the jury is out as to what effect the use of high potency – 99% THC – marijuana has on the human brain. But it’s hard to imagine it is any good.
“We would be much better off learning the results of such experiments under the careful watch of researchers, rather than rushing blindly into commercialization. There is a right way and a wrong way to go about meaningful and responsible research, and we do not need to legalize the drug to study it – anymore than we need to legalize heroin to understand that drug. We should instead focus on reducing barriers to make marijuana research easier, while warning the general population about its increasing harms.”
###
