Field groups unite to seek more direction from feds on marijuana legalization

A number of provider and advocacy organizations in the addiction field want more specific answers from the U.S. Department of Justice about its recently announced stance on state marijuana legalization measures such as the ones in effect in Colorado and Washington.

In a Sept. 4 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Deputy Attorney General James Cole, these groups offer a united condemnation of the Obama administration’s decision not to block enforcement of the laws, stating, “It will result in serious negative consequences, both economic and social, and will create several major obstacles to reducing drug use and its impacts in the Unite d States.”

Organizations represented in the coalition signing the letter include NAADAC, The Association for Addiction Professionals, the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), the National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP), the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD), and Treatment Alternatives for Safer Communities (TASC).

The letter’s first signature is that of former U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, co-founder of Project SAM: Smart Approaches to Marijuana, whose mission is to define a middle ground between a criminal justice-based approach to marijuana use and outright legalization.

While the Justice Department in its recent guidance to U.S. attorneys indicated the need to monitor the new state laws to determine whether they are establishing sufficient safeguards against outcomes such as increased underage use, the groups signing the letter want more direction on how that monitoring will unfold. Some of the questions they pose in the letter include:

·        “Precisely how many additional underage marijuana users, marijuana-related driving injuries and fatalities, marijuana-related school dropouts, and other marijuana-related public health and safety consequences will be required to trigger federal intervention?”

·        Will the administration increase funding in the president’s FY 2015 budget to oversample federal surveys in legalization states and for additional prevention, treatment, enforcement, and recovery services that will be required to deal with increased problems?”

The letter states that many of these negative effects already are surfacing in the states whose voters last year embraced legalizing recreational use of marijuana. It asks the Justice Department to reply in writing with more information on its intended monitoring effort.