The other side of legal weed: Kennedy who battled addiction argues against legalization

Legalizing marijuana while the country is battling an opioid addiction epidemic would be like throwing gasoline on a fire, former Rep. Patrick Kennedy said as he joined pot opponents from New Jersey and around the country for a Washington news conference.

Along with physicians and neurologists who talked about the harm posed by marijuana and its active ingredient, THC, state Sen. Ronald Rice and the Rev. Jethro James, both of Newark, said legalization would hurt cities and the minorities who dominate their populations.

During Friday's event, Kennedy stressed that corporate interests looking to profit from marijuana are touting civil liberty and social justice arguments while the long-term costs to mental and physical health, as well as programs such as Medicaid, are not getting appropriate attention.

"If everybody's now looking at pharma and saying they got us into this mess because they had unscrupulous practices of selling more OxyContin than were needed, because they were making bigger profits, and the more people they got hooked, the higher those profits would be, why would we ... say, well, let's repeat that mistake and instead of oxys we’ll have all these new forms of a new addictive drug, THC?" Kennedy said.

Some public polls show support for legalization has grown: A recent Monmouth University poll put support at 59 percent, up from 48 percent in 2014. Kennedy argued that people do not understand that marijuana products are more potent now, or that they are sold as elixirs and candies as well as loose weed that could be smoked.

The son of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, Patrick Kennedy was treated for cocaine use in his youth and for OxyContin addiction in 2006, while he was representing Rhode Island in Congress. He now lives in Brigantine, and along with serving on the White House Opioid Commission that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie led last year, he is an honorary board member of the group Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), which is battling legalization efforts around the country.

Kennedy said he has voiced his objections to Gov. Phil Murphy, a fellow Democrat who wants pot legalized in New Jersey, but not to Sen. Cory Booker of Newark, another Democrat who is sponsoring a bill that would repeal the federal prohibition and let states set their own policies.

On Friday, Booker posted a video arguing that legalization would “correct for massive injustices” caused by the racial disparity in arrests and convictions for marijuana possession and use.

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“We already have marijuana legalization for privileged people in this country,” Booker said. “But it’s a very different reality in communities like the one in which I live, in which lives have been destroyed for doing things that presidents have admitted doing.”

In an interview, Kennedy said it was a false argument that the only choice is between keeping the current system of criminal penalties and full legalization. He said SAM supports revamping laws so users get access to treatment rather than criminal punishment, and argued that advocates for profiting from selling pot are trying to make full legalization the only option.

He also said SAM is not funded by the pharmaceutical industry, as some have charged. But he said that should not matter as much as whose arguments are right.

Rice, a state senator and former Newark councilman who battled with Booker over city politics, is sponsoring a bill that would remove criminal penalties for small amounts of marijuana but would not create a system of legalized, regulated and taxed sales.

Rice said that if there were such a system, the stores selling it would not be in Monmouth County, where Murphy lives, but in places like Newark, where residents might have to deal with increased crime as people look for cash to buy drugs.

“What offends me the most is not so much … what white folks who are trying to make money and white folks who have other agendas are doing, what disturbs me the most is what black leaders are doing,” Rice said.

He said advocates for legalization are using the prison disparity arguments but will not agree to release people who were imprisoned for violating marijuana laws.

“We’re being told that we need to legalize marijuana primarily because it’s a social justice issue,” Rice said. “It’s insulting, because you’re telling me that even though I shouldn’t be in jail, you’re not going to turn me loose unless I help you make some money.”

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