CHAPTER ONE
Marijuana: Politics, Partisanship,
and Demagoguery
He who knows only his side of the case, knows little of that . . .
(but) wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and
argument.
—John Stuart Mill1
Every year, more than 480,000 Americans die as a result of using
tobacco.2 In 2014, alcohol use resulted in the deaths of 88,000 Ameri-
cans,3 including 9,967 people killed in alcohol-related traffic collisions.4
Alcohol was used before 32 percent to 50 percent of all homicides5 and
was a major factor in more than 33 percent of sexual assaults,6 nearly
25 percent of violent crimes,7 and 66 percent of intimate violence.8
According to the Cato Institute, when these figures are translated into
deaths per 100,000 users, “tobacco kills 650, alcohol 150, heroin 80,
cocaine 4.”9 To date, there have been no reports of marijuana as the pri-
mary cause of death.10
If a Martian were to visit the United States tomorrow and be shown
these statistics, he might be surprised to learn that of three substances—
tobacco, alcohol, and drugs—only drugs, including marijuana, are crimi-
nalized. The Martian might also be surprised, indeed bewildered, to learn
that even though alcohol and tobacco were legal substances and even sub-
sidized, American society was willing to lose $180 billion annually,11
arrest and incarcerate hundreds of thousands of American citizens for
drug offenses (further overcrowding prisons already beyond capacity and
