Kevin Sabet, the anti-marijuana legalization activist who formerly advised the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations on drug policy, has a new interview out with Vox in which he explains why he opposes “Big Marijuana.”
Sabet, who heads the anti-legalization “Smart Approaches to Marijuana,” (SAM) tends to argue against marijuana from a somewhat unusual standpoint: lumping marijuana into the anti-GMO cause, for example, by warning that legalization would facilitate “GMO marijuana.”
He told Vox that the only reason other “vices” like tobacco and alcohol are legal “is because of their cultural place in history. Alcohol, for example, dates back to before the Old Testament in terms of widespread use in Western culture.”
“Yes, marijuana has been used in Western and other cultures for a very long time,” he continued, “But in terms of widespread use by the vast majority of the population, that is alcohol and, in the past century or two, tobacco. So we’re sort of stuck with those things.”
Sabet returned to this point later, suggesting again that the only reason alcohol should remain legal, and pot illegal, is that “so many people drink regularly and it’s been in our culture forever. Tobacco use is close to being eliminated in the US, but it’s still around abroad. Whereas with marijuana, you don’t have this global use that you do with alcohol and tobacco.”
He said the power of the marijuana industry in Colorado “troubles” him, and this his “biggest concern is creating Big Marijuana — sort of like Big Tobacco.” Sabet essentially believes that Americans don’t have the capacity to legalize and consume things responsibly:
He does, however, want to decriminalize the drug. “I absolutely think we should remove criminal penalties for use,” he said. “I absolutely think we should not be penalizing someone with an arrest record so they can’t get job.”
He also supports some form of legalization for medical use. “Like I’ve always said, we don’t need to smoke opium to get the effects of morphine,” he explained. “Similarly, we shouldn’t have to smoke marijuana to get its potential medical effects.”
SAM calls itself the “nuanced,” bipartisan effort against pot legalization. “The reason we formed SAM with the support of many medical organizations is to get the evidence out there on marijuana’s problems with mental illness, school performance, etc,” said Sabet. “And we want to warn the American people against promoting this new tobacco-like industry.”
