This DEA tweet accidentally reveals one of the big arguments for legalizing marijuana

Updated by German Lopez@germanrlopezgerman.lopez@vox.com 

The Drug Enforcement Administration heads the nation’s drug war. As part of that, it’s done a lot to push messaging that marijuana is dangerous — at times struggling to admit that pot isn’t as dangerous as heroin.

On Tuesday, the DEA’s Twitter account put out a chart making the case for why this kind of messaging is, in its view, necessary:

CHALLENGE: Over the long term its proven that the perception of drug harm is correlated w/use, a trend that's going in the wrong direction pic.twitter.com/2IJJHS5rCR

— DEA HQ (@DEAHQ) January 9, 2017

In the DEA’s interpretation, this chart shows there a correlation between perceptions of risk and a drug’s use. Sure enough, the chart largely exemplifies that: As the perceived risk of tobacco rose, its use among 12th graders declined. And there’s a similar, although not quite as clean, story with pot, with marijuana use among 12th graders going up and remaining relatively flat as risk perceptions have dropped.

But there’s another reading of this chart that the DEA in particular won’t like — one that argues against the DEA’s work in prohibiting marijuana and cracking down on its use.

Tobacco, after all, has been legal for the entirety of the DEA’s chart. Yet all this time, the perception of how risky it is has gone up and its use has declined. That’s because of various policies, including education campaigns, mandatory warning labels, public and workplace smoking bans, and higher taxes on tobacco products.

Marijuana, meanwhile, has remained illegal on the federal level. Yet, as the DEA’s chart shows, its use has continued fluctuating and perceived risk has continued dropping despite the hundreds of thousands of arrests each year for pot possession.

Source:
https://finance.yahoo.com/m/1a045979-2387-3dcf-8cf4-fe9826bd0e5e/this-dea-tweet-accidentally.html