In WaPo, Chris Ingram shares one striking chart that shows why pharma companies are fighting legal marijuana. In short, “in the 17 states with a medical-marijuana law in place by 2013, prescriptions for painkillers and other classes of drugs fell sharply compared with states that did not have a medical-marijuana law.” This isn’t just about pot and opioids. It’s about the power of lobbying and professional messaging to skew public policy and opinion. Thanks to big pharma maneuvering and the false rhetoric of the drug war, we prohibit one drug while pushing others that are about a zillion times more dangerous (I’m a Humanities major, but I’m pretty sure my math is right). A tenet of the anti-drug movement has been to warn of the risk of gateway drugs. For thousands of people, prescription opiates have been a gateway to the graveyard while, as far as I can tell, marijuana is at most a gateway to laughing hard at jokes that aren’t that funny.