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Entertainment - No more beer at Giants Stadium? |
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Written by Paul Armentano
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Wednesday, 08 February 2006 |
It’s time for a kinder bud than booze
There was less “buzz” than usual during the NFL season’s final regular
season Monday night football game between the New York Jets and
defending Super Bowl champion New England Patriots and it had little to
do with the Jets’ dire season record.
Following a string of violent incidents between
rowdy football fans during the team’s previous games, including
stabbings, Giants Stadium officials made the call to halt beer sales.
Jets spokesman Ron Colangelo could not have been more blunt: “It’s for
the safety of our fans.”
The Dutch secret to keeping the peace: a clamp down on alcohol and regulated access to cannabis.
Alcohol’s long-standing association with aggressive
behavior begs the comparison to another social lubricant, cannabis.
No credible research has shown cannabis use to be a
causal factor in violence, aggression or delinquent behavior, dating
back to the U.S. government’s First Report of the National Commission
on Marijuana and Drug Abuse in 1972, which concluded, “In short,
marijuana is not generally viewed by participants in the criminal
justice community as a major contributing influence in the commission
of delinquent or criminal acts.” (The Commission also recommended that
Congress remove all criminal and civil penalties on the possession of
small amounts of the herb.)
A more recent Canadian Senate review reaffirmed:
“Cannabis use does not induce users to commit other forms of crime.
Cannabis use does not increase aggressiveness or anti-social behavior.”
“Cannabis differs from alcohol in one major respect.
It does not seem to increase risk-taking behavior,” stated the British
Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in its 2002 report recommending
the depenalization of cannabis. (Parliament eventually did so two years
later.) “This means that cannabis rarely contributes to violence either
to others or to oneself, whereas alcohol use is a major factor in
deliberate self-harm, domestic accidents and violence.”
British soccer fans recently experienced this first
hand after their team’s loss to Portugal at the Euro 2000 tournament in
the Netherlands. According to news reports, the British fans, whose
reputation for post-game, alcohol-fueled tirades is known worldwide,
took the loss without incident and not a single fan was arrested after
the match. The Dutch secret to keeping the peace: a clamp down on
alcohol and regulated access to cannabis.
It’s a lesson we can pay heed to here in America, as well.
* Paul Armentano is a policy analyst at NORML, the
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. www.norml.org
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Paul Armentano |
| About the author: |
| Paul Armentano, 28, has been writing on drug policy, film, health reform, and other issues since 1994. His writing resume includes more than 120 published articles in textbooks, academic journals, newspapers, magazines, and on the Internet. His most recent short story, "Reflections of a Hitchhiker," is featured in the collection, Where The Road Leads (Chapbooks for Learning, 1999). |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 10 August 2006 )
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