One of the interesting parts of this is this concept of the relative harms of tobacco, cannabis, and alcohol. The task force itself, the McLellan task force, found, as has every other major study, that relatively speaking, cannabis has less health impact on anybody than does alcohol or tobacco.
Interestingly, if we're going to talk about the developing brain, why aren't we talking about raising the age of consuming alcohol in this country, if that's the case? If the brain's developing and a 19-year-old can drink a bottle of scotch every single night, I can tell you that after five straight years of doing that, they're going to have brain damage. They're going to have cirrhosis of the liver, potentially. They're going to have all sorts of problems. We don't criminalize that. We don't say, you face a 14-year penalty in jail because of the developing brain when it comes to alcohol.
What is motivating my amendments here today is trying to situate cannabis. If we're going to legalize it, then situate it based on the evidence, in an appropriate manner, comparing it with other substances that we want to restrict to adults, which we know have potential health consequences. It doesn't make any sense, though, to retain 14-year criminal penalties for cannabis and not to have those for alcohol or tobacco, and that's exactly the absurdity of this provision.