DOPE ALARM

POT POTENCY POSES NEW RISK

The marijuana kids smoke at Snoopp Dogg concerts today is not the same
pot their parents or grandparents used at Woodstock. Hydroponic
growing techniques, in which the marijuana plant is cultivated in
nutrient-rich solutions, and the selective use of seeds have produced
a more potent form of marijuana that is showing up in cities and small
towns across the country. Pot confiscated by police today has 66
percent more THC, its active ingredient, than the pot seized in the
1980s. It has five times the THC of marijuana smoked in the 1970s.

As the potency has increased for one of the nation's most popular and
widely used illicit drugs, there has been a correspondingly sharp
increase in the number of marijuana-related emergency room visits by
young pot smokers. The number of 12-to 17-year-old youths admitted to
hospitals because they had an adverse reaction to marijuana tripled
between 1994 and 2001, the last year for which federal officials
provide figures. They cite a number of different reason for the
hospitalization. "Unexpected reaction" to the drug is the most common,
followed by "overdose, chronic effects and accident or injury."

It's not just young people who are affected by the new high-octane
pot. A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical
Association this month reports an 18 percent increase in marijuana
abuse and dependency over the last decade. Both young people and those
aging baby boomers who continued smoking pot beyond their college and
young adulthood report problems of concentration and with performing
tasks that they did not have in the past, and more difficulty weaning
themselves from the drug.

While overall use rates remain fairly stable among adults - 4 percent
of Americans 18 years or older report using pot about the same as in
surveys in the early 1990s, -use among Hispanics and blacks has
increased dramatically. Researchers offer a number of
explanations.

Because pot use is high among college students, increased minority
college attendance may account for their greater use of the drug.
Also, a crackdown on underage drinking and tobacco use and the higher
costs of cigarettes may have had the unintended effect of steering
low-income users to marijuana.

All of this argues that Americans should think again about the
pervasive notion that marijuana is relatively harmless. A growing body
of evidence suggests that today's marijuana is not just more potent
than that smoked by the baby boomers, but more cause for concern as
well.