TARGETING MARIJUANA

Marijuana should not be the main focus of U.S. drug war
efforts, as advocated by drug czar John Walters.

U.S. drug czar John Walters, in Los Angeles this week to kick off the
federally backed U.S. Cities Initiative to slash drug use, cited
marijuana as a prime focus of his concern. The source of concern: A
national survey Mr. Walters pointed to that shows more than 22 percent
of Los Angeles teens had smoked marijuana in the last month, much
higher than the percentage (14.5 percent) that had smoked cigarettes.

Mr. Walters justified his focus on marijuana, rather than on harder
drugs, by explaining that marijuana potency has dramatically increased
over the past three decades. His message to parents of teens: This is
not the same marijuana that many of them had smoked when they were
younger.

That point, however, is controversial. According to the official U.S.
marijuana potency monitoring project at the University of Mississippi,
commercial-grade marijuana potency, measuring key ingredient THC, has
increased from an average of 3.71 percent in 1985 to an average of
5.57 percent in 1998. Even the feds call this a slow increase, which
makes it hard to believe Mr. Walters' claim that marijuana is
substantially different in nature than it was decades ago.

As Kevin Zeese of Common Sense for Drug Policy points out, that change
in potency is quite small. An increase in potency mainly reduces the
amount of marijuana one smokes, he added, calling Mr. Walters'
comments a "scare tactic."

What's really going on here?

The main goal of targeting marijuana is to provide a broad enough base
of "users" to justify more federal efforts and more taxpayer funding.
Mr. Walters and local Los Angeles-area officials joined together to
push for congressional approval of a $100 million anti-drug effort.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca even told National Public Radio
that an increase in the local sales tax is necessary to help pay for
such endeavors.

Rather than throw marijuana in with heroin and other hard drugs to
justify more law enforcement efforts and higher taxes, the U.S. drug
czar ought to make important distinctions.

We are not justifying marijuana use, but the goal should be improving
public health, not upping the drug-war ante.