NEW AD CAMPAIGN GIVES STRAIGHT DOPE ON MARIJUANA

TO BELITTLE the negative effects of marijuana use is to engage in dangerous
"reefer madness."

In essence, that is the timely and welcome message that the office of
National Drug Control Policy will spread in a new ad campaign that its
director, John Walters, announced last week.

New studies, not widely enough publicized, have shown that marijuana is
addictive -- despite "urban myth" to the contrary. Mr. Walters said that
more teens are addicted to marijuana than to alcohol and all other illegal
drugs combined. Matter of fact, pot affects the brain in ways quite similar
to cocaine and heroin.

Marijuana also contains up to five times as much tar and carbon monoxide as
tobacco does, and its long-term health consequences can be demonstrably worse.

Those facts are alarming. Despite them, though, some 20 percent of the
nation's eighth-graders have tried pot at least once -- twice as many as a
decade ago. As Mr. Walters said, "Youth popular culture has trivialized the
real harm of marijuana in kids."

To counteract that tendency, and to spread the truth, the drug control
office will join 17 education, public health, family advocacy and anti-drug
groups to sponsor the new ad campaign on TV and radio and in print media
and NFL stadiums and game programs.

As Surgeon General Richard Carmona put it, "Marijuana is not a rite of
passage but a dangerous behavior."

He's right. Here's hoping his message falls on receptive ears.