BUZZ KILL

First, it was Office of National Drug Control Policy Director John P.
Walters contending last week that of the "roughly 7 million people we
have as an estimate that need treatment because of dependence or abuse
of illegal drugs, roughly 60 percent are dependent on marijuana."

To which Bruce Mirken, director of communications for the Marijuana
Policy Project on Capitol Hill, responded that Mr. Walters was being
"deliberately and rather brazenly disingenuous," because the majority
of medical-treatment admissions he cited "were referred by the
criminal justice system -- i.e., kids were arrested and offered
treatment instead of jail."

Now it's Thomas A. Riley, spokesman for the Office of National Drug
Control Policy, telling Inside the Beltway readers not to buy into Mr.
Mirken's "goofy spin." Mr. Riley argues that one cannot talk about the
drug-dependency problem in this country today without acknowledging
the "role" of marijuana.

"It's a much more serious drug of abuse than many people of my
generation realized," he says. "People can differ about policies here,
but there is no serious dispute about the facts, however inconvenient
or harmful they may be for people who want to legalize marijuana."

As for Mr. Mirken's arguments, Mr. Riley counters that the best U.S.
government estimate of the number of Americans suffering from
marijuana dependency is based on applying certain criteria to the
large number of people surveyed annually about their personal drug
use.

"It has nothing to do with the number of 'arrests' -- just what the
people themselves said about their drug use," says Mr. Riley, although
he acknowledges of these particular polls' error margins. "Maybe the
pot smokers in the survey were too stoned or confused to answer
accurately."