FEDS' MYTHS ABOUT MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Studies Dispel Arguments That Passage Of Prop. 215 Led To Increased Teen
Drug Use

FOUR YEARS AGO, when Californians were about to vote on Proposition 215,
the medical marijuana initiative, opponents predicted that if seriously ill
patients were allowed to use marijuana, recreational use among young people
would increase. Drug czar Barry McCaffrey warned: "Teens stop using drugs
when they become aware of the risks involved. Sending them the wrong
message that marijuana is medicine will cause drug use to skyrocket."

Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services released its annual
National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. As a Californian and mother of a
16-year-old boy, I read with keen interest the data on teenage use of
marijuana.

Here's what I learned. In 1999, just under 8 percent of the nation's 12- to
17-year-olds used marijuana regularly. In California, the percentage was
identical. Despite the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes in
the Golden State, in each subsequent year California teenagers have ranked
about average compared to the rest of the country.

In 1997, the year after the initiative passed, almost 7 percent of
California teenagers used marijuana regularly, compared with nearly 9
percent nationwide. And in 1998, there was not much difference, with just
over 7 percent of California's 12- to 17-year-olds using marijuana
regularly, compared with 8 percent of the nation's teenagers.

As it turns out, the sky did not fall, and the predicted spike in marijuana
use among teenagers never materialized. But Californians would never know
it, because we're not supposed to.

In 1997, immediately after the passage of the medical marijuana initiative,
a study was commissioned by the federal govern ment's Substance Abuse and
Mental Health Services Administration to demonstrate the (presumably
negative) implications of Proposition 215. But the results of that study
indicated that although marijuana use rose among high school students in
other parts of the country, use actually leveled off in California after
passage of the initiative.

The report was suppressed, and according to its author, Professor Rodney
Skager of the UCLA Graduate School of Education, "I wonder if (the report)
will ever see the light of day. Two years have passed since delivery of the
first draft. People in the sponsoring agency undoubtedly fear the
consequences of release of the data. The findings are politically incorrect
because federal propaganda about the medical marijuana initiative insisted
that passage would send the wrong message to young people."

Indeed, young people are getting all kinds of "wrong messages" about
marijuana. And many are confused, which is not surprising. As high school
civics teachers lecture about democracy, students are witnessing a
thwarting of "the will of the people" in the name of protecting them.

Last week, the Supreme Court weighed in. By a 7-to-1 vote, the court
responded to an "emergency" request by the Department of Justice to
prohibit the Oakland Cannabis Buyer's Cooperative from distributing
marijuana to its (fewer than 20) medical necessity patients who are
extremely, even terminally ill.

Evidently, the Clinton administration pursuaded most Supreme Court justices
that medicinal use by the sick and dying will result in compromising our
ability to enforce our drug laws and marijuana-is-evil posture. The one
dissenting voice was that of Justice John Paul Stevens, who said the
government "has failed to demonstrate that the denial of necessary medicine
to seriously ill and dying patients will advance the public interest or
that the failure to enjoin the distribution of such medicine will impair
the orderly enforcement of federal criminal statutes."

Justice Stevens is right. If the statistics collected by our government
tell us anything, it is that there is no relationship whatsoever between
providing medicine to sick people and erosion of our ability to enforce our
drug laws.

Last year alone, some 700,000 individuals were arrested on marijuana
charges (87 percent for simple possession) -- more than any other year in
our history, and more than any other country in the world. As for "the
public interest," marijuana use in the general population remained constant
last year, if not in decline.

If any messages have been sent to young people, they are that our system of
government does not reflect voters' decisions when those decisions are
inconsistent with federal dogma. The reality is that medical marijuana,
this small step toward rational drug policy, has not resulted in increased
teenage use or in fewer arrests in the general population. What surely has
increased among young people is cynicism and mistrust of our government's
drug policy.

Marsha Rosenbaum, Ph.D., directs the San Francisco office of the Lindesmith
Center- Drug Policy Foundation, www.drugpolicy.org, an institute based in
New York.