DRUG CZAR'S STAND ON MARIJUANA BELIED BY FACTS

To the Editor of The Day:

I recently heard US Drug Czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey speak at the Aqua Turf
Club in Southington, and I take issue with his statements there about marijuana.

Gen. McCaffrey told us that the criminal sanctions for drug use must remain
in place, and that the most dangerous drug in America is marijuana. This,
despite the recent findings of the Institute of Medicine report his own
office commissioned, which found marijuana to be not very harmful, not very
addictive, and not a "gateway" to harder drug use ("Marijuana and Medicine:
Assessing the Science Base," (http://www.drugsense.org/iom_report/).

Attendees received the "Statewide Interagency Substance Abuse Plan" for 1999
prepared by the Connecticut Alcohol and Drug Policy Council (CADPC), which
mentions that, according the 1996 Adult Household Survey conducted, 32
percent of Connecticut residents reported lifetime use of marijuana, and 3
percent reported using marijuana in
the past 30 days. It also says there are 2,537,535 adults in the state of
Connecticut. According to the statistics in this plan, Connecticut is home
to at least 76,000 regular adult marijuana users and 812,000 adults who have
used marijuana at some point in their lives. These numbers are doubtless
low, because the Drug War climate encourages respondents to be less than
truthful in reporting their own "crimes."

Now, I doubt that all or even most of those 76,000 thousand regular
marijuana smokers statewide are bad people in need of criminal convictions
for marijuana posession under current Connecticut state law, much less
desperate "pot addicts" in need of forced treatment for marijuana addiction.
Yet, according to a recent study by the General Assembly's Office of
Legislative Research, Connecticut arrests over 8,000 people per year for
marijuana "crimes." ("Marijuana Statistics",
http://www.cga.state.ct.us/olr/marchreports/99-R-0384.htm)

It's time that the General Assembly follow the recommendations of the
Connecticut Law Revision Commission's 1997 report on drug policy
(http://www.cga.state.ct.us/lrc/DrugPolicy/DrugPolicyRpt2.htm), and
decriminalize posession of less than one ounce of marijuana by adults over
the age of 21.

Perhaps in doing so the state can free up valuable resources needed to
combat real problems of addiction and drug abuse, programs for which,
according to CADPC, are desperately underfunded.

Mike Gogulski, Hamden

Mike Gogulski is a founding member of the Connecticut Cannabis Policy Forum
(http://www.ccpf.org/), and Editor
for the Media Awareness Project of DrugSense (http://www.mapinc.org/)