A DRUG WAR FOUGHT ON IDEOLOGY

A drug war fought on ideology alone when
science says marijuana is medically useful
the antipot warriers turn deaf.

Darn, the facts do get in the way. What are the drug warriors to do
now that the most thorough scientific survey ever of the medical
consequences of marijuana use concluded this: Marijuana eases pain and
quells nausea in cancer and AIDS patients and isn't addictive or a
gateway to harder drugs.

"Withdrawal symptoms are relatively mild and shortlived," according to
the report of the federal Institute of Medicine, and "there is no
conclusive evidence that marijuana acts as a 'gateway' drug."

But if the effects of marijuana smoking are no more threatening than
smoking cigarettes, as the panel of 35 experts announced last week
after an 18 month study commissioned by federal drug czar Barry R.
McCaffrey, then why is the cultivation, trade and use of pot regarded
as a crime?

Each year, more than half a million Americans are arrested on
marijuana related charges even though, as this report confirms, their
use of the drug poses no substantial risk to themselves or society.
That also has been the conclusion of every other serious study of the
effect of marijuana.

Eighty million Americans have used marijuana and most have shown no
inclination to move on to harder drugs or to act in antisocial ways.
But the huge and highly profitable antidrug war industry is hooked on
marijuana as justification for its enormously expensive and disruptive
crusade. That's how they get the alarming numbers of "drug users,"
which masks the fact that harder drug use has declined and effects a
much smaller percentage of the population.

This explains why McCaffrey, who heads the White House Office of Drug
Enforcement, now dissembles instead of facing up to the policy
implications of a report he commissioned. When he announced this study
two years ago, it was in an effort to counter claims of those who had
successfully rallied voters in seven states to pass referendums
legalizing the medical use of marijuana.

At the time, McCaffrey, calling for "science not ideology" to settle
the medical marijuana debate, predicted the therapeutic claims made
for the drug would prove bogus and confirm his oftrepeated statement
that marijuana is the major gateway drug.

But McCaffrey was proved wrong on both counts.

Marijuana, as has been widely acknowledged throughout the world for
thousands of years, is a relatively benign euphoric. It was grown and
used by our founding fathers and was legal throughout most of this
great nation's history. It is certainly less harmful than alcohol,
which kills 100,000 people a year, or cigarettes, which account for
four times that number of deaths.

McCaffrey should now concede that marijuana is not a gateway drug and
that its use should be decriminalized. Instead, he acknowledged only
the report's warning that smoking harms the respiratory system. Which
argues that if marijuana is ingested through a vaporizer or in a baked
brownie, it is safe. Anyway, we don't arrest people for smoking
tobacco, preferring education over imprisonment as a means of persuasion.

Our drug war is based on lies that confuse rather than educate the
public, particularly the young. Better to tell them the truth: Any
drug can be abused, be it marijuana, cigarettes or beer.

But truth is abhorrent to the drug war hawks in Congress. Rep. Bill
McCullum (RFla.), who chairs the House subcommittee on crime,
condemned the current report, saying, "When smoking a dangerous and
highly addictive drug is labeled 'therapeutic,' we are sending the
wrong message to our youth." He obviously had not bothered to read
even the summary of the report that clearly concludes that marijuana
is not "highly addictive."

For drug war veteran Rep. Bob Barr (RGa.), this is just the problem:
The scientists wasted our money because they came to the wrong
conclusions. Barr, who has led the fight to spend $11 billion a year
on the drug war, condemned this scientific study as an egregious waste
of funds: "You cannot consistently send a message to our young people
that the use of mindaltering drugs is wrong and at the same time spend
nearly $1 million of taxpayers' hardearned money to fund studies
looking for ways to justify the legalization of marijuana."

No, much better to spend many times that amount locking up those same
taxpayers for preferring marijuana to bourbon. Madness can properly be
defined as a state of mind in which facts and logic are of no consequence.
What better way to describe our failed drug policy?

Robert Scheer Is a Times Contributing Editor. Email: Rscheer@aol.com