UNTIL 'GATEWAY' CASE IS CLOSED, POT SHOULD BE OFF-LIMITS

Peter B. Wilson has been crusading for years to legalize marijuana in
Arizona and thinks changes in the law couldn't come too soon.

That's partly self-interest. The Phoenix man will be sentenced next week on
nine drug counts and could be sent to prison.

But it's also because he's convinced that the nation's drug laws have done
more harm than good, especially as they apply to pot.

Wilson sent me a hot e-mail after I wrote that despite failures in the
nation's war on drugs, legalization wasn't the answer and could lead to
bigger problems.

He replied that it would be hard to imagine any policies creating more
problems than current ones.

"The war on drugs is a system that engineers refer to as a positive
feedback loop," said Wilson, who holds a degree in chemical engineering.

"It's what causes that unbearable squealing you sometimes hear in public
address systems. The politicians call for hiring more people to fight drugs
next year, which results in more people involved in distributing drugs next
year, which results in hiring more people the next year, which . . .

"The federal drug war has failed. It has increased the harmfulness of
drugs. The only result from war is violence, and that's what we're getting."

He asked: What is the government trying to accomplish by putting tens of
thousands of marijuana smokers in jail?

I agreed that many drug penalties are too severe, but added that some drug
experts consider marijuana a "gateway" drug, leading users to more
addictive and damaging ones.

"There have been all kinds of studies on marijuana, and none has showed it
to be a gateway drug," he said.

If things were only that clear.

Government studies have found that people who have smoked pot are 17 times
more likely to use cocaine than those who have not. And more than 90
percent of hard-drug users report that marijuana was their introduction to
drugs.

A pair of studies published in the journal Science last year cast further
doubt on the argument that pot is harmless and unrelated to other drug use.

One study, conducted by an American-Spanish team, reported that withdrawing
from long-term marijuana use produces the same biochemical changes
associated with withdrawal from harder drugs. Those changes can "prime" the
pot smoker's brain in a way that makes it more susceptible to other drug
abuse, according to the report.

In the second study, Italian researchers found that marijuana hits the same
pleasure centers in the brain as heroin and cocaine. Rats given intravenous
doses of heroin and THC (the principal active ingredient in marijuana)
showed a similar buildup of the brain chemical dopamine, which is crucial
to the "high" drug users seek.

The new findings strengthen the claim that pot can hook people. Those who
insist it has no addictive power might have a hard time persuading the
100,000 or so Americans who seek treatment annually for marijuana
dependence.

The research, however, isn't unequivocal. A study in the American Journal
of Public Health evaluated the health of 65,000 patients for more than a
decade and reported that "few adverse clinical health effects from the
chronic use of marijuana have been documented in humans."

While research suggests that pot often leads to harder stuff, the proof is
weak. An estimated 80 million Americans have tried marijuana, and most
haven't gone on to other drugs. Since teenage use of marijuana has shot up
this decade, the gateway argument says teen use of cocaine would as well.
But it has dropped by 50 percent.

Though I don't think people like Peter Wilson, who has two children, ought
to be thrown into prison, I also don't think the country would be in better
shape if Starbucks started serving cannabis along with cappuccino.

Smoking pot is a long way from shooting up heroin, but the research gives
reason to suspect a link. Until science says otherwise, both should stay
illegal.

Steve Wilson can be reached at 444-8775 or at steve.wilson@pni.com via
e-mail.