THE WAR ON KIDS

In a series of raids March 16 the DEA took down several East Bay
facilities -indoor grow sites and kitchens- at which cannabis-laced
candies and sodas were produced for distribution through
dispensaries. Twelve people were arrested, including the alleged
honcho, Ken Affolter. Considerable care and skill had gone into the
preparation and packaging of their "Pot Tarts," "Munchy Way" bars,
"Toka-Colas," etc. The labels stated, "contains cannabis... for
medical purposes only." The confectioners were arraigned in federal
court and are being held pending a bail hearing next week.

According to DEA Special Agent Lawrence Mendosa, "the real concern is
for public safety.

If a four-or five-year old who is too young to read finds this in a
house, picks it up and eats it thinking it's real candy, it could be
disastrous." SA Mendosa's scenario plays out very, very rarely.

Overdosing on pot-laced candy would be extremely unpleasant for a
child (ending in a long, deep sleep) but it would only turn
disastrous if the grown-ups involved sought help at an ER. Then they
could be arrested for child-endangerment and lose their kid(s) to the
foster care system.

While law enforcement pours enormous resources into possibly saving a
few children from inadvertently ODing on cannabis, the intentional,
systematic drugging of U.S. children by the pharmaceutical companies
escalates. A study by William Cooper, MD, and co-workers in the
March-April issue of Ambulatory Pediatrics concludes that, as of
2002, some 2.5 million children under age 18 had been prescribed
powerful anti-psychotic drugs such as Seroquel, Abilify, and
Risperdal. Cooper reports that doctors are prescribing antipsychotic
meds routinely for treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder and behavioral problems that don't rise to the level of psychosis.

Comparing data from two national surveys, Cooper and his team at
Vanderbilt University's Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital found
that the prescription of antipsychotics to U.S. children rose from
below a rate of one in 100 in 1995-1996 to one in 25 in
2001-2002. If the trend has continued to the present -and
advertising and promotion of antipsychotics suggests that the rate at
which they're prescribed has probably increased-one in 10 kids in the
U.S. have had these pharmaceutical atomic bombs dropped in their brains.

In the seven years covered by the study, children made 5.7 million
visits to doctors who gave them prescriptions for antipsychotics; 53%
were written for behavioral and affective problems (as opposed to
schizophrenia). The dramatic rise in prescribing can be attributed to
the aggressive marketing of Risperdal and other "atypical"
antipsychotics, which supposedly have fewer side-effects than older
ones like Thorazine. Cooper points out that the newer drugs have
adverse effects of their own -obesity, diabetes, heart problems- and
their effectiveness in treating behavioral problems has never been
tested. "These are really powerful medications," says Cooper, "They
haven't been studied in children yet and we don't know if they work,
and we don't know what the potential risks are."

If SA Mendosa really cares about kids, he'll urge the DEA to fight
their real enemy -Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson-instead of
wasting resources going after small businesses like "Beyond Bomb"
(which is what the cannabis candymakers supposedly called their
enterprise). "Turn the guns around!"

The Doctors' Perspective

Members of the Society of Cannabis Clinicians have been investigated
by the state medical board for approving cannabis use by teenagers,
and tend to do it very sparingly.

The most outspoken advocate of cannabis as an alternative to the
pharmaceutical drugs being pushed for ADHD and other problems of
adolescence in the U.S. has been Tom O'Connell, MD. He blames the
National Institute on Drug Abuse for providing a pseudo-scientific
rationale to the prohibitionists. "One of my first responses to
learning that many of the chronic pot smokers seeking my designation
as 'medical' users had probably been treating serious emotional
symptoms since high school was to begin reading what (for me) had
been a very unfamiliar genre of peer-reviewed literature dealing with
'addiction' and 'drugs of abuse.'

"What I discovered was an enormous body of work extending back to the
mid-1970s. Most such studies had obviously been designed around the
concept that juvenile use of cannabis is a risk to be avoided.

The historical origin of that idea had been a discovery that nearly
all the young cannabis users first encountered in the aftermath of
the hippie movement had already tried alcohol and tobacco; and many
were still using both. That discovery quickly gave rise to a
'gateway' hypothesis suggesting that cannabis, while perhaps not as
intrinsically dangerous as 'harder' drugs, is still undesirable for
youth because it functions in some as yet undisclosed way as a
'gateway' between legal and illegal agents.

"One important study in 2002 demonstrated that, theoretically at
least, some as yet unidentified 'common factor' could explain those
well-known pejorative associations. The 'common factor' is pot's
unrecognized role as an anxiolytic, which allows it to serve as a
benign alternative to alcohol and tobacco -the only previously
available agents for teens afflicted with similar (and very common)
symptoms. It doesn't require much imagination to understand why such
a formulation would be rejected out of hand by a majority of those
dependent on NIDA funding, or simply steeped in three decades of
federal anti-pot propaganda... Clinical truth is the best Anti-NIDA."

SCC founder Tod Mikuriya, MD, is submitting a case report to the
International Cannabinoid Research Society describing a teenager
whose relatively minor problem (difficulty concentrating in school,
the result of an inability to sleep) was exacerbated exponentially by
a series of pharmaceutical drugs, starting with Ritalin at age 11 and
graduating to the antipsychotics. Tbe subject was put on more than 15
drugs and placed in various inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation
programs. Now, at age 16, after a little more than a year on
cannabis, he is normal, calm, fully functional. "This case describes
an all-too-typical pattern," says Mikuriya. "When Ritalin doesn't
work, ignorant practitioners prescribe anti-depressants, then
anti-psychotics, which very often produce symptoms far worse than
those with which the child initially presented."

We are very sorry to report that Dr. Mikuriya, 72, is closing his
practice as he weighs what steps to take to combat an inoperable
malignancy affecting his liver and lung. He is working on a second
volume of "Marijuana Medical Papers," his anthology of
pre-prohibition medical literature, and a paper -"Medical Uses of
Cannabis in California, 1996-2006"- that represents the culmination
of his 40-year involvement in the field.

Mikuriya was the physician most prominently associated with Prop 215,
and at the time of its passage, almost alone in his willingness to
recommend cannabis to treat conditions other than AIDS or cancer.

To date he has approved cannabis use by more than 9,000 patients.

Successes 'R' Us

Drug Czar John Walters has responded to George Melloan's
anti-prohibitionist op-ed with a letter to the Wall St. Journal
restating the reasons why the War on Drugs is a great success and
must go on. (As I read it Thursday morning, Gen. Peter Pace was on
the tube restating why the Occupation of Iraq is a great success and
must go on.) Obviously, Walters's staff at the White House Office of
National Drug Control Policy put a lot of time and thought into his
missive -it took them more than three weeks to draft and polish.

It begins with a self-fulfilling prophecy and a false assertion
packed into one sentence: "Illegal drugs are inherently dangerous,
corrupting and incompatible with health and freedom." Of course
they're dangerous and "incompatible with freedom" -they can land you
in jail. As for health effects... well, that was just a lie.

Most revealing was the last clause of the last sentence of Walters's
letter: "In 2004, we saw a 22% drop in the retail-level purity of
south American heroin, and evidence of a 15% decline in cocaine
purity for the first three quarters of 2005, *along with
corresponding increases in their respective prices.* " The
prohibitionists measure success in terms of elevated prices.

Dennis Peron has always said that law enforcement conducts occasional
raids and occasional prosecutions of marijuana growers and
dispensaries to maintain high prices. "It's their form of price supports.

They know that a raid now and then will justify the sixty-dollar eighths.

They take the marijuana for themselves. Why prosecute, you're only
risking defeat?"

Growers who were asking $4,200/lb and getting $4,000/lb in 1996 are
now getting $2,000 -or less, if they urgently need the sale. But
dispensaries, especially in Southern California, are still selling
1/8th ounces of sinsemilla for $50 and up, so the feds, although they
can't undo Prop 215, can take credit for successful damage control...
John Walters, by the way, is the son of Vernon Walters, the CIA's top
official in Vietnam during the U.S. government's very successful
intervention there.