ANTI-DRUG EFFORT OVEREMPHASIZES MARIJUANA

A survey from the National Association of Counties reported that local law
enforcement agencies think the federal government has its anti- drug
priorities backward, putting too much emphasis on marijuana and not enough
on truly lethal drugs like methamphetamine.

Now a new report suggests that even the federal government's top drug cops
- -- the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration -- know something is very wrong.

They'll never say it explicitly, of course -- executive branch agencies
don't openly criticize White House policies. But the message in the DEA's
2005 "National Drug Threat Assessment" -- prepared in February but released
with no publicity last month -- is unmistakable: The war on marijuana is a
failure, and cops overwhelmingly see meth as a greater threat.

For reasons no one outside Bush administration really understands, the
White House Office of National Drug Control Policy under director John
Walters has been obsessed with marijuana. In November 2002, ONDCP sent a
letter to the nation's prosecutors declaring flatly, "Nationwide, no drug
matches the threat posed by marijuana."

That emphasis has continued, most visibly in ONDCP's press conferences,
news releases and ad campaigns. Recent efforts have included highly dubious
claims that marijuana causes mental illness (ONDCP simply ignored the many
studies that contradict this hypothesis and the fact that periods of high
marijuana use have never correlated with increased rates of mental illness)
and even more dubious claims that marijuana causes lung cancer (scientific
data actually suggest precisely the opposite).

Of the six press releases put out by ONDCP from May 1 through this writing
that addressed individual drugs, five dealt with marijuana and only one
focused on meth.

America's police have different priorities, the DEA found. Asked to
identify the greatest drug threat in their communities, only 12 percent of
local law enforcement agencies named marijuana -- a figure that has been
declining for years. In contrast, 35.6 percent named cocaine and 39.6 cited
methamphetamine as the greatest threat despite the fact that marijuana use
is massively more common and despite what the DEA described as "marijuana's
widespread and ready availability in the United States."

The agency explained, "Such data indicate that, despite the volume of
marijuana trafficked and used in this country, for many in law enforcement
marijuana is much less an immediate problem than methamphetamine, for
example, which is associated with more tangible risks such as violent users
and toxic production sites."

Science backs up the cops' impressions. Marijuana can indeed cause harm,
but in terms of toxicity, addictiveness or dangerous effects on behavior,
it is simply not in the same league with cocaine, methamphetamine, or even
alcohol.

In a recent scientific review, Oxford University pharmacologist Dr. Leslie
Iversen concluded, "Overall, by comparison with other drugs used mainly for
'recreational' purposes, cannabis [marijuana] could be rated to be a
relatively safe drug."

While sucking resources away from more serious drug problems, the
government's war on marijuana hasn't even succeeded on its own terms.
Despite the "eradication" of some three and a half million marijuana plants
last year, the DEA could find "no reports of a trend toward decreased
availability" anywhere in the country. And rates of marijuana use among
both adults and teens remain higher than they were when President Nixon
first declared "War on Drugs" more than three decades ago. "INDEED," THE
DEA report noted, "reporting from some areas has suggested that marijuana
is easier for youths to obtain than alcohol or cigarettes."

This is crazy. America desperately needs drug policies based on science,
reason and common sense. If the current regime at ONDCP is incapable of
moving in that direction, the president must replace director Walters with
someone who will let policy be guided by facts, not ideology.

BRUCE MIRKEN, a veteran health journalist, is director of communications
for the Marijuana Policy Project.