GUNS DON'T KILL, POT DOES

The strangest things excite the frenzy of Bush Republicans. I don't know
why they were so hot to drill in the Arctic National Wilderness. But they
were, to a degree that can't be based solely on energy policy. Maybe they
thought it was a Moral Victory.

Or pot. Kids shouldn't take drugs, because they're a waste of time and can
be dangerous. But pot is not exactly packing them into the emergency rooms,
certainly not in proportion to the rabid White House assaults upon it. Talk
about reefer madness.

The latest example is an Office of National Drug Control Policy ad running
in national newspapers last week that suggests, falsely, that tobacco is
less dangerous than pot. The headline is, "Introducing a really high-tar
cigarette," next to a photo of what the ONDCP probably still calls Mary
Jane. The text begins:

"Quite a few people think that smoking pot is less likely to cause cancer
than a regular cigarette. You may even have heard some parents say they'd
rather their kid smoked a little pot than get hooked on cigarettes. Wrong,
and wrong again . . . One joint can deliver four times as much
cancer-causing tar as one cigarette."

Yeah, and if people smoked 60 marijuana cigarettes a day, they might have a
point. But pot smokers have no greater cancer risk than nonsmokers, and
some studies even show they have less risk.

The big difference between smoking pot and smoking cigarettes is that for
most people pot is something they try at 16 and abandon soon thereafter,
while cigarettes are a lifetime habit afflicting a quarter of the
population. But the government isn't obsessed with tobacco.