POTENT ARGUMENT - THE LATEST MARIJUANA SCARE

The Office of National Drug Control Policy is so happy with a recent
Reuters story about marijuana that it has a prominent link to the
article on its Web site. It's not hard to see why.

"Pot is no longer the gentle weed of the 1960s and may pose a greater
threat than cocaine or even heroin," writes Reuters health and science
correspondent Maggie Fox. That's her talking, not the ONDCP. More
precisely, it's Fox dutifully parroting what the ONDCP has told her in
its latest attempt to scare people about marijuana.

Because so many Americans have decided, based on direct experience or
by observing pot smokers they know, that marijuana is no big deal, the
government's anti-pot propaganda has taken on a decidedly defensive
tone. "Marijuana today is a much more serious problem than the vast
majority of Americans understand," ONDCP Director John Walters tells
Fox. Or, as he put it during a visit to Seattle last month, "This is
not the substance you joked about in the '60s. We have a greater
reason for concern."

Such assertions are based on the premise that marijuana is much
stronger than it used to be. In a 1995 interview with the Dallas
Morning News, Clinton drug czar Lee Brown claimed "marijuana is 40
times more potent today than was the case 10, 15, 20 years ago."
Lately the ONDCP has been warning that "today's marijuana is twice as
strong" as the pot of the mid-1980s.

Either the marijuana people smoked in the 1960s and '70s was not
psychoactive at all, and its perceived effects were a mass delusion,
or someone is exaggerating. Otherwise, we'd have to believe that the
level of THC (marijuana's main active ingredient) in today's pot
exceeds 100 percent.

In fact, the ONDCP says the current average is something like 7
percent, up from 3.5 percent in 1985, based on analyses of marijuana
seized by federal agents. But seizures are not necessarily a
representative sample, and if the focus of anti-pot efforts has
shifted in the last two decades, the 1985 data may not be comparable
to more recent measurements.

Still, marijuana probably is somewhat more potent, on average, than it
used to be, because growers have gotten better at producing
high-quality cannabis. Contrary to what the government says, however,
there's little reason to believe stronger pot is worse for you. If
anything, it's healthier, since people smoke less of it to achieve the
effect they want.

To her credit, Reuters' Fox allows someone from the Marijuana Policy
Project to make that point toward the end of her article. But she
provides no rebuttal for the government's insinuation that stronger
pot has caused a dramatic increase since 1992 in the number of
teenagers "in treatment for marijuana dependence and abuse."

The government's own data show that most teenagers treated for
"marijuana dependence and abuse" are referred by the criminal justice
system. Since the annual number of marijuana arrests in the U.S. has
more than doubled since 1992, it's not surprising that treatment
admissions have gone up as well. Even those that do not stem from
arrests can be the result of pressure from misguided school officials
or panicked parents.

Getting caught with pot does not mean you're an addict. As Mitch
Earleywine, author of Understanding Marijuana, and Bruce Mirken of the
Marijuana Policy Project noted recently in the Hartford Advocate, most
marijuana "abusers" entering treatment have used the drug three or
fewer times during the previous month.

Marijuana's legal status clearly has an impact on decisions about who
should receive "treatment." Otherwise, it would be impossible to
explain why, as Fox reports, "children and teenagers are three times
more likely to be in treatment for marijuana dependence than for
alcohol." Not only is alcohol more widely used, but survey data
indicate that addiction is more common among drinkers than it is among
pot smokers.

In case the prospect of addiction is not enough to scare the public,
Fox adds that stronger pot "could make children and teenagers anxious,
unmotivated or perhaps even psychotic" (although she concedes "the
research so far is inconclusive"). The story closes by saying that
John Walters, who is doing his best to whip up a pot panic despite
declining use by teenagers, "does not want to overreact."

"We shouldn't be victims of reefer madness," Walters says. At last, he
and I agree about something.