LIES AND THE LAZY REPORTERS WHO REPEAT THEM

On May 5, newspapers and news broadcasts around the country carried
alarming stories about a new study of marijuana, published in that
day's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"Stronger marijuana makes more addicted," screamed the Los Angeles
Daily News. "Abuse and dependence rise as pot becomes more potent,"
headlined the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Rising marijuana potency,
the stories claimed, was leading more Americans to become addicted to
the devil weed.

Small problem: The theory that pot that is more potent is getting
people hooked is almost certainly wrong. But none of the newspaper
stories gave the slightest hint that might be the case.

The government-funded study on which the stories were based,
"Prevalence of Marijuana Use Disorders in the United States," was
conducted by scientists from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and
the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. It compared
survey data from 1991-92 to 2001-02, indicating an increase in
marijuana "abuse" or "dependence," as defined by the DSM-IV, the
American Psychiatric Association's official diagnostic manual for
mental disorders. The study's authors hypothesized that the most
likely cause for this increase is "increased marijuana potency." As
the Atlanta Journal-Constitution story, picked up by the Daily News,
put it, "It's not your parents' marijuana." Wire stories used by most
other papers took roughly the same line, though in less shrill language.

None of these stories chose to mention a salient fact: The "potent
pot" hypothesis is pure speculation. As Mitch Earleywine, University
of Southern California associate professor of psychology and author of
"Understanding Marijuana" (Oxford University Press, 2002) notes, there
is no scientific evidence that marijuana that is more potent leads to
greater levels of dependence. Indeed the JAMA article makes no claim
that any such evidence exists.

Second, as the JAMA article notes, under DSM-IV criteria, people can
be classified as marijuana "abusers" if they experience "legal
problems related to marijuana use." The FBI Uniform Crime Reports
arrest tabulations show that marijuana arrests skyrocketed from about
300,000 in 1991 to well over 700,000 in 2001. What may be simply the
results of shifting law enforcement priorities were presented in both
the study and in news reports as the dire effects of "potent pot."
Strikingly, the JAMA article fails to identify which abuse/dependence
criteria increased, and by how much.

That alone should have led an inquisitive reporter or two to ask if
there might be an alternative explanation to the "potent pot" theory.
But the journalists covering the story failed to ask this most basic
question even though the study contained a giant red flag: The
increased "abuse" occurred almost entirely among young blacks and
Hispanics. There was no similar increase among whites in the same age
group.

Young blacks and Hispanics have no special access to high-potency
marijuana, and there is no evidence that THC affects black and
Hispanic brains differently than those of whites. But people of color
are well documented to be at disproportionate risk for arrest for drug
crimes.

None of this was discussed in the Journal-Constitution story, or in
the AP, Reuters and Scripps-Howard wire stories that were reprinted
across the country. Indeed, what is striking about all of these
stories is their similarity to the National Institute on Drug Abuse's
press release. None of these esteemed newspapers or wire services
chose to quote even a single expert or advocate skeptical of the
government line. None of them seems to have considered the possibility
that our government might spin the data in order to match its Drug War
policies.

For shame.