REEFER BADNESS

There's a Lot of Misinformation Out There: Here's More

Last Wednesday White House anti-drug crusaders set up camp at KETC-TV
(Channel 9)'s downtown St. Louis offices as part of a cross-country
tour to help reduce teen drug use 25 percent by 2007.

The way the feds see it, the media are part of the drug problem.
According to Robert W. Denniston, deputy director of the National
Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, less than 10 percent of news stories
about marijuana mention negative consequences. "So we know there's a
lot of misinformation out there," Denniston says.

Eager to do our part - and to partake of the free box lunch - Unreal
joined two fellow journalists, a dozen drug-treatment providers and
the anti-drug panel, which consisted of Denniston, two experts and a
reformed teen toker.

"We have a lot of new scientific information," Denniston let it be
known.

In 2001, emergency rooms tallied 2,311 "marijuana drug episodes" in
St. Louis alone. Nine local people died -- died -- that year after
smoking pot. These statistics were distributed along with other
literature in a shiny folder festooned with a photo of a spanking-new
pipe stuffed with schwag. Unreal discerned that the pictured pot was
laced with seeds, and, more distressingly, that the statistics were
unadorned with context. What was the precise nature, we wondered, of
the "drug episodes" and the deaths?

Alas, there was no time for musing; it was on to the "new scientific
information."

To wit: Researchers have found that marijuana targets neurological
receptors that affect memory, emotional stability and cognitive
skills, said Dr. Michael Spigarelli, an assistant professor of
pediatrics and internal medicine at the University of Cincinnati. Pot,
Spigarelli added, is addictive, it's probably a gateway drug, and kids
who use it are more prone toward violence than kids who don't. Teen
dope smokers don't exercise as much as they should and can end up as
couch potatoes or worse. "Forgetting the condom, getting in a car
accident, can lead to devastating consequences for getting high for a
little while," said the doctor. Disaster aside, pot's bad: "You escape
for the fifteen minutes or two hours that you are high, but in life
you need to pay that time back."

Seventeen-year-old Caroline, who sat behind a placard that read simply
"Teen," earned a round of applause when she said she's been clean for
ten months. When she asserted she'd never used anything stronger than
pot, panelist Linda Cottler, a Washington University epidemiologist,
said that was probably because no other drugs were available. One of
the most disturbing trends she has seen, says Cottler, are surveys
that show 30 percent of high-school seniors don't see anything wrong
with occasional marijuana use. Adults with attitudes born in the 1960s
aren't much better, she says: "Parents just don't get it."

Jeez, the crisis is much bigger than we imagined.