BUSTED

The U.S. "Drug Czar" sent some anti-drug warriors to Seattle to talk to
local reporters about the dangers of marijuana.

The Stranger sent a pot-smoking, marijuana-legalization activist to the
meeting.

The invitation came via fax from the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy (ONDCP). Any newspaper that wanted to send a reporter to the
May 16 briefing had to RSVP, give the name of the reporter it would be
sending, and make sure the reporter brought identification. Undoubtedly,
the federal drug warriors hoped for an audience comprising passive
journalists who would offer no objection to the feds' drug war pabulum and
who would, in turn, feed the official word to the masses.

The ONDCP certainly didn't expect The Stranger to send the director of
Seattle's Hempfest to its meeting last Friday afternoon.

The ONDCP was created by the Executive Office of the President in 1988 with
the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act. According to the ONDCP's website,
the agency's mission is to create federal policies, priorities, and
strategies in order to curb drug use, sales, and related crime.

The ONDCP can be thanked for all those recent TV ads that attempted to
blame terrorism on drug users.

The ONDCP spent millions of taxpayer dollars on those slickly produced
ads--once upon a time, drug users had fried eggs for brains, now a single
bong hit can blow up a disco in Bali--and all of that money was, like so
many pot smokers, completely wasted.

The nation's largest drug-policy reform organization, Drug Policy Alliance,
reported last month that the ONDCP's own review of its media campaign found
that the ads actually increased pot consumption among teens.

The deputy director of the ONDCP's National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign,
Robert Denniston, ran the meeting in the offices of the Greater Seattle
Chamber of Commerce, 24 floors above the marijuana-saturated streets of
Seattle. While Mr. Denniston seemed pleasant enough, his
I-lost-touch-a-long-time-ago mullet slaughtered any youth culture
credibility he might have had. So in addition to Denniston and the two
other grownup panelists--Richard Ries, MD, the University of Washington's
chief at the addictions division of the Department of Psychiatry and
Behavioral Sciences, and David Stewart, PhD, an assistant professor from
the university's Division of Public Behavioral Health and Justice
Policy--the ONDCP invited a former teenage pot addict to share her story
with the audience. In the aftermath of the ONDCP's failed
pot-users-fund-terrorism campaign, the group is attempting to get its
anti-drug message to young people in other ways. The ONDCP is behind a new
website called Freevibe (freevibe.com) that uses sexy models, trendy
graphics, and words like "lowdown" in a "desperate" attempt to "connect"
with "youth." To connect with parents, the ONDCP is spending tens of
millions of dollars on ads that allegedly give parents the information they
need to tell if their kids are using pot. (Are your kids depressed? Are
they burning incense?) But the campaign's biggest hurdle is persuading
aging baby boomers to tell their children to say no to pot, a drug most of
them used and weren't harmed by.

To that end, the ONDCP's anti-pot propaganda paints a scary picture of the
risks of modern "super pot." Unlike the pot that parents smoked in the
'60s, '70s, and '80s, the pot their kids are smoking today is much more
potent and thus more dangerous. That was the focus of the ONDCP's briefing
this past Friday. While pot may be perceived as relatively benign by people
who used it when they were kids, today's "super pot" damages the brain's
development and is the gateway to harder drugs.

It was "super pot," brain damage, and gateways that the ONDCP supposedly
wanted to discuss with local reporters.

Let's start with the super pot argument.

At the meeting, Dr. Ries said that marijuana is as much as 30 times more
potent today than the marijuana people smoked a generation ago. While the
percentage of THC (pot's active ingredient) used to be only around one
percent, some modern varieties have reached a whopping 33 percent,
according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. That's laughable. If the
pot from a generation ago contained an average level of THC of around one
percent, then your parent's pot had THC levels akin to industrial-grade
hemp. You can't get high smoking hemp, and we all know the boomers got
high. While today's pot is stronger than that of a few decades ago (from
about three percent up to around 10 percent in rare high-grade pot), the
increase is hardly dramatic.

According to a report from the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws (NORML), "studies indicate that marijuana smokers
distinguish between high and low potency marijuana and moderate their use
accordingly just as an alcohol consumer would drink fewer ounces of (high
potency) bourbon than they would of (low potency) beer." It also should be
pointed out that not one single fatal marijuana overdose has been recorded
in human history.

And the stronger the pot, the less you have to smoke to get the desired effect.

As for the ONDCP's new effort to push the "gateway" theory, that tired old
argument was soundly refuted in a study completed in December of 2002 by
RAND, a nonprofit research institution created by the U.S. military.

Andrew Morral, lead author of the study, stated, "We've shown that the
marijuana gateway effect is not the best explanation for the link between
marijuana use and the use of harder drugs.... While the gateway theory has
enjoyed popular acceptance, scientists have always had their doubts.

Our study shows that these doubts are justified."

As for the "brain damage" contention, although some of the panelists'
statements were greatly distorted and intentionally misleading, a few core
elements of the message are self-evident and irrefutable, even to the avid
marijuana smoker and reform activist.

Marijuana use clearly reduces short-term memory recall, decreases cognitive
reaction time, and makes people, well, stoned.

Meaning, don't get baked before class or else you won't learn much. But no
evidence of pot use inducing brain damage was presented at the
meeting--because no conclusive scientific evidence actually exists.

As everyone knows, one of the side effects of smoking pot can be mild
paranoia. So as a regular pot user, I couldn't help but wonder what the
ONDCP was really up to in Seattle. Why the hush-hush 28-city tour? Why are
only reporters invited? Why aren't these meetings open to the public?

Well, for that we paranoids must look closer--not at the ONDCP's
public-health messages, but at its budget.

This year marks the end of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign's
five-year funding cycle, and the ONDCP has to justify its existence as it
appeals to Congress for more funds.

The ONDCP figures that if its nationwide tour can generate some positive
coverage in papers across the country, Congress just might toss it another
few hundred million dollars. In fact, the strategy may already be paying
off. At the same time the ONDCP was whispering into the ears of Seattle
reporters, Congress was taking the first steps toward renewing the
organization's funding.

On Friday, May 16, the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy,
and Human Resources approved HR 2086. Disturbing new language in the bill
amends the scope of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, allowing
government officials to use federal funds to "take such actions as
necessary to oppose any attempt to legalize the use of a substance." In
other words, the ONDCP may soon be able to spend hundreds of millions of
taxpayer dollars every year on radio, print, and television ads opposing
medical marijuana initiatives and trying to defeat candidates who support
more compassionate drug laws.

"If this provision stands," says Steve Fox, director of government
relations for the Marijuana Policy Project, "it means that the drug czar
can use our tax dollars to fund partisan political campaigns."

Dominic Holden is the director of Seattle Hempfest, the largest annual
marijuana policy reform rally in the United States, and campaign manager
for I-75, an initiative to de-prioritize the enforcement of Seattle's
marijuana laws.