STUPIDEST DRUG STORY OF THE WEEK

Is Reuters Drinking Bong Water?

Why don't the hacks who cover the illicit-drug beat just turn their
keyboards over to the drug-abuse industrial complex and let them write
the stories?

This week, Reuters moved a story based on a government press release
about marijuana potency issued by the Office of National Drug Control
Policy--the office of "drug czar" John P. Walters. The press release
and the Reuters story state that marijuana potency has reached its
highest level since the government started monitoring it in the late
1970s. The average levels of THC in marijuana now stand at 8.5
percent. (THC is the primary active ingredient in marijuana.) This
compares to a little less than the 4 percent measured in 1983.

Headlined "U.S. Marijuana Even Stronger Than Before: Report" on Reuters' Web
site, the piece quotes nobody outside of government as it channels drug
warrior hysteria.

As this drug-czar chart shows, the average percentage of THC in
cannabis samples analyzed by the ongoing Marijuana Potency Monitoring
Project at the University of Mississippi has increased over the years.
Assuming for just a moment that these findings accurately reflect
marijuana potency, I've got a question: So what?

Back in 2002, when Czar Walters warned of the dangers of stronger pot
in a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed, drug scholar Mark A.R. Kleiman of
UCLA responded with this item in his blog:

What matters isn't how strong the material is, but how intoxicated the
users get. And there's lots of evidence that marijuana users tend to
have a target level of intoxication and learn how to titrate dosage to
reach that level. Studies that ask marijuana users to roll a joint
have found that the average size has halved, from about half a gram to
about a quarter of a gram, and there's anecdotal evidence that sharing
a single joint has become more common.

So much for the inherent dangers of superpotent weed. But how accurate
are the government's measurements of average THC? Writer Brian C.
Bennett notes that the number of drug samples tested in the government
study has varied widely, making meaningful comparisons of increased
(or decreased) potency difficult. The collection of samples doesn't
appear to be as scientific as it does anecdotal. The czar's press
release asserts that two-thirds of the samples analyzed in the most
recent study came from law enforcement seizures and purchases, and the
rest from domestic eradications.

Bennett writes that the kinds of marijuana seized and tested vary from
year to year, also. In 2000, sinsemilla, the extra-potent flowering
tops of the marijuana plant, constituted 3.66 percent of the tested
samples. In 2004, 18.39 percent of the samples were sinsemilla. Guess
which year produced a higher average measure of THC? In 2000, the
figure was about 5 percent. In 2004, about 7 percent.

The Reuters article also conveys the views of a National Institute on
Drug Abuse official in reporting that "60 percent of teens receiving
treatment for drug abuse or dependence report marijuana as their
primary drug of abuse." Kleiman's blog puts the treatment numbers in
perspective by pointing to the University of Maryland's Center for
Substance Abuse Research, which reports that the increase in marijuana
treatment admission is driven by the increase in criminal justice
referrals. Marijuana arrests "have roughly doubled over the past
fifteen years," Kleiman writes in his blog, "with the vast bulk of
those arrests ... for simple possession. Other studies show that for
juveniles, most non-criminal-justice referrals reflect parental pressure."

None of this is to champion the use of marijuana. I just want
journalists to stop regurgitating whatever the drug warriors tell
them. Bennett catalogs some of the most ridiculous claims about
marijuana potency made by officials and published in the press during
the last 40 years. If you take these statements at face value, a
single joint rolled from today's marijuana should carry a bigger punch
than several tons of yesteryear's Mexican grass

I've never smoked marijuana and I don't advocate its use. For
compelling health reasons, kids should avoid it, and many seem to do
just that. According to a Monitoring the Future study, the number of
high-school pot smokers remains flat or down over the last decade.