Pot Use In America

Con

MARIJUANA TODAY: SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

The public debate over marijuana has been plagued by difficulties, not the
least of which is a lack of accurate information. Any policy debate that
draws activists promoting their cause is likely to suffer from confusion.
But the debate over marijuana has been further muddled by careless or
gullible media reports. Too often, journalists are fed misleading advocacy
information that they swallow whole.

For instance, one columnist recently charged that worry about the increased
potency of today's marijuana is wildly overstated. In fact, he calls such
claims "whoppers," because the active ingredient THC (tetrahydrocannabinol)
"has only doubled to 4.2 percent from about 2 percent from 1980 to 1997."

No wonder the public has trouble getting a clear picture. His source for
this information is the Marijuana Policy Project, a group of marijuana
legalizers relying on a study that covers just those years. Unfortunately,
the columnist did not check his facts with the Drug Enforcement
Administration, which monitors scientific studies of marijuana.

What does the DEA analysis show? In 1974, the average THC content of
marijuana was less than 1 percent. But by 1999, potency averaged 7 percent.
Further, unlike the old "ditchweed" and bulk marijuana of the past, there
are now far more powerful products to entice youth. The THC of today's
sinsemilla averages 14 percent and ranges as high as 30 percent.

Even stronger stuff is on the way. The point is that the potency of
available marijuana has not merely "doubled," but increased as much as 30
times.

Some advocates argued that this increased potency is actually good news,
because kids will simply use less. But the data don't support that
interpretation. The number of tons of marijuana sold in America is
increasing, not decreasing. The number of people seeking medical treatment
for marijuana abuse is increasing rapidly, not decreasing. In fact, the
number of adolescent marijuana admissions increased 260 percent between
1992 and 1999.

The stakes in this debate are high, especially for young people. So
widespread is marijuana in today's schools that nearly half of all high
school seniors report having tried it by graduation, while a smaller but
still alarming number report using it every month -- even everyday. This is
a drug that, after all, produces withdrawal symptoms, is associated with
learning and memory disturbances and produces behavioral problems for those
who become dependent.

It's time to face facts: Today's marijuana is a more dangerous drug than
the pot of the Woodstock era. It creates tolerance (you need increasing
doses to achieve the same effect), and at high doses it induces paranoia or
even violence.

The haze of misinformation grows even thicker when it comes to the issue of
"medical" marijuana. On the face of it, the idea that desperately sick
people could be helped by smoking an intoxicating weed seems unlikely, even
medieval. It is, in fact, absurd.

Smoking marijuana, even if it weren't psychotropic, hardly seems healthy.
The threat of lung damage, not to mention exposure to carcinogens and more
toxins than those found in tobacco smoke, increases with every "hit." But
no less than the New York Times editorialized recently in support of
medical marijuana. Amazingly, the paper termed it "life-saving" and claimed
it represented "mainstream medical opinion."

Who have they been listening to? Perhaps the source was the same Marijuana
Policy Project, which paid for a full-page ad in the Times on March 6,
2000. The MPP claimed scientific support for medical marijuana from the
prestigious National Academy of Sciences, whose Institute of Medicine, MPP
claimed, "urged the federal government to give seriously ill people
immediate access to medical marijuana on a case-by-case basis."

But nowhere in the IOM report can you find this "urging." Quite the
contrary: the IOM throws cold water on smoked-marijuana enthusiasts,
stating clearly, "Marijuana is not a modern medicine."

Does the IOM regard marijuana as a helpful 'medicine' for the afflicted?
Not at all. "In no way," the researchers continued, "do we wish to suggest
that patients should, under any circumstances, medicate themselves with
marijuana." In fact, they state that any experimental subjects must be
notified that they are using "a harmful drug delivery system," adding that
short-term experiments might be conducted only after the "documented
failure of all approved medicines" and only under strict medical supervision.

But while the IOM wishes to study the ingredients in marijuana, the purpose
of these clinical trials (now being conducted through the University of
California at San Diego) is not to investigate the potential medical
benefit of smoking the stuff. As the researchers put it, their purpose
"would not be to develop marijuana as a licensed drug."

These facts place us far away from efforts to justify the distribution of
marijuana cigarettes through cannabis buyers clubs. Real and lasting damage
can follow "experimentation" with marijuana, as reflected in the fact that
marijuana abuse is today the major reason for young people to seek drug
treatment.

Yet, listening to some in the media you are still likely to hear that
marijuana "isn't such a big deal," and that even the National Academy of
Sciences endorses it "for medicinal purposes." Now you know better.