LAZY JOURNALIST PASSES ALONG MARIJUANA MYTH

Dear Editor,

Several classic drug war myths have appeared in the SJ-R recently. It's one
thing when a misinformed letter-writer parrots the tired, old "Gateway
Theory", but it's something else entirely when a supposedly objective
journalist like Jenifer Hanrahan makes uncritical reference to it as she
did in the July 14 article, "Upstanding Citizens Smoke Pot."

The notion that cannabis leads to harder drugs was put firmly to rest by
the 1999 Institute of Medicine report "Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing
the Science Base," which states: "There is no evidence that marijuana
serves as a stepping stone on the basis of its particular physiological
effect. Instead, the legal status of marijuana makes it a gateway drug."

Hanrahan cited Dr. Herbert Kleber of Columbia University as a source for
her negative information on cannabis. Readers should be aware that Dr.
Kleber refuses to submit his work for ordinary peer-review. Complaints have
arisen on the Columbia campus that Kleber's outfit, the Center on Addiction
and Substance Abuse (CASA), uses the university's name to give a
prestigious academic veneer to its agenda-driven, non-peer-reviewed "research."

Unfortunately, there's no shortage of lazy journalists who will pass along
CASA's propaganda as the final word on cannabis and other drugs.

Larry A. Stevens, Springfield