PUSHING DRUG MYTHS WITH OUR TAXES

WASHINGTON -- Our nation's drug czar is annoyed. If proponents have
their way, the District of Columbia will vote later this year to
legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes for the second time.

John P. Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control
Policy, took some potshots at the issue in a recent Washington Post
piece that has been reprinted across the country. Unfortunately, he
brings more smoke than light.

"After years of giggling at quaintly outdated marijuana scare stories
like the 1936 movie 'Reefer Madness'," he writes, "we've become almost
conditioned to think that any warning about the true dangers of
marijuana are overblown." He then proceeds with unintended irony to
give an overblown warning of his own about "The Myth of 'Harmless'
Marijuana." He warns Baby-Boomer parents that "today's marijuana is
different from that of a generation ago, with potency levels 10 to 20
times stronger than the marijuana with which they were familiar."

He doesn't say where he gets that whopper and that's too bad, since it
conflicts with a federally funded investigation of marijuana samples
confiscated by law enforcement over the past two decades.

Published in the January 2000 Journal of Forensic Science, that study
found the THC content (that's the active ingredient that gets you
high) had only doubled to 4.2 percent from about 2 percent from 1980
to 1997. Those are not undesirable potency levels when you are using
it to relieve illness. Thousands of patients suffering from HIV,
glaucoma, chemotherapy, migraines, multiple sclerosis or other
similarly painful or nauseating conditions could benefit from
legalized marijuana use, according to the Washington-based Marijuana
Policy Project. Yes, marijuana is dangerous. So are cigarettes, liquor
and prescription drugs. The question that Walters fails to address is
why marijuana should be treated differently from the drugs mentioned
above?

We allow adults to buy cigarettes and alcohol, even though both are
highly addictive and kill thousands every year. Experts may disagree,
depending on definitions, over whether marijuana smoke is "addictive"
or merely "habit-forming" but both sides are hard-pressed to find
anyone who has died of a marijuana overdose.

Doctors treat the ill with numerous prescription drugs that are more
dangerous and addictive than marijuana. But physicians are not allowed
to treat the ill with marijuana. Instead, thousands of Americans
unnecessarily have become criminals by purchasing marijuana for their
ill loved ones rather than see them suffer.

Yet Walters lambastes what he calls the "cynical campaign under way"
in the District of Columbia and elsewhere "to proclaim the virtues of
'medical' marijuana." In fact, those "cynical" campaigners include the
American Public Health Association, the New England Journal of
Medicine and almost 80 other state and national health-care
organizations that support legalizing patient access to marijuana for
medicinal treatment. So far, eight states have legalized medical use
of marijuana by ballot initiative or legislation. District of Columbia
voters also passed a referendum in 1998, but it has been blocked by
Congress.

Where referendums have been held, they have passed. But, alas, Walters
dismisses those initiatives as "based on pseudo-science." Maybe he did
not read the 1999 report by the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the
National Academy of Sciences. It confirmed the effectiveness of
marijuana's active components in treating pain, nausea and the
anorexic-wasting syndrome associated with AIDS. Walters says we should
wait for more information. He praises a study now under way at the
University of California's Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research. But
if that study doesn't come out his way either, you have to wonder,
will he ignore that one, too?

"By now most Americans realize that the push to 'normalize' marijuana
for medical use is part of the drug legalization agenda," Walters
says, mentioning financier George Soros and others who have
contributed to the legalization cause. Walters does not mention the
billions of tax dollars that he, as drug czar, has at his disposal to
push marijuana myths--with our tax money!

Instead, he arouses our passions by recounting the lawlessness of
violent marijuana-dealing street gangs in the district. If anything,
pot gangs offer us another good reason to legalize marijuana. After
all, when a drug is outlawed, only outlaws will have the drug.