DRUG CZAR PERPETUATES POT MYTHS

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 pot shots 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"After years of giggling at quaintly outdated marijuana scare stories like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 warnings 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 of a statistic, 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 those other drugs? We allow adults to buy
cigarettes and alcohol, even though both are highly addictive and kill
thousands every year. Experts may disagree whether marijuana 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 they are not allowed to treat
the ill with marijuana. Instead, thousands of Americans have become
criminals by purchasing marijuana rather than seeing their loved ones 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
80 other state and national health-care organizations that support legal
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 is following in the
path of past drug czars, who feel they know what's better for voters than
the voters themselves do.

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.

"By now most Americans realize that the push to "normalize' marijuana for
medical use is part of the drug legalization agenda," he 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.

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 reason to legalize marijuana. After all, when a drug is
outlawed, only outlaws will have the drug.