'REEFER MADNESS,' THE SEQUEL: THE DRUG CZAR'S ODD IDEAS

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 pot shots
at the issue in a recent Washington Post piece (reprinted in the Bee on May
13, "Pot's weird effects on brains of youth").

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"After years of giggling at quaintly outdated marijuana scare stories like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 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.

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," 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--with our tax
money. Instead, Walters arouses our passions by recounting the lawlessness
of violent marijuana-dealing street gangs in the District of Columbia. 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.