POT SHOTS

"After years of giggling at quaintly outdated marijuana scare stories like
the 1936 movie 'Reefer Madness,' " writes drug czar John P. Walters in a
recent Washington Post op-ed piece, "we've become almost conditioned to
think that any warnings about the true dangers of marijuana are overblown."

Walters thus concedes that people like him have been lying to the public
about marijuana for at least 66 years. But finally, he seems to be saying,
the government is telling the truth. Walters does not get far before he
reneges on that implicit promise.

The drug czar claims "drug use among our nation's teens remains at
near-record levels, with some 49 percent of high school seniors
experimenting with marijuana at least once prior to graduation -- and 22
percent smoking marijuana at least once a month." Actually, the latter
figure refers to use in the previous month, not "at least once a month,"
and these numbers peaked at 60 percent and 37 percent, respectively, in 1979.

Walters says marijuana is "10 to 20 times stronger" today than it used to
be. As the sociologist Lynn Zimmer and the pharmacologist John P. Morgan
explain in Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts, claims like these are based on
a spurious comparison with small samples of low-grade Mexican marijuana
seized in the early '70s. These samples were not representative of the
marijuana available at the time, and it appears that they decayed before
they were tested. Even if average potency were somewhat higher today, that
would be a health advantage, since users could smoke less to achieve the
same effect.

"Each year," Walters asserts, "marijuana use is linked to tens of thousands
of serious traffic accidents." Linked is a slippery word. The fact that
traces of marijuana are found in a driver's blood does not mean he was
under the influence at the time of the accident or that marijuana
contributed to the crash. In a 1992 analysis of accidents in which the
drivers were killed, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
reported: "The THC-only drivers had a responsibility rate below that of the
drug-free drivers... While the difference was not statistically
significant, there was no indication that cannabis by itself was a cause of
fatal crashes."

To support his contention that marijuana "is in fact addictive" (whatever
that means), Walters reports that two-thirds of the "4.3 million Americans
who meet the diagnostic criteria for needing drug treatment... are
dependent on marijuana." Since Walters conveniently leaves out alcohol, and
since marijuana is by far the most popular illegal drug, its predominance
among people with drug problems is hardly surprising. A more relevant
question is what percentage of marijuana users get into trouble with the
drug. A 1994 study based on data from the National Comorbidity Survey
estimated that 9 percent of marijuana users have ever met the American
Psychiatric Association's criteria for "substance dependence." The
comparable figure for alcohol was 15 percent.

Walters says claims about marijuana's medical utility are "based on
pseudo-science." Apparently he has not seen the National Academy of
Sciences report that discusses the evidence at length. He should check it
out. It was commissioned by his predecessor.