THE MYTH OF 'HARMLESS' MARIJUANA

Last December the University of Michigan released its annual survey
"Monitoring the Future," which measures drug use among American youth.
Very little had changed from the previous year's report; most
indicators were flat. The report generated little in the way of public
comment.

Yet what it brought to light was deeply disturbing. Drug use among our
nation's teens remains stable, but 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.

After years of giggling at quaintly outdated marijuana scare stories
like the 1936 movie "Reefer Madness," we've become almost conditioned
to think that any warnings about the true dangers of marijuana are
overblown. But marijuana is far from "harmless" -- it is pernicious.
Parents are often unaware 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.

Marijuana directly affects the brain. Researchers have learned that it
impairs the ability of young people to concentrate and retain
information during their peak learning years, and when their brains
are still developing. The THC in marijuana attaches itself to
receptors in the hippocampal region of the brain, weakening short-term
memory and interfering with the mechanisms that form long-term memory.
Do our struggling schools really need another obstacle to student
achievement?

Marijuana smoking can hurt more than just grades. According to the
Department of Health and Human Services, every year more than 2,500
admissions to the District of Columbia's overtaxed emergency rooms --
some 300 of them for patients under age 18 -- are linked to marijuana
smoking, and the number of marijuana-related emergencies is growing.
Each year, for example, marijuana use is linked to tens of thousands
of serious traffic accidents.

Research has now established that marijuana is in fact addictive. Of
the 4.3 million Americans who meet the diagnostic criteria for needing
drug treatment (criteria developed by the American Psychiatric
Association, not police departments or prosecutors) two-thirds are
dependent on marijuana, according to HHS. These are not occasional pot
smokers but people with real problems directly traceable to their use
of marijuana, including significant health problems, emotional
problems and difficulty in cutting down on use. Sixty percent of teens
in drug treatment have a primary marijuana diagnosis.

Despite this and other strong scientific evidence of marijuana's
destructive effects, a cynical campaign is underway, in the District
and elsewhere, to proclaim the virtues of "medical" marijuana. By now
most Americans realize that the push to "normalize" marijuana for
medical use is part of the drug legalization agenda. Its chief
funders, George Soros, John Sperling and Peter Lewis, have spent
millions to help pay for referendums and ballot initiatives in states
from Alaska to Maine. Now it appears that a medical marijuana campaign
may be on the horizon for the District.

Why? Is the American health care system -- the most sophisticated in the
world -- really being hobbled by a lack of smoked medicines? The
University of California's Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research is
currently conducting scientific studies to determine the efficacy of
marijuana in treating various ailments. Until that research is
concluded, however, most of what the public hears from marijuana
activists is little more than a compilation of anecdotes. Many questions
remain unanswered, but the science is clear on a few things. Example:
Marijuana contains hundreds of carcinogens.

Moreover, anti-smoking efforts aimed at youth have been remarkably
effective by building on a campaign to erode the social acceptability
of tobacco. Should we undermine those efforts by promoting smoked
marijuana as though it were a medicine?

While medical marijuana initiatives are based on pseudo-science, their
effects on the criminal justice system are anything but imaginary. By
opening up legal loopholes, existing medical marijuana laws have
caused police and prosecutors to stay away from marijuana
prosecutions.

Giving marijuana dealers a free pass is a terrible idea. In fact,
thanks in part to excellent reporting in The Post, District residents
are increasingly aware that marijuana dealers are dangerous criminals.
The recent life-without-parole convictions of leaders of Washington's
K Street Crew are only the latest evidence of this.

As reported in The Post, the K Street Crew was a vicious group of
marijuana dealers whose decade-long reign of terror was brought to an
end only this year after a massive prosecution effort by Michael
Volkov, chief gang prosecutor for the U.S. attorney's office. The K
Street Crew is credited with at least 17 murders, including systematic
killings of potential witnesses. (It should not be confused with the L
Street Crew, a D.C. marijuana gang that killed eight people in the
course of doing business.)

Says prosecutor Volkov: "The experience in D.C. shows that marijuana
dealers are no less violent than cocaine and heroin traffickers. They
have just as much money to lose, just as much turf to lose, and just as
many reasons to kill as any drug trafficker."

Skeptics will charge that this kind of violence is just one more
reason to legalize marijuana. A review of the nation's history with
drug use suggests otherwise: When marijuana is inexpensive, as it
would be if legal, use soars -- bad news for the District's schools,
streets and emergency rooms.