US DC: OPED: The Myth of 'Harmless' Marijuana
Newshawk: Doug McVay http://www.csdp.org/ http://www.drugwarfacts.org/
Webpage: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11915-2002Apr30.html
Pubdate: Wed, 01 May 2002
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Page: A25
Copyright: 2002 The Washington Post Company
Contact: letters@washpost.com
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Author: John P. Walters
Note: The writer is director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

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After years of giggling at quaintly outdated marijuana scare stories like the 1936 movie "Reefer Madness," we've become almost conditioned to think that any warnings about the true dangers of marijuana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.

REBUTTAL

Taking a break from blaming drug users for September 11th, Drug Czar John Walters has published yet another misleading op-ed. This time the subject is marijuana and the Washington Post is the messenger. Walters pretends to be rational and even goes so far as to acknowledge the existence of prohibition-related violence. Such drivel might be amusing were it not for the fact that it comes from a person who is the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and serves as the basis for a socially destructive government policy.

Unfortunately, in Walters' convoluted reasoning gangland killings are acceptable collateral damage providing the price of marijuana remains high. The near-record levels of drug use cited by Walters suggest that the price of pot has not kept kids from smoking it. The lucrative drug market (thanks to prohibition) breeds violence as drug dealers battle for market control and bigger profits. Prohibition surrenders all control to the black markets which generate billions of tax-free dollars for the narco-traffickers. Has Walters learned nothing from the failed attempt at alcohol prohibition in America?

Walters' most glaring offense is his outrageous lies about medical marijuana. In claiming a lack of available research on a plant that has been used medicinally for thousands of years, he ignores abundant recent medical research from around the globe, as well as the recommendations of the 1999 Institute of Medicine Report, commissioned by the very same White House Office of National Drug Policy he works for.

FACTS:

* There is no evidence that marijuana use would "soar" if legal. If anything tough drug laws increase use. A majority of European Union countries have decriminalized pot. Despite marijuana prohibition, lifetime use of marijuana in the U.S. is higher than any European country. See: http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/espad_pr.pdf

* The anti-tobacco campaign Walters mentions succeeded at reducing tobacco use without relying on a punitive criminal-justice system. If social marketing works for addictive tobacco, why is the threat of extremely harsh penalties and criminal records necessary to deter marijuana use?

* Drug policy dictated by federal bureaucrats with "drug-free" backgrounds gives rise to a policy based on ignorance. Key stakeholders (actual drug users and medical cannabis patients) are not only ignored, but persecuted and incarcerated.

* Perhaps the botonists should be alerted about the unnaturally rapid rate which the cannabis plant has evolved (according to Walters.) The increased marijuana potency cited by Walters, even if it were true, is not necessarily a negative effect for a medical cannabis patient. Potent pot actually requires less smoke inhalation and incurs fewer health risks to the user.

* The ONDCP needs to stop pretending there is no scientific basis for medical marijuana and read the recommendations of its own report. See: http://www.mpp.org/science.html