Reefer Madness 1997: The New Bag of Scare Tactics
The war on drugs is really a war on Marijuana,” says Professor Lynn Zimmer, a sociologist at Queens College, in New York, who is widely regarded as one of the nation’s leading analysts of drug policy. Marijuana, says Zimmer, is the leading justification for drug testing in the workplace, the main target of anti-drug efforts in the schools and the media, and the principal preoccupation of drug warriors in and out of government today. The drug warriors’ tactics include – along with arrests, seizures, incarceration and the intimidation of doctors who would prescribe pot for the terminally ill – a more sinister approach. Spokesmen are quoted by journalists and appear on the evening news and on talk shows, making frightening claims about marijuana’s harmful effects, spinning unproven theories and, in some cases, distorting the known truth in an effort to demonize even casual users of pot.
It’s no wonder that the warriors find themselves in a quandary. They’re essentially fighting a war against the 70 million Americans who have tried marijuana, including half of all Americans aged 18-35 and more than a quarter of everyone older than 35. Polls have indicated that a fourth of all adult Americans favor legalizing pot, which, after alcohol, tobacco and caffeine, is the fourth most popular psychoactive drug in the world.
“You can’t scare middle-class parents with a war on heroin and cocaine,” says Zimmer. “These drugs are too removed, too remote. Marijuana brings it home.”
Bill Clinton’s administration, desperate not to appear soft on drugs, has indulged in its share of scare tactics. Clinton’s newly appointed drug czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, has set the tone for the federal government’s new stance, threatening sanctions against medical doctors in California and Arizona (RS 750/751), where citizens voted in November to allow the medicinal use of cannabis. More typical, however, is the approach taken by Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, who disingenuously told reporters last December, “All available research has concluded that marijuana is dangerous to our health.”
Is pot dangerous? Is there any scientific research to back up Shalala’s claim? There are, of course, reasons to be concerned about marijuana. It is, like alcohol, a powerful psychoactive drug. Used irresponsibly, it contributes to accidents on the roads and in the workplace. During the period of intoxication, short-term memory is impaired. Heavy pot smokers face some of the same risks as cigarette smokers. And some people become dependent upon marijuana, using it as a crutch to avoid dealing with relationships and responsibilities.
Among kids, especially, it is the daily use of marijuana, not experimental or occasional use, that merits concern. According to the latest annual survey of drug use among high-school students, the percentage of eighth-graders who admit to daily pot smoking increased from 0.2 percent in 1991 to 1.5 percent in 1996. Among 10th-graders, there was an increase from 0.8 percent to 3.5 percent; among seniors, an increase from 2 percent to nearly 5 percent. Of course, smoking marijuana every day would contribute to a teenager’s problems in school and socially, but more likely it is an indicator of something else that is basically wrong.
On the other hand, there is ample evidence that the majority of the 70 million Americans who have tried marijuana are doing just fine. Since the early 1970s, the government has funded studies that have ended up proving that pot is not harmful, then disavowed the findings. In 1988, following an extensive review of the scientific evidence on marijuana, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s own administrative-law judge, Francis Young, concluded that marijuana “in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.” Virtually every independent commission assigned to examine the evidence on marijuana and marijuana policy – including the Shafer Commission appointed by President Richard Nixon, a National Academy of Sciences committee in the early 1980s, and numerous others both in the U.S. and abroad – have concluded that marijuana poses fewer dangers to individuals and society than either alcohol or tobacco and should be decriminalized.
And there is little reason to expect anything different from the Clinton administration’s January announcement that it will spend $1 million to review all the evidence on the medical benefits of marijuana. The problem is that no Congress or president has ever had the guts to follow through on the recommendations of independent commissions assigned to balance the risks and harms of marijuana with the risks and harms of marijuana policies. It’s still impossible, for instance, for any government official to speak out publicly about the difference between responsible and irresponsible use of marijuana, as they would with alcohol. All marijuana use is defined as drug abuse – notwithstanding extensive evidence that most marijuana users suffer little if any harm. That position may be intellectually and scientifically indefensible, but those in government regard it as politically and legally obligatory.
So the government resorts to scare tactics and misinformation, relying increasingly on three claims: that today’s marijuana is much more potent than the version that kids’ parents smoked a decade or two ago; that new research has shown the drug to be more dangerous to our health than previously thought; and that marijuana use is a gateway to more dangerous drugs.
Are these claims true? Is today’s marijuana much more potent? Is marijuana much more dangerous than previously believed? Is marijuana a “gateway drug”? Most marijuana researchers depend on government grants to finance their studies. This poses two problems. First, the government tends to encourage and fund only those research proposals that seek to identify harmful effects of marijuana. There are few incentives to investigate the benefits of marijuana, medicinal or otherwise, and little interest in determining either the safety margins of occasional use or ways of reducing the harms of marijuana use. Studies that identify marijuana as harmful are well publicized by the governments’ public-affairs officers. Findings that fail to confirm any harms are ignored.
Second, few marijuana researchers dare publicly challenge the government’s anti-marijuana campaign. Scientists know that the grant-review process can be both scientifically objective and politically subjective. If too many studies fail to identify and emphasize the harms of marijuana, subsequent research proposals may not fare well in grant competitions. It takes a lot of courage for a scientist — dependent upon government grants for his or her livelihood – to raise questions about government policies and statements regarding marijuana. Not many scientists are that brave.
Fortunately, there are a few researchers who maintain their independence. Zimmer, the sociologist at Queens College, and Dr. John P. Morgan, a physician and pharmacologist who teaches at the City University Medical School, in New York, don’t rely on government funding. They have recently completed a book, Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts: A Review of the Scientific Evidence, that systematically analyzes and dissects hundreds of studies on marijuana, including virtually all of those cited by government officials and other anti-drug crusaders to justify the war on marijuana. The result is the most comprehensive and objective review of the scientific evidence on marijuana since the National Institute of Medicine’s report in 1982 – one that both debunks many of the myths propagated by drug warriors and tells the truth about what is actually known of marijuana’s harms and margins of safety. What follows is drawn largely from their work.
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