Latest Words From the War On Natural Substances
It shouldn't come as any news, but Smoking Marijuana Doesn't Make You a Junkie.
The idea that marijuana is a 'gateway' drug has been once again squelched by two new scientific studies.
Two recent studies should be the final nails in the coffin of the lie that has propelled some of this nation's most misguided policies: the claim that smoking marijuana somehow causes people to use hard drugs, often called the "gateway theory."
Such claims have been a staple of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy under present drug czar John Walters. Typical is a 2004 New Mexico speech in which, according to the Albuquerque Journal, "Walters emphasized that marijuana is a 'gateway drug' that can lead to other chemical dependencies."
The gateway theory presents drug use as a tidy progression in which users move from legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco to marijuana, and from there to hard drugs like cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. Thus, zealots like Walters warn, marijuana is bad because it leads to things that are even worse.
It's a neat theory, easy to sell. The problem is, scientists keep poking holes in it -- the two new studies being are just the most recent examples.
In one National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded study, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh tracked the drug use patterns of 224 boys, starting at age 10 to 12 and ending at age 22. Right from the beginning these kids confounded expectations. Some followed the traditional gateway paradigm, starting with tobacco or alcohol and moving on to marijuana, but some reversed the pattern, starting with marijuana first. And some never progressed from one substance to another at all.
When they looked at the detailed data on these kids, the researchers found that the gateway theory simply didn't hold; environmental factors such as neighborhood characteristics played a much larger role than which drug the boys happened to use first. "Abusable drugs," they wrote, "occupy neither a specific place in a hierarchy nor a discrete position in a temporal sequence."
Lead researcher Dr. Ralph E. Tarter told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "It runs counter to about six decades of current drug policy in the country, where we believe that if we can't stop kids from using marijuana, then they're going to go on and become addicts to hard drugs."
Researchers in Brisbane, Australia, and St. Louis reached much the same conclusion in a larger and more complex study published last month. The research involved more than 4,000 Australian twins whose use of marijuana and other drugs was followed in detail from adolescence into adulthood.
Then -- and here's the fascinating part -- they matched the real-world data from the twins to mathematical models based on 13 different explanations of how use of marijuana and other illicit drugs might be related. These models ranged from pure chance -- assuming that any overlap between use of marijuana and other drugs is random -- to models in which underlying genetic or environmental factors lead to both marijuana and other drug use or models in which marijuana use causes use of other drugs or vice versa.
When they crunched the numbers, only one conclusion made sense: "Cannabis and other illicit drug use and misuse co-occur in the population due to common risk factors (correlated vulnerabilities) or a liability that is in part shared." Translated to plain English: the data don't show that marijuana causes use of other drugs, but instead indicate that the same factors that make people likely to try marijuana also make them likely to try other substances.
In the final blow to claims that marijuana must remain illegal to keep us from becoming a nation of hard-drug addicts, the researchers added that any gateway effect that does exist is "more likely to be social than pharmacological," occurring because marijuana "introduces users to a provider (peer or black marketeer) who eventually becomes the source for other illicit drugs." In other words, the gateway isn't marijuana; it's laws that put marijuana into the same criminal underground with speed and heroin.
The lie that marijuana somehow turns people into junkies is dead. Officials who insist on repeating it as a way of squelching discussion about common-sense reforms should be laughed off the stage.
But let's never let the facts get in the way of an agenda:
DEA Forced to Scrub Misleading Info on the American Medical Association's Position on Marijuana
On November 10th, the AMA reversed its long-held position that marijuana has no acceptable medicinal value and adopted a new policy position favoring medical marijuana. The AMA called on the U.S. government to reconsider its current classification as a Schedule I substance. (The government categorizes drugs into “Schedules.” Four of the five actually regulate the use of substances, but Schedule I drugs-such as marijuana, heroin and LSD-are completely banned.)
However, a week after the announcement of this historic reversal, the DEA still hadn’t removed mention of the AMA’s old, anti-medical-marijuana position from its website.
So, the advocacy group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), an organization of cops, judges and prosecutors calling for the legalization and regulation of all drugs, created an action alert asking U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to order the DEA to scrub the bogus statements from the web.
After just one day of emails from activists, the information disappeared. One might conclude this quick response was the handiwork of Obama’s tech-savvy team, if it weren’t for the other government websites still spreading misinformation about the AMA's position on medical marijuana. Both the White House "drug czar's" office and the DEA's “scare the children” youth website still contain inaccurate statements about AMA's position on medical marijuana.
Of course, the drug policy reform advocates at LEAP won’t settle for anything less than the whole truth and are still urging membersto send more letters to Attorney General Eric Holder and White House "Drug Czar" Gil Kerlikowske, asking them to stop spending taxpayer money to spread false information about medical marijuana.
Meanwhile, other public health officials are going even further than the AMA in criticizing current drug policies. For example, on October 18th, the California Medical Association endorsed a resolution stating that the criminal prohibition of marijuana, even for non-medical reasons, is a “failed public health policy.”
These bold statements from public health officials do more than buoy the hopes of drug policy reformers; they point to a clear trend of health officials joining ranks with the outspoken law enforcers at LEAP in saying that current drug policies aren't protecting the general health, well-being and safety of the public. The second-largest physician group in the country, the American College of Physicians (ACP) endorsed the use, reclassification, and further study of medical marijuana, making the case that the red tape surrounding the medical use of cannabis has obscured good science for too long.
Speaking of good science, the second in command at the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Deputy Drug Czar Thomas McClellan, saidon November 18th: “It’s time to use science and common sense to direct our efforts - not ideology, not positions of the past, but a fresh look at what the data tells us. We also need the willingness to rethink old positions and particularly to change direction when the science says it’s time to change direction.”
McClellan’s statement is a reminder of President Obama’s inaugural pledge to construct federal policy informed by "the most complete, accurate, and honest scientific information."
Hopefully both President Obama and Thomas McClellan will honor their word, but if they don’t, they should at least know that LEAP and other watchdog activists are poised to help them do so.
Update: Less than a day after this piece was uploaded, the DEA changed the remaining claim on their website that the AMA still opposes medical marijuana, replacing it with a reference to the AMA’s call for a review of marijuana’s Schedule I status. Unfortunately, the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s site is still inaccurate. Please take action and demand full accountability from our federal government on this issue.
Some cops, of course, have a clue.
Former Police Chief Norm Stamper: 'Let's Not Stop at Marijuana Legalization'
A new poll shows that most Americans are ready to legalize marijuana, but not drugs like cocaine or heroin. A 34-year police vet says it's time to legalize them all.
These days, it seems like everyone is talking in earnest about marijuana legalization, once dismissed as little more than a Cheech and Chong pipe dream. Indeed, a new poll reveals that 53 percent of Americans now support ending marijuana prohibition.
Bolstered by increasing public support for something once considered to be a political third rail, lawmakers from Rhode Island to Washington State have put the issue on the table for consideration. And citizen initiatives (particularly in California) are cropping up faster than ditch weed.
These are welcome developments to a retired police chief like me who oversaw the arrests of countless people for marijuana and other drugs, but saw no positive impact from all the blood, sweat and tears (and money) put into the effort. Soon, it seems, cops may no longer have to waste time and risk lives enforcing pot laws that don’t actually prevent anyone from using marijuana.
Yet, I'm alarmed that the above-mentioned poll showing majority support for marijuana legalization also found that fewer than one in 10 people agree that it's time to end the prohibition of other drugs.
This no doubt makes sense to some readers at first glance, since more people are familiar with marijuana than other drugs like cocaine, heroin or meth. However, even a cursory study of our drug war policies will reveal that legalizing pot but not other drugs will leave huge social harms unresolved.
Legalizing marijuana only will not:
• Stop gangs from selling other drugs to our kids (since illegal drug dealers rarely check for ID);
• Stop drug dealers from brutally murdering rival traffickers for the purpose of controlling the remaining criminal market for other drugs;
• Stop drug dealers from firing on cops charged with fighting the senseless war on other illicit drugs;
• Stop drug dealers from killing kids caught in crossfire and drive-by shootings;
• Stop overdose deaths of drug users who refrain from calling 911 out of fear of legal repercussions;
• Reduce the spread of infectious diseases like AIDS and hepatitis, since marijuana users don’t inject their drug like heroin users (who sometimes share dirty needles and syringes because prohibition makes it hard to secure clean ones);
• Stop the bloody cartel battles in Mexico that are rapidly expanding over the border into the U.S;
• Stop the Taliban from raking in massive profits from illegal opium cultivation in Afghanistan.
Of course, none of this means that our rapidly growing marijuana legalization movement should slow down.
On the contrary, as the polls show, a majority of Americans understand that legalizing marijuana will produce many benefits. No longer will 800,000 people a year be arrested on pot charges, their lives damaged if not ruined; governments will be able to tax the popular commodity; regulation and revenues will help forge and finance effective programs of drug abuse prevention and treatment; and those vicious cartels will lose as much as half their illicit profits when they can no longer sell marijuana.
Further, once people get used to the idea of allowing legal sales of the previously banned drug we'll be able to point to successful regulation as a model for similar treatment of all other currently illicit substances.
Marijuana legalization is a great step in the direction of sane and sensible drug policy. But we reformers must remember that we’re working to legalize drugs not because we think they are safe, but because prohibition is far more dangerous to users and nonusers alike.
Norm Stamper, a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, is a 34-year police veteran and served as Seattle's chief of police from 1994-2000. He is the author of "Breaking Rank: A Top Cop's Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing."
The idea that marijuana is a 'gateway' drug has been once again squelched by two new scientific studies.
Two recent studies should be the final nails in the coffin of the lie that has propelled some of this nation's most misguided policies: the claim that smoking marijuana somehow causes people to use hard drugs, often called the "gateway theory."
Such claims have been a staple of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy under present drug czar John Walters. Typical is a 2004 New Mexico speech in which, according to the Albuquerque Journal, "Walters emphasized that marijuana is a 'gateway drug' that can lead to other chemical dependencies."
The gateway theory presents drug use as a tidy progression in which users move from legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco to marijuana, and from there to hard drugs like cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. Thus, zealots like Walters warn, marijuana is bad because it leads to things that are even worse.
It's a neat theory, easy to sell. The problem is, scientists keep poking holes in it -- the two new studies being are just the most recent examples.
In one National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded study, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh tracked the drug use patterns of 224 boys, starting at age 10 to 12 and ending at age 22. Right from the beginning these kids confounded expectations. Some followed the traditional gateway paradigm, starting with tobacco or alcohol and moving on to marijuana, but some reversed the pattern, starting with marijuana first. And some never progressed from one substance to another at all.
When they looked at the detailed data on these kids, the researchers found that the gateway theory simply didn't hold; environmental factors such as neighborhood characteristics played a much larger role than which drug the boys happened to use first. "Abusable drugs," they wrote, "occupy neither a specific place in a hierarchy nor a discrete position in a temporal sequence."
Lead researcher Dr. Ralph E. Tarter told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "It runs counter to about six decades of current drug policy in the country, where we believe that if we can't stop kids from using marijuana, then they're going to go on and become addicts to hard drugs."
Researchers in Brisbane, Australia, and St. Louis reached much the same conclusion in a larger and more complex study published last month. The research involved more than 4,000 Australian twins whose use of marijuana and other drugs was followed in detail from adolescence into adulthood.
Then -- and here's the fascinating part -- they matched the real-world data from the twins to mathematical models based on 13 different explanations of how use of marijuana and other illicit drugs might be related. These models ranged from pure chance -- assuming that any overlap between use of marijuana and other drugs is random -- to models in which underlying genetic or environmental factors lead to both marijuana and other drug use or models in which marijuana use causes use of other drugs or vice versa.
When they crunched the numbers, only one conclusion made sense: "Cannabis and other illicit drug use and misuse co-occur in the population due to common risk factors (correlated vulnerabilities) or a liability that is in part shared." Translated to plain English: the data don't show that marijuana causes use of other drugs, but instead indicate that the same factors that make people likely to try marijuana also make them likely to try other substances.
In the final blow to claims that marijuana must remain illegal to keep us from becoming a nation of hard-drug addicts, the researchers added that any gateway effect that does exist is "more likely to be social than pharmacological," occurring because marijuana "introduces users to a provider (peer or black marketeer) who eventually becomes the source for other illicit drugs." In other words, the gateway isn't marijuana; it's laws that put marijuana into the same criminal underground with speed and heroin.
The lie that marijuana somehow turns people into junkies is dead. Officials who insist on repeating it as a way of squelching discussion about common-sense reforms should be laughed off the stage.
But let's never let the facts get in the way of an agenda:
DEA Forced to Scrub Misleading Info on the American Medical Association's Position on Marijuana
On November 10th, the AMA reversed its long-held position that marijuana has no acceptable medicinal value and adopted a new policy position favoring medical marijuana. The AMA called on the U.S. government to reconsider its current classification as a Schedule I substance. (The government categorizes drugs into “Schedules.” Four of the five actually regulate the use of substances, but Schedule I drugs-such as marijuana, heroin and LSD-are completely banned.)
However, a week after the announcement of this historic reversal, the DEA still hadn’t removed mention of the AMA’s old, anti-medical-marijuana position from its website.
So, the advocacy group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), an organization of cops, judges and prosecutors calling for the legalization and regulation of all drugs, created an action alert asking U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to order the DEA to scrub the bogus statements from the web.
After just one day of emails from activists, the information disappeared. One might conclude this quick response was the handiwork of Obama’s tech-savvy team, if it weren’t for the other government websites still spreading misinformation about the AMA's position on medical marijuana. Both the White House "drug czar's" office and the DEA's “scare the children” youth website still contain inaccurate statements about AMA's position on medical marijuana.
Of course, the drug policy reform advocates at LEAP won’t settle for anything less than the whole truth and are still urging membersto send more letters to Attorney General Eric Holder and White House "Drug Czar" Gil Kerlikowske, asking them to stop spending taxpayer money to spread false information about medical marijuana.
Meanwhile, other public health officials are going even further than the AMA in criticizing current drug policies. For example, on October 18th, the California Medical Association endorsed a resolution stating that the criminal prohibition of marijuana, even for non-medical reasons, is a “failed public health policy.”
These bold statements from public health officials do more than buoy the hopes of drug policy reformers; they point to a clear trend of health officials joining ranks with the outspoken law enforcers at LEAP in saying that current drug policies aren't protecting the general health, well-being and safety of the public. The second-largest physician group in the country, the American College of Physicians (ACP) endorsed the use, reclassification, and further study of medical marijuana, making the case that the red tape surrounding the medical use of cannabis has obscured good science for too long.
Speaking of good science, the second in command at the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Deputy Drug Czar Thomas McClellan, saidon November 18th: “It’s time to use science and common sense to direct our efforts - not ideology, not positions of the past, but a fresh look at what the data tells us. We also need the willingness to rethink old positions and particularly to change direction when the science says it’s time to change direction.”
McClellan’s statement is a reminder of President Obama’s inaugural pledge to construct federal policy informed by "the most complete, accurate, and honest scientific information."
Hopefully both President Obama and Thomas McClellan will honor their word, but if they don’t, they should at least know that LEAP and other watchdog activists are poised to help them do so.
Update: Less than a day after this piece was uploaded, the DEA changed the remaining claim on their website that the AMA still opposes medical marijuana, replacing it with a reference to the AMA’s call for a review of marijuana’s Schedule I status. Unfortunately, the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s site is still inaccurate. Please take action and demand full accountability from our federal government on this issue.
Some cops, of course, have a clue.
Former Police Chief Norm Stamper: 'Let's Not Stop at Marijuana Legalization'
A new poll shows that most Americans are ready to legalize marijuana, but not drugs like cocaine or heroin. A 34-year police vet says it's time to legalize them all.
These days, it seems like everyone is talking in earnest about marijuana legalization, once dismissed as little more than a Cheech and Chong pipe dream. Indeed, a new poll reveals that 53 percent of Americans now support ending marijuana prohibition.
Bolstered by increasing public support for something once considered to be a political third rail, lawmakers from Rhode Island to Washington State have put the issue on the table for consideration. And citizen initiatives (particularly in California) are cropping up faster than ditch weed.
These are welcome developments to a retired police chief like me who oversaw the arrests of countless people for marijuana and other drugs, but saw no positive impact from all the blood, sweat and tears (and money) put into the effort. Soon, it seems, cops may no longer have to waste time and risk lives enforcing pot laws that don’t actually prevent anyone from using marijuana.
Yet, I'm alarmed that the above-mentioned poll showing majority support for marijuana legalization also found that fewer than one in 10 people agree that it's time to end the prohibition of other drugs.
This no doubt makes sense to some readers at first glance, since more people are familiar with marijuana than other drugs like cocaine, heroin or meth. However, even a cursory study of our drug war policies will reveal that legalizing pot but not other drugs will leave huge social harms unresolved.
Legalizing marijuana only will not:
• Stop gangs from selling other drugs to our kids (since illegal drug dealers rarely check for ID);
• Stop drug dealers from brutally murdering rival traffickers for the purpose of controlling the remaining criminal market for other drugs;
• Stop drug dealers from firing on cops charged with fighting the senseless war on other illicit drugs;
• Stop drug dealers from killing kids caught in crossfire and drive-by shootings;
• Stop overdose deaths of drug users who refrain from calling 911 out of fear of legal repercussions;
• Reduce the spread of infectious diseases like AIDS and hepatitis, since marijuana users don’t inject their drug like heroin users (who sometimes share dirty needles and syringes because prohibition makes it hard to secure clean ones);
• Stop the bloody cartel battles in Mexico that are rapidly expanding over the border into the U.S;
• Stop the Taliban from raking in massive profits from illegal opium cultivation in Afghanistan.
Of course, none of this means that our rapidly growing marijuana legalization movement should slow down.
On the contrary, as the polls show, a majority of Americans understand that legalizing marijuana will produce many benefits. No longer will 800,000 people a year be arrested on pot charges, their lives damaged if not ruined; governments will be able to tax the popular commodity; regulation and revenues will help forge and finance effective programs of drug abuse prevention and treatment; and those vicious cartels will lose as much as half their illicit profits when they can no longer sell marijuana.
Further, once people get used to the idea of allowing legal sales of the previously banned drug we'll be able to point to successful regulation as a model for similar treatment of all other currently illicit substances.
Marijuana legalization is a great step in the direction of sane and sensible drug policy. But we reformers must remember that we’re working to legalize drugs not because we think they are safe, but because prohibition is far more dangerous to users and nonusers alike.
Norm Stamper, a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, is a 34-year police veteran and served as Seattle's chief of police from 1994-2000. He is the author of "Breaking Rank: A Top Cop's Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing."