Pubdate: Thu, 01 Nov 2001
Source: Washington City Paper (DC)
Copyright: 2001 Washington Free Weekly Inc.
Contact:  http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/489
Authors: Redford Givens, Robert Sharpe
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n1838/a08.html

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

The Washington City Paper ("Magic Pill, 10/26) abandons objective 
journalism by accepting Alan Leshner's lies, dissembling, and 
propaganda for drug prohibition at face value without the withering 
criticism that such nonsense deserves. What Leshner seeks to hide is 
the fact that drug use caused no societal problems worthy of mention 
before the drug laws went on the books.  No one was robbing, whoring, 
or murdering over drugs when addicts could buy all the heroin, 
cocaine, morphine, opium, and anything else they wanted cheaply and 
legally at the corner pharmacy.  When drug were legal, addicts held 
regular employment, raised decent families, and were 
indistinguishable from their teetotaling neighbors.  Overdoses were 
virtually unheard-of when addicts used cheap, pure Bayer heroin 
instead of the expensive toxic potions prohibition puts on the 
streets.  (See The Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs, 
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cumenu.htm.) 
Where drug crime was once unheard-of we now have prisoners 
overflowing with drug users.  Where addicts once lived normal lives, 
we have hundreds of thousands of shattered families.  Where overdoses 
were once extremely rare, we have tens of thousands of drug deaths 
every year.  The addiction rate is now three times greater than when 
we had no laws at all.

Alan Leshner and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) do not 
want people to know that virtually all of the "drug problems" we 
currently have are the direct result of drug prohibition, not the 
drugs themselves.  Never in its history has NIDA accomplished a 
single thing that lowered drug abuse, so Alan Leshner is nothing more 
than a propaganda agent with a bag of harmful deceptions to inflict 
on society. The universally bad results of drug prohibition mark it 
as a destructive policy that should be abandoned.

Redford Givens, San Francisco

WEIRD SCIENCE

The Washington City Paper's cover article on addiction ("Magic Pill," 
10/26) referred to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) 
Intramural Research Program as "cutting-edge science."  As a social 
scientist trained in research methods, I'm skeptical of the alleged 
science NIDA cranks out with our tax dollars, especially as it 
pertains to marijuana.  According to the NIDA Web site "[m]arijuana 
is a green or gray mixture of dried, shredded flowers and leaves of 
the hemp plant." NIDA can't even get the color of marijuana right.

What does that say about the validity of their research?

The article noted that a NIDA researcher "recently won accolades from 
his peers for finally training monkeys to smoke marijuana 
voluntarily."  Apparently, most animals don't enjoy marijuana but 
"take to cocaine and heroin like fish to water."  NIDA's 
determination to train monkeys to use marijuana despite repeated 
failure says a lot about the organization's integrity.  Science and 
predetermined outcomes are mutually exclusive.

NIDA has a long history of funding methodologically suspect research. 
The reefer-madness myths that led to marijuana prohibition have long 
been discredited, forcing the drug-war gravy train to spend millions 
on politicized research, trying to find harm in a relatively harmless 
plant.  Last year's highly publicized NIDA study involving squirrel 
monkeys and cocaine is a prime example.  Frustrated with animal 
research subjects' unwillingness to self-administer THC (one of the 
many psychoactive ingredients in marijuana), NIDA researchers devised 
a flawed but headline-grabbing means of supporting their dubious 
contention that marijuana is addictive: The problem was overcome by 
first teaching the monkeys to self-administer cocaine.  After 
strapping squirrel monkeys into chairs and turning them into cocaine 
addicts, NIDA found that monkeys would willingly self-administer THC 
when forced into cocaine withdrawal.  The NIDA press release quoted 
Stephen Goldberg, one of the study's authors, as concluding that 
"marijuana has as much potential for abuse as other drugs of abuse, 
such as cocaine and heroin."  Despite questionable methodology and a 
statistically insignificant control group of four monkeys, the study 
made headlines around the nation. NIDA produces propaganda, not 
science.

Robert Sharpe, Cleveland Park
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