Pubdate: Wed, 22 Dec 2004
Source: Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber (WA)
Copyright: 2004 Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber
Contact:  http://www.vashonbeachcomber.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2606
Author: Clifford Schaffer

REAL IGNORANCE IS IGNORING RESEARCH

Reefer madness updated is still Reefer madness.

The first clue comes when someone tells you that marijuana in the 1960s was
X percent (choose the percent that suits you) THC. Any percentage they give
is BS because there simply weren't any programs to measure THC in the 1960s.
The truth is that nobody knows.

But we can be sure that high potency marijuana was available in the 1960s,
because hashish has been available since at least the time that 1001 Arabian
Nights was written.

J. B. Cole (Beachcomber Nov. 24) makes another mistake when he says that the
marijuana debate is plagued by lack of information. That is not true at all.
During the last 100 years, there have been at least a dozen major studies of
the marijuana issue.

If Mr. Cole is really interested in accurate information, he can find the
full text of most of them at http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer under Major
Studies of Drugs and Drug Policy.

Studies all concluded that the marijuana laws were based on racism,
ignorance, and nonsense (Reefer Madness) and should have been repealed long
ago because they do more harm than good.

In 1973, President Nixon's U.S. National Commission on Marijuana and Drug
Abuse concluded the largest study of the marijuana laws ever done. At the
end of their research, they said that the real drug problem was not
marijuana, or heroin, or cocaine. The real drug problem, they said, was the
ignorance of the people who had never bothered to read the most basic
research on the subject.

More than 30 years later, J.B. Cole proves their conclusion is still true.

Clifford Schaffer Director, DRCNet Online Library of Drug Policy
http://www.druglibrary.org 
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