Wednesday, September 6, 2000
San Francisco Chronicle
www.sfgate.com
Feds' Myths About Medical Marijuana
Studies dispel arguments that passage of Prop. 215 led to increased teen
drug use
By Marsha Rosenbaum
FOUR YEARS AGO, when Californians were about to vote on Proposition 215,
the medical marijuana initiative, opponents predicted that if seriously
ill patients were allowed to use marijuana, recreational use among young
people would increase. Drug czar Barry McCaffrey warned: ``Teens stop
using drugs when they become aware of the risks involved. Sending them
the wrong message that marijuana is medicine will cause drug use to
skyrocket."
Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services released its
annual National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. As a Californian and
mother of a 16-year-old boy, I read with keen interest the data on
teenage use of marijuana.
Here's what I learned. In 1999, just under 8 percent of the nation's 12-
to 17-year- olds used marijuana regularly. In California, the percentage
was identical. Despite the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes
in the Golden State, in each subsequent year California teenagers have
ranked about average compared to the rest of the country.
In 1997, the year after the initiative passed, almost 7 percent of
California teenagers used marijuana regularly, compared with nearly 9
percent nationwide. And in 1998, there was not much difference, with just
over 7 percent of California's 12- to 17-year-olds using marijuana
regularly, compared with 8 percent of the nation's teenagers.
As it turns out, the sky did not fall, and the predicted spike in
marijuana use among teenagers never materialized. But Californians would
never know it, because we're not supposed to.
In 1997, immediately after the passage of the medical marijuana
initiative, a study was commissioned by the federal government's
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to demonstrate
the (presumably negative) implications of Proposition 215. But the
results of that study indicated that although marijuana use rose among
high school students in other parts of the country, use actually leveled
off in California after passage of the initiative.
The report was suppressed, and according to its author, Professor Rodney
Skager of the UCLA Graduate School of Education, ``I wonder if (the
report) will ever see the light of day. Two years have passed since
delivery of the first draft. People in the sponsoring agency undoubtedly
fear the consequences of release of the data. The findings are
politically incorrect because federal propaganda about the medical
marijuana initiative insisted that passage would send the wrong message
to young people.''
Indeed, young people are getting all kinds of ``wrong messages'' about
marijuana. And many are confused, which is not surprising. As high school
civics teachers lecture about democracy, students are witnessing a
thwarting of ``the will of the people'' in the name of protecting them.
Last week, the Supreme Court weighed in. By a 7-to-1 vote, the court
responded to an ``emergency'' request by the Department of Justice to
prohibit the Oakland Cannabis Buyer's Cooperative from distributing
marijuana to its (fewer than 20) medical necessity patients who are
extremely, even terminally ill.
Evidently, the Clinton administration persuaded most Supreme Court
justices that medicinal use by the sick and dying will result in
compromising our ability to enforce our drug laws and marijuana-is-evil
posture. The one dissenting voice was that of Justice John Paul Stevens,
who said the government ``has failed to demonstrate that the denial of
necessary medicine to seriously ill and dying patients will advance the
public interest or that the failure to enjoin the distribution of such
medicine will impair the orderly enforcement of federal criminal
statutes.''
Justice Stevens is right. If the statistics collected by our government
tell us anything, it is that there is no relationship whatsoever between
providing medicine to sick people and erosion of our ability to enforce
our drug laws.
Last year alone, some 700,000 individuals were arrested on marijuana
charges (87 percent for simple possession) -- more than any other year in
our history, and more than any other country in the world. As for ``the
public interest,'' marijuana use in the general population remained
constant last year, if not in decline.
If any messages have been sent to young people, they are that our system
of government does not reflect voters' decisions when those decisions are
inconsistent with federal dogma. The reality is that medical marijuana,
this small step toward rational drug policy, has not resulted in
increased teenage use or in fewer arrests in the general population. What
surely has increased among young people is cynicism and mistrust of our
government's drug policy.
Marsha Rosenbaum, Ph.D., directs the San Francisco office of the
Lindesmith Center- Drug Policy Foundation,
www.drugpolicy.org,
an institute based in New York.
===============================================
Ellen Komp
Program Associate
The Lindesmith Center - West
2233 Lombard Street, San Francisco, CAŹ 94123
(415) 921-4987 ph, (415) 921-1912 fx
Office of Legal Affairs
1095 Market Street, Suite 503, San Francisco, CA 94103,
(415) 554-1900 ph, (415) 554-1980 fx
The Lindesmith Center
925 Ninth Avenue, New York, NY 10019
(212) 548-0695 ph, (212) 548-4670 fx
===============================================