Pubdate: 16 Oct 2000
Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer (WA)
Copyright: 2000 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Contact:  P.O. Box 1909, Seattle, WA 98111-1909
Website: http://www.seattle-pi.com/
Author: Malcolm Ritter
Cited: NIDA www.nida.nih.gov
Bookmark: cannabis clippings http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm

NEW STUDY CALLS POT ADDICTIVE, BUT OTHERS DISAGREE

NEW YORK -- Monkeys repeatedly dosed themselves with the main active 
ingredient of marijuana in a new federal study. The researchers say that 
result emphasizes the idea that people can get hooked on pot and provides a 
new way to test therapies.

Lab animals will actively dose themselves with most drugs abused by people, 
but marijuana has been an exception, said researcher Steven Goldberg of the 
National Institute on Drug Abuse, called NIDA.

Some people might interpret that as suggesting it has little potential for 
addiction, he said. But the new work found that squirrel monkeys repeatedly 
pushed a lever to get injections of the marijuana ingredient THC, Goldberg 
and colleagues report in the November issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience.

NIDA says marijuana causes often uncontrollable craving and use, despite 
health and social consequences, and so is addictive. Not everyone agrees.

"This drug is not addicting. Clinical experience says that," said Dr. 
Lester Grinspoon, a Harvard Medical School emeritus professor of psychiatry.

The monkey study doesn't prove otherwise, said Grinspoon, who is chairman 
of the board of the NORML Foundation, which promotes medical use of 
marijuana and ultimately its legalization.

In Goldberg's experiment, four squirrel monkeys sat through hour-long test 
sessions once a day with a tube attached to a vein.

When a green light turned on, they could push a lever 10 times to get a THC 
injection. They gave themselves up to 30 injections per session, versus one 
to four when the tube delivered only water.

On the Net: www.nida.nih.gov/
- ---
MAP posted-by: Thunder