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 - --- MAP posted-by: Josh