CASA Report Uses Suspect Science to Hype Teen mar1juana Menace

There You Go Again, Joe: CASA Report Uses Suspect Science to Hype Teen mar1juana Menace 4/30/04
The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University has once again raised the alarm about teens and mar1juana. And once again, CASA head Joseph Califano and his team of researchers appear to be playing games with the numbers in order to advance an anti-mar1juana political agenda in lockstep with drug czar John Walters.

CASA's most recent report, released April 20, was sensational: "New CASA Report Finds More Teens in Treatment for mar1juana Than for Alcohol or All Other Illegal Drugs Combined," shrieked the headline on the CASA press release accompanying the report. "Huge Increase in Emergency Room Admissions Among 12 to 17 Year Olds Where mar1juana is Implicated," read the subheading. There has been a 142% increase in teens in drug treatment for mar1juana, the report noted.

And if the screeching all-caps headlines were not enough to make the point, Califano was on hand to reiterate. "The evidence is overwhelming that mar1juana is a dangerous drug," he said in the press release announcing the report. "Parents should recognize -- and help their children understand -- that playing with mar1juana is like playing with fire. More kids are in treatment for mar1juana dependence and abuse than ever before, and mar1juana is a culprit in an increasing proportion of emergency room visits. Moreover, CASA's latest analysis provides increasing evidence that mar1juana is a gateway to other drug use. The more researchers study the drug and the consequences of its use, the clearer it becomes that teens who smoke pot are playing a dangerous game of Russian roulette, not engaging in a harmless rite of passage."

Kudos to Califano for managing to stuff three controversial and widely criticized ideas -- about teens in treatment, teens in emergency rooms, and the gateway theory -- into the space of a single paragraph. His work here would make the drug czar proud. But there is no need to speculate about that, because Walters was up next.

As if evidence were needed that Califano and CASA are working hand in glove with the drug czar, Walters gladly provided it by contributing his own anti-mar1juana rhetoric to the CASA press release. "The CASA white paper reinforces the fact that today's mar1juana is very different from what was available in the 1970's and 1980's, in terms of its potency and addictive potential," Walters chimed in. "Thanks to research such as this, we know more than we ever have about the adverse health impacts of using the drug, particularly for our youth. mar1juana poses a significant danger to young bodies and minds, and should be a matter of serious concern for American parents."

It all sounds pretty darned scary, which, of course, is precisely what Califano and Walters intended. But there is less to the report than meets the eye. For starters, take the claim that teens are flocking to drug treatment to get a grip on their mar1juana habits.

The numbers are indeed going up, but not for the reasons CASA suggested. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's (SAMHSA) Drug & Alcohol Services Information System (DASIS) Treatment Episode Data Sets (TEDS), which CASA used, the increase in teen mar1juana treatment is driven almost entirely by referrals from the criminal justice system or the schools. In the most recent TEDS numbers, only 16.6% of teen mar1juana treatment episodes were self-referrals, while nearly two-thirds (64.9%) were the result of referrals from the courts (54.1%) or the schools (10.8%). An additional 10.3% of treatment referrals came from health care providers. Another 8.6% of referrals came from "other community," which can include defense attorneys advising their young clients to cop a treatment plea.

"Why are there more teens in treatment for mar1juana now? Duh," snorted Mitchell Earleywine, author of "Understanding mar1juana: A New Look at the Scientific Evidence" and professor of clinical psychology at the University of Southern California. "It's because you can go to treatment or you can go to jail," he told DRCNet.

"This is bogus," said Paul Armentano, Senior Policy Analyst for the National Organization for the Reform of mar1juana Laws (http://www.norml.org). "If you take out all the referrals from the criminal justice system or school authorities, you find that less than 17% of teens who underwent treatment for mar1juana checked themselves into treatment. What happens is that someone is arrested for mar1juana possession and he is offered a choice between doing jail time or attending a treatment program. They either volunteer or a judge orders them into treatment."

The increase in teen mar1juana treatment admissions is not due to high potency pot or people reporting negative health consequences, Armentano told DRCNet, but to increased enforcement of the mar1juana laws. "In reality, the increase in treatment episodes merely mimics the proportional increase that we have seen in mar1juana arrests in recent years," he explained. "The rise in treatment episodes correlates strongly with the rise in arrests."

The upshot is that teenagers who do not need drug treatment are undertaking it to avoid jail or other unpleasantness. And the consequences of filling treatment slots with those who don't need them extend beyond the teenagers in question. "The reality is that every individual ordered to go to treatment because of mar1juana is taking bed space from people who could be addicted to hard drugs," said Armentano. "If a large percentage of those people in treatment for mar1juana are there even though they don't meet the scientific criteria for treatment, but because a judge didn't want to send them to jail, then we are just wasting scarce and valuable treatment slots."

There are indeed a few who seek treatment for their mar1juana use, conceded NORML executive director Keith Stroup. "Some people may decide they need help, and if they want treatment, that is terrific," he told DRCNet. "But there is no increase in mar1juana smokers in treatment in the last few years except for those referred by the criminal justice system. On the one hand, the cops and the courts pack these treatment programs with people doing it to stay out of jail, and on the other hand, people like Califano and Walters turn around and point to the increase as evidence of a problem," Stroup growled. "That's bull****. It doesn't prove that mar1juana is making more people seek treatment, it merely shows that people will do almost anything, even undergo humiliating and unnecessary treatment, to avoid going to jail."

Well, then, what about that high potency mar1juana sending kids to hospital emergency rooms? The numbers cited by CASA come from the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), a network of big city emergency rooms that reports all visits where drugs are mentioned. Drug War Chronicle has reported on problems in the DAWN statistics (http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/252/futilityofdawn.shtml), but it is worth repeating that under DAWN nomenclature an "emergency room mention" of mar1juana means not that mar1juana caused the visit but only that pot was one of up to four drugs mentioned by the patient. For example, if a person is run down by a drunken driver and goes to the emergency room and tells hospital personnel he smoked a joint that day, that is an "emergency room mention" of mar1juana.

The CASA report trumpets a 48% increase in "mentions" of mar1juana by young emergency room patients, but fails to explain what a "mention" means, instead leaving readers to reach the incorrect, but politically useful, conclusion that kids are overdosing on high potency mar1juana in droves. What is really occurring is that a miniscule number (7,000 -- less than 0.5% of all emergency room drug "mentions") of young people have arrived in emergency rooms saying they used mar1juana that day. And according to the DAWN numbers, nearly half of them reported no problems related to their mar1juana use but were there for other reasons. The remainder cited "unexpected reactions" to getting high or other non-life-threatening.

CASA and Walters would like to blame teen mar1juana-related emergency room visits on high potency weed. "Especially troubling is the possibility that this rise in teen emergency department mentions is related to the increased potency of the drug," the CASA press release speculated. But mar1juana experts aren't buying it despite repeated statements from Walters and other prohibitionists that today's mar1juana "is not your father's pot" or is 10 or 20 or even 30 times stronger than mar1juana available in the 1970s.

"It is easily apparent that these estimates of the increase in pot potency are really far off the mark," said Earleywine. "They are based on estimates from the 1970s that suggested 1% THC levels, but that was from mar1juana police had in evidence that had been sitting in hot evidence lockers for months before they sent it down to Mississippi to be tested," he explained. "You don't even get high at 1% THC levels. Now they're saying it's 20% THC, but that is extraordinary, and if you look at the averages from other labs, you see that average potency has increased two or three times since the 1970s, not the 10 or 20 times claimed by people like Walters."

But don't take the word of Earleywine. Here's what the Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center had to say about mar1juana potency in its 2004 National Drug Threat Assessment released this month: "Reporting from the Potency Monitoring Project indicates that the average THC content in submitted samples of commercial-grade mar1juana was 5.03 percent in 2001 and 5.14 percent in 2002. In those same years, the average THC content in submitted samples of sinsemilla was 9.60 and 11.42 percent, respectively. Rising mar1juana potency is perhaps more a factor of the demand for better quality mar1juana, however, than a reflection of mar1juana's widespread availability. mar1juana testing at 9.0 percent THC or higher accounted for 15.3 percent of submitted samples in 2001 and 23.2 percent in 2002."

And besides, said Earleywine, that high potency mar1juana could be beneficial in some respects. "Data that researchers Peter Cohen and Craig Reinarman have collected show that no one reports getting any higher on high potency pot, they just smoke less to get high. In that sense, high potency pot could be seen as harm reduction. There is no lethal dose, so making mar1juana stronger doesn't make it worse or more dangerous. The idea that higher potency mar1juana is leading to more need for treatment does not seem to be the most parsimonious explanation," he said. It is also unclear that teenagers are actually buying and smoking high potency mar1juana, Earleywine said. "Go up to a teenager and ask him whether he would rather buy a whole bag of Mexican pot for $100 or a couple of grams of the high potency pot. Most teens have limited budgets; they aren't even smoking the stronger stuff."

So much for the threat of "not your father's pot." That leaves the claim that mar1juana is a gateway drug, a claim upheld not by the scientific community but only by prohibitionist propagandists. The gateway theory has been debunked numerous times by reputable scientists, including the National Academy of Science's 1999 Institute of Medicine Study on the medical uses of mar1juana. While researchers are apt to carefully couch their conclusions, the Institute of Medicine was forthright: "There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of mar1juana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs."

Other than misleading, distorting, or being downright wrong on each of its major points, CASA's report on the teen mar1juana menace is a fine piece of science.

To read the CASA report, "Medical mar1juana II: Rite of Passage or Russian Roulette" online, visit:
http://www.casacolumbia.org/pdshopprov/files/Marijuana_Paper_on_Letterhead.pdf

To read the National Drug Intelligence Center on mar1juana potency online, visit:
http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs8/8731/mar1juana.htm#text16

To read about the methodology and data in the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) project online, visit:
http://dawninfo.samhsa.gov

To read the government's Treatment Episode Data Sets (TEDS) online, visit:
http://wwwdasis.samhsa.gov/dasis2/teds.htm

To read the 1999 Institute of Medicine report, "mar1juana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base," online, visit:
http://books.nap.edu/html/marimed/

For other reports by reputable authorities debunking the gateway theory, see:
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/172/ajphgateway.shtml
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/266/randreport.shtml

A helpful online resource for debunking prohibitionist distortions is Common Sense for Drug Policy "Drug War Distortions" web site:
http://www.drugwardistortions.org

 

They continue to tout more of the same 'ol, same 'ol for a solution, but it should be obvious by now that this is just a case of the government continuing to prop up a failed policy. We could save a hundred billion dollars per year AND add $40-50 billion in tax revenues by regulating the market. In addition, we would see a reduction in violence and teen drug use with a regulated market.

We can keep our kids from being able to get drugs, we will just have to revamp our policy and use a different strategy.

 

The drug war apparatus is substantial, organized, and well funded. Only a concerted effort by a large group of American citizens is going to change this policy. Is it time for you to help?

 

Newsbrief: FBI Was Looking for Dope, Not Terrorists, 9/11 Commission Says 4/30/04
In a report issued April 13, the commission investigating the September 11, 2001, attacks on Washington and New York criticized Attorney General John Ashcroft for not making counterterrorism a top priority. The report, produced by commission staff, singled out a May 10, 2001, Justice Department memorandum setting out priorities for the year. According to that memorandum, the Justice Department's top priorities were fighting the war on drugs and prosecuting gun crimes.

That memorandum stood in stark contrast to Attorney General Ashcroft's testimony before Congress just one day earlier, when he told legislators that his Justice Department had "no higher priority" than fighting Al-Qaeda. But the memorandum issued the next day didn't even mention counterterrorism. Instead, the commission found, "the department issued guidance for developing the fiscal year 2003 budget that made reducing the incidence of gun violence and reducing the trafficking of illegal drugs priority objectives."

Ashcroft's lack of concern about the threat from Al Qaeda came despite increasingly urgent appeals from the FBI's counterterrorism unit to reassess its priorities in the face of growing signs of Al Qaeda activity. According to the report, when Dale Watson, head of the bureau's counterterrorism unit read the May 10 memo setting priorities and found emphases on drugs and guns but nothing about fighting terrorism, he "almost fell out of his chair."

Watson wasn't the only one worried. Then-acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard, who replaced Louis Freeh in the position, testified before the commission that he had appealed to Ashcroft for more money for counterterrorism on September 10, 2001, the day before the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. Ashcroft rejected that appeal.

But blame does not reside only with Ashcroft, the commission found. "As the terrorism danger grew, Director Freeh [a Clinton appointee] faced the choice of whether to lower the priority the FBI attached to work on general crime, including the war on drugs, and allocate those resources to terrorism," the commission noted. The agency formally made counterterrorism a priority, but "it did not shift its human resources accordingly." A year before the devastating attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, the report continued, "there were twice as many agents devoted to drug-enforcement matters as to counter-terrorism," and even agents who were assigned to counter-terrorism were often moved temporarily to drugs and crime.

In fact, immediately after the September 11 attacks, the FBI moved more than 400 agents to counterterrorism, the vast majority coming from drug investigations. At that time, only 6% of the FBI's total personnel were working on counterterrorism.

In a 1996 speech, Arnold Trebach, a founding father of the contemporary drug reform and anti-prohibitionist movements (http://www.trebach.org), presciently warned of what could happen if the drug war continued to be a higher priority than fighting terrorism. "All of us would be infinitely safer if the courageous efforts of anti-drug agents in the US... and other countries were focused on terrorists aimed at blowing up airliners and skyscrapers (rather than) drug traffickers seeking to sell the passengers and office dwellers cocaine and mar1juana."

Too bad John Ashcroft wasn't listening.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/335/dopehunt.shtml

 

The time is all the time and the place is everywhere you go. The best thing you can do is to study the issue and arm yourself with the facts regarding drug use, abuse, and prohibition. I highly recommend www.stopthedrugwar.org for this purpose.

When you talk to or debate the issue with others, please try not to berate or deride other people's opinions. We can win this argument with facts and figures and will be more effective if the prohibitionists are seen as the angry ones.

Believe it or not, most people that I debate on this subject either change positions or at least soften their stance. I attribute this to my unflinching use of facts, evidence, science, and common sense when discussing this issue.

A wonderful tactic I enjoy using is to turn the prohibitionists on their heads. Force them to take the position of defending this policy. When people are forced to defend this policy, they eventually see the light because given the facts, prohibition is the worst thing we could possibly do.

Actually, if we are to inject logic, alcohol would be more highly regulated than mar1juana.

 

Clear Lake High in the '80s.