Yet Even More Lies About Pot Potency

[Jimbo]

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:34:47 By: Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director

Okay, even I’m beginning to grow really, really tired of debunking this tripe.

Leave it to the ever exploitive folks at CASA (The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University) to jump on the phony “It’s not your father’s pot” bandwagon. Their bogus claim — which CNN embarrassingly bought hook, line, and sinker — is that today’s allegedly stronger pot is responsible for the spike in the number of Americans enrolled in ‘drug treatment’ for cannabis.

Notwithstanding that the potency figures cited by U-Miss are by the government’s own admission utter bullcrap, let me try to once again set the record straight in as few words as possible.

The recent spike in so-called marijuana ‘treatment’ admissions has nothing to do with marijuana; rather, it has everything to do with the public policies that criminalize its possession and use.

Noticeably absent from CASA’s press release (and CNN’s hatchet job) is the fact that marijuana arrests skyrocketed during this same period — from a modern low of 288,000 in 1991 to a record 830,000 in 2006.

Predictably, as record numbers of minor marijuana offenders have been arrested, a record number of judges and drug courts have been ordering defendants to attend ‘drug treatment’ in lieu of jail or as a requirement of their probation.

Nationally, according to data compiled by the US Substance Abuse and Mental Services Administration and published here, nearly 60 percent of all adolescents admitted to drug treatment for cannabis were ordered there by the criminal justice system. This percentage is almost a 50 percent increase since 1992. During this same time frame, “The proportion of admissions from [all] other referral sources declined.”

In other words, if Drug Czar John Walters and his ilk hadn’t been on a pot-arresting rampage over the past decade and a half — a rampage largely fueled by lies perpetuated by the likes of CASA and regurgitated by the talking heads at CNN — there would likely be fewer Americans in drug treatment for pot now than there were 16 years ago!

Marijuana Law Reform - NORML

[devdevguitar]

this couldnt have been more true bub.

it reminds me of a kid trying to throw a fit in a store just so the child can get what it wants

[tronix]

It reminds, me they can twist and skew numbers to look like anything they want these days.
If you took all of the counselors from Marijuana treatment centers, and transferred them to pharmaceutical addiction treatment centers, the world would be a slightly better place.

[Firestone]

I've been smoking weed for 40 odd years. The potency of the best weed has stayed about the same,IMO,but it's easy to get now. Before it was 3-4 encounters with truly great weed a year,now it's any day you want,if you can afford it.

Regs and mids,or commercial and primo in the day,what most people smoke,are about the same as they were then.

The only exception to me is commercial Mexican. As bad as people talk about,Mexican weed is much better than it was then,but it's no better than the commercial Colombian of the mid 70's.

Regular availability of the top end stuff is the only difference between then and now.

[Weed420]

But manipulating statistics is so easy to do. Much easier than actually doing something about the problem

[P8riot]

Manipulating facts and/or perceptions to fit one's outlook on the subject is a tried and true tactic of politicians, religious leaders, historians and educators for hundreds of years. Big surprise that it is happening with weed, huh?