Buzz Kill

[SmokeWeed]

First, it was Office of National Drug Control Policy Director John P. Walters contending last week that of the "roughly 7 million people we have as an estimate that need treatment because of dependence or abuse of illegal drugs, roughly 60 percent are dependent on marijuana."
To which Bruce Mirken, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project on Capitol Hill, responded that Mr. Walters was being "deliberately and rather brazenly disingenuous," because the majority of medical-treatment admissions he cited "were referred by the criminal justice system -- i.e., kids were arrested and offered treatment instead of jail."

Now it's Thomas A. Riley, spokesman for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, telling Inside the Beltway readers not to buy into Mr. Mirken's "goofy spin." Mr. Riley argues that one cannot talk about the drug-dependency problem in this country today without acknowledging the "role" of marijuana.

"It's a much more serious drug of abuse than many people of my generation realized," he says. "People can differ about policies here, but there is no serious dispute about the facts, however inconvenient or harmful they may be for people who want to legalize marijuana."

As for Mr. Mirken's arguments, Mr. Riley counters that the best U.S. government estimate of the number of Americans suffering from marijuana dependency is based on applying certain criteria to the large number of people surveyed annually about their personal drug use.

"It has nothing to do with the number of 'arrests' -- just what the people themselves said about their drug use," says Mr. Riley, although he acknowledges of these particular polls' error margins. "Maybe the pot smokers in the survey were too stoned or confused to answer accurately."


NewsHawk: *********** - 420 Magazine
Source: Washington Times
Pubdate: Mon, 16 Oct 2006
Author: John McCaslin
Copyright: 2006 News World Communications
Contact: letters@washingtontimes.com
Website: The Washington Times, America's Newspaper