A long time ago, a commision was formed by former President
Nixon. The task he gave to his commision was to study marijuana
and provide some solid information concerning the drug that was
sweeping the country. The commision he established was a blue
ribbon commision containing doctors, lawyers, legislators and
chaired by a conservative republican governor. Two years later
the commision presented it's report; Marijuana: A Signal of
Misunderstanding. Unfortunately, the report did not contain the
information he wanted to hear and so he refused to accept the
report and denounced his own commision.

It is too bad the president never took the time to read the
report. The report contains a lot of good solid marijuana
information and is even relevant today. One very interesting
section was the myths surrounding marijuana. The report debunked
several myths such as brain damage, gene damage, addiction and more.
Today we a new myth is being promoted. The new myth is that
"Marijuana is now more potent; therefore it is a more dangerous
drug than before."

This new "fact" is being aimed at parents like me, who grew up in
the 60's and 70's. I suppose we are to feel remorse or guilt for
our previous actions and support the government current efforts
to continue marijuana prohibition.

Well, this new myth has several problems. It is a
misrepresentation of the facts. The marijuana that was tested in
the late 60's and early 70's were taken primarily from a small
number of samples of Mexican kilobricks. Marijuana consumers of
the time will remember that Mexican marijuana was the cheap
stuff. The better marijuana was known to come from Panama,
Columbia, or Hawaii. Some of the tobacco companies even
trademarked some of the common underground terms (i.e. Panama
Red) for their secondary tobacco products.

A better data set to evaluate Marijuana's potentcy comes from the
1980's to the present. Starting in 1983 where the numbers of
seizures exceeded 1000, the average THC content was 3.2%. In the
90's the potency was around 3.4% and the number of seizure tested
was over 3000. The 60's and 70's data had a very small sample
size of approximately 100 or less. There are some individual
samples that have much higher THC percentage, but then again so
did some of the late 60's data.

The above data was obtained from the government's Potency
Monitoring Report prepared by the University of Missippi. This
institute is the only one allowed to cultivate marijuana.
The federal testing lab's technology of handling marijuana has
improved over the last 20-30 years. They now have a great deal
of experience in preserving samples for accurate testing. Please
note, a hundred years ago, when tincture of marijuana was used by
the medical community it was known that it had an uneven potentcy
and degraded easily due to poor storage conditions.

The second point of this new myth is "therefore it is a more
dangerous drug than before." The logic in this statement is weak.
It begs the question, was it dangerous when it was less potent
and how does that make it more dangerous? The real question
should be; is THC the intoxicating ingredient in marijuana dangerous?
Well smoking anything is presumably deleterious to your lungs. I
can not imagine ingesting hot particles in your lung doing any
good for anybody. I would suggest the less you do, the better
you are in the long run. Perhaps smoking high quality marijuana
is better than smoking poor quality marijuana, since you would
naturally consume less smoke. This is definetly something to
consider, if we are truly interested in health.

The fundamental question is; do we believe the government postion
on marijuana. The government says marijuana is a drug that has a
high potential for abuse. That is medical/legal speak for it is
addictive. I do not ever remember hearing the term "marijuana
addict" in a serious discussion or in scientific/medical
literature. According to the addiction clinics most all of their
marijuana customers come to them due to a court imposed condition.

The next statement from the government is that it is a drug that
has no accepted medical use in the United States. That is most
amusing, the United States government itself supplies several
people with pre-rolled marijuana joints from the same institution
I mentioned earlier for various medical conditions.

The last official statement from the government on marijuana is
that it is so dangerous that it can not be safely used even under
medical supervision. I contacted the hospital and asked how many
Marijuana overdoses that they have had. I was greeted with a
laugh, "come on, no one dies from marijuana."

So do we continue to believe in fairy tales and myths? I suggest
we look at the following facts. Over half a million people are
arrested for marijuana each year, homes are broken into by people
who look like Darth Vader searching for a few plants, mothers are
stripped searched in front of their children, military forces are
being used to enforce civil laws, and innocent civilians are shot
in law enforcement accidents or trade disputes among drug
dealers. These are not incidents that happen somewhere else.
They happen right here, right now in places like Milton,
Whaleyville and Salisbury.

Robert Ryan
Salisbury, MD