cannabisnews.com: Busted Busted Posted by CN Staff on May 23, 2003 at 12:06:02 PT By Dominic Holden Source: The Stranger The U.S. "Drug Czar" sent some anti-drug warriors to Seattle to talk to local reporters about the dangers of marijuana. The Stranger sent a pot-smoking, marijuana-legalization activist to the meeting.The invitation came via fax from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). Any newspaper that wanted to send a reporter to the May 16 briefing had to RSVP, give the name of the reporter it would be sending, and make sure the reporter brought identification. Undoubtedly, the federal drug warriors hoped for an audience comprising passive journalists who would offer no objection to the feds' drug war pabulum and who would, in turn, feed the official word to the masses. The ONDCP certainly didn't expect The Stranger to send the director of Seattle's Hempfest to its meeting last Friday afternoon. The ONDCP was created by the Executive Office of the President in 1988 with the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act. According to the ONDCP's website, the agency's mission is to create federal policies, priorities, and strategies in order to curb drug use, sales, and related crime. The ONDCP can be thanked for all those recent TV ads that attempted to blame terrorism on drug users. The ONDCP spent millions of taxpayer dollars on those slickly produced ads--once upon a time, drug users had fried eggs for brains, now a single bong hit can blow up a disco in Bali--and all of that money was, like so many pot smokers, completely wasted. The nation's largest drug-policy reform organization, Drug Policy Alliance, reported last month that the ONDCP's own review of its media campaign found that the ads actually increased pot consumption among teens. The deputy director of the ONDCP's National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, Robert Denniston, ran the meeting in the offices of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, 24 floors above the marijuana-saturated streets of Seattle. While Mr. Denniston seemed pleasant enough, his I-lost-touch-a-long-time-ago mullet slaughtered any youth culture credibility he might have had. So in addition to Denniston and the two other grownup panelists--Richard Ries, MD, the University of Washington's chief at the addictions division of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and David Stewart, PhD, an assistant professor from the university's Division of Public Behavioral Health and Justice Policy--the ONDCP invited a former teenage pot addict to share her story with the audience. In the aftermath of the ONDCP's failed pot-users-fund-terrorism campaign, the group is attempting to get its anti-drug message to young people in other ways. The ONDCP is behind a new website called Freevibe -- http://www.freevibe.com -- that uses sexy models, trendy graphics, and words like "lowdown" in a "desperate" attempt to "connect" with "youth." To connect with parents, the ONDCP is spending tens of millions of dollars on ads that allegedly give parents the information they need to tell if their kids are using pot. (Are your kids depressed? Are they burning incense?) But the campaign's biggest hurdle is persuading aging baby boomers to tell their children to say no to pot, a drug most of them used and weren't harmed by. To that end, the ONDCP's anti-pot propaganda paints a scary picture of the risks of modern "super pot." Unlike the pot that parents smoked in the '60s, '70s, and '80s, the pot their kids are smoking today is much more potent and thus more dangerous. That was the focus of the ONDCP's briefing this past Friday. While pot may be perceived as relatively benign by people who used it when they were kids, today's "super pot" damages the brain's development and is the gateway to harder drugs. It was "super pot," brain damage, and gateways that the ONDCP supposedly wanted to discuss with local reporters. Let's start with the super pot argument. At the meeting, Dr. Ries said that marijuana is as much as 30 times more potent today than the marijuana people smoked a generation ago. While the percentage of THC (pot's active ingredient) used to be only around one percent, some modern varieties have reached a whopping 33 percent, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. That's laughable. If the pot from a generation ago contained an average level of THC of around one percent, then your parent's pot had THC levels akin to industrial-grade hemp. You can't get high smoking hemp, and we all know the boomers got high. While today's pot is stronger than that of a few decades ago (from about three percent up to around 10 percent in rare high-grade pot), the increase is hardly dramatic. According to a report from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), "studies indicate that marijuana smokers distinguish between high and low potency marijuana and moderate their use accordingly just as an alcohol consumer would drink fewer ounces of (high potency) bourbon than they would of (low potency) beer." It also should be pointed out that not one single fatal marijuana overdose has been recorded in human history. And the stronger the pot, the less you have to smoke to get the desired effect. As for the ONDCP's new effort to push the "gateway" theory, that tired old argument was soundly refuted in a study completed in December of 2002 by RAND, a nonprofit research institution created by the U.S. military. Andrew Morral, lead author of the study, stated, "We've shown that the marijuana gateway effect is not the best explanation for the link between marijuana use and the use of harder drugs.... While the gateway theory has enjoyed popular acceptance, scientists have always had their doubts. Our study shows that these doubts are justified." As for the "brain damage" contention, although some of the panelists' statements were greatly distorted and intentionally misleading, a few core elements of the message are self-evident and irrefutable, even to the avid marijuana smoker and reform activist. Marijuana use clearly reduces short-term memory recall, decreases cognitive reaction time, and makes people, well, stoned. Meaning, don't get baked before class or else you won't learn much. But no evidence of pot use inducing brain damage was presented at the meeting--because no conclusive scientific evidence actually exists. As everyone knows, one of the side effects of smoking pot can be mild paranoia. So as a regular pot user, I couldn't help but wonder what the ONDCP was really up to in Seattle. Why the hush-hush 28-city tour? Why are only reporters invited? Why aren't these meetings open to the public? Well, for that we paranoids must look closer--not at the ONDCP's public-health messages, but at its budget. This year marks the end of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign's five-year funding cycle, and the ONDCP has to justify its existence as it appeals to Congress for more funds. The ONDCP figures that if its nationwide tour can generate some positive coverage in papers across the country, Congress just might toss it another few hundred million dollars. In fact, the strategy may already be paying off. At the same time the ONDCP was whispering into the ears of Seattle reporters, Congress was taking the first steps toward renewing the organization's funding. On Friday, May 16, the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources approved HR 2086. Disturbing new language in the bill amends the scope of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, allowing government officials to use federal funds to "take such actions as necessary to oppose any attempt to legalize the use of a substance." In other words, the ONDCP may soon be able to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars every year on radio, print, and television ads opposing medical marijuana initiatives and trying to defeat candidates who support more compassionate drug laws. "If this provision stands," says Steve Fox, director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project, "it means that the drug czar can use our tax dollars to fund partisan political campaigns." Dominic Holden is the director of Seattle Hempfest, the largest annual marijuana policy reform rally in the United States, and campaign manager for I-75, an initiative to de-prioritize the enforcement of Seattle's marijuana laws.Source: Stranger, The (Seattle, WA)Author: Dominic HoldenPublished: Vol 12 No. 36, May 22 - May 28, 2003Copyright: 2003 The StrangerWebsite: http://www.thestranger.com/Contact: postmaster thestranger.comDL: http://www.thestranger.com/2003-05-22/feature.htmlRelated Articles & Web Sites:NORML: http://www.norml.org/Seattle Hempfest: http://hempfest.org/Marijuana Policy Project: http://www.mpp.org/Drug Policy Alliance: http://www.drugpolicy.org/Move Would Let Drug Czar Campaignhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread16359.shtmlBuying Initiatives - Daniel Forbeshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread16350.shtml Marijuana No Gateway To Cocaine and Heroinhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread14879.shtml Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Comment #6 posted by Virgil on May 23, 2003 at 21:34:33 PT P.S- The docrine of conservatism You do not overstate assets or profit and you do not undervalue liabilities or losses. In accounting, this is called the doctrine of conservatism. This would translate into a physicians guiding principle of do no harm. [ Post Comment ] Comment #5 posted by Virgil on May 23, 2003 at 17:58:22 PT Lehder, Before martial law I do not see how the plutocracy plan to survive. What we have now is a display of power that is distracted by people with little free time spending it on entertainment and, well, spending. Watch 18 minutes of commercials an hour, with the big change now coming, advertisements in the content and then go shopping. June 2nd and the story behind it will only increase the view of the coup. It will take a police state in full operation to stop the people that will be shouting "Constitution" with one breath and "Food" with another. The police state is here, but how will it survive now that it is found out by a critical mass. It is not a matter of liberty or death. It is a matter of liberty above all else and whatever. The country and the greatest arsenal of the world is controlled by criminals. The media gave America a narcascim by only showing it itself. Dickhead Busch, I am against you. You are a criminal. Let me say that I regard it all in the direst of situations. A situation that should never, ever occured and now has. The UN was not allowed to have inspectors in the last election. The media consortium that has always done exit it polls folded the situation weeks before the election. The Greg Palast truth of the Florida elections have never got a segment on the faux news. Voting machines without a paper trail- how over the line can you get and how stupid is everyone.A company that did not have an audit trail would be fined by the IRS. My degree is in accounting, and the Enron scandal broke basic rules also, Accounting 101 rules. You do not overstate assets or profit and you do not undervalue liabilities or losses. Tens of billions in bubble profit and no one is in jail is absurd. It is the plutocracy looking after their own.Anyway, NarcoNews has a new story up called "Feast of Lies" with the following paragraph and is excellent journalism that speaks to the truth of their lies- http://www.narconews.com/Issue30/article791.htmlErradícate Illegal Crops or Comply with Environmental Law?Immediately after learning about the report by John Walters, President Uribe announced his authorization to increase the dose of glyphosate in the herbicide mixture... and nothing succeeded in ridding his mind, more closed every day to the criticisms made by the Southern state governors, the Public Defender, human rights groups, environmentalists, farmers and indigenous. Not even counting the protests by the international community - like the European Union - many sectors of Civil Society asked that the fumigations be ceased. [ Post Comment ] Comment #4 posted by Lehder on May 23, 2003 at 17:01:02 PT "Help America Vote" According to this article in yesterday's Counter Punch,http://www.counterpunch.org/estabrook05222003.htmlCongress has passed the "Help America Vote Act." The lists of names used in the 2000 election to wrongly bar tens of thousands of registered Floridians from voting must now be compiled and enforced in all fifty states. With this program of groundless mass disenfranchisement to complement the crooked voting machines that run on "classified" software and preclude any possibility of a recount, that have already produced a number of stunning upsets (always in favor of a Republican), we can be certain of a fully prepackaged election in 2004.http://www.commondreams.org/views/121400-108.htmThere's no point in arguing over the fine points: the rule of democracy was toppled in a sneaky coup and the U.S. is now a dictatorship. Over the past two years, the lies have become more brazen, the policies more openly cynical and self-serving; and after the next election we'll see a bare knuckled government that no longer even pretends to hear your voice and that takes no prisoners at all. [ Post Comment ] Comment #3 posted by elfman_420 on May 23, 2003 at 13:50:00 PT This is too far. So was the "Missing kids" ac They are fighting THIS SEEMINGLY INSIGNIFICANT battle very hard. Even if it means destroying the country's core values. What are they thinking.At the same time the ONDCP was whispering into the ears of Seattle reporters, Congress was taking the first steps toward renewing the organization's funding. On Friday, May 16, the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources approved HR 2086. Disturbing new language in the bill amends the scope of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, allowing government officials to use federal funds to "take such actions as necessary to oppose any attempt to legalize the use of a substance." In other words, the ONDCP may soon be able to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars every year on radio, print, and television ads opposing medical marijuana initiatives and trying to defeat candidates who support more compassionate drug laws. [ Post Comment ] Comment #2 posted by til on May 23, 2003 at 12:54:29 PT Legalization of Pot causes U.S. economic fall. I wonder how much the U.S economy would suffer with out funding to support continued criminalization of Pot. Also what is the growth forecast for punitive implimentation in dollars? [ Post Comment ] Comment #1 posted by Prime on May 23, 2003 at 12:48:57 PT ONDCP doesnt give Americans enough credit... One thing most of us seem real good at is detecting a scam. The ONDCP's agenda is backfiring. Maryland passed MJ reform right on their front, Canada is pissed and may just allow the courts to legalize, the Brits are coming around.The Schedule One Lie (your welcome Virgil) has been exposed, and the more the ONDCP steps up the stealth propaganda, the more people will lose faith in their message.The government's effort to protect us from making bad decisions is about to end. They just passed a law in WA stating that kids under 18 will no longer be allowed to purchase games that depict killing cops. No people are up in arms that there is no law banning games that depict violence against women or minorities. Where will end? It'll end when Americans grow up and realize the nanny state is not productive. I dont need a law telling me not to do heroin. I can make that decision all by my self. The same way I decide every night not to drink gallons of grain alcohol. I think this is a cyclical pattern with government, especially one based on puritanical/moralism beliefs such as ours. They will test the waters every so often to see how far they can go. This administration has already crossed the line in my opinion, and will pay for in 2004 when the messages of John Waters and the ONDCP are rebuked at the polls. [ Post Comment ] Post Comment