Anslinger’s Curse
Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts: A Review of the Scientific Evidence
Lynn Zimmer, Ph.D. and John P. Morgan, M.D.
The Lindesmith Center, 1997, ISBN 0-9641568-4-9
a review by Peter Webster
published 1998 International Journal of Drug Policy
(pre-publication version)
“It is truly mind-boggling to step back and look dispassionately at America's marijuana policy over the past fifty years. We have wasted billions of dollars, polarized the nation, damaged thousands of lives, and defined millions of respectable people as criminals, all over a mild intoxicant that every serious study has pronounced less harmful than beer. It is difficult to imagine how we, or indeed our worst enemies, could have developed a more wrong-headed policy. It is as if Harry Anslinger, James Eastland, Richard Nixon, and all the others had been agents of the Kremlin, hell-bent on sowing dissension among us. Our marijuana policy has become a domestic Vietnam, a national disgrace. If it weren't so tragic, it would be hilarious.”
— Patrick Anderson (i)
Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts has been around for quite some time now in a previous version: It was originally published as a very much shorter on-line pamphlet available at the internet website of the Lindesmith Center,ii the publishers of the 1997 edition under review here. During its development towards the present edition, the authors iii have solicited comments and suggestions from many co-workers and the internet drug policy reform community as well, thus the present hard-copy edition has benefited from an evolution of ideas and input from many sources, making it all the more an important and timely document and one that is very difficult to fault in its presentation, format, or on scientific grounds.
In contrast to its former presence on the internet, however, the publication of the hard-copy edition has aroused the ire of Prohibitionists and ratcheted up the ongoing controversy about marijuana several more notches: iv Marijuana Myths has been widely reviewed, discussed, and already the book has been banned from some school libraries in the U.S.v It has been called “inflammatory” yet “extraordinarily well-researched” in a review in the Journal of the American Medical Association, vi and of course it has been subject to outright denunciation from ‘narcotics experts’ such as NY City Police Commissioner Howard Safir, among others. And reviews in the popular media have typically tried very hard to find something about the book, anything at all, that can be criticized, a Sisyphian task attempted only by those with predefined convictions about the subject matter or about acceptable techniques of literary criticism: Here, I shall make no excuse for praising the book unreservedly.
In a phrase, Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts might be described as a one-stop all-purpose handbook for use by anyone concerned to demolish the reefer-madness mendacities still employed so widely in support of the utterly ridiculous fraud of marijuana prohibition. When such mendacities are proferred by Prohibitionist scientists or others in authority, they take on an apparent respectability that is difficult for the lay public or concerned reformers to rebut or discredit without assistance. True, reefer madness rhetoric today is more reserved and refined than that epitomized by the classic inanities formerly concocted by Harry Anslinger and his infamous clique of moral zealots in the Bureau of Narcotics, and thus more believable to the uninformed. But when carefully analysed as it is in Marijuana Myths, today’s brand of propaganda is seen to be no less mendacious.
Thus the present book can function as a powerful tool for both scientists and non-scientists, reformers, and simply the concerned citizen, for it can effectively counteract much of the advantage that Prohibitionist authority illegitimately commands in the current debate. It achieves this goal because, as the subtitle of the book indicates, it is a thorough, systematic and genuinely scientific examination of the evidence,vii an analysis and rebuttal of twenty of the most widely heard accusations about marijuana’s harms and reasons for its continuing prohibition. These accusations are purportedly based on sound scientific research, yet we see that at least a few of these ‘myths,’ as the authors call them, are so absurd that honesty would normally demand calling them ‘lies,’ and granting them a scientific hearing is very generous indeed. The authors have nevertheless given such a hearing to all parties and studies concerned, and have exhibited great restraint and care not to appear cavalier toward that large American (and World) audience still convinced of the ‘wrongness’ and ‘harmfulness’ of marijuana use. Changing such attitudes is often a long and arduous task despite the possession of the facts, as history shows all too plainly.
For example, let us consider one such egregious myth about marijuana, the currently very fashionable accusation about the recent ‘dangerously-high’ potency of the weed. According to some Drug War propaganda, today’s marijuana is forty times viii more powerful than the ‘hippie drug’ of the 1960s. In a former edition of Marijuana Myths on the Lindesmith Center website, this myth was given the number two spot, and its de-emphasis to myth number nineteen in the present edition is a good example of the authors’ pursuit of balance and restraint: Instead of giving top billing to a bit of nonsense easily-dismissed on several counts, the authors begin with the most controversial and value-judgment-laden topics in the current debate, such as marijuana’s medical value or its supposed addictiveness. The potency myth, by contrast, is a very easy one to demolish as can be seen from the facts and figures presented. I shall deal with it here not because it is easy to demolish, however, but for several reasons which will illustrate both the bankruptcy of Prohibition, a necessary task, and show the great extent to which the scope and intention of the authors’ project could be extended in the future.
The potency myth can be dissected in ways that reveal much about Prohibition and its adherents, and about the underlying bogus morality at the root of Prohibitionism. Such analysis also shows convincingly that Drug Warriors are indeed intentionally propagandizing the debate, (no doubt because they are perilously short of facts to support their position, as Marijuana Myths so well demonstrates). And use of, or belief in the potency myth betrays an ignorance about marijuana and the normal social and individual ways that it is used by the great majority of marijuana enthusiasts, that if exhibited on any less maligned and misunderstood topic, would disqualify the accuser decisively. Yet in public fora, in interviews and TV programs featuring Drug Warriors, the potency myth has lately been almost an ‘accusation of last resort’ (as if it somehow ‘proved’ beyond a shadow of a doubt the entire Prohibitionist stance presented up to that point).
Of course, due to Prohibition and many decades of reefer-madness mendacities, the official public image of marijuana and its users is a highly distorted one, some Drug War propaganda insinuating that normal, innocuous and pleasurable use of marijuana, even if it exists, does so only momentarily before some inevitable and swift slide into addiction, crime, and mental and physical degradation, if not hell itself. And under Prohibition, research of normal social use of marijuana has been difficult to accomplish, and an even more difficult task has been to interject the results of such research into the public mind and drug policy debate. Even committed drug policy reformers avoid mentioning the pleasures and benefits of normal moderate use for fear of sealing the ears of their audience, so dominant is Drug Warrior propaganda and the largely unexamined ‘morality’ which condemns marijuana without a hearing. It is therefore to be expected that Prohibitionists’ views and those of the majority of the public about ‘normal social use’ are completely divorced from the reality of the situation. Nothing reveals this more glaringly than the potency accusation, for the least knowledge about marijuana and its users would make a Prohibitionist scrupulously avoid the potency argument for fear of appearing a complete fool.
Anyone within a circle of friends and acquaintances that includes some who use marijuana moderately and socially can only wonder at those who would attach any negative importance to increased potency. Even if today’s marijuana were more potent, (and, to the contrary, Marijuana Myths shows evidence for a reliable constancy of average potency in the long-run), those in the know would universally insist that this was either of little consequence, or in fact, actually beneficial. Arguments for this position are well presented in the book, and include the fact that since the principal risk of smoking marijuana is harm to the lungs from tars and combustion products, stronger marijuana means less harmful marijuana since less needs to be smoked to attain the desired effect.
Of course, the Prohibitionist position routinely denies that the smoker has any will-power or control over his ‘habit,’ and in such denial we see a gravely mistaken, but perhaps intentional confusion of marijuana and its effects with the public image of harder drugs such as heroin. But the fact is, that controlling the dose of marijuana is far easier than controlling one’s dose of alcohol in an analogous situation. Bars and cocktail parties are routinely full of people who have obviously ‘had a bit too much,’ but the social marijuana user very commonly knows the level of ‘intoxication’ he desires and has no trouble smoking just the required amount, no more. Not only does a marijuana user rarely ‘overdose,’ but the potency accusation seems to ignore that even large marijuana ‘overdoses’ are never life-threatening (as with harder drugs including alcohol), and at most, uncomfortable to the extent that the user merely wishes to recline for a while. The desired level of ‘intoxication,’ it should be noted as well, is frequently a very moderate one, so much so that the outsider not familiar with marijuana or the ‘moderately intoxicated’ user notices with great difficulty, if at all, that the person is under the influence of a ‘drug’, a great contrast to the easily-noticed antics at a bar or the often vapid loquaciousness at a cocktail party.
Stronger marijuana, however, certainly is available, such as the special strains and varieties grown by many American and European enthusiasts. Again, contrary to the myth, stronger marijuana also means better overall quality, and more enjoyable marijuana. An analogous example would be between the crudely fermented and barely drinkable ‘plonk’ wine of 8 or 9 degrees made locally by rural peoples in the poorer regions of Europe, and a fine Bordeaux (more potent by fifty percent at 12 to 13 degrees!) which is not only far more enjoyable, but will result in far less of a hangover if the dose is badly controlled. A puff of a scientifically selected strain of carefully-tended, precisely cured and finely manicured marijuana is, in the opinion of many an enthusiast, as great a pleasure as others might consider a sip of Château Margaux or Hennesy 5-Star Cognac, and to neither pleasure do we find many seriously ‘addicted.’ Of course, if the Prohibitionists had their way, all of this would be forbidden. Indeed, recent developments in the U.S. show a worrying and increasing sentiment for a new flirtation with alcohol prohibition, ix not to mention the spectacle now being played out over tobacco.
That Prohibitionist views about marijuana’s normal social uses and users are so willfully ignorant must indicate in many instances that such views are held intentionally, in spite of available facts, to support a position having ulterior motives and justifications having little or nothing to do with the evidence about marijuana itself. Only by a willful blinkering of one’s views concerning the entire history of prohibitions can one insist that the prohibited substances are ever in themselves ‘wrong.’ x The history of prohibitions shows that the prohibited substance is merely a scapegoat, and a convenient vehicle for exercising that regrettable and continuing human propensity to seek absolute control over others, usually under some religious or moralist guise. Studies by Erich Fromm and Michael Maccoby in the early 1970s revealed that no less than ten to fifteen percent of persons in any given population exhibit a syndrome characterized by the commission or drive to commit malignant aggression against others, a syndrome the researchers characterized as anti-life or necrophilous. Exerting absolute or masochistic control over others is a common aspect of such malignant aggression, and from this significant reserve-at-large of the necrophilous have come the great tyrants and their squadrons of lackeys, the power and destructiveness of their antics being determined by the historical and political facilitations of the time. The interviewers who conducted the Fromm and Maccoby studies
...noted a sterility about many such people and their houses. They live in a deadened, joyless atmosphere... “In all of the samples, we found that the anti-life tendencies were significantly correlated to political positions that supported increased military power and favored repression against dissenters. The following priorities were considered most important by individuals who have dominant anti-life tendencies: tighter control of rioters, tighter enforcement of anti-drug laws, winning the war in Vietnam, controlling subversive groups, strengthening the police, and fighting Communism throughout the world.” xi
What the Prohibitionist really means when he says that marijuana is ‘wrong’ is that the marijuana experience is ‘wrong,’ or at least of no use whatsoever. If this is true about ‘weak’ marijuana, how much more true it must be of ‘strong’ marijuana! But what of this altered state of consciousness produced by marijuana? It must at least be of scientific interest, and simple condemnation of it as ‘wrong’ cannot have much rational basis, if any. Again, Marijuana Myths deals with the relevant Prohibitionist accusations fairly and thoroughly. Hysterical claims that the marijuana experience involves “memory loss, mental deterioration, impairment of cognition, that people are unable to think rationally and intelligently” under the influence of marijuana, are examined in light of the great preponderance of scientific evidence and found far closer to Anslinger’s brand of reefer madness than many other current ‘marijuana myths’. Such claims and beliefs of ‘mental deterioration’ have a strong taint typical of the mind-set of the Prohibitionist and moral zealot, and were, not so long ago, the favorite warnings against masturbation. It is hard to avoid the somewhat Freudian conclusion that when a Prohibitionist makes such an accusation of mental deterioration he is projecting his own dimly-sensed mental incapacities upon others, perhaps as a denial of his own problems. And in view of Fromm and Maccoby’s research, it is not surprising that the marijuana experience can be flatly declared ‘wrong’ by the moral zealot, because the motivation for doing so is seen to be primarily a result of individual and collective psychogenic pathology, and has nothing whatever to do with a genuinely moral position. Morality must in the end provide “the greatest benefit for the greatest number,” not the satisfaction of zealotry or the necrophilous or masochistic drives of that small but significant minority who are using the ‘drug problem’ as a vehicle for their own perverse preoccupations.
Now it certainly can be admitted, without implying any of the Prohibitionists’ hysterical claims, that marijuana consciousness is not as ‘efficient’ a state of mind as ‘normal’ consciousness for navigating the social reality of our relentlessly competitive and spiritually superficial modern capitalist’s paradise, for coping with the everyday hassles of boring and unrewarding jobs and necessary but mind- and spirit-numbing routines. Marijuana consciousness may in fact provide a very valuable antidote to the idea that such machine-consciousness is the ‘normal’ way to function. Marijuana consciousness is far less relentless in its demands than the workaday compulsions of ‘normal’ consciousness, it is less aggressive and more forgiving, more pragmatic, more artistic, poetic, humorous, spontaneous, friendly, mysterious: quite valuably, it is less ‘efficient’ and may, once normalized in society, provide a healthy and perhaps ideal contrast to normal hectic demands, a contrast now sought in far more dangerous and abuse-prone anti-depressants and other ‘treatments’. The observed characteristics of Fromm and Maccoby’s necrophilous individuals seem to indicate, however, that such persons are quite threatened by the ‘lack of efficiency’ represented by marijuana consciousness and its poetry and humour.
A final word on some criticisms of Marijuana Myths that have called it ‘unbalanced’: After a thorough reading this writer can detect only a relentless and dispassionate exposure of the evidence, essentially all the evidence that currently matters in this debate. But I can fully appreciate how annoying and unsettling such concentrated evidence must be not only to confirmed Prohibitionists, but even to parents dreading the day when they discover evidence of drug use by their teenager, but having not yet realized that the threat of harm comes far more from Prohibition than from the drugs themselves. I must say that the authors have made an extreme effort not to make accusations or cause any overt offense to anyone, but the honest pursuit of truth in controversial situations must necessarily tread very hard on more than a few toes. ‘The seriousness of the drug problem,’ which may more accurately be termed ‘the seriousness of the effects of Prohibition,’ is threatening enough so that we should not ask anyone to pull his punches or be polite at the expense of truth. The plea for even-handedness and calm discussion, to treat the Drug Warriors and Prohibitionists as rational participants in the debate, to attempt to persuade them of the illogic of their position, is itself not a very rational position, for it may be equivalent to suggesting to a red-baiting McCarthyite that not only do not all communists want to overthrow America, but many wouldn’t even accept an invitation.
Drug Warriors for the most part need to be exposed, not reasoned with, for their arguments are based not on logic nor rational thinking, but on those convictions which Nietzsche called “more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.” Thus Rick Strassman, writing in the JAMA review mentioned above, “A literature review and critique of this magnitude (68 pages of references), with a less inflammatory title, using a less pugnacious approach, might be easier to buy, read, and digest.” By whom? The Drug Warriors are not going to buy nor read, much less digest this study, but it does effectively provide drug policy reformers with the tools they need to demolish any Prohibitionist nonsense that comes up in public debate, for the benefit of that part of the audience not already in Fromm and Maccoby’s ten to fifteen percent. Marijuana prohibition has caused so much harm, that those supporting it need to be exposed, not reasoned with, and Prohibitionist leaders need to be completely discredited, disqualified, unswervingly attacked and perhaps even brought to some kind of post-Prohibition judicial procedure such as a ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission.’ In the end, history will show Anslinger’s atrocity in its full light: in view of the effects of his manufacture of reefer madness he should be accorded a high place among the famous perpetrators of great crimes against humanity, along with Hitler, Stalin, and the rest of the necrophilous personalities who have tortured our ancestors and our history with their deeds. Prohibition of any kind is a stain on so-called rational society, an ugly sore which may well develop into something malignant and fatal if not excised. This is the task ahead, not polite argument to try to convince the Drug Warriors of their error. If Marijuana Myths is “pugnacious and inflammatory” we may note that the truth of evidence is always a great annoyance to those needing to ignore it for one reason or another. For some, the necessity may arise out of some grave psychological disorder, for others, a disposition to believe that such troubled persons represent a viewpoint of some validity rather than one in need of elimination by every method that works. Careful reasoning with madness has seldom been a method that works. George Soros remarked in a recent article in the New York Review of Books, xii
“Indeed, almost any doctrine can become a threat to civilization if it is taken seriously enough, and if it can gather sufficient force. In the Middle Ages, people went to war over the doctrine of transubstantiation.”
Drug Prohibition, especially as it exists today in the U.S. with its vision of a ‘drug-free America’ if not world, is as nonsensical and fanatic a doctrine as we have seen in a very long time. And, indeed, it is a very grave threat to civilization.
i From the final chapter of High in America, The True Story Behind NORML and the Politics of Marijuana, by the Washington-based novelist and journalist Patrick Anderson (Viking,1972). This book remains one of the best views of the attempt and failure to repeal marijuana prohibition in the U.S. in the late 1960s and 1970s. With the permission of the author, this book is now available on the World Wide Web at the URL: http://www.druglibrary.org/special/anderson/highinamerica.htm
ii The Lindesmith Center Website is found at the URL: http://www.lindesmith.org/
iii Lynn Zimmer, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Sociology at Queens College, City University of New York, and a research fellow at the Center for Research on Crime and Justice at New York University Law School. She has published two previous books as well as numerous scholarly articles on drug use, drug testing, law enforcement, and prison. John P. Morgan, M.D. is Professor of Pharmacology at the City University of New York Medical School and adjunct professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He has published extensively in the medical science literature on central nervous system stimulants, opiates, hypnotics, and chemical dependency. In 1996 Dr. Morgan won the LeDain Award for contributions to drug policy reform from the Drug Policy Foundation.
iv Prohibitionists were apparently unaware or unconcerned that the internet version of Marijuana Myths was long being distributed at a far faster rate than the hard-copy edition yet enjoys. For an extended period, the on-line version was being downloaded a minimum of 3,000 times a month while the present edition has yet to sell out its initial print run of ten thousand copies. (personal communication)
v Boston Globe, January 27, 1998, “Group Upset Over Libraries’ Rejection of Marijuana Research Book.”
vi J. Am. Med. Assoc. February 25, 1998, “Marijuana” by Rick J. Strassman. M.D.
vii David Hadorn, M.D., director of the New Zealand Drug Policy Forum Trust has stated the following about Marijuana Myths, “Speaking as a physician who has spent the past decade analyzing medical and scientific literature for academic and governmental agencies in the U.S., Canada, and New Zealand, I believe this book represents the definitive hard-copy source of what the evidence says about cannabis—not just about the health and psychological effects but also the effects of drug education and punitive policies.” (personal communication).
viii U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala writing in The Wall Street Journal, “Say ‘No’ to Legalization of Marijuana,” August 18, 1995.
ix “Temperance Movement Grows in Chicago, a Precinct at a Time,” New York Times, Sunday April 19, 1998.
x An assertion we often hear from the likes of Secretary Donna Shalala, or William Bennett, joseph Califano and their cohort of ‘moral entrepreneurs’.
xi M. Maccoby, 1972, quoted from The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, Erich Fromm, Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1973, pp 379-380 of the paperback edition.
xii October 7, 1993, “Bosnia and Beyond”.