Congressman Edward I. Koch opens this 1969 Conference on Marijuana recorded at the Guggenheim Hall of the Mount Sinai Medical Center School of Nursing.
Koch mentions a bill proposal to establish a presidential commission to investigate Marijuana use and decriminalization. He hopes that this conference will garner some "intelligent up-to-date" conclusions and potential legislative actions.
Mitchell Krause, host of Channel 13's nightly news, moderates the panel of six speakers, with a break for a "cigarette or whatever."
The first speaker is Dr. Joel Fort of the University of California, Berkeley. Fort argues that the demonization of marijuana use is defined by "Moral Entrepreneurs" who ignore broader implications of drug use. He believes that drug use is a barometer of America's social ills. The exaggerated views of the extreme right and the extreme left ignore the effect that marijuana has on an individual, which he compares to the range of behaviors that one can observe at a cocktail party. He argues that there is no validity to the "gateway drug" concept and calls for the decriminalization of all drugs in favor of focusing on broader social problems. "We should encourage people to turn on to the world around them, to tune into knowledge and feeling, and to drop into changing and improving the quality of American life."
The next speaker is Dr. Henry Brill, Psychiatrist and Director of the Pilgrim State Hospital. He asserts that marijuana is not harmless - that there are medical effects such as aggressive behavior - but that it does not, however, produce physical dependence. In disagreement with Dr. Fort, Brill believes that there is a correlation between marijuana use and further experimentation with drugs like heroin. However, he does agree that laws controlling the possession of marijuana are excessive and deserve a review. He urges the audience to look into research conducted in other countries with a longer history of use. He argues that we do not know if Marijuana is sufficiently harmless and that the substance should remain illegal.
Dr. Sidney Cohen, Director at the National Institute of Mental Health, is the next to speak. He agrees that there is no pharmacological quality in marijuana that leads to crime, no tendency to be aggressive but rather to withdraw. He believes that it generally does not lead to a condition of dependence based on how potent the substance is. He believes that there is a definitive link between marijuana use and more debilitating drugs but agrees that laws controlling the substance are too excessive, suggesting that possession should be reduced to a misdemeanor.
Harold Rothwax, a lawyer and director of the Mobilization for Youth Legal Services, asserts that the penalty for marijuana use should be removed entirely. He declines to comment on the medical or psychological aspects of marijuana use, arguing that if it is harmful, the medical profession should treat abuse of the substance instead of the law. He believes that the current legal penalties are the problem - not the use of marijuana - and that the consequences to the individual and the entire system are too adverse. He argues that marijuana is an "invisible crime" and therefore too difficult to regulate, that it is a tool to harass people of color, that it inhibits medical research and that the invasion of privacy is too great.
Next, Frederick M. Garfield, Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, believes that there is already too much freedom to conduct drug experiments by "amateur investigators" and that the public should not have "unrestrained freedom in the drug area." He believes that the link between use of marijuana and further drug use is inconclusive but that there is statistical evidence that marijuana use causes damage to individuals and society. He advises against this "social experiment" of diminishing the laws arguing that the benefits of the laws outweigh the risks. He advocates for a clear and rational review of legislation that penalizes drug possession as well as proposed laws.
Dr. Fort is invited to speak again as he must leave for another conference. He rebuts research studies that suggest a dependence on Marijuana. He insists on decent medical care and research for those living in ghettos and laws are "hard on drugs and soft on people."
The final speaker, Bardwell Grosse, Director of the National Student Association's drug studies program, argues that marijuana should be taken out of the same classification as heroin on the basis that there is no more potential for abuse than with legal drugs such as alcohol and cigarettes. He advocates for the legalization of marijuana arguing that if you lie to the public about marijuana, they won't believe you when you warn them about more harmful drugs.
After a break, the speakers are invited to refute any points made by fellow panelists. Dr. Cohen argues that the youth perpetuate the myths about marijuana instead of the legal and medical community and that laws create a necessary balance between personal freedom and social responsibility. Grosse disagrees, however, asserting that those suffering from drug addiction are penalized to a socially irresponsible degree.
Dr. Brill reiterates that it is safer to wait for more research on the effects of marijuana. He chides, "in my opinion one does not learn about alcohol and alcoholism by drinking." Rothwax replies that legalization is an argument of personal freedom, that it is a question of values, not public safety. Dr. Garfield disagrees citing a case in Boston. Grosse clarifies that he supports the legal control of marijuana in a manner comparable to alcohol.
Next, the panel receives questions from the audience. Brill is asked about his marijuana experimentation. Another audience member asks if the control of marijuana use can be considered a political act. The recording ends during a question about medical research.
Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection
WNYC archives id: 150790
Municipal archives id: T7805
This is a machine-generated transcript. Text is unformatted and may contain errors.
Then with the problem of increasing marijuana use is evident in the large number of sponsors for this conference and of course in your attendance here this morning I'd like to take this opportunity to offer my special Franks to Margo minda chin Barbara Margolis who have been a service cochairman of this conference and of help in making the necessary arrangements and I'd like to also express my gratitude to Mt Sinai Medical Center for their hospitality and cooperation in making these facilities available to us they've been extraordinary in the way they've assisted and helped and I'm really very much in the dead of the hospital. There are several questions of considerable complexity to be discussed today so I will make my introductory remarks brief nine congressmen have join me in co-sponsoring a bill to establish a presidential commission on marijuana we think it is high time that our government take a new look at marijuana use an educated self and the American people we need a respected blue ribbon panel to examine the medical social and legal questions involved and authoritative study that sweeps away old myths and shibboleths and establishes in their place intelligent up to date conclusions and recommendations. Such conclusions and recommendations should be the basis for intelligent public discussion and legislative action at all levels local state and federal. This local conference on marijuana has been organized for the same reasons as those which prompted me to introduce the Merrow want to commission bill we have deliberately chosen for questions which seem to me to be the most often discussed and most often surrounded by confusion. Such questions surely do not exhaust the subject but they do need answering I hope the panelists will be able to clear up some of the confusion and indeed provide at least tentative answers I do not pretend to have any expertise in answering the first three questions on the program however with respect to the question as to whether current criminal penalties for possession of marijuana are appropriate I for one think they. Are Not if we are to condemn and punish our young people we ought to be sure the cure is not worse than the disease a criminal record can haunt that young person for the rest of his life he may be barred from certain professions and denied employment for which he is well qualified it seems to me that severe criminal penalties only exacerbate the problem and further alienate young people I hope this conference will in some small way bring us all that much closer to understanding the problem of marijuana use and thereby permit us to seek intelligent solution there will be a transcript of the conference made available at a later date for all those who would like to have one it's my pleasure now to introduce Mr Mitchell Kraus who will introduce the panelists Mr Krauss's host and moderator of news from Channel thirteen nightly news program he has been in broadcast journalism for the past twenty years Kraus thank thank you cars truck let me just for a moment to give the ground rules for this morning so the whole understand how we're proceeding each one of the speakers here this morning we'll have approximately ten minutes we will watch the time so that we have the quality of time for everyone and will be a presentation by each for that ten minute period will be followed that with a short five minute break for a cigarette or or whatever and. Then we'll come back and we'll have some in a discussion among the analysts here at the head table and then we'll entertain questions from the floor so that everyone will have an opportunity to participate we hope to and probably yes one pm So we're going to try to stay on point killed this morning as far as as far as the time is concerned let me introduce the first of our speakers this morning he is on the extreme right he is Dr Joel Ford Dr Fort Hood is a professor of the School of Social Welfare of the University of California Berkeley and He's co-director of the National section drug for. On the Saturn Cisco generally considered one of the world's leading experts on mind altering drug use and abuse he is the creator and director of the Center for special problems of the San Francisco Department of Public Health the only program in the United States providing comprehensive treatment education and research on all forms of drug abuse sexual problems crime and suicide Dr Ford has had extensive experience in dealing with the problems of the young and the alienated He is also the author of many articles in scientific and general magazines he's the author of the soon to be published book called The pleasure seekers the drug crisis youth and society he recently wrote an article for psychiatric opinion entitled marijuana of the real problems on the responsibilities of the professions in solving talk for like you you want me now here. I think you could take the hardest pressures of thank you very much I want to say first that with the complexity of this issue and problem ten minutes is scarcely sufficient and nobody should have any illusions that it will be adequately dealt with in that time there are many techniques of speaking about marijuana the most popular one of course is to pander to the biases and. Build in preconceptions of the audience and to vary one's remarks according to the nature of the audience and of course according to the nature of one's own alliances that is if you're representing a certain political body or a certain organization you will ordinarily hear your remarks in that direction appealing frequently to ignorance and fear rather than to knowledge and illumination the most popular technique of all one that has led to great success in America is the one dimensional viewing with alarm technique that is to take one drug such as marijuana. Totally out of context and look at it with what we could call a pathological frame of reference choosing very selectively certain aspects of it and of course ignoring the broader context of drug use alcohol nicotine sedative stimulants and the bright of other drugs making it seem as though this is the only drug and dealing only with certain dimensions of its use and the drug scene along with the hippie phenomena I believe have rescued more people from well deserved up scaredy in American society than any other phenomena by this viewing was alarming one dimension one gets all the traditional rewards of the chicken and pea banquet circuit the prestigious positions the titles etc but one rarely contributes annoyed gender standing or social progress then we have the problem of evil what is evil How is it defined. We get some insight into differing perceptions of it from a little anecdote about a small boy tending Sunday school the Sunday school teacher asked him whether he was troubled by evil thoughts he said no I enjoyed them. And we might bear that in mind as we think about our pairing perspectives on marijuana many people think that what is a problem about marijuana or a two anything else was defined by God on Mosaic tablets and as handed down has been handed down to us in perpetuity but actually in any society and certainly today what we think of as the marijuana problem or any other problem is to find often subjectively an arbitrarily by moral entrepreneurs various rule makers and opinion formers who often for self-serving reasons define a certain phenomena as a problem and then seek all kinds of rationalizations for that. We often assume that the expert is one who has a committee position of some kind or whose work was some other drug totally unrelated to marijuana thus we've had bacteriologists anesthesiologists administrators a variety of other people without any direct or ongoing experience with marijuana or for that matter with other drugs that they pontificate about masquerading as experts and being widely quoted and of course believability and credibility are very important part of reaching. Young people and should be a very important part of morality Now when we talk about drugs we should be talking not just about drugs but about people it is a human problem more than it is a drug problem and we should be talking about the society in which the drug use is occurring marijuana use does not occur in a vacuum it is a barometer of American society a society which is sick in many ways which has deep underlying ills and drug use is a symptom we often like to deal with symptoms and refuse to look at the roots of problems. We are not going to make progress until we attack these roots I can summarize marijuana what it is and what it does very briefly for you and let me emphasize parents. That traditional bureaucratic technique of referring something to a committee or calling for more research is basically your role but of course we want to know more about marijuana just as we want to know more about drugs about which much greater dangers have been already demonstrated alcohol tobacco variety of other phenomena but that has nothing to do with public policy and we can get by a lot of verbiage by agreeing on and I will I will state what I think to be the truth that no drug will ever be found to be harmless all drugs have some potential danger certainly include ing aspirin Penna so on anti-histamine aches and including marijuana and no drug including marijuana will ever be found to be as dangerous as a hydrogen bomb and we've had some of our great honorable leaders in Congress and in state legislature legislatures falling out of their chairs when somebody says marijuana is dangerous is a hydrogen bomb and you need to increase the penalties the same people who react not at all to the real hydrogen bomb but when you call a drug the equivalent of what they assume that to be true and immediately overreact and of course this popular viewing with alarm that I mention is exemplified by the people who are hard on airplane hijacking by calling for increase penalties when the penalties are already the death penalty and I'm sure we will always have people who call for the death penalty for the first marijuana offense and castration for the second offense but that will not solve the problem by any means and we will see it getting far worse if that trend continues far. Mikkel logically marijuana is a mix sedative stimulant drug it has some properties of alcohol and barbiturates the sedative drugs and some properties of amphetamines terminology is deliberately misleading I caution you to avoid loose and emotional terms like narcotic psychedelic hallucinogen. One of the popular terms now of course is soft narcotics a very beautiful term if your purpose is to foster ignorance and hysteria because it seems to be saying that even though the drug marijuana is not a narcotic it is still a narcotic but it is somehow softer than some never defined concept of pardon this and good Americans have been taught to have a kneejerk reaction to the word hard without ever thinking through what it means and again looking at it totally out of context so when you hear that term soft narcotic it should mean no more to you than if somebody lectured you on soft pregnancy. Make distinctions between the use abuse addiction and habituation. We don't have time to go into all the details of this but certainly not all use in fact most use of a drug whether marijuana or alcohol does not constitute abuse by any scientific definition and only some drugs such as alcohol sleeping pills and narcotics meaning opium morphine heroin are capable of producing addiction much is made today of the term psychological dependency or habituation particularly by such well respected by elderly people organizations as the American Medical Association who call upon call for perpetuation of the status quo because of marijuana producing psychological dependency now indeed marijuana can produce psychological dependency just as alcohol caffeine nicotine sleeping pills and any other drug can produce psychological dependency it means simply that through a period of use of the substance you get so used to it psychologically that one it's taken away you become restless irritable out of sorts and don't know what to do with yourself just as millions of Americans who watch television for five hours a day for years when that to burns up become restless irritable and don't know what to do with themselves being hung up or psychologically dependent on T.V. Depending on your value system you may feel as I do that that can be as detrimental to their self actualization and the society's welfare is certainly a bit too ation to any drug including marijuana can be the drug fact is a very important concept this is the real heart of the demonology that exists about marijuana. The right wing point of view would have us believe that within minutes or hours of exposure to marijuana everyone thus exposed will become a murder rapist heroin addict and lifelong inmate of a mental hospital this spew is of course been perpetuated by the people most ignorant of drugs and what they do the narcotics police for self-serving reasons to aggrandize their power and agencies and this view has been willingly collaborated in by the American Medical Association the National Institute of Mental Health and other supposedly prestigious agencies the drug facto ever let me out that the left wing point of view using this political metaphor is equally polarized and equally absurd that hat would have us believe that within a short period of time of exposure to this drug everyone would become a fool we saw factual creative genius living happily ever after now if you think about it when most people talk about marijuana as so it is those two views are there are talking about one or the other of them they're not really talking about the drug what it does pharmacologically psychologically sociologically but responding to one of these extreme views actually a druggie fact depends mainly on what you are as a human being your personality character mood attitudes and expectations you will know that from the most common drug experience in American society the cocktail party where people of the same background body size age etc consume the same amount of a mind altering drug and behave in quite different ways some becoming amorous or Alysa vs some passive or withdrawn or sleepy some boisterous or aggressive this is true of all mind altering drugs that mainly what comes out of the drug interaction with average doses is what you are as a human being thus in response to one of our key. Russian stay if you're talking about criminal behavior or sexual excesses whatever that means that's a popular term and is used as one of the scare techniques today whatever you're talking about it will stem mainly from the personality and character of the person who has ingested the drug if you're a professional burglar certainly you could use a drug to reduce your anxiety or loosen inhibitions but there is no drug that will make a law abiding happy conforming respectable American if there is such a person into a monster simply by taking that drug that principle will help you to understand all these very extreme distorted views as to the steppingstone theory it has about as much fuel that it is the domino theory of foreign policy and was created for very much the same reasons after the fact to justify otherwise unsupportable policies a limited Association develop between marijuana and heroin as a direct effect of our extremis laws where the drugs both being driven underground came to be supplied by similar sources and a person coming into contact with one would often learn about the other so it came to be true that if you asked. Heroin addicts their history of drug use and asked them in the narrowest possible and most biased context you would find that seventy percent or so had used marijuana before they became heroin addicts you would also find of course that one hundred percent had used milk before they became heroin addicts and sticking to mind altering drugs you would find that ninety five percent uses their first illegal drugs as most young people still do today alcohol and nicotine that some of those people willfully deliberately violating the law of the land then went on to. Used marijuana and some of those marijuana users went on to use her one the fact that things occur in sequence does not now and never did prove causality there has to be far more sophisticated measuring devices used to arrive at that kind of conclusion in any case there is no validity to that concept in fact this marijuana use has now moved up to between ten and fifteen million people in America conservatively most of them young but also a very significant number of older people in all social economic categories occupational groups etc It is not a problem by the way are not a matter of those people over there the unshaven hippie the call it radical the ghetto. Or etc It pervades the society just as alcohol and tobacco use do but it's merit Hard Talk For you want to begin want to go OK almost fifteen years just as these two drugs alcohol and tobacco the marijuana use is now cutting across all these lines and as this use has increased heroin addiction has remained stabilized or actually decreased and we have an inverse relationship if anything but even if that were true you know that some drug that lead to another drug it would seem to me it would fall logically new mainly that you would then want to apply rehabilitative and preventive techniques to both forms of drug use rather than it indicating that you should send people to jail in order to learn real crime aggressive homosexuality and a variety of other patterns that we do not usually consider desirable So in conclusion let me say that I think drastic reform of the laws are necessary that without any question there is no basis whatsoever in our society and never. Was for criminalizing users of any drug and keep in mind if we enforced all present drug laws we would depopulate American schools overnight if you include all the alcohol and tobacco laws as well as the marijuana and other drug laws no drug user should be treated as a criminal drug you should be dealt with from a public health that means prevent of sociological standpoint the criminal law should be applied to anti-social behavior most of which has nothing to do with drugs certainly nothing do with marijuana when it does involve a drug it's most commonly alcohol and secondly the criminal law can focus on major trafficking in a drug such as the one to three tons of marijuana illegally exported each week from Mexico into the United States while thousands of young people are being arrested having their lives destroyed in the delusion that this is stopping the traffic in marijuana and it's helping those people anybody concerned about stamping out marijuana smoking should focus on stamping out smoking for if we had not been taught it was desirable to put a dried tobacco leaf in our model set it on fire boys in our lungs with those fumes and pollute the air space of everyone else we would not have the widespread marijuana smoking it's an unnatural habit once being once learning to accept any form of cigarette smoking it's easier to take on another it would be more more and more rational since there is overwhelming evidence of three hundred thousand premature deaths yearly from tobacco smoking that anybody seeking to stamp out marijuana smoking concentrate on smoking per se I think we need to ban advertising in mind altering drugs stress education and rehabilitation and we need to move beyond drugs not preoccupying ourselves with them as we are today in a drug ridden drug. Abscess society a society where children are taught to live the slogan of better living through chemistry but move the society young and old beyond this revitalize dead institutions probably our most serious social problem the greatest source of alienation which drug use is a symptom and marijuana use Included is the nature of our pure bureaucratic political process it's unresponsiveness to human needs it's hypocrisy and injustice and a variety of other things the time doesn't permit me to get it into so I would say finally that we should paraphrase the psychedelic ethic not just by what we say but by what we do meaning that we should encourage people to turn on to the world around them to tune in to knowledge and feeling and to drop and changing and improving the quality of American life thank you very much. The old thank you thank you Dr Joy for let's move on to our next speaker he is Dr Henry Brill director of the program state hospital in west front would Long Island is graduate year old college in your old school of medicine he's chairman of the American Medical Association Committee on drug dependence and alcoholism chairman of the National Research Council committee on drug dependence and a member of the expert panel of drug dependence of the World Health Organization Dr Breaux is former vice chairman of the New York State narcotics addiction control commission and author of more than fifty papers on drug dependence as first deputy commissioner of the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene Dr Brill was instrumental in developing the New York state program against narcotic addiction one thousand nine hundred fifty four to nine hundred sixty four Dr Britton. Was very much interested in and after Fort Krishnan Taishi and I agree Frederick lady with a great. Deal of what he said. Unfortunately I'm not going to be able to present as colorful a set of arguments as he has. It's a matter of differences in personality and I'm going to start out by trying to define what we're talking about as starter fort said this is a highly complex subject and it's hopeless to cover the details in ten minutes we can at least define the question define some of the issues that are involved and take a few steps toward commenting on these issues to begin with there are broader areas of agreement among the professionals in this field even though they appear to be tearing each other's hair out I may speak of sleep. For example Dr forces said that there is no such thing as a harmless truck. And that's true I think all patients will agree and that includes marijuana now the question is not whether it's harmless or whether it's harmful because we know that it's harmful The question is how armless are harmful or at least harmful rather. They. Are applying this issue now or this criterion out of the four questions that have been presented here does the use of marijuana cause violent crime or aggressive anti-social behavior no question of whether it does because in some unstable individuals we know that it does we know that many kinds of substance will precipitate aggressive behavior the real question is how often does this happen our statistics are not good on this subject apparently it occurs but not in an overwhelming proportion of cases from some parts of the world where you get information that indicates that it occurs fairly frequently but as I say the statistics in this country are rather thin on the subject as yet we're accumulating statistics quite rapidly with the new self experimentation that many many altruism young people have been indulging in. Then next question does the use of marijuana produce conditions of dependence psychosis or other armful of facts requiring medical treatment I think which everyone would agree that it does where we have disagreement is how frequently how serious are these. Allergies. Now in my experience in the experience of psychiatry should cross the United States marijuana has precipitated conditions of dependence and has precipitated psychotic breaks in sufficient numbers of cases of young people to be a matter of public health concern. That week doesn't go by that I don't get it I get away without getting a letter or having it contact with somebody somewhere who says I used to think that this was harmless I saw several cases I am convinced now that it is not all that harmless some people get sick some people require treatment some people are seriously sick. Now it does not produce physically pendants we all agree on that there's no use setting up straw men to knock down we know that it doesn't produce pharmacological dependence we do know that in countries where the preparation has been heavily used for many years something similar to dependence does appear to exist and people who are deprived of their dose show severe irritability I reviewed a series of cases of this type and Athens body year ago and the clinical information there seems to be fairly straightforward however in America this is not a tendency it's not a prominent part of the picture. Does the use of morrow want to lead to the use of heroin I think that here we have to do some defining it does not lead to the use of heroin in a pharmacological sense it is associated with the use of heroin and I'm afraid that the statistics and the statistical manipulations which are required to come to some reasonable conclusion as to the nature of the association these these statistical manipulations are far beyond present ation at this moment sufficient. Let me say this however that in the opinion of in the opinions of the people who have studied this most closely the association which does exist is more than chance it is more than the association between milk and heroin. The marijuana is also associated with the use of speed it's also associated with the use of L.S.D. in a very different society says different social groups in the colleges where there is an association with other drugs it tends not to be heroin but it does tend to be L.S.D. or speed the association with heroin however is not to be ruled out because to everyone's surprise heroin has been showing up. In colleges and been showing up in small cities across the country this is a matter of fact I don't feel as comfortable about the heroin situation as Dr Ford appears to feel I think that this is far from a solved problem and at the present moment the indications are that heroin is becoming a more diffuse problem than it ever was before. Finally. Are the current criminal penalties for the possession of marijuana appropriate I'm not a criminologist I'm not a lawyer here I can cannot speak as a professional but only as a layman to me as a layman they appear to be excessive they appear to be and I speaking personally now but I will say that here again there are broad areas of agreement that among the professionals that I know everywhere including the A.M.A. there is a feeling that these penalties deserve careful review there's a serious question about it. Now. That Ford made a couple of points that interested me very much. He indicated that smoking tobacco opens the door for smoking marijuana I think there's some some virtue to that the use of any one drug opens the door to the use of other drugs he denies that the use of marijuana opens the door to the use of other drugs so I think that this is a break in logic and it's contrary to general experience matter of fact but it's something to be explored Now he did say something that might be two things that might be misleading and I'm sure that he didn't mean it that way but I'd like to be sure that our points are clear. He said that marijuana was sedative which it is that it's stimulating which it is but. Over and over again and finally it has been proved in the laboratory and I'm not one of those in spite of all my contacts with experimental psychopharmacology I'm not one of those that believes that all the knowledge in the world comes from laboratories because if we depend on the laboratory we're going to have to assume that a human being is a collection of molecules without a soul without a mind without anything but a mechanical operating force some way or at least a mechanical gadget that we know that that's not true we also know that there are many other areas where one must depend on knowledge outside of the laboratories to come to a reasonable and common sense conclusion. A second point I'll return to this just a moment if I don't eat up all my ten minutes. A second point that he made which can be misleading is that the smoking of marijuana is really the goal and that if if America want out we're not smoke we'd have no cannabis problem this is not really true because cannabis was a problem for a long time before smoking was invented. Smoking as you know came from America it spread across the world in the sixteen hundreds but long before the sixteen hundred tomorrow one hour was known to be a problem because of this and it's products when I say Mara when I mean cannabis and one can quibble as to whether the wheat itself is the problem or whether it's products are a problem to me that wheat and its problem and its products are one piece. Now finally I think I have a couple of more minutes finally I'd like to define the real question that we have to settle here and the real problem the real question that's before the Society today is is this drug sufficiently harmless so that it may be legalized is it not sufficiently harmless or are we in a sufficient state of doubt so that we should hold off once a drug is legalized it will carry the message to the youth that is carried with respect to a lot of other legalized substances that basically it must be harmless and that it's only the individual who is at fault and not the drug if something goes wrong I think we should look carefully before we turn this substance loose on society with the premature of the government that this is legal. I think that we should not be narrow in the way in which we use information we should look at the judgment of others the judgment or the experience of other countries there's been enormous experience with this substance in other countries and the experiences be uniformly unfavorable. We also should look. At the experience of the past we should look at the experience in this country where this substance has been used most widely and I'm very much impressed by the fact that the most vivid arguments the most and those he asked to support for the free use of marijuana comes from that class of society that has had the most limited experience with it that is the people in the colleges and the secondary schools who have just begun to play with this drug and i sed i still would like to hear some comment on the desirability of children of twelve thirteen fourteen sixteen playing with marijuana. Let's ask the people who live in the ghettos what they think about marijuana when I was on the narcotic commission I have a lot of contact on this subject I have yet to hear anybody in the get aware ears of the big cities in the United States who says that this is a harmless drug or that it should be turned loose on the population quite the contrary. I would be glad to discuss this privately with you. I still maintain and I would like to I'd like to maintain this is a strong position that the opinions that I have heard from the from the ghetto have been uniformly negative now it is quite possible that one can identify an author and individual who has taken a position I'm talking about the general opinion and I will now close with another statement of the same sort organized medicine all over the world all over the United States is uniformly agree that this is a harmful drug that it should not at this time be legalized and until we have proof that this is harmless This should remain in a an illegal state now there are individuals who will disagree there are individuals who are well qualified of had experience in the field I speak now for the preponderance of medical opinion all over the world. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to Ed. Now or let me simply say to you hold your questions or comments for will until I see let me introduce our third speaker this morning he is Dr Sydney Cohen who recently has been appointed director of the division of narcotic addiction and drug abuse of the National Institute of Mental Health He was formerly chief of psychiatry services the wards worth a Veteran's Administration Hospital Los Angeles associate clinical professor of medicine at U.C.L.A. Dr Cohen is editor in chief of The Journal of psychopharmacology and on the editorial board of psychosomatic three of his books The Beyond within the arch the story L.S.D. and the drug dilemma written for a popular audience who spoke extensively in North America and abroad on every aspect of drug problem so the doctor. I'd like to first address myself to the first question namely the current criminogenic effect of marijuana. Surely we all know the story of the in the assassins and I'm not going to reach here you with the. Pictures in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics which show acts of excess of violence upon infants. If individuals who have been under the influence nor am I going to quote the oft cited case of the soldier who was on guard duty in Vietnam and. Shot up his squad because he happened to be under the influence of pot I think that these items are a great rarity. My own overall opinion is that marijuana. Has no pharmacologic quality which we used to crime it is as so many other drugs are that have already been mentioned dissociate dissociating agent and if you happen to go in in that direction if you have the beer helped change you you will act out the tendency rather is to act in to become more passive to withdraw into ones internal referees so that I'm not overly impressed with the accuracy of it or the criminal tendencies of marijuana so much is depends upon the variable of why it's taken in what count context and the personality of the individual. Does the use of marijuana conditions of the hand. Here again. Dr Brill is adequately answered that of course not physical be penned them so unless you're speaking of the very strong stuff to her she should cherish that is taken in large amounts then there is a sort of withdrawal syndrome which is rather more focus and there's no question in anybody's anybody's mind about the physical dependence it does not. Psychological dependence says Dr Ford brought out but we're psychologically dependent upon many pleasurable activities and drugs and so we shouldn't make a big deal of this. Unless there are other reasons to do so what about psychosis. In this I you know I've been trying to make sense so this marijuana bed. For years now trying to understand why in the Near East increased in Egypt Morocco in Nigeria in India they speak of marijuana psychosis and here we see little or nothing of this sought and when we do we usually get a prehistory of a very disturbed character who is used to excess of amounts and who has flipped. I think the answer in part well there are two answers one is the quality of the substance you now North American marijuana is pretty weak. It some of it is about as activists corn silk or banana peel. It has zero percent tetrahydrocannabinol voice and you can puff your. Yourself into hyperventilation and get no facts from it. On the other hand there are qualities of marijuana which are extremely. Great Syrian. Vietnamese certain Indian. Poly marijuana is strong stuff and I think this explains some of the variations in the literature why. Dr cherish Dr Chopra. Dr Chopra who visited me last week reports that he has seen two hundred cases in the last five years of marijuana psychosis and why we see them so infrequently and and where we feel that they are only a precipitant the causal agent. The potency and the and the amount of material and just as important I think. And the work has already begun on the active ingredient in marijuana the tetrahydrocannabinol show that if enough is taken sure it can produce toxic psychotic reactions which are usually brief and in some individuals extended but again this is a rarity and much keep it in context the other aspect of the discrepancy between the foreign literature and ours is that. Strangely enough in a place like in the it's the are educated malnourished the alder fall. The mean age in Dr Chopra series was over thirty. The people who probably had all kinds of physical and emotional ailments who seemed to become psychotic under the influence of pot and just that lay it may interest you to know that. The young people. In the a protest by drinking scotch they don't go far. Wrong which is the customary She served in. India. So that your stay. Anthropologic side remark which I think you can might be revealing about the whole marijuana story. At any rate that these people are deeply to motion already and physically and it does it isn't surprising that if they take. Six or eight grams of hasheesh a day that it may lead to stronger effects than we see here. With our very weak brain and of material and. When we when somebody does get ahold of the heart or if you'll pardon the correction. Doctor for the heart or marijuana. There indeed we do see panic States and paranoid reactions not very frequently but there they are to be seen in the emergency rooms of hospitals. So much the parings on these two variables. The other harmful effects I think I have already mentioned that people may go out of control with this and with pot depending on how well they're stuck together and what the quantity of T.H.C. or ethanol happens to be that they're using I think this might help us understand the nature of the problem I think here we are to speak about the question of escalation. It isn't only a matter of marijuana leading to heroin let me deal with that immediately five years ago if somebody had asked me that question I would say it's absurd it's true that eighty five percent of all marijuana. Of all heroin users have tried marijuana first but one hundred percent of all marijuana use of try to help first I would have said. But there's a there's a trend developing which concerns me and this is. In a survey stage it's only a couple of years old. And it consists of middle class heroin usage joy hopping very often but not. Middle and upper class white. Students or former students are getting involved with heroin so that. This may indicate a trend now what is the connection. Well from our study it seems as though most people who start on marijuana either step back from it or are social users. Let me quote can in this regard. The Indian Ham Drug Commission which is now seventy five years old and I would essentially you agree with. Their conclusions were that moderate use of these drugs speaking of cannabis produces no injurious affects except in persons with specially marked erotic diaphanous see. Excessive you use in the case and intensifies mental instability moderate huge produces no moral one of the old fashioned word injury whatsoever. I think this is how we should see it that there are some vulnerable individuals. And some who can take it there are some you and some you. Know what about its escalation to other drugs which is a bit of a concern is the Parkhead Now let's get over to the five or ten percent of marijuana users who use it chronically often they only and frequently. What about the part. Is he satisfied to remain a part of. Many are many others are not but they look. At least what had others what method drain and others. A very small number perhaps five percent of that group toward the opiates. And since I've just heard that I only have two minutes left me by. Giving my opinion of the current criminal penalties for possession I think we're at a state of knowledge now where. Somebody. Should clearly state that the possession of. The State of the procession laws are excessive track Kone I'm and that they are doing no harm but they are doing more harm than good. And that at the very. As a first step until we know more about the situation. Penalties for possession and use it should be reduced to a misdemeanor I think this would be. Consonant with our present knowledge I do not say this because of any pressure from any legalized marijuana group who I think are stuck to fourth point pointed out extremists in their own right. Know I would for a rethinking of this because not only are they harsh an excessive but they have failed which is a worse. And therefore I would favor a reduction of penalties for simple possession and usage of marijuana Thank you thanks to Ed thank you Dr Holmes actually halfway mark presentation let me introduce our next speaker Here's Harold Ickes the director of the Legal Services Unit of the mobilization for youth in New York City he also serves as a consultant to New York University's law school project on social welfare law and the Legal Services Program of the Federal Office of Economic Opportunity Mr Ross works as a member of the board of directors of the New York Civil Liberties Union and the National Legal Aid and defender of so she asian he serves as a member of the court delays and sentencing Committee of the mayor's criminal justice Coordinating Council Mr Roth watch has written several monographs and have puts on the legal rights of the poor last year he presented a paper to the National Conference on social welfare on partnership between social work and the law a prerequisite for effective community organization efforts focused on social change for the poor Mr Howard Prof works. My position is that the criminal laws against the possession of marijuana of a barracks and without justification and should be removed not just that the penalty should be left. I do want to address myself just briefly this all the question is does the use of marijuana produce harmful effects requiring medical treatment I don't know frankly as a lawyer I don't care if they do require medical treatment my argument is that the medical profession should treat them and that judges and prosecutors and police officers whose expertise is limited in this area should have no participation in that effort because the use of marijuana lead to the use of heroin I don't know and again from the point of view of the efficacy or appropriateness of the criminal law I don't care if it does and if that's a medical problem. I think the medical profession or to treat it what again I find this so absurd is that while the thrust of most of the concern about marijuana where it is expressed is that the drug is harmful what we have done through the criminal wars pretty much to exclude the medical profession from the whole area because when you have the criminal law doctors themselves are threatened that if they distribute the drug for medical purposes they may themselves be prosecuted and who want to be bothered with that if you spent so many years in school and you finally got that license while going to another area of medicine can be intellectually stimulating outside of this. This the use of marijuana cause violent crime or aggressive anti-social behavior. Well I say no to that in ten years as a criminal lawyer in the courts of the city of New York I have never seen any direct and I would go so far to say even any indirect link between it would have a factor if in fact the fellow smokes marijuana cigarette and goes out shoots up a platoon we have present criminal laws against shooting up platoons and others and it seems to me that he can be effectively prosecuted for the end of those laws as he would if he had drank too much and went out but it seems foolish absurd even insane to punish everybody even the ninety seven or ninety eight or nine you know i percent that don't go out and shoot up platoons because one fellow with a psychotic background may when he smokes marijuana cigarette be released from his in a position again shooting up platoons. Are the current criminal penalties for the possession of marijuana in appropriate I would say in New York where mere possession of marijuana for one's own use is only a misdemeanor what Dr Cohen has recommended we reduce the laws in other states too we have seen a disaster and I'll go into that with you briefly my main points however are if the argument against marijuana is that it is medically socially psychologically harmful it seems to me these are issues that are best addressed by the medical profession and a shocking thing that came to my attention just a few months ago I think is worth your attention a young sixteen year old girl who had been a rested for selling marijuana and who was addicted to heroin came into our office and complained about the fact that police officers were using her as an informant and there's a great deal of pressure when you arrest for these crimes to turn informant and what they were doing to make her useful as a former informant was giving her heroin to sustain her habit while she was out on the street I don't mean that we're giving it to her and directly they were giving her the money with which she could buy their. I want to sustain our habit and it struck me that we had reached a point now where police officers were providing addicts with heroin at a time when doctors could not and I don't know how much more absurd we can get in our approach to this problem and that would seem to suggest in fact. The fact that our society has resorted to the criminal law by we as its instrument to control the use of marijuana has nothing to do with it's medically harmful or proper. Quality It has nothing to do with marijuana at all if the truth be known it really has to do between a conflict between styles of life and attitudes toward life. The analogies between the prohibition of marijuana and the prohibition against alcohol back during the prohibition is here I think a significant two years ago the president of the Women's Christian Temperance he was saying. We were once an accepted group the leading people would be members so they would be ashamed to belong to the W.C. to you today we have a kind of lower which was the it's not fashionable any longer to belong and that statement I think says something fundamental about the relationship between societal consensus and the regulation of public morality because for those who affirm a strong moral position the capacity to regulate public morality may document this status in society the greater the commitment to the Kleinian way of life the more important validation of public recognition and public power genuine Custom does not require the criminal law for its enforcement I venture to say that I can't even take seriously. The fact that marijuana will no longer be possession for your own use will no longer be against the law in ten years when the generation that's now growing up. Becomes electorally powerful and is able to vote it out in the distance right now it's just too difficult for men in politics to advocate that. We have to I think consider relieve you appropriateness of the criminal law to this area. My position is that of John Stuart Mill the only part of the conduct of anyone for which he is amenable to society is that which concerns others on the part which really concerns him self is independence is right absolute over himself over his own body and mind the individual sovereign Well you never get away with an argument quite that easily the answer to the mill is gone that no man is an island device smoke a marijuana cigarette and die from and I suppose my wife and children go on public welfare and therefore nothing I do is without some repair in society however indirect that ripple may be the fact is of course the to accept that particular argument is to give government finally the ultimate power that it could have that is government the power to make criminal and to intervene and to punish you for doing something that they think in some indirect or rippling way will ultimately increase the welfare rolls it would mean I suppose that if you ate too much or ate too little you'd be subject to control if you had too much sex or too little too much coffee or too little whatever in fact is no reason to put drug risk decisions on any other basis than any other risk decision we live I suppose in a very risky society at this moment in time back in one thousand nine hundred one of their more enlightened acts the New York State legislature abolished the laws which made attempted suicide a crime they didn't do this because they were in favor of suicide some of them may have but most of them did not. That's the ultimate danger to a person I suppose but they realize that the criminal law really didn't address the problem of suicide in any meaningful way helpful kind of a way and that there was no sense really once you'd save this guy from his suicide to throw him in jail for ten years we do that now with marijuana. And somehow it seems more sensible to us the criminal law is the most serious intervention that a society can have in the personal life and personal liberty of citizens and it would seem to me that we ought to in sixth on the greatest rationality that we can in that law Herbert Wechsler no flaming radical in these areas for me a law school said the penal law governs the strongest force we permit official agencies to bring to bear on individuals its promise is an instrument of safety is matched only by its power to destroy if it is harsh or arbitrary in its impact it works a gross injustice on those court within its toils it should surely be as rational and draws as law can be it is worthwhile to pause for a moment to examine what the social consequences of the enforcement of the marijuana possession laws are I hold them to be so one desire of all is to throw doubt on the wisdom of war and the it seems to me that if we had set out in a calculated way to find the worst possible method an instrument for controlling drug use we could not have done better than what we have at this moment in time look for example with the impact that these laws have on the uses the police the courts organized crime the medical profession and society as a whole and so far as the user is concerned we take a man who for whatever reason takes that marijuana cigarette either because he's psychotic because he wants a kid or because he just wants to experiment and we make him a criminal and we do that by giving him a criminal record often throwing him in jail for long periods of time and by doing that I suppose we create a disrespectful war and forlorn Fauresmith and a whole new generation that is coming into being. Well we do the police one thing in a time of rising crime rates and this is not a speech on Law and Order we require a disproportionate allocation of their resources to be devoted to the policing of what at the best is an insignificant concern at least criminally in our society. The control of drug use is an invisible crime that is if you rob somebody somebody runs up to a policeman It says that man robbed me in the policeman goes out to it but nobody complains with drug use because people actively soliciting attempt to get the drug it's an invisible crime to the police saw forced to go out and the pain informants and you have a whole area of of men informing against each other of men being sustained on drugs so that they may be able to inform against each other because it's an invisible crime you have an enlargement of police corruption because there are great profits to be made in this and because it's not something that can be adequately supervise though clearly seen and so from time to time we see policemen indicted either for selling drugs or for being in conjunction with gamblers or what have you but they work with organized crime and very often they can't and I'm amazed at the nice new cars that so many of the new people on the narcotics bureau driving around in lately they are engaged in harassment very often because if you work on the Lower East Side as I do in Hatton where we have a group of people Negro Puerto Rican and alienated. Which even threaten or anger police officers they can use these laws devices or excuses by which they can harass whole group a whole society whole attitude and way of living. When you go to the courts you find the courts are overwhelmed with cases certainly the misdemeanor codes they run two hundred cases to a calendar a day more often than not they cannot even complete the calendar apart from doing anything else and yet a substantial part of their resources devoted to the trial of misdemeanor marijuana cases to what end and for what purpose you. Can provide legal delivery systems well organized crime will have to find other ways to earn its money and you come to the medical profession as I indicated you you frightened a lot of medical men from coming into this area you have excluded them entirely from the whole area of treatment you have retarded research in this area both with marijuana and heroin and with society as a whole you have in a way conditioned them to profound invasions of privacy starching things like rage at Stony Brook in the middle of a night on the morning of a time when students are studying for exams because they are presumably been invited for the use of marijuana or heroin. In fact most of the search warrants were issued in New York today are issued in connection with gambling and drug offenses and what we have done is accustomed our society and our populace to some belief that these kinds of incursions and invasions of privacy and liberty are justified by way of helping those medically in need of help. And last of all and perhaps most discouraging is that increasingly we resort to the criminal law in the belief that somehow this is a solution when of course it's not a solution at all the reason why the criminal law is so often resorted to is not because it is a solution but because it is inexpensive it costs nothing it doesn't increase the budget at all to increase a penalty or to make something that was not criminal criminal and that is one reason why we have you losing of doing something when we're not doing anything at all the criminal law. I suppose is the most malicious interference with any intelligent and enlightened approach to this problem that I can conceive of and it's simply absurd to focus on merely reducing the penalties when the real problem is the Lord self absorbed through of thank you Mr Rauf works let me turn now to our next speaker Frederick M. Garfield Frederick Garfield is assistant director for science and education of the Department of Justice's Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs his entire career has been devoted largely to the scientific and administrative aspects of food and drug law enforcement at the federal level just Garfield was educated at Washington University in St Louis he held several important positions within the Food and Drug Administration before turning his present post He's the author of a number of technical publications and a member of the Association of food and drug officials of the United States Mr Gore. I'm not going to address myself to the first three questions and somewhat indirectly to the poor. Washing society has consistently sought to confine the use of drugs through the practice of medicine. This judgment is based on a premise that person skilled in medicine can guide drug use in such a way as to which she benefit while minimizing our eliminating the risk of damage certain classes of drugs including marijuana have an abuse potential which simply means that a number of persons desired to use them outside of medical supervision without regard to possible deleterious effects in themselves or society generally every drug Zakk some coal in terms of biological function in the case of the Aleutian the genic drugs there is an additional toll in terms of immediate behavior and psychological balance in medical practice these risks are minimized by close supervision and offset by puting next necessity in the absence of medical supervision the risks are greatly increased without corresponding benefit unrestrained freedom and the manufacture and distribution of drugs has been controlled on the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act for many years those who worked maximum freedom in the drug field should remember that it would also bring with it a maximum freedom for irresponsible persons to conduct drug experiments it is not difficult to imagine the consequences of the excess enthusiasm are the carelessness of amateur investigators are even some professionals operating under maximum freedom of drug use no one with a responsible realistic view of the world today would subscribe to unrestrained freedom in the drug area. There is an assumption that legalized marijuana would involve only the milder forms currently in use in the United States there is no such guarantee. In fact it is doubtful that the population interested in marijuana use would be content to restrict themselves to the milder forms. Studies on T.H.C. showed definite those related the facts this means that is that those increases the effects become more and more bizarre. Resembling those produced by the hope in forms of hashish any serious plan to legalize marijuana must take this fact into account and must be supplemented by studies of the effects of the stronger forms of the drug. The degree to which drug use answers into the car's value of an event or condition is generally difficult to determine it depends on the quantity and frequency of those and a particular precondition of the individual. These are factors which may vary considerably from person to person and in the same person over a period of time thus many of the common notions concerning drug effects must be qualified if they are to be made accurate. Now Mossad because of marijuana use can see that some persons will use a drug to excess and even sustain injury but claim that the freedom of users should not be restricted simply because some of them might abuse the privilege the essence of the argument is that the benefits derived outweigh the risks of damage which may result. In society however most consider not only the wrist the user is willing to take but also the risk which his choice forces upon others. For the individual flirtation with marijuana may be a gamble for society as a whole however. Damage in terms of loss of productivity and direct personal injury to the user are to others by virtue of accident or even aggression has been statistically demonstrated and establish ample evidence exists to suggest that social damage would result from free use and availability of various forms of marijuana even if a small percentage of persons using drugs to excess. It seems to me that it would be an act of great the responsibility to undertake a social experiment of free are even limited availability of marijuana as a means of discovering the extent of damage that would result. In the control of drugs ranks among the most complex problems of control encountered in modern technology. In this effort the law is but one useful tool. Its use is based on a premise that prohibition of Salem possession of drugs for non-medical purposes will result in less abuse and therefore less damage to the society's members. A further view of the law would indicate society's right to protect itself from damage are from the prospect of damage. To put it mildly I think it's fair to note that a number of questions have been raised about the provisions of the present marijuana law why I do not propose the pursuit the relative merits of these provisions as they now exist or to discuss my personal views on this subject I can assure you that our bureau internally is giving the most serious consideration to this subject. It seems is our bill from both the legislative and executive branch points of view to more effectively. Isolate identify. And communicate the difference between use and trafficking in marijuana and other controlled rows and to rationalize the system of control so that the laws and their purposes will be more clearly and realistically understood and accepted I agree with the statement the doctor you are blunt question is book marijuana and I quote the time in history has come to make the decision as to what to do with cannabis as we do it might be well to remember that while drugs can offer us escape through illusion and give us pleasure. Through euphoria there is only one way of life that can give us happiness facing living in and coping with reality on our own without a pharmacological crutch if we come to the point where we cannot do this the battle is done and drug abuse will be the victor very little has been said about. By the panel members here about the various laws and I think it might be well to establish at least in part. The tone of Congress with regard to the various drug laws. Some of you may not be free from it with this some of you may say that the original drug abuse control amendments contain no provision or no penalty for the illegal possession of stimulant depression are hallucinogenic drugs. That was changed in the bill that passed in September. You know on very sleazy stage died bill which increase the penalties for illegal possession of the state of the Depression and hallucinogenic drugs to a misdemeanor and if I may I'd like to take a few minutes here just to read to you from the statement of the committee yes they're thinking. And what went into the decision to modify the provisions of the drug abuse control members. Might also point out. That there was. A recent. Decision of the Supreme Court in the very case knocked out illegal possession of marijuana at least at the federal level and the presumption of importation. And two bills have been introduced in Congress one by Carson Rogers of Florida by Congressman staggers who have suggested that illegal possession position positions of the marijuana law be transferred to the drug abuse control amendments this was the safe equally prohibited in the language of the law and this would be a modification this is again. Cause of some problems. Right now tech or hydro can add an old. Principle of marijuana or control of the drug abuse control and marijuana was controlled under the marijuana laws under the drug abuse control amendments illegal possession of T.H.C. and L.S.D. are misdemeanors and they were fellow only provisions under the. Marijuana Law So here again you see that there are many complications because the law is not really been studied and not geared to the particular situation they have been developed over a period of years and shortly at this time there is indeed a need for attention to the various drug law visions I like to read to you just for a moment this statement of the committee in its report. Says a committee is attempting to strike a balance between conflicting views on a question of whether an app is a show of dangerous drugs are pinned illegally should made be made a prohibited acts subject to fine or imprisonment. The bill makes possession of dangerous drugs a misdemeanor subject to imprisonment up to one year and a fine of up to one thousand dollars for first offenders but apparently of up to three years imprisonment and up to ten thousand dollars fine for second and subsequent offenses. The bill also provides However that were an individual is charged with simple possession of dangerous drugs obtained without a doctor's prescription and he has not previously been convicted of a violation of the law with respect to dangerous grows the court may in lieu of fine or imprisonment place the offender part probation for such period up to one year as a court might be term and subject to such conditions as a court may impose for example the person charged with the first offense of possession could be required to obtain psychiatric help as a condition of probation. The court is authorized to discharge the offender from probation prior to expiration of one year if the offender is charge discharge from probation by the court are at the completion of the period of probation prescribed by the court. The court determines that the offender has fully complied with the terms and conditions of probation the conviction is automatically set aside and the court is required to issue a certificate to the offender to this effect. This I take this in this fashion persons convicted of first offense for personal use may in the discretion of the court be treated with leniency in upon compliance with the conditions of probation wind up with no criminal record in the event of a second offense against the laws controlling dangerous drugs by a person his conviction has been set aside. That individual be treated as a first offender. Now let me point out some other ways in which the records may be expunged and I have concluded of course if the offender is a juvenile below the age of eighteen juvenile offenders act which applied to him which means that he will be treated in the same fashion as other juvenile offenders against federal law. And as an adult would have no criminal record in addition in a case of youthful offenders below the age of twenty six the federal youth offenders act will be applicable which also provides for probation and under some circumstances a setting aside of conviction in addition to the above protections for youthful offenders the Department of Justice has established administratively a system referred to as a broken play and under which she U.S. attorney may either prior to our after arrest college juvenile offenders and parents or guardians where appropriate to use Office and withhold the rest are prosecution of the offender in the appropriate cases where in the discretion of the U.S. attorney it appears that the purposes of of the law can be better served Thank you. Thank you I wish Garfield before wrote we turn to our final speaker for the formal presentation Mr Gross Dr Ford has to get out to the airport to get on line for the delay so I thought we'd get from three minutes to a little over a bottle before he must start out of the scope of the cell right to warrant. I Paul does so the other palace there is one kind of conference that I consider more important than a conference on marijuana and that's really what brought me east and that's a conference on medicine in the ghetto that's taking place in Boston that I have to get to because it started this morning also and fortunate last three days so I apologize for. The interruption I want to comment very briefly on a few of the points that were raised. And I'll have to be very quick. It was mentioned that I didn't feel marijuana should be classified as a hallucinogen my point there was that there are many emotional labels used in this field psychedelic is an emotional label implying that everyone will have their consciousness expanded by. Particular drug collusion and John a more popular one implies that everyone under all circumstances will become psychotic certainly marijuana can produce psychotic experiences these have been authenticated I've seen several myself in fact in a psychiatry as to was illegally using marijuana. They are short lived. They are relatively infrequent as compared to a number of other phenomena the go on in our society and they certainly should not be overdone when you call the drug a hallucinogen carry convey the implication that that's it usual fact in the usual reason it's used and the reason most most people use marijuana is no difference in the reason most people throughout the world use all call the use to feel good to get high to turn on to relax to conform it Sutter up and. Implies a much much more philosophical motive than is usually true to use the term now it was mentioned that I implied smoking marijuana smoking is the evil and it was stated by Dr brawl that it was a problem long before I think what he means to say is that marijuana was used long before certainly it's been used for thousands of years in a variety of cultures used by mouth as well as by inhalation whether or not it was a problem is a far more complicated issue as I pointed out initially the definition of a problem is a very subjective and often self-serving one and the only way really to objectify that is to have some definition of drug abuse so I would define a problem roughly as measurable impairment of you're so sure vocational functioning or of your health can be directly attributed to a certain drug and as was pointed out when poverty mountain attrition a variety of other things enter into it you can hardly attribute what what you think of as problems to. The particular drug as to Dr Cohn's point about why there have been cannabis psychosis reported in foreign countries the explanation for that will be found in the Indian hemp Commission report that he quoted from in another context it points out that in areas of India that had high use of cannabis practically everybody coming into a mental hospital had their schizophrenia attributed to cannabis use whereas in areas of India that had high use of alcohol everybody coming into the hospital with schizophrenia had that attributed to alcoholism or excessive use of that drug and you will find that there's almost a total absence of scientific methodology or even assemblance of what we consider rational thinking and I was also interested in Dr rules comment that most support for marijuana comes from those with the least experience of college students first of all college students have had very extensive experience with marijuana and they. Well I don't have time to dwell on that but I want to get out he said no one in the ghetto calls for marijuana and one of the things that should be looked at first of all is as I've tried to make clear it's not a matter of calling Ford or Carr speaking against it but trying to put it in proportion and perspective so you can understand it but what goes on in ghettos of America should be judged by what the pattern of drug use is not by what a few people might say and I assure you that in the Puerto Rican Mexican American black American communities marijuana use is says problem and pervasive as it is in white communities and I was interested in that regard that Dr Brill said organized medicine is agree that it is a harmful drug and until it is harmless no changes should be made in the law but means that no change would ever be made because no drug will ever be found to be harmless and it's another form of the traditional buck passing I'm glad that he was interested in the ghetto I. Take that as an indication that the American Medical Association is changing its concept of health care that instead of and such. And such a thing a probably true white middle class affluent Americans I hope it will now become a matter of urgency that we provide decent medical care for all people in the ghettos. And Dr Cohen I think showed the same kind of hypocrisy when he said there is a trend developing which concerns him that is a white middle class heroin use I've been long concerned about heroin use and I would hope that he would be concerned about issues in the slums of New York City in the black communities the Puerto Rican communities in the barrios of Los Angeles and elsewhere it is not a new phenomena by any means there's been sampling or chipping around with it for years every survey of high school and college drug you show some of it fortunately it's role of Lee small as compared to other patterns of use now there was one final point if I can find it. That I wanted to comment on. Yes it was finally I want to add to what Mr Ross works I think made abundantly clear the main drug problem with marijuana is the problem of the laws and their info and their fanatical enforcement or selective enforcement against certain groups of people the ones with higher visibility the people most psychologically dependent on marijuana most of that to wade into it are drug policeman certain politicians and certain bureaucrats their whole status their power their salaries their whole life stall comes from that psychological dependency and marijuana that is the marijuana scene not the drug itself is almost as major a motivating force in American society as anti-communism anybody can campaign for office by being hard on drugs and and so forth now the position I outline for you briefly my viewpoint on it I would describe it as hard on drugs but soft on people and what the official American system is not been hard on drugs at all because we've never had more drug use including more dangerous drugs it's been very hard on human beings well being soft on drugs and we have most of all to get beyond this hang up we have was drugs this obsession with chemicals and try to move our whole society beyond this preoccupation thank you very much. I just want to thank Dr Ford to and to wish him world for his presentation the moment we'll have the final speaker and then after that we'll take that five minute break if you all wait. And the following are just for those who came in. But later perhaps the panelists would like an opportunity after the break to have a three minute rebuttal if they wish and then we'll open it up to the floor for questions so if you have questions why not make a note of them and I think we should have about an hour for the questions from the floor perhaps when we finish with the rebuttal so after the break I'm sort of stalling here a little bit while our transcriber refills his machine so we will miss any of the and even presentations this morning yes. We we want to remind you that when Koch has indicated the transcripts in some form will be available at some date in the future. You know the procedures. Well if you are. You are in there is a sheet what you are going around if you sign your name your address we will with a reasonable time. Wise you see how we think we've gained if it's possible we removed the travel expense. You free the fence you'll hear about it. While we're just waiting for a moment to the bill that you're trying to put forth Congress will be directly related to the substance of the oh you should assume it is related to it. Knowing Congressman myself included introduced a year and they are to establish a presidential commission to determine definitively answers to these problems which are being raised today. That you know those congressmen are because it's very difficult to find a congressman are willing to co-sponsor of the of this car and there they are Abner Mikva. Congressman Anderson Duncan Edwards days sure pepper Rosenthal and goodie. Now that bill is. Now before the Judiciary Committee and perhaps I ought to mention at this point since we are talking about the bill that there one very great step forward is that the chairman of the Judiciary Committee Emanuel seller with whom I spoke on Wednesday has advised me that he will be sending that bill to a subcommittee and that would ordinarily mean that we will be getting hearings on it so hopefully there might be a full dress. Question of hearing on this bill within this congressional session OK thanks All right let's turn now to the to the final speaker this morning he is Bardwell gross director of the drug studies program for the National Student Association he's a graduate of Southern Illinois University and was very active in student government for several years gross worked with the N.S.A. drug studies program for two years he said Mr Gregg occasion conferences and testified before hearings of the joint legislative committee on social welfare in Massachusetts as well as participating in numerous drug education programs on college campuses across the country he's a member of the board of the National Coordinating Council on Drug Abuse education and information a member of interface incorporated a Washington D.C. group concerned with drug involvement among young people he is currently editor of the Drug Law Bulletin and you buy monthly publication of the national student associations drug studies programs to grow so that you have until noon on the clock up the wall there so time. To make it clear that I'm a left wing extremist timespan and so you're sitting on the extreme left extreme level right. Now. I want to make perfectly clear at the beginning when my biases are and the organization that I am fully with the National Student Association for the past three years the delegates at the annual congress have forwarded to legalize marijuana hand at the same time to educate college students about all drugs it's like that's my starting point that's how I feel that's the organization I represent off we're in arrest and legal controls or regulation decriminalization whatever you want to call it of marijuana that would be similar to what the older generation enjoys now with alcohol it's just volves same. I think what I'm going to do is speak to mostly the points that were made by different members of the panel. By the time they came up I was ready to. Jump up in you know a bar down quite a bit more cash and I'll try and be rational I'm serious like oh yes. First it was quite a bit of concern. Seem like I'm just concerned about people's health but the relationship between partner marijuana about. Someone to be types now getting involved with Para one of these hippies and use pot before concern about the effect of pot in the ghetto well doing what Joel said and Mr Ruff works the parts in the ghetto and it's been there for thirty years and those are the people we've been prosecuting with the laws and only now that the white middle class kids are involved really are people like me who are white middle class becoming involved and really pointing out the injustices that existed and that these people have had to cope with the last thirty or forty years and I feel that if you're really interested in helping these people you know why and where we're having problems with heroin and possibly you know are going from pot to heroin then get the hell out of the classification with heroin get out of the hands of the pusher put it in a recreational drug classification just like alcohol you know all these problems that you're making up above this would be one I think fairly relative of the simple way to solve it. You know I just can't see a lot of these arguments here in the concern seems to me. Shallow to a certain extent. There's been talk on the panel about a certain percentage of people having problems with marijuana well right yeah a certain percentage of people have problems with all drugs my parents or my parents' generation me say as a great deal of problems with you know all. Right see I'm very concerned about my generation and some people in my generation having problems not only with marijuana but speed the amphetamines barbiturates and heroin and tell me what was expected. Effectively above the Gers of abusing drugs such as heroin the amphetamines furbished shirts you're just going to have to get rid of the pot because as long as you have them there they are this quite symbolic generation gap that stands between the establishment kids kids that are really having problems with some of these other drugs and as long as you're lying about it. As long as you have these love these laws on the kids are not going to listen to you even on the very real dangers of these other drugs now you know you can say this is a rational most kids that's why they're called it a look at I'm not saying it's good or bad I'm saying this is the way they react they say you're lying about what we know if we smoke good and if you're lying about you know well maybe you're lying about how we're going to try here I want to in are going to try everything else I'm saying that you know if you. Make sane was you know regarding the regulation or control control of marijuana that these people will start to listen and possibly one from your experience about these other drugs rose and going out and you know going why having to go through that experience some souls like your credentials your credibility are just completely wiped out now in the community. I would point to was brought up and I hear it continually as both needing more research you know it's like I hear people sitting up here saying just wait and maybe in about twenty thirty years we'll find something harmful you know but give us a chance we'll find it will for God sakes you found out about cigarettes you found out about alcohol you know I think that's an irrelevant point surely you know what Dr Ford said we would like to get that information but you know this is where kids can see just a tremendous amount of hypocrisy and part of the established stablished of. And again there are a few drugs anyway that don't care of potential abuse and you can say marijuana might have I'm sure alcohol most definitely has potential do so with cigarettes. Again I think my take you know you should take marijuana out of this classifications criminal law and put it in the classification of your beverage that is a recreational drug that kids can use. National Institute of Mental Health is represented here which I'm very happy about save started a nationwide campaign in the last couple months. Communications media television radio newspapers all. On Drug Abuse and I for one particular thing that got me this most relevant to my work was saw the commercial the advertisement that they have on marijuana and it's really funny because it starts out beginning in here like voices on the right one of them one very same while parts groovy another guy sings part of KILL YOU couple of these on each side and then you have the same rational force coming in and saying the only thing we really nor a bone marrow. Is you can get thrown in jail you know and they all scales or to steer a whole thing they show this guy's wall your research you can use your driver lose your driver's license your voting certificate nor their so what they're saying. Is the only thing however with marijuana that they've been able to prove is you can get put in jail you know and they said Just wait a while maybe we'll find something else I say That's Ridiculous. And anyway I think that brings up again a civil libertarian. Conflict here. Dr Drew was talking about well the question is is there sufficient time in the drug you know and we don't know that yet and we're concerned you know might turn out like cigarettes and only launch two more studies of thirty or forty years will be able to produce the type of statistics we need will they have to say that's a bad words you know in any type of logic that I'm acquainted with and I learned all my schools you know you don't make some everything illegal or you find out whether it's harmful or not. You know what are you going to do about the drugs that you already hear of their been proven harmful you know it's set up with a straight face and trying to tell me about that when you drink a martini you can do it you don't throw people in jail while you're awaiting fair X. Now that's so I think sort of fundamental to the democratic society that we're supposed to be trying to accomplish in this country. Next to where US. OK. Arguing about and I really sort of means I don't think it's really brought up today and there is a after all this is said and done they say yeah but don't bring another evil in the society and all we've got enough problems with the food and with no cigarettes Well first this is nor is a generational thing you know why our work racial drug versus your recreational drug all the thing is really it's silly saying don't bring this evil you know man where you've been it's already here and all and it's been here for quite a while and it's increasing and I haven't seen any studies done outright say it would be increasing in proportion to the harshness of the penalties and the more you escalate the penalties the more the kids turn out it seems like something I think that will continue because the less you know you will feel less on the panel these kids are still going to turn out this is a generational recreational drug and you just accept exasperate the conditions by your was sick. Last one. And this is just more a statement of the motion and I think my reaction I think somebody said here that. Spoke for the preponderance of their organizational behavior speaks to the preponderance of youth in this country and that is that we will this you know we can hear all your rational arguments very nice intellectual plaintiff going. We can listen to all your psychological studies and you can do more and was sociological research pharmacological research on marijuana you can tell us about the tone of Congress and man it doesn't make any difference because the kids know you're lying about pot. And that is the way they feel. Thank you I guess OK Well perhaps we can all get together get it five minutes past twelve Thank you very much Henk. To get back to our places. Sort of see if we get this free. Analysts here shortly. I'd like to advise you if you wish to ask a question there are two. Two there's at least one like turn that I see is or not is this. Microphone over and they are all over there between those two windows in a select turn microphone up here please and there's also one over there by that side if you want to ask a question please come up to the microphone the reason for that is that this is the tape recorded for broadcast use and the question will not be heard on the tape or in this room unless you do go to the microphone and I suppose if you have no objection you can also identify yourself if you don't wish to you don't have to if. We were going to begin by permitting the analysts those extra And up here this morning to comment if they wish perhaps if they have no burning desire to do same perhaps they might get their rebuttals in during the question period but if they. Like say something which I will let Dr Cone begin with. Just about three or four minutes I think. I have a burning desire because I think there are a couple of points that are worth. Illuminating rather than. Turning the fires of emotion. To emotion as much as anyone else but I think thought fullness. Here and there are. Shouldn't be an establishment virtue rather. I would make a plea for. I would make a plea for. A sense of history. People who are younger than I am but is under thirty. Very bright but you're awfully very stupid in that you don't look at the past and the one who hasn't looked at the past is condemned to repeat it do you want to repeat the coking story that O.P.M. story and all the other stories we've been through we've been through all this before let's wire in a little bit become a little more human and in that regard the trouble with pot is not the drug the troubling part is the part just like the trouble. In other words and age are taken. To the exclusion of. One's own ability to deal with life one's own exposure to life stress and goodness knows us enough of that around. Anyone who needs a tree in order to enjoy is merely perpetuating his own immaturity. And not growing up this is what I have against the. Perpetual use of any drug legal or illegal and we card to. The this is particularly important because this is a time of turmoil and a time of growth and if we interpose a drug. To the exclusion of dealing with life and life defeats and life struggles how are we ever going to grow this I think has to be. Nor does you I'm afraid Afraid have a monopoly on telling it like it is it's my impression from what I've heard here this morning that the myths of the younger among us are as great or greater than the older among us and we are perpetuating the issues and I'm afraid your kids will be talking about a gap which is even greater than the one today I would like to finally say something about this issue of personal freedom that is certainly enormously important and central to the marijuana issue should a person have the right to do with his body as he wishes in this complex society in a society of one in a society where people live a mile away from each other I would say yes why not but here we into law. We are living very closely to each other and I think there has to be a. Balance of attention. A constant struggle between the maximal own personal freedom and yet a modicum of social responsibility and when one says I would legalize every drug. I wonder would he then not. Go along with such things as vaccination. The question of. Do you of. Certain drug use restricted to prescription you. Use of Florida zation of water is there no such thing as a chanting to do things for the social welfare or do we only think of our own. Selves I submit that we have to think of both sides of that. Another little myth that was perpetrated today was a question of organized crime and marijuana I know of no evidence of organized crime isn't marijuana in the marijuana thing I think it's on organized crime. Small stuff. If anyone has evidence that the Mafia is in marijuana I'd like to hear about it. Thank you I think I'll stop there. Thank you oh and is there any of the other panelists have a desire at this point to make a rejoining. I was wondering if I'd get any more where can I want to go and. If you like say something go ahead do you if you would. Like to ask that question of. My friend here on the left. Seems to be so concerned about the arrests in the white community I just wonder why the National sued Association did not take a stand on get over arrest but wait till the problem actually we preach to the white community before taking a stand. I could say something about the CIA's infiltration and in the N.S.A. if. We first found. This couple years. I feel now though certain probably a minor part of my old. Put in my place at work answered a couple points in Sydney brought out. What just one reference talk about look state telling us to look at the past while I look at it now makes me sort of six Why don't we want to go into there too deeply you know if you want to found the pale skin this country you can do it you know. OK. When you talk about your concern about people taking drugs to the exclusion of the desire to cope with white stress. And then in the same context talking about attempting to do things for social welfare in our country you know what are you doing you're throwing people in jail that's what your concern is doing you know this person isn't dealing with his problems right so we're going to throw him in jail that's what you're saying and while I think that's you know that's a worse trip than anybody I've seen on marijuana a lot worse one hundred thousand people arrested in California last year here where there I haven't thrown anybody in jail yet or were you using the I was using the Nuremberg watchmaker I guess. Yes Dr Drew. Again in the interests of trying to come to some sort of a closure on our discussion and I'd like to try to do to say what I think there's agreement down where there's disagreement I've heard only one panelist say that the drug should be D. controlled all the other panelists as far as I could as I have heard have admitted at least that it might be harmful but perhaps not that armful perhaps some other way should be used to control it I think that the serious discussion in the in our society today is not whether the drug should be controlled complete. Early But what methods of control should be used and I think that this is really worthy of serious discussion we don't know I will leave that to Mr Roth whites we don't know very much about the correlation between. Laws and they are in force mint on the one hand and conduct disorder on the other I think we could stand a lot more solid information which is available and has not been tapped to any significant degree. The Another question was raised about experience in the colleges. There is a lot of overconfidence on the part of young people as to what they know concerning marijuana in my opinion one does not learn about out the hall and alcoholism by drinking the great professors of alcoholism that I know I have not been drunks one does not learn about the effects of any drug by taking that drug one learns about that from many other ways but not by taking it the experience of the college student has been brief it is run back now approximately five or six years this is not long enough to show the chronic affects of the drug this is not long enough for society to form a firm opinion about it in the ghetto where it's been present and I've dealt with it there with people coming from the ghetto since one nine hundred thirty two they do have enough experience to come to some sort of a social conclusion. I'd like to have ask one question which bothers me all the time what's the hurry why do we have to pass a pot now why can't we determine whether this is going to give us another problem of the dimensions of alcoholism whether the experience of millions of people across the world over centuries is false and we are in five years of experience are right why why can't we wait a little while there's an enormous amount of research that has been tripped off by the present interest in marijuana I would think that our society would be a lot safer safer to wait because I can assure you that it's easier to keep the genie in the bottle than to let him out and then try to put him back afterwards this is an awfully difficult thing to do I'm not convinced that this drug has spread to the extent that the one time users to to sticks indicate. There is a lot of pot being used and there are a lot of bad reactions developing but it is not by any means true that the bulk of the young younger generation is now taking part regularly I think that Dr Cohen's point is very valid we should look at the experiences of other countries with various drugs Japan for example has had a lurid experience since World War two And I think we should look at that experience in context. Proof. Is very difficult to present to people who don't want to believe I think only a disinterested judge can measure proof when people are committed to a point of view I think it's impossible to prove anything to them. Well look Mr off our show final word here and then we get to questions. The argument for legalization is not an argument for use. It's an argument freedom and freedom implies the option to choose the way you want to live your own life or your own way so when a person says that it should not be a crime to use it I would not expect that everybody would go out and use it if they did that would be alright with me too but it would be their decision to make and I think that you show a little confidence in your position when you identify the two because what you're saying is that but for the law our position has so little appeal our argument so little weight that everybody would run out and use that drug if you removed the criminal sanctions on it all we argument for legalization tens upon. His the argument that a person should have as a minimal constitutional right the right to be wrong the right to find his own way to his own experience the right to run those risks with his life that he chooses to run so long as he does not directly injure or harm somebody else we do that in every area of our life except drugs right now the guys who are running shooting out to the moon there it's a pretty risky business the people who climb mountains pretty risky maybe getting to be the case that those who cross streets are right about those this drink while they drive while it's fun but those who drink while they drive Dr Brill are endangering others and nobody's ever challenge the right to control it by all those who drink in their own privacy of their own living room or drink and don't drive have a right to do so that's the key to the difference of opinion the question is how much hazard is it to the rest of you keep on insisting that this is an issue of proof it's not an issue of proof at all it's an issue of values what shall the relation of man to his society be and it's not and it has nothing to do with what will turn up after thirty years of research I would argue that marijuana want to be legalized. If to take one one part would result in instant death it would seem to me that society should be concerned that people know about that that people should be advised of the dangers involved with it but ultimately a man is responsible for himself and that's what democracy is about and that's to say that you know better it seems to me to arrogate to yourself both the power and intelligence and a weight that you simply don't have I think society has to make the decision with the full knowledge of the hazards and that's what I'm trying to say here Society Dr Brill is you and me it's the majority it's votes that's all it is right now you're in the majority in ten years you'll be in the minority mature and marijuana will be legal you know I mean that's that's all that you talk through. But I. Just read something very famous for this very briefly I want to get a question and there was a case in Boston not too long ago involving the illegal sale possession of marijuana and the fundamental rights the individual raises this was a most unusual case in that the judge took testimony of impartial witnesses and partial witnesses on both sides of the question and the brief which was submitted to him got into the constitutional rights of the individual and I'm not going to discuss all that went before this but I think there's one paragraph here that I think you might be interested in as a judicial review of of a superior of a judge in the Superior Court of Massachusetts and he says although the situation here is to attempt to Pro Plan an all inclusive list the fundamental rights and examination of these cases cited by the defendant indicate that only those rights are to be considered as fundamental whose continuation is essential to our good liberty in other words fundamental rights are those without which democratic society should cease to exist Furthermore those rights which are recognized fundamental are also in many instances closely related to some commonly knowledge moral or legal duty not merely to a heaven if the seeking after pleasure no claim of any such duty which would demand the possession use or sale of marijuana has been advanced in this case. I can assure you that the cases were well reviewed before they were submitted to according to industry I think really we ought to try to get to the Irish to her she's sorry I have to interrupt because something said about him which is a misquote which I don't like especially when you hear that was what dark Toprol said of all apparently felt that I so there should be no controls whatsoever on marijuana I try to make it very clear for I started in my diatribe or whatever fat I was for the legal control or regulation of marijuana or somewhere to go or call. If we have some questions now if you want to come up to the microphones please because we'd like to hear them would you. Well I know we still like to hear it because our audience will be able to like. Dr Brill I assume you've taken aspirin a few times and it hasn't killed you assuming that you were to smoke marijuana to the point of getting high and did that. Several times to experience what it's like what do you fear from that would it to ruin your objectivity or for what you. Know I know I think that in all likelihood it would do me no harm. If it didn't do any more than you describe which are defining the result in terms of the question I don't know what it would do neither does anybody else might do some unpleasant things. To try well I must tell you that I have I think I told you personally that I tried it in a medical context mostly to be able to answer questions like this. Didn't get perceptibly high no and that's the experience of about fifty percent of all people who try marijuana reported on surveys I was not interested in pushing it to the point of producing intoxication I took a couple of cigarettes and that was the result of. Stuff that circulates Stark to Kaunas says it's largely dead and that's why we're so overconfident about our minister this. Yes good question I think for Mr Garfield primarily and it has to do with the case that he quoted. That the experience in society around drug use as a fundamental freedom as a political act as historically had two faces and cleaver writes about these one in the historically the black community drug use has been so much izing has been counter-revolutionary in almost every sense. There is some indication in the in the Cultural Revolution which is accompanying the political revolution that drug use particularly marijuana use here is a political act. And and it is a powerful political force given the whole don't Johnson of it and some of the things that. And I was only if you if you would like to comment on that or any other school. I don't think the control of marijuana United States is a political act I think the control of marijuana is worldwide United States have you should be a signatory of the single convention as are some fifty other countries outstanding countries of the world I don't believe in and she you question is a political situation. You don't want to hear stare at some Surely there are maybe some of the people here consider me to be an extremist and so well I think in actuality herd people like the white Panthers Transworld energies these type of people I'm sort of a moderate because I'm saying maybe we can see some of the good things we have left in this society by reforming it and changing some of the was like these people all these other people disagree with me violently and sort of hate me and threaten me for doing this because they're saying man keep force was a way they are getting worse because that's going to bring about a lot sooner because every kid who turns out he doesn't have to get a bus or ever see anything any kid who turns up let me say smokes marijuana doesn't even have turn around because I find it's all going off really so it always he was radicalized right there and it's a very political work and you can talk about the fifty countries you know and that type of thing but I think we're talking about a cultural revolution in terms of wife styles which is a lot different kind of like this fair which mean Russia. Would like to express my dissatisfaction heard maybe I mean this is supposed to be so-called experts not one person is head any sort of data any quoted any experiments I mean this is just excuse to our hundred percent people who drink now have a hundred percent chance of taking morphine or seem to. If marijuana is a hallucinogen you said this was proven real I mean it hasn't even been proven for L.S.D. and I'd like to know you know what. Spearmint was done to prove that it was lucid Jan. You know and you also say that the marijuana has to be proven harmless before we can be legalized I mean what was the story without the whole why was out of all legalized after it was prohibited I mean. You know it seems you're using two different standards one standard to judge marijuana and another standard to judge our whole I mean why can't they be combined I mean if you're going to be against marijuana be against our hard like to pull one experiment from done in Washington State that appeared recently in science here you're familiar with it there was done by the State Motor Vehicle Association where they had three groups one group received nothing and then took a stimulant simulated driving test another group had two drinks they were intoxicated they just had two drinks and it third group smoked marijuana until they said they were high and I'm sure you know the results as well as I do were is the people would had to drink scored twice as many errors as the normal group and also the marijuana group was exactly equal to the normal that they have saluted no deficiencies found in driving except for maybe a spirometry or. Reading for they were found to drive a lot slower I think you're misinterpreting what was in an article I don't remember all of the details but I do when I would like to respond to it because it's important to sort of shop for. Fiction soon as possible if you read the science article you will find that.