How The Oregonian Cribs Its Editorials from DEA Handouts

May 6, 1997

To the editors of The Oregonian:

I read a lot of prohibitionist propaganda in newspaper editorials, so I was not particularly surprised by The Oregonian's call for the recriminalization of Oregonians who use marijuana. ("Not Going To Pot" Saturday, May 3, 1997) What did surprise me was the exceptionally poor quality of the thinking and the low level of journalistic ethics.

The worst thing about the editorial was that its key points, the only alleged facts, seem to have been cribbed directly from a Drug Enforcement Administration handout, "Drug Legalization: Myths and Misconceptions - US Dept. of Justice; Chapter One: Addiction Rates And Drug Legalization" without attribution, and certainly without any critical thought.

For example, The Oregonian says, "Dr. Richard Schwartz, professor of pediatrics Georgetown University School of Medicine wrote in 1994 that the states with the most lenient marijuana laws - Oregon and Alaska - also had the highest addiction rates, at double the national average."

The DEA says, "Furthermore, Dr. Richard Schwartz, Professor of Pediatrics at Georgetown University School of Medicine, notes that Alaska and Oregon, the states that traditionally have had the most lenient drug laws, also have the highest marijuana addiction rates in the United States double the national average." (Never mind that a pediatrician is not an expert on epidemiology, or that there is huge amount of data that suggests otherwise.)

Then The Oregonian closes with the bizarre claim that "marijuana available today is maybe 60 times as potent as that of the 1960s…"

What did the DEA say? "Although it is very difficult to determine the precise number of marijuana users and addicts in the United States, one fact is clear: marijuana has become much more potent over the last twenty years. Cannabis delta 9 tetrahydrocannabinol, commonly known as "THC," is the active ingredient in marijuana and other cannabis such as hashish. The THC content in marijuana during the days of Woodstock was something less than 1%. In 1974, the average THC content of illicit marijuana was 0. 36% and by 1984 had increased to 4.40%. In 1992 in Alaska, marijuana was discovered that had a THC content of 29.86%. Now stop and think about that for a minute. Today's marijuana may be between thirty to sixty times as potent as were the joints of the 1960's." (emphasis added)

Now as the DEA says, "stop and think about that for a minute." I realize that doubting the veracity of the DEA for even a moment is pro-drug, anti-child and generally "double-ungood," but let's pretend that a government agency might lie just once, or more than once. Let's analyze the facts about what this paragraph from which you cribbed your numbers is actually claiming.

1. There is no data -- repeat, no data -- on average marijuana potency from the 1960s. But were the 1960s and '70s really about a placebo?
2. The DEA is claiming (without any supporting data) that the THC content was "something less than 1%" at Woodstock in 1969, but somehow it then fell so that in "1974, the average THC content of illicit marijuana was 0. 36%," (the THC level of industrial hemp) but by 1984, a year famous for something, but the reason why has been consigned to the memory hole, it had soared to 4.40%. How did this happen?
3. All of the data on marijuana potency in the last twenty years comes from the same source, testing sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which says that "Most ordinary marijuana has an average of 3 percent THC." (From the NIDA pamphlet "Marijuana: Facts Parents Need to Know" page five.) One sixtieth of 3 percent is .05 percent!!
4. The US government data from the early 1970s were based on very small samples of material of uncertain quality. Data from private testing, which is no longer permitted, differed significantly from the government data. Twenty years ago, in 1977, the average potency of government seized marijuana samples tested by the NIDA Marijuana Project was 1.76% THC, and this almost certainly was low due to the small sample size. In 1982, with much larger samples, seizures averaged 3.34% THC, but in 1992 they averaged just 1.96%. These numbers all come from the same data source.

Finally, apparently you did not notice that the paragraph from which you cribbed your potency data begins with a sentence that undermines the premise of the other quote that you cribbed from this propaganda: "Although it is very difficult to determine the precise number of marijuana users and addicts in the United States…" Well….

If it is "very difficult to determine" the national rates of marijuana usage, then how can you know that Oregon has rates twice the national average?

You end by saying that "the times, they are a-changin'." No, unfortunately, they are not. Marijuana prohibition began 60 years ago with just this sort of irrationality and lying. You have lied to your readers and have violated the Ninth Commandment against giving false evidence against your neighbors. (Yes, Oregonian marijuana users, whom you want to arrest, are your neighbors.) You have undermined the credibility of drug education by making absurd statements that children can see through, even if you cannot. And you have prostituted your newspaper to the Drug Enforcement Administration's war on Oregon's marijuana users.

I know that you will not print this letter. However, with supporting documentation, it will be posted on our web site, www.marijuanamgazine.com, under the heading "How The Oregonian Cribs Its Editorials from DEA Handouts," and copies of it will be sent to every college newspaper in Oregon. The students of Oregon certainly have the right to know that The Oregonian lied in order to recriminalize many of them.

If you wish to reply, we will print your letter. Unlike prohibitionists, we want the public to know what those with whom we disagree are saying. We are not like you. We do not have to lie.

Sincerely,

Richard Cowan

Press Release from NORML With Added Data from Government Sources

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws

Activists Charge Oregon's Largest Newspaper Sides With The DEA In Promoting Marijuana Recriminalization Bill

May 8, 1997, Portland, Oregon:

Marijuana reform activists fighting to save the state's marijuana decriminalization law have charged The Oregonian with being a willful participant in the "War on Drugs" after the paper ran an editorial endorsing recriminalization that relied almost exclusively on a Drug Enforcement Administration handout.

The May 3 editorial supporting the current legislative effort to recriminalize marijuana in Oregon (H.B. 3643) stated that the "marijuana available today is maybe 60 times as potent as that of the 1960s." This statement is almost identical to language that appeared in chapter one of a 1994 DEA pamphlet: "Drug Legalization: Myths and Misconceptions."

Ironically, annual evidence gathered from the National Institute on Drug Abuse's Potency Monitoring Project indicates that marijuana potency has remained relatively stable for almost the entire 20+ years it has been measured. According to a 1995 pamphlet from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services entitled Marijuana: Facts Parents Need to Know, "Most ordinary marijuana has an average of 3 percent THC." This is virtually the same figure that NIDA reported in 1982 (3.34 percent).

The Oregonian editorial also relied heavily on the 1994 assumptions of Dr. Richard Schwartz of Georgetown University who argued in an unpublished paper that marijuana decriminalization encourages marijuana use. Schwartz's findings also appeared in the DEA handout.

However, according to the only federal study ever conducted regarding the impact of marijuana decriminalization on use (Monitoring the Future Occasional Paper 13: Marijuana Decriminalization: The Impact on Youth 1975-1980), Schwartz's assumption is incorrect. The study's conclusions are as follows:

• The data show "absolutely no evidence ... of any increase, relative to the control states, in the proportion of the age group who ever tried marijuana."
• "The degree of disapproval young people hold for marijuana use, to the extent which they believe such use is harmful, and the degree to which they perceive the drug to be available to them .. [was] found to be unaffected by [decriminalization.]"
• There exists no evidence "of an increase in the frequency of use in the marijuana-using segment of the population. ... In fact, both groups of experimental states showed a small, cumulative net decline in lifetime prevalence as well as in annual and monthly prevalence after decriminalization."

Prior to the May 7 editorial, The Oregonian also printed a quote from Darin Campbell, lobbyist for the Oregon Association Chief's of Police, who falsely implied that Oregon was the only state that maintains marijuana decriminalization. In reality, 10 of the 11 states that decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana in the 1970s continue to remain decriminalized. These states presently represent one-third of the U.S. population.

"What justifies such bias and misleading sensationalism," asked Portland NORML activist Phil Smith, a former writer for The Oregonian. "When will The Oregonian stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution?"

For more information, please contact Sandra Burbank of Mothers Against Misuse and Abuse @ (541) 298-1031