"The truth shall make you free' only if you are willing to renounce your chains."

The Bible says, "the truth shall make you free." Surely, this is one of the "traditional values" most prized by Americans. We like "free." The truth, however, can also make you uncomfortable. The Bible hasn't much advice for dealing with this inconvenience, apart from excoriating hypocrites, people who know the truth but apparently take greater comfort in lies. When it comes to marijuana, alas, Americans are ferocious hypocrites.

This particular truth hits hard in Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts, the new book by Lynn Zimmer, Ph.D. and John P. Morgan, M.D. (233pp, Lindesmith Center, $16.95, 800 444 2524). Myths/Facts is an encyclopedic, excruciatingly-footnoted summary of fatuous assertions vs. scientific investigation of marijuana dating back over a century. It ruthlessly exposes our stubborn, downright embarrassing preference for lies over long-established and widely-known truths.

The book is neatly organized around 20 marijuana myths. One opens each chapter in paraphrase: Myth: Marijuana impairs memory and cognition. Several attributed quotes employing the myth ensue, propaganda like, "Marijuana savages short-term memory and the ability to concentrate." (Joseph A. Califano, 1996)

We then get a single-paragraph refutation in the authors' words, essentially a review of the chapter. Fact: Marijuana produces immediate temporary changes in thoughts, perceptions and information processing.... This diminishment only lasts for the duration of intoxication. There is no convincing evidence that heavy long-term marijuana use permanently impairs memory or other cognitive functions.

The body of the chapter follows, a detailed, heavily-annotated review of the best science available, testifying against the myth in question; acknowledging whatever kernels of truth it may contain (and boy, are these rare). The aggregate makes for a tidy, single-volume annihilation of current policy.

Too many of us still applaud politicians preaching the intellectual equivalent of a flat Earth. Far, far worse, too many applaud as fellow citizens are led off to prison for knowing the repeatedly proven truth that marijuana use is, at the very worst, a frivolous vice. (The truth in this case makes you a convict.)

"Frivolous vice" is the essential conclusion of virtually every reputable study:

"The moderate use of hemp drugs is practically attended by no evil results at all." --Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894.

Marijuana's effects have "apparently been greatly exaggerated." Panama Canal Zone Report, 1925.

"... ills commonly attributed to marihuana have been ... exaggerated." LaGuardia Commission Report, 1944.

"... once the myths were cleared, it became obvious that the case for and against was not evenly balanced. ... long-term consumption of cannabis ... has no harmful effect." The British Wooten Report, 1969.

"... little proven danger of physical or psychological harm ..." National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, 1972.

"... anti-social effects ... have not been substantiated by scientific evidence." National Academy of Science Report, 1982.

"... risks of cannabis use cannot ... be described as 'unacceptable'." Report by the Dutch Government, 1995.

All this and much more, and yet headlines were made recently when researchers injected anandamide, a cannabinoid-like compound that occurs naturally in humans, directly into petri dishes containing two-cell mouse embryos. Development stopped! Presto: "serious and harmful effect of marijuana" on pregnancy for mice who throw their embryos into the petri dishes of confused researchers. This is the caliber of "science" offered to refute over a century of clinical study and 5,000 years of cultural experience with hemp.

Again, all this might be of only academic interest were it not for the fact that, even as real crime has diminished for five years running, marijuana arrests have doubled over the same period. We now have 1,725,842 Americans in prison, more than ever. Further, "drug offenses have accounted for more than a third of the growth in the incarcerated population, and since 1980 the incarceration rate for drug arrests has increased 1,000 percent." (New York Times, 1/19/98) For "drug," read "marijuana."

A 1995 study by Virginians Against Drug Violence found that more than half of all drug offenders are arrested for marijuana -- 89.5 percent for simple possession. This is just one truth opposing the lie that pot-smoking today is winked at. Myth: ... lax treatment has allowed criminals to use and traffic in marijuana with impunity. (Washington Post, 9/9/96)

Any pot-smokers recently "winked at" can well appreciate President Nixon's own Shafer Commission's finding in 1970 that "marijuana policy had become more damaging to American society than marijuana." Marijuana use cannot be shown to have destroyed a single life in thousands of years of documented use, clinical observation and medical study. Marijuana law, boasting all the sound legal footing of Paleolithic taboo, has destroyed, and keeps on destroying, tens of thousands of lives every year. Since 1970, a staggering eleven million Americans have been arrested for consorting with a plant.

This superstitious nonsense persists despite examples like the Netherlands, where prohibition has been essentially repealed and marijuana made freely available for over 20 years. Rather than study and heed such examples, American leadership has taken them as grist for more lies: Myth: Marijuana policy in the Netherlands is a failure. Fact: ... rates of marijuana use in the Netherlands are similar to those in the United States. However, for young adolescents, rates of marijuana use are lower ... The Dutch government ... remains committed to decriminalization.

Friends and foes of prohibition will profit from this little book and its thorough documentation. Here are assembled all the reputable studies with each objection and every finding of "sustained" or "overruled." What astounds the reader is not a mere preponderance of evidence overruling the many mythical objections to marijuana, but the devastating blast of refutation on nearly every count; a collective verdict of "innocent" so overwhelming that our persistence -- indeed, our seeming preference for lies becomes as perverse as any drug addiction. We are "sober as a judge" prosecuting our War on Drugs. And yet our judgement is "intoxicated" just

as Webster's defines the word: "poisoned."

Abjuring such a long-practiced perversion in favor of truth may indeed be uncomfortable and inconvenient. With a political culture and legal system so long-addicted to lies, resistance to truth is entrenched to the extent that honest debate is treated like criticism of the Emperor's New Clothes. Ask former Surgeon General Elders.

"The truth shall make you free" only if you are willing to renounce your chains. The truth about marijuana has long been known, but, like junkies in denial, we prefer our chains, shaming and discrediting the law, creating crime from whole cloth, imprisoning the innocent, even persecuting the sick in our Inquisition-style zeal. With the publication of Marijuana Myths; Marijuana Facts our addiction to lies has been entirely exposed. Someday and soon, it must be as entirely rejected.

BACKGROUND:

Travis Charbeneau is a writer and commentator living in Richmond, VA. Long-active with The World Future Society, he is especially interested in exploring the evolution and impacts of technological, political and cultural trends. He works in a variety of styles and formats, from magazine-length articles to op-ed.

Charbeneau has worked as a syndicated stringer for Copley News Service and Alternet, appearing independently in Utne Reader, World Monitor, The Des Moines Register, Newsday, The Sun, The Christian Science Monitor, Esquire Magazine, In These Times, The San Jose Mercury-News, The Detroit News, Keyboard, Toward Freedom, On the Issues, The Dallas Times-Herald, The Dallas Morning News, Option, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and many other periodicals. His essay "My Story" won a 1985 PEN award.