There were several major problems from a purely journalistic perspective:

• Data was introduced with phrases like "According to scientists..." "Research has now produced disturbing new information…" "Studies show" and the ever-popular "We now know…" This created the impression that there is now a consensus among "scientists" based on new information. This is simply untrue.
• They ignored all data that contradicted their conclusions.
• Worst of all, they flatly misrepresented the content of the studies that they cited.

The premise of the program was that marijuana use is soaring among children because its dangers are not understood, so Wallace and company set out to cure this deficiency. As the camera zooms in on kids smoking pot Wallace intones, "You are looking at ground zero in America's growing drug problem." Actually, the program never examines "the drug problem," so this is really only their definition of it: all white, middle class, underage, and marijuana, of course.

In fact, the program's use of adolescents was misleading in several ways. Almost anyone would be disturbed by these teens' marijuana use, but it was portrayed as the cause of all their problems. This is as dangerous for individuals as it is for society as a whole. A group of teens, who were presented as being in a drug rehabilitation program because of their marijuana use, (Wallace introduces them as "kids who used to smoke pot") turn out to be poly-drug users, which, in turn, is blamed on marijuana.

Even though they describe their use of alcohol and other drugs, they are coached to blame marijuana for all of their problems with memory and attention deficits disorders, etc. Of course, such problems are not unknown among those who use no drugs at all, and over one and one half million children are prescribed daily doses of Ritalin for ADD and related behavioral problems.

A suicidal fourteen year-old, who clearly suffers from severe depression speaks of his cravings for "drugs," but all of his problems are attributed to his marijuana use. Indeed, it is often unclear whether the subject is marijuana only, or "drugs" in general. These kids are now in the hands of people, who – like Wallace – have an ideological interest in blaming marijuana, so their underlying problems may never be properly treated. Recognizing this is not to deny that their marijuana use may very well have aggravated these problems.

The worst exploitation of a child was that of a thirteen year-old "daily pot smoker." She seemed to be the program's designated spokesperson for the "pro-marijuana" position, the only person who is allowed to disagree with the program's premise. (Her voice is distorted "to protect her identity" -- but this is done in such a way as to make her sound like a five year old.

When she says that marijuana "is not as bad for you as drinking," Wallace cuts to the rehab group that is urged to tell of the terrible things that marijuana did to them. Indeed, Wallace seems intent on protecting the interests of ABC's beer advertising. Later in the program when a parent also says that marijuana is "safer than alcohol" Wallace again responds by immediately cutting to a segment on the alleged dangers of marijuana, although -- even by the measures of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America -- teenage alcohol use is a bigger problem than teen marijuana use.

Wallace's response to the parent's implied criticism of ABC's sponsors is, "But the pot is different from what their parents smoked in the 70's. According to scientists (emphasis added) it is four times more potent, which brings up the question: just how much of health risk is it."

"According to scientists..." Really? All scientists? Some scientists? Two scientists? This type of attribution may give a claim a cloak of authority but it is flatly dishonest. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse "Most ordinary marijuana has an average of 3 percent THC."

(From the NIDA pamphlet "Marijuana: Facts Parents Need to Know" page five. This same page also says, "There are stronger forms of marijuana available today than there were in the 1960s." But there is no data on potency from the 1960's, because testing was not begun until the early 1970s! And, there is only limited data from the 1970s. The US government data in most of that period 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.)

Of course, if marijuana really were four times more potent today this would mean that in the 1970's marijuana averaged less than 0.75% THC which is close to the definition of industrial hemp! Were the 1960s and 70s really about a placebo? 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 seizures averaged 3.34% THC, and in 1992 they averaged just 1.96%.

One of the nation's leading scientists, John P. Morgan, M.D. Professor of Pharmacology at the City University of New York Medical School, has done extensive research on the subject, in collaboration with Prof. Lynn Zimmer, Ph.D. of Queens College. (Both work in New York City, a local call from the ABC studios.) They have demonstrated that the best available data simply do support this conclusion. The average potency of marijuana has probably not changed much at all. (However, ABC should ask former Drug Czar Lee Brown why he was claiming that pot is twenty or forty times more potent!)

Of course, even if some marijuana is "more potent" that does not tell us anything about what teenagers smoke. Kids usually buy the cheapest available. In one very odd segment the camera shows some teens buying pot. Wallace says, "Pot is back and cheaper and easier to get than you might imagine." $20 gets "enough for 10 joints" In New York City this is very cheap pot indeed. If the average potency is still around three percent THC, and the kids are buying cheap pot on the streets, then it is very unlikely that they are getting anything special.

Of course, more potent pot is not inherently more dangerous, so potency does not really "bring up the question" about health risks. Increased potency does not increase the risks associated with marijuana use. First, the onset of the effects of smoking are very rapid so smokers simply use more or less to achieve the desired high. Second, a lethal overdose is impossible. If one is concerned about respiratory irritation from smoking, stronger pot may actually be safer, in that one needs to smoke less to get high.

Wallace goes on to misrepresent other data. After getting the kids in rehab to tell about the terrible damage that marijuana did to them, Wallace says, "It is more than just a few anecdotes. Research (emphasis added) has now produced disturbing new information about the effects of marijuana on the body." Again, how much research? This is another misleading attempt to give the impression of a settled scientific consensus, when there is none.

Wallace: "For example, daily pot smoking interferes with short term memory. Researchers at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts tested college students who smoked marijuana, measuring their ability to pay attention. Heavy users have trouble following instructions, couldn't repeat word lists and didn't learn from their mistakes." Wallace then goes on to say that the author of the study, Dr. Harrison Pope, says, "This may show neurological damage." Yes, it may, but…

What the report actually said was quite different.

1. Memory: "(T)he ability to retain newly learned information after a temporal delay appeared to remain relatively intact in the heavy users….with recall functions per se remaining relatively unaffected."
2. Repeating word lists: In the first test (Wisconsin Card Scoring Test) shown on the screen, heavy users got 51.3 correct, and light users got 53.3 correct. In the second test of the same type, heavy users got 55.5 correct and light users got 56.3 correct. Hardly a major difference.
3. Attention span: "(T)he two groups proved virtually identical." On another measure of attention, "heavy and light users again showed no significant differences…."
4. Neurological damage: The study actually says that the light users who used to be very heavy users "unexpectedly… displayed a much higher Verbal Intelligence Quotient" than did those who had never been heavy smokers. "(N)o differences approaching significance were found on any neuropsychological variable.." between the former heavy users and those who had never been heavy users. "Thus, these analyses…. weigh tentatively against a C(entral) N(ervous) S(ystem) alteration hypothesis."

The accompanying JAMA editorial is not at all dismissive of the results of the study, but it says:

"It will be interesting to see whether reporters exaggerate the findings of Pope and Yurgelun-Todd. Physicians should not. There is far more extensive, consistent evidence of cognitive deficits associated with heavy use of alcohol relative to marijuana. Most of the cognitive impairments observed ... are not large relative to normal cognitive variability observed among individuals; such impairments would not make a heavy marijuana user "stand out from the crowd."

Did anyone at ABC actually read this study? Obviously, they did not read the accompanying editorial. Perhaps they have a learning disorder. Full text with tables and links on AMA site, requires registration, but no charge.

In another example of a tenuous claim masked as established fact, Wallace says, "We now know (emphasis added) that smoking 1 to 3 marijuana joints a day produces lung damage equivalent to smoking 5 times as many cigarettes." We now know?? We? All of us? Now? This is far from being established fact. Again Morgan and Zimmer have analyzed the data and arrived at other conclusions. Wallace claims to have something new and therefore newsworthy, when, in fact, there is no actuarial data to back up such seemingly dire health warnings.

To the contrary. Note a recent study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, (155:141-148, 1997,) by Donald Tashkin, et al. "Heavy habitual marijuana smoking does not cause an accelerated decline in (respiratory function) with age." (More on this study will be available soon on marijuanamagazine.com.) This study found that after eight years, heavy marijuana users, defined as at least 3.5 joints per day, showed no respiratory damage, while tobacco smokers averaging 30 cigarettes per day showed a significant decline in lung function. Will ABC report this study? Regardless of one's respiratory status, it would be inadvisable to hold one's breath.

It is important to remember that marijuana does not have any nicotine, which is the source of many of tobacco's health risks. Virtually all the research on the subject acknowledges that it is very difficult to compare marijuana and tobacco smoking because the two are used in such different ways. Most marijuana users smoke far less than one fifth the number of cigarettes consumed by typical nicotine addicts. Joints are not of a standard size and consistency, and they are often shared by several smokers, so quantitative comparisons are even more difficult and meaningless.

Also, comparing marijuana and tobacco risks for teens is a bit silly. If a teenager is smoking so much marijuana that there is a long-term respiratory risk, there is likely to be a much greater short-term behavioral problem. Also, Mr. Wallace, remember if pot really is four times as potent today, then pot smokers need only one fourth as much to get high. You can't have it both ways. "We now know?" Indeed.

It gets worse. With the screen showing "The Effects/Addiction" Wallace says, "And marijuana is capable of producing physical addiction. At Virginia Commonwealth University, Dr. Billy Martin took the active ingredient in pot, THC, and studied the effects on animals, when the use was abruptly stopped." (White rats on the screen)

Dr. Martin: "What we saw in these animals – we saw shaking movement; we saw hand (sic) tremors; and we saw a profile that is very similar what occurred with other drugs that produce dependence." True enough, but there were two very important facts that Wallace did not tell us.

1. The unfortunate rodents in question were given huge amounts of THC, far beyond levels usually taken by marijuana smokers. (By the way, THC is not the only active ingredient in marijuana.)
2. They were then injected with a synthetic chemical which blocks the brain's THC receptor site. This is something that no marijuana smoker does.

In short, the study did not prove that marijuana causes physical addiction in humans.

Wallace then goes on to say, "Studies show (emphasis added) that one in five people also develop a dependence on marijuana. The problem is that no one knows who will become addicted. "Studies show…" There he goes again. This is utter non-sense. Then he leaps from addiction to dependence, which are not the same. (A person may be "dependent" on a cup of coffee in the morning, but that is not the same thing as being "addicted" to coffee. Or, if it is, then the terms are meaningless, which may well be the case.)

Nonetheless, this is simply untrue. One in five marijuana users develop a dependence? Good grief! Stop and think for a moment. Over sixty million Americans have tried marijuana. That would mean that there would be over twelve million who would have developed a "dependence" on marijuana.

Cut back to Wallace and the 13 year-old daily pot smoker. Wallace: "Do you think that you are addicted?" (emphasis added) 13 year-old in altered squeaky voice: "No, you can't get addicted to marijuana."

Wallace: "But every year more than one hundred thousand people seek treatment for marijuana dependence." Not exactly. Many of those people go to some sort of "treatment" program as a way of avoiding jail and/or a criminal record for a marijuana charge. This does not mean that they have a "dependence" – much less an "addiction."

A better measure this can be inferred from the Netherlands where marijuana has been quasi-"legal" for more than twenty years. According to the Dutch government:

"Between 2 and 5 per thousand cannabis users get into trouble. The number of registrations for problematic cannabis use in the out-patient facilities for addiction care was 2,456 in 1995, amounting to 5% of all registrations. Addiction clinics, psychiatric hospitals and general hospitals admitted a total of 237 people for cannabis addiction and 87 people for cannabis abuse without addiction in 1995. In line with increased use, there has been a rise in the number of requests for professional help over the years." Dutch Cannabis Policy Update

This is a free program under the Dutch public health service. (The Dutch also have a similar program for gambling "addicts.")

The Dutch have a lower rate of marijuana use by both adults and adolescents than we do – and a lower rate of hard drug addiction as well. Based on the Dutch numbers, there should be approximately fifty thousand people voluntarily enrolled in comparable treatment programs in America -- if we had such programs instead of prohibitionist propaganda programs that depend on the police and courts to get them customers. ABC was careful not to report on the success of Dutch policies.

It is also amusing to note that ABC did not seem to understand the conflict between the Martin and Pope studies. In the Pope study, the "heavy users" were encouraged to continue their regular usage until they went into the hospital for the study. The next day, they were allowed to have coffee and tobacco, but no marijuana. Dr. Pope did not report seeing any withdrawal indicating physical addiction by his heavy users. He did say that the small differences in the performance of the heavy users might have caused by their having a mild withdrawal syndrome. Of course, this would argue against the preferred interpretation of long term neurological damage, so ABC would not want to mention this. In any case, the Pope study contradicts ABC's misrepresentation of the Martin study. (It would be interesting to see how heavy caffeine and/or tobacco users would perform under similar circumstances of abrupt abstinence.) Again, you can't have it both ways.

Wallace then returns to the kids in rehab who describe their cravings for marijuana and how they sold their things -- or in one case sold LSD -- to get money for marijuana.

WALLACE: "Kids we talked with said they desperate to keep smoking pot. Desperate for money, then desperate for other drugs. Marijuana is often called a gateway drug, because kids who try pot are between 65 and 85 times more likely to use cocaine or other addicting substances than kids who have not."

Screen: Marijuana being put into a bong, then white powder on a glass table top, then a needle pulling melted heroin up from a spoon.

Girl in rehab: "I moved on to alcohol and acid." (This is the girl who blamed marijuana for her attention deficiency.) Boy: "I wanted a better high. I moved on to other drugs." The kids mention the other drugs they used.

Of course, kids who use caffeine are at least one thousand times more likely to use cocaine than kids who do not. In fact, can you imagine finding someone who uses cocaine, but who has never had an iced tea or a cola drink? Sound silly? Well, this is exactly the same comparison, and remember, caffeine – like cocaine -- is a central nervous system stimulant.

Twenty-five years ago marijuana was called a "stepping stone" to heroin. Now it is "gateway" to cocaine? Any logic textbook will tell you that correlation is not causation. The most popular drugs are used before less popular drugs. In the real world, most marijuana users do not "move on to other drugs." In any case, the first "drugs" that kids use (other than caffeine) are almost always alcohol and tobacco. If there really were such a thing as a "gateway drug," it would not be marijuana. (marijuanamagazine.com will discuss elsewhere the "Gateway Drug" myth.)

Many people seem to think that is acceptable to exaggerate or even lie about the effects of marijuana, if it will discourage kids from using it and save them from problems like those of the kids on this show. Wallace asks, "Why, after all these years of drug education are we heading in the wrong direction?" Ironically, one of the kids in the rehab program told him, but he did not seem to understand. She called the Partnership for a Drug-Free America's infamous fried-egg commercial ("This is your brain on drugs…") "a joke."

The same week that this program was aired, a study was published in California – after being suppressed for over two years -- that said that most drug education programs do not work and may even be counterproductive.

When kids find out that they have been lied to about marijuana, the way this program did, they will think that they have also been lied to about other drugs. They also will not believe any warnings about marijuana, and so will not recognize that they are having problems with it. In short, exaggerating the risks in marijuana use is counterproductive.

Wallace ends his segment by urging parents: "Listen, don't lecture. Keep the lines of communication open." Unfortunately, this is going to be very difficult for parents who have watched this program -- if they did not know that they were being lied to, and did not notice that every time their drug, alcohol, the one that is advertised on ABC, was compared with marijuana, Wallace changed the subject, and lied some more about marijuana.

The children, however, will have noticed, and they will also know that the kids depicted on this show were far from typical marijuana users. In short, this program will frighten the parents and alienate their children and make it more difficult for them to communicate. "Why, after all these years of drug education are we heading in the wrong direction?" Why? Roll the tape. Take a bow.