Dominic Holden

The Drug Czar’s office hasn’t historically bothered to respond to criticisms from drug-law reform groups. So maybe they’re hopped up on that extra-potent superbud going around and it’s making them chatty, or maybe drug reformers have developed a following on the blogosphere and the drug czar’s feeling threatened. But now the office is fighting fire by blowing smoke on their own blog to counter criticisms on the Huffington Post.

Paul Armentano, the deputy director of NORML (I’m on the board), refuted a government-funded study that found marijuana is more potent and thus super dangerous to kids. This is a perennial story engineered to scare parents that gets sucked up and regurgitated by the press. The argument doesn’t hold water: people smoke less pot when it’s high quality just like people drink less whisky than beer. And, um, pot can’t kill you like liquor can. But even the argument that pot is more potent is bogus, says Armentano.

“…even by the University of Mississippi’s own admission, the average THC in domestically grown marijuana — which comprises the bulk of the US market — is less than five percent, a figure that’s remained unchanged for nearly a decade.”

That bunched some panties at the drug czar’s office and they’ve written a response on their blog.

The “domestic” samples analyzed in the University of Mississippi’s report do not represent what’s found in the U.S. market. “Domestic” samples refer to marijuana plants that were found in the process of being grown and were then eradicated by law enforcement in the U.S. The potency of these “domestic” specimens is far lower because those specimens are most often taken from immature plants that never reached full cultivation (maturity) for distribution and consumption in the illegal market.

To which NORML responds here:

Oh, you’re counting domestic as stuff grown in the US before it’s harvested? Well, excuse us. Our mistake. If we knew that was how you were defining “domestic”, then we would have pointed out that 98% of your “domestic” seizures are feral hemp (”ditchweed”). You claim that these “domestic” seizures are averaging 5% THC content, but you define “ditchweed” as having virtually no levels of detectable THC.

We have no way of knowing how much of your “domestic” seizures were, in fact, ditchweed. But I’d venture to guess you’re not including ditchweed, because you’re wanting to make a point about consumer marijuana, and nobody is smoking ditchweed. Fair enough… but then you need to explain why you’ve spent $175 million taxpayer dollars since 1984 to eradicate something you don’t count as part of the consumer marijuana “problem”.

Writes Armentano:

As Gandhi once said, “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” Well, I guess it’s safe to say we’re at the stage where they finally fight!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 11:39 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.