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December 31, 2006
Rare Insight that Deserves a Wide Audience
<Today's Orange county Register, published a remarkable guest OP-Ed; one that deserves to be read more widely than any opinion piece I've seen in a long time. At a minimim, it should be required reading for every member of Congress, police chiefs at all levels, and any US or district attorney prosecuting drug cases, as well as all the judges who hear them.
Of course, that won't happen, but hopefully, Chip Parkhursts's cogent analysis of the role of marijuana in our obscene drug war will find a wide audience because it is right on target and cuts through the usual mind-numbing rhetorical drivel to focus on key issues. To a remarkable extent, it also anticipates and describes what my own study of pot applicants suggests about the obvious relationship between cannabis, alcohol, tobacco and other drugs: those other agents are connected because tend to be tried, and eventually to be used, by the same vulnerable adolescent population; there is overwhelming evidence to that effect, but it has been overooked during the four decades that our suprmemely dishonest war on drugs has been both distorting reality and blocking unbiased studies of drug users.
Parkhust was even prceptive enough to identify Morral's pivotal Rand study, which should have been the beginning of the end of the 'gateway hypothesis,' but which has been steadfastly ignored by our drug policy 'experts,' most of whom are held in disgraceful thrall by know-nothing federal 'science' commissars at NIDA and the FDA.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at December 31, 2006 09:14 PM