The private journals of the late William S. Burroughs appeared in the New Yorker last week. In them, Borroughs expressed naked disdain for the far right and its dreams of national sobriety. "Who are these anti-drug freaks anyway?" he asked. All this is relatively unsurprising; Burroughs' novels were practically ghost-written by narcotics. What is surprising however is the number of mainstream publications which have echoed his amazement. Beginning with a recent New York Times Magazine cover article favoring the legalization of marijuana, many have come to Mary Jane's side and criticized the "anti-drug freaks" who, for over 50 years, have waged war against her.
The media's change of heart comes in the wake of two studies from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) which "determined" that marijuana is not only a gateway drug to heroin, but is itself a hard drug, as "addictive as alcohol or cocaine." In this study, they pumped rats full of enough pure THC to flip Timothy Leary out, then -- instead of letting the THC leave their bodies gradually, as it does in humans -- injected the rats a second time with a chemical inhibitor that blocks the THC sites in the brain. It was then and only then that the rats began to show signs of withdrawal.
It was a gamble. By pitching the otherwise acceptable data to papers as a major breakthrough in drug research, NIDA and its dispatchers earned themselves some heavy media fire. "Perhaps NIDA and the pliant journalists should inject themselves with a big dose of common sense," wrote Slate's Philip Coffin. Salon's Cynthia Cotts quipped: "Reporters were apparently too stoned to question two hopelessly flawed studies 'proving' that marijuana is a gateway to heroin." A San Jose Mercury News editorial pointed out an even bigger problem with the study: "If drug educators exaggerate the risk of marijuana, why should students believe their warnings about heroin?" Sometimes honesty is the best policy, even if you're the government.
The media isn't alone in its rejection of the drug-free America. Last November, in what Jefferson Morley called the "beginning of the end of the War on Drugs," Arizona and California voted overwhelmingly to liberalize their states' drug laws. However, some politicians are choosing to ignore the vox populi. Earlier this year, President Clinton announced his $16B anti-drug campaign for '98, and on Monday, liberal Democrat Mario Cuomo and William "Book of Virtues" Bennett announced that they were joining forces to combat the spread of drugs among our nation's youth... and asked the government for $350M to support them. If recent trends are any indication though, all that good money may just go up in smoke. And not the kind that makes you happy, either.
Aaron Dubrow is a former Tripod intern. He has since moved on to bigger, more European things.
