How sweet is Mary Jane?

THE CASE for legalizing recreational drugs has been thoroughly, often effectively, argued. I remain skeptical, though I've been impressed by those who emphasize decriminalization. But what about an argument that holds that certain drugs now banned are actually harmless? That's what my friend Keith Mano contends in a recent Gimlet Eye ["Marijuana," May 14]. I'm troubled by the technical airiness of the contention that marijuana isn't dangerous. And I'm weary of the abuse Mr. Mano and others level at booze. Arguments against alcohol-which Mr. Mano calls "ten thousand times more destructive than pot"-simply do not stand as arguments for marijuana.

Primarily, Mr. Mano discusses what marijuana isn't; it isn't crack, heroin, or "ice." He makes the further assertion that, while pot isn't for kids, shouldn't be smoked, and isn't safe if you're driving, it nonetheless won't "destroy kids," isn't addictive, and won't cause physical or psychological damage.

That's wrong. The latest research on the latest marijuana indicates that it is indeed an addictive drug; one that is almost always smoked; one that wrecks the lives of many of its millions of adolescent users. One-quarter of all American teenagers smoked dope last year. That's the bad news. The good news is that's about half what the figure was a decade ago. The twin forces of prohibition and education are working. Legalization would undermine the very arguments that have been winning the battle. But let's consider the serious drug we're discussing. What puts the devil in the "demon wee&? Mostly THC, which stands for delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, a complex substance containing more than four hundred known chemicals, subsequently broken down by the body into another two thousand, most of them unstudied. What we do know indicates that THC's by-products are like Krazy Glue in the user's brain. It takes a month for the body to eliminate just the known chemicals left by one joint; if a chronic user quits, it takes at least three months. What long-term mischief THC may cause is still anybody's guess, but tests on rhesus monkeys (using the monkey equivalent of two to three joints per day) have shown significant brain-cell damage.

Psychological addiction is common among younger users, and younger users (14 and under) are common. What's worse for school-age kids is the way pot impairs short-term memory, ability to concentrate, and attention span. Experts call this the "eraser effect," which phrase speaks for itself.

Pot's effects on cardiopulmonary health are well known. Studies have shown that otherwise healthy pot smokers-two joints a day-have 25 per cent more airway impairment than cigarette smokers who put away a pack a day. And most pot smokers also smoke cigarettes. A Vietnam autopsy study showed that pot/cigarette smokers had a pre-cancerous-cell incidence of 91 per cent. It takes a long time for such cancerous cells to grow, but animal studies indicate that pot smoke causes cancer development more quickly than cigarette smoke. And the heart? Pulse and blood pressure increase dramatically on pot. Pot also boosts carbon-monoxide levels in the blood-an invitation to cardiac arrest. But all this comes from smoking it, and Mr. Mano favors the Alice B. Toklas method, so perhaps I shouldn't fault him here. Then again, let's be realistic: legal or illegal, when the point is not the love of chocolate but the desire to get high, how many people are going get out the Betty Crocker mix, stir in the Mary Jane, bake for thirty minutes, and then wait another twenty minutes after eating for the drug to kick in? As to the sperm change which Mr. Mano considers pot's only black mark, it is certainly very real. THC also accumulates in the ovaries-whether smoked or eaten. Female rhesus monkeys tested had trouble conceiving, and then gave birth to nearly four times the usual number of stillborn offspring.

Can Do

THE AMERICAN can-do-in this case, anything-spirit is changing everything that we thought we knew about pot. In the Sixties, the THC in pot weighed in at about 0.5 per cent of volume; three decades of botanical refinement later, it's 10 per cent. Which means today's teenager smokes a joint the equal of twenty of his father's. When you buy a bottle of Beefeater, you know exactly what you're getting in terms of ingredients and potency. But when you score some grass-or grow it yourself-you know practically nothing about what you roll up in the old Bambu. The pleasures of gin or wine or beer are partly in the neurological effects, partly in the aesthetics of taste. With pot there is only the high. Finally, people who start using marijuana rarely stop. And 98 per cent of all cocaine users have used marijuana; for 93 per cent of them, pot came first. Harmless? Hardly. Deadly may be too strong a word, but it's closer to the truth than safe. 1--l

Mr. Miner is NR's literary editor.