From: Christopher B Reeve <[cr 39] at [andrew.cmu.edu]>
Organization: Sophomore, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon,
Pittsburgh, PA

"In February 1990, for example,
the National Transportation Safety Board released a study that
board members described as the most detailed ever conducted of
drug and alcohol abuse in interstate trucking.  The New York
Times ran its report of the study under this headline: 'Truck
Deaths Linked to Alcohol or Drugs.'  Reporting the findings that
Safety Board members called significant, the Times reporter
quoted a board member as saying, 'I expected to find higher
alcohol and drug use than the industry and the regulatory
agencies have predicted.  But I did not expect to find 33
percent' [Cushman, John H., Jr.  (2/7/90).  Truck Deaths Linked
to Alcohol or Drugs.  New York Times: A11.].
  However, if the study is examined, one finds that the results
are far from significant; they are utterly useless.  The data
were collected from autopsies performed on truck drivers who had
been killed in accidents in eight states.  One-third of them had
recently used what was described as 'drugs and alcohol'
[Cushman, John H., Jr.  (2/7/90).  Truck Deaths Linked to
Alcohol or Drugs.  New York Times: A11.].  But there was no
control group.  Theoretically, 99 percent of truckers who did
not have accidents could have recently used drugs or alcohol.
  Even the Transportation Department itself has admitted that no
reliable studies linked drug use to serious accidents in the
trucking industry.  After a review of studies designed to
determine the relationship between drug use and highway
accidents, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
admitted that 'the nature and extent to which drugs, other than
alcohol, are a serious highway safety problem cannot be
specified with certainty' [Salpukas, Agis.  (1/27/90).
Roadblock for Random Drug Tests.  New York Times: 21.]."
(Christina Jacqueline Johns, Power, Idealogy, and the War on
Drugs: Nothing Succeeds Like Failure, 97)

"There are many reasons why widespread private sector drug
testing is unlikely to have a signficant impact on drug use or
accidents thought to be related to drug use.  First, some drug
userse are unemployed.  Second, most companies give advance
warning of drug testing, which allows those using drugs to
either stop use for a while or switch to less detectable drugs.
There are even substances on the market that mask the traces of
some drugs (e.g., steroids) for the few hours of the test
[National Public Radio.  (3/5/91).  Morning Edition.].  As
Zimmer [Zimmer, Lynn.  (1989).  Employment Drug Testing and Its
Effectiveness in the War against Drugs.  Paper Presented at the
annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Reno,
Nevada.] has noted, folk wisdom is already replete with stories
of how to beat the drug tests.  There is also some indication
that drug testing (like interdiction efforts) often has the
effect of merely pushing the problem around.  When employers
begin to test, workers move to other employers in the area who
are not testing [Roberts, Preggy.  (2/19/90).  More Companies
Say Yes to Drug Tests for Workers.  Montgomery Advertiser: 1.].
The APT Foundation report noted that testing alone, even of
employees in 'safety-sensitive' positions, was unlikely to
provide adequate protection from accidents [Wicker, Tom.
(12/1/89).  Warning about Tests.  New York Times: 31.]."
(Christina Jacqueline Johns, Power, Idealogy, and the War on
Drugs: Nothing Succeeds Like Failure, 98 - 99)

"In late 1990, the FBI announced that it would begin field
testing kits that would make it possible for police to test for
the handling of drugs by wiping the palms of stopped drivers.
This method was described as offering the advantage of being
'less intrusive' (and therefore presumably more palatable) than
other testing methods.  The test uses antibodies that detect
small amounts of the target substance on skin, desk tops, or
other surfaces.  It is argued that the tests are so highly
calibrated that they do not pick up the tiny amounts of cocaine
that are now evidently on virtually all $20 and $50 bills in
circulation [Montgomery Advertiser.  (8/30/90).  New Tests
Detect Drugs Instantly: 4A.].  Similarly, New Hampshire has been
using a chemical that police drop on the driver's licenses of
people whom they have stopped.  If the chemical indicates the
presence of drugs, the police used it as a legal justification
for searching the driver and the car.  However, the president of
the New Hampshire Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, which
filed charges against the state for the practice, maintains that
licenses may test positive when there is no cocaine present.
Laboratory tests conducted by the Lawyers Association showed
that thousands of other chemicals, including those in laundry
detergents, produced the same reaction [Lewin, Tamar.
(9/13/90).  Drug-Testing Kit for Parents Spurs Stormy Debate.
New York Times: 12A.]." (Christina Jacqueline Johns, Power,
Idealogy, and the War on Drugs: Nothing Succeeds Like Failure,
99)

"In a Washington Post / ABC News poll conducted in 1989, 55
percent of the respondents advocated mandatory drug tests for
all U.S. citizens.  Sixty-seven percent agreed that all high
school students should be regularly tested for drugs [Morin,
Richard.  (9/8/89).  Many in Poll Say Bush Plan Is Not Stringent
Enough.  Washington Post: A18.].  The ACLU has persuaded some
states to pass laws prohibiting drug testing unless there is
reason to suspect a particular individual.  But at least one
bill has been introduced in Congress that would override such
state laws and allow employer drug testing of virtually any
employee [American Civil Liberties Union.  (1989).  Letter.  New
York.]." (Christina Jacqueline Johns, Power, Idealogy, and the
War on Drugs: Nothing Succeeds Like Failure, 100)

The Stepping Stone / Substitution / Gateway Theories

[In response to gateway theories: In fact, probably the most
common reason for moving on to more harmful or potentially
dangerous substances of abuse is a rise in price or drop in
availability of the currently used substance.]

"The absurdity of most of the positions on the 'stepping stone'
hypothesis can be seen by examining some of the ways authors
cited each other as their sole supporting evidence for the
theory.  One F. R. Gomila, who was a colleague and co-worker
with Fossier, wrote a book about marihuana, which he condensed
into an article in 1938.  R. P. Walton reprinted Gomila's
article (on the 'stepping-stone' hypothesis) in his book,
Marihuana, America's New Drug Problem.  In 1943 P. O. Wolff used
Walton's reprint as the sole supporting evidence in an article
advocating the 'stepping-stone' hypothesis.  Another article
that advanced the 'stepping-stone' hypothesis appeared in 1937,
listing Fossier's article as one of the five bibliographic
references given.  In all, there were only 15 works printed
during the period 1931 to 1948 that advanced this hypothesis."
(J. Mandel, "Who Says Marijuana Use Leads to Heroin Addiction?"
Journal of Secondary Education, 43 (1968), 212, extracted from
Lester Grinspoon, Marihuana Reconsidered, 237)

"California has also kept statistics for drug law violators who
have not had a past record of involvvement with opiates, and
from an examination of these data, Mandel has reached the
following conclusions:
Dangerous drugs (amphetamines, barbituates, etc.) are more often
'starters' towards opiate than is marijuana.
... Opiate use without a past history of marijuana is seven
times likelier than opiat use with a past record of pot smoking.
... On the average, over 60 times as many Californians are
arrested for marijuana without having a history of 'hard drugs'
than appear to 'graduate' from marijuana to heroin.
As Mandel notes, each of these could be used to refute the
'stepping-stone' view." (J. Mandel, "Who Says Marijuana Use
Leads to Heroin Addiction?" Journal of Secondary Education, 43
(1968), 215, extracted from Lester Grinspoon, Marihuana
Reconsidered, 243)

"in 1950 the Federal Bureau of Narcotics ran a random study of
602 cases pulled from their files of opiate convictions and
found that only 'seven per cent off them started on marihuana.'
Again, the indication is that the assumption that previous
marihuana use is a causative factor is entirely spurious.
  The Task Force on Narcotics and Drug Abuse of the President's
Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice
asserted in 1967 that approximately 50 percent of heroin users
have had some prior experience with marihuana.  However, this
same group noted that most of the heroin users studied had also
had previous experience with alcohol and tobacco.  It might have
been noted that most of them had had experience with milk,
Coca-Cola, or sex.  Such retrospective studies of this problem
give no clue as to the existence of any conceivable typical
'escalation'; there is simply no valid evidence of
anythinginherent in cannabis or cannabis use which would make
the marihuana user likely to become a heroin or other opiate
user.  Marihuana is, as far as has yet been determined a
precursor of only further marihuana use." (two sources: U.S.
Congress, House, Ways and Means Committe, Control of Narcotics,
Marihuana, and Barbiturates, Hearings on H.R. 3490 and H.R. 348,
82nd Cong., 1st sess., April 7, 14, and 17, 1951, statement of
George W. Cunningham, Deputy Commissioner, Bureau of Narcotics,
Treasury Department, p. 64; and second source: Task Force on
Narcotics and Drug Abuse, The President's Commission on Law
Enforcement and Administration of Justice, Task Force Report,
Narcotics and Drug Abuse (Annotation and Consultants' Papers)
(Washington, 1967), p. 13.  All of this is extracted from Lester
Grinspoon, Marihuana Reconsidered, 244)

"There is no evidence of a causal connection between the two
drugs [marijuana and heroin], and all attempts to establish the
truth of the progression theory have failed.  The theory was
explicitly denied in the 1937 marijuana hearings, but drug
progression again became a matter of public concern in the 1940s
and 1950s when an alleged increase in heroin addiction was
attributed to prior marijuana use.  The main support fot the
theory comes from studies showing a shistory of marijuana use in
addicts.  As Pet and Ball show [Pet, Donald D., and John C.
Ball.  "Marijuana Smoking in the U.S.," Federal Probation, Sept.
1968], 80.4 percent of addicts at the U.S. Public Health Service
Hospital at Lexington, Kentucky, had smoked marijuana.  But this
post hoc reasoning does not stand up.  By the time these people
became heroin addicts they had tried everything, including
liquor and milk.  The real question is, what percentage of
marijuana users become heroin addicts?  The answer appears to be
very few indeed.  In his extensive sduty of student drug use in
1968 [Blum, Richard H.  Students and Drugs, San Francisco,
Jossey-Bass, 1969], Blum found that only 7 percent of maijuana
users had tried opiates; making adjustments for the subsequent
upsurge in marijuana use, this figure would now be around 3
percent.  Blum, examing the population of the Oakland ghetto,
found that teen-age heroin and marijuana users belonged to
completely diffeent grousp who held different values.  Few of
the 'heads' turned to heroin.  These reports were confirmed by
the marijuana users we interviewed, very few of whom were
willing to try heroin." (Norman E. Zinberg and John A.
Robertson, Drugs & The Public, 40)

"In any case, the relevant quesiton is what proportion of
marijuana users become addicts, not what proportionof addicts
first used marijuana.  We would probably find that 100 percent
of addicts first used tobacco, alcohol, and even milk, but these
are not responsible for heroin addiction.  The best statistics
on this subject came from California, where marijuana use has
grown more rapidly than elsewhere.  But these figures show no
corresponding rise in heroin addiction.  In fact, marijuana use
is quite prevalent among both college students and North
Africans, two groups with very low rates of opiate addiction.
The evidentiary picture is summed up in a report to the British
Home Office on the dangers of marijuana, which put the matter in
these terms: 'It can clearly be argued on the world picture that
cannabis use does not lead to heroin addiction. [Wootton Report,
p. 12] " (Norman E. Zinberg and John A. Robertson, Drugs & The
Public, 181)

"Stepped-up enforcement  also frequently leads to substitution.
In July 1990, for example, participants in a conference held by
NIDA were maintaining decreases in cocaine use and no evidence
of substitution.  By August 1990, however, after more than a
decade of decline, heroin use in some cities was on the rise.
Federal drug authorities were saying in August 1990 that heroin
was then more abundant and cheaper and was sold in purer forms.
In addition, according to DEA estimates, between 1985 and 1989
the world production of opium more than doubled [Belsie,
Laurent.  (8/1/90).  Concern Grows over Heroin Use.  Christian
Science Monitor: 6.]." (Christina Jacqueline Johns, Power,
Idealogy, and the War on Drugs: Nothing Succeeds Like Failure,
10)

Drug-related Violence

"In 1962 L. Kolb noted that the alleged crime-inducing
properties of cannabis had been studied at length in at least
five well-conducted investigations by competent scientists or
doctors in this country, and none of them had found that there
was any evidence for a link between cannabis and aggressive
crime, and, in particular, none of the investigators had found
any evidence for anything that could possibly be labeled a
cannabis-induced murder.  Kolb believes that the gneral
harmfulness of the drug has been grossly overrated by the
antimarihuana laws and their proponents: 'Marihuana, like
alcohol, releases the user's inhibitions and distorts his
judgment ..., but its potency as an instigator of crime has not
been ... demonstrated in the United States ... The tendency to
credit a narcotic as the cause of physical, mental, and social
disasters is so great in the United States that
marihuana-induced crimes are often reported in the press and by
police-trained people when there is no causal relation of
marihuana to the crime.'  As an example, he gives a case in
which two young men consumed a large amount of whiskey in a
hotel room, then smoked one marihuana cigarette, began to
quarrel, fought, and one killed the other.  The press played up
the story as an example of a vicious, marihuana-induced murder."
(L. Kolb, Drug Addiction: A Medical Problem (Springfield, Ill.,
1962), pp. 23-24, extracted from Lester Grinspoon, Marihuana
Reconsidered, 310)

  "As we have said, it is also widely believed that the drug user
becomes morally enslaved and falls very easily into criminal
activity.  In this view, the drug turns its user into something
akin to the ordinary criminal.  Here again we will distinguish
between the dependency-prone and the drug-experimenting groups.
  Studies [Gerard, D. L., and C. Kornestsky.  "Adolescent Opiate
Addiction: A Study of Control and Addict Subjects," Psychiatric
Quarterly, Vol. 29, 1955; Hill, H.E., C.A. Haertzen, and R.
Glaser.  "Personality Characteristics of Narcotic Addicts as
Indicated by the MMPI," Journal of General Psychology, Vol. 62,
1960; Alksne, H., et al., "A Follow-Up Study of Treated
Adolescent Narcotic Users," New York: unpublished report of
Columbia University School of Public Health and Admin. Med.,
1959, quoted in Vaillant, G., "A Twelve-year Follow-Up of New
York Narcotic Addicts.  III.  Some Social and Psychiatric
Characteristics." Archives of Genreal Psychology, Vol. 15, 1966;
Crime and Delinquency in California, Bureau of Criminal
Statistics, State of California, 1967] of the first group
[people who resort to drug use because of personality disorders]
demonstatre that the hard-core user was criminal before he began
to use drugs." (Norman E. Zinberg and John A. Robertson, Drugs &
The Public, 45)

"a careful study of the studies done linking marijuana to
aggression or crime concludes that there is strong evidence
against the link between marijuana and crime.  The survey
analyzes several famous cases, which have been repeatedly quoted
to illustrate the criminogenic effect of the drug.  Tenuousness
of the evidence is revealed in each instance.  Other large
studies (Indian Hemp Commission, La Guardia Report, Blum,
Blumer, police/arrest figures) consistently find that, if
anything, marijuana inhibits such antisocial activity [Kaplan,
John.  Marijuana, The New Prohibition, New York, World
Publishing Co., 1969].  The marijuana user is criminal only in
that he uses an illegal drug.  The modern marijuana user usually
comes from a social class different from that of the heroin
addict, and he uses the drug differently; it is as much part of
his ordinary social life as a martini in the evening is for his
father." (Norman E. Zinberg and John A. Robertson, Drugs & The
Public, 46)

"Senator Thomas Dodd, chariman of the Senate Subcommittee on
Juvenile Delinquency - the committee where much drug legislation
originates - told the Senate of information he had heard [Boston
Herald Traveler, Dec. 5, 1969]
  ... from an outstanding expert that the marijuana toxic
  psychosis ... may have played a part in the events at My Lai on
  March 16, 1968 ... I plan to conduct hearings to get at the
  facts, to let our people know if our soldiers in Vietnam have
  suddenly become brutal stormtroopers or whether, as I consider
  more likely, some of them have become victims of a drug problem
  that has already torn asunder the fabric of domestic American
  society.
That Senator Dodd can make this unproven and unwarranted
statement without fear of contradiction from responsible
quarters is a glaring example of smokescreening.  The harsh
realiteis of the Vietnam War are hidden in the miasma of drug
use." (Norman E. Zinberg and John A. Robertson, Drugs & The
Public, 238)

--
"Freud was convinced that 'the voice of the intellect will be heard.'
But no one understood better than he that if reason is to triumph,
it has to sound above the clamor of conflicting emotion and the roar
of primitive desires." (Zinberg and Robertson, _Drugs & The Public_, 242)