Drugs: Pot: Safer than Alcohol?

More Americans than ever are turning on with marijuana. Most of them are under 21, but an astonishing number of respectable adult citizens are also using "sticks" or "joints" or "grass." Obviously no one knows the total, since possession of a single cigarette is a crime. But Commissioner James L. Goddard of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cites estimates that as many as 20 million Americans may have used marijuana at one time, while 400,000 some say as many as 3,000,000—may now be smoking it regularly.

The vast majority of users declare that marijuana is simply an escape hatch, probably no more dangerous—even if less tasty—than alcohol. Smoking pot, they say, should be as socially and legally acceptable as drinking cocktails or highballs. In this they are supported by a growing number of physicians, psychologists, sociologists and criminologists. But they are vigorously opposed by both U.S. and state law-enforcement officers. Notable among these is Commissioner Henry L. Giordano of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, who sees the use of marijuana as "a vice which draws with it a train of depravity stretching far into the future."

Rarely Hashish. Which side is right? The fact is that although man has been using marijuana or related products for 5,000 years, medical science still knows too little about it. Research—even on animals—is hampered by red tape written into restrictive laws and lack of a standardized natural product.

Compounding the confusion, marijuana itself is an inexact term. All marijuana comes from the female hemp plant, Cannabis sativa, which grows worldwide. As the plants ripen, their flower and seed heads exude a resin that contains the highest natural concentration of active cannabis chemicals. The pure resin is hashish, a combination of powerful chemicals. Hashish, by Giordano's own testimony, rarely reaches the U.S.

What the Mexicans christened marijuana (literally "Mary Jane") is a variable combination of female cannabis seed heads with leaves and chopped-up stalks. At best, say U.S. pharmacologists, the mixture is only about one-tenth as strong as hashish. Marijuana is illegally imported into the U.S., mainly from Mexico, either loose or in the form of pressed bricks, called "keys" (for kilos), weighing 2.2 lbs. Connoisseurs strain out the coarse stalks before rolling it into cigarettes or packing it loosely into long-stemmed, cooler-smoking pipes. For $5, anyone almost anywhere can buy enough through his office boy or teen-age offspring to make six cigarettes.

Overexpectation. As with alcohol, it can be used in a variety of ways and to a variety of degrees. Like their fathers and mothers, who learned to hold their liquor in college, today's youngsters have to learn how, when, where and why to use how much marijuana. A common experience is to feel no effect whatsoever the first time marijuana is used. Quite contrary to the effects of alcohol's first use, this is probably a result of overexpectation, apprehension about the unknown, and the pervasive awareness of doing something illegal. This last aspect is one reason that photographed pot parties often look furtive and clandestine. "The first time I ever smoked pot, I got upset, frightened and sick," says a mid-thirtyish Chicago housewife.