Law: The Potshot That Backfired

Science agency rejects its own study on easing marujuana laws

Like other Washington organizations, the independent National Academy of Sciences often makes a big fuss when one of its panels of experts issues an important report. The N.A.S. president attaches a letter praising the panel's work, and the press is summoned to the academy's auditorium to meet some of the experts and film them for the evening newscasts. That is not the way things went at the N.A.S. last month, however. When the Committee on Substance Abuse and Habitual Behavior turned in its study of marijuana laws, the N.A.S. president flatly disavowed its recommendations, and the academy brushed it aside in the apparent hope it would fade away for lack of attention. No press conference, no press release, no public announcement at all. The reason: the committee urged that the possession or private use of small amounts of marijuana should no longer be a crime.

The 18-person panel did not endorse the smoking of cannabis. Indeed, the experts backed another N.A.S. report (released with much fanfare last February) that found enough evidence of the drug's physical and emotional dangers to justify "serious national concern." But the committee's assignment was to look at the fiscal and social costs of enforcing criminal laws against marijuana use. And it found those costs too high. Tough laws do not appear to deter marijuana use, said the committee, noting that in states without such statutes there seems to have been no "appreciable" increase in pot smoking. In addition, those states have lower costs of enforcement. California, for example, now spends only a quarter of what it used to and concentrates on the pursuit of dealers and large-scale distributors. The committee also cited the contempt that many young people have for the law because it imposes such different sanctions on the use of alcohol and pot. Says the report: "Alienation from the rule of law in democratic society may be the most serious cost of current marijuana laws."

None of that persuaded Frank Press, a geophysicist who was Jimmy Carter's science adviser before his 1981 election as N.A.S. president. In his covering letter to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the federal agency that in 1978 requested and funded the study, Press contended that the committee had "insufficient" data and was rendering "a judgment so value laden that it should have been left to the political process." NIDA Director Dr. William Pollin was "not pleased" either. Pointing to recent surveys that indicate high school seniors are turning away from pot, he said it would be "a terrible mistake and a public health tragedy [to do] anything that suggests a greater societal acceptance of the use of marijuana, particularly by young people."