KIDS & POT

In a drug-and-alcohol rehab, the wounded sit grimly on folding chairs, acknowledging the folly of their old life--their misadventures with alcohol, cocaine or other poisons. Then comes the afternoon that is set aside for atonement on the subject of marijuana. Now the chastened air gives way to argument. The house divides along generational lines. The oldest of the sinners (mostly age 50 or older) nod agreement with the official message: Yes, indeed--devil weed. The baby boomers, however, with their rich pharmaceutical histories, begin to snigger and squirm. "Give me a break!" rings out in the hall. The youngest members of the congregation (some in their teens) sit in bewilderment, trying to decide whether to support the geezers or the boomers.

There it is again: the Marijuana Exception...the Reefer Loophole. All the idiots who drank Canadian Club and Heineken for breakfast, or wrecked themselves on smack or meth--they know they done wrong. But "merely" smoking pot? Well...

The question of whether marijuana is a dangerous menace or something less than that--even, perhaps, a kind of benign and unfairly persecuted folk medicine--suddenly dominates discussions of the great American drug habit. Last month voters in Arizona and California passed ballot propositions that legalize the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, a kind of backdoor quasi-legitimation alarming to the pot hawks, who fear that high-minded tolerance (pot as pain reliever, glaucoma salve, general angel of mercy) may become infectious and spread to the other states.

In August the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a study that surveyed almost 18,000 Americans and concluded that marijuana use among youths (ages 12 to 17) has roughly doubled in the past few years. Use of pot by young people rose 105% from 1992 to 1994, and gained 37% between 1994 and 1995. At the Phoenix House Foundation 10 years ago, 13% of adolescents sought treatment for marijuana; today that figure has jumped to 40%.

It is possible that the increased popularity of marijuana is merely cyclical, part of the usual flux and reflux that have also seen harder drugs like cocaine and heroin rise in their allure for a time, and then decline when the consequences became more luridly obvious--only to rise again when a generational forgetfulness sets in and a drug's glamour could assert itself afresh. Indeed, today some experts are worried that an obsessive concern about marijuana may confuse overall perspectives. Says Mark Kleiman, a UCLA professor who specializes in national drug policy: "It's destructive to focus the country on one small part of drug use. Focusing on marijuana ignores the rising use of methamphetamine and the fact that heroin appears to be coming back, and ignores the No. 1 drug of abuse among high school kids--alcohol."