Dear Editor,
In your response to my criticism of your marijuana article, you disputed my claims and made counter arguments (‘Sunday Stabroek was irresponsible in publishing article on teen drug use,’ November 13). I hope this spirit of skeptical journalism continues the next time you do an article from the drug education standpoint. Your response, however, creates a need for me to rebut and clarify a few issues.
Firstly, you claim that parents often confuse the signs of drug use with psychiatric disorders, but you sidestep the actual objection I raised. My problem is that your article steered parents away from psychiatric help. Indeed, you go so far as to state that drug counselling is where the kids should have been “in the first place.” Surely a medical professional can decide if there is indeed a medical problem should be the first place? And again, I ask, what steps did Stabroek News take to double check the claims of psychiatric failure with an actual medical source?
Instead, you allowed a simplistic condemnation of medical drug therapy. If a diabetic is dependent on insulin for functioning, no one says they’re addicted. Yet there is a double standard for mental health, where if a person requires drugs for mental functioning, they get dismissed as being ‘addicted’ to the medical drugs.
Second, you defend your claim that one use of marijuana can lead to addiction by saying it could happen in special cases where there an addictive personality is involved. So you acknowledge that is a rare phenomenon even though your article made it sound like a certainty, ie, “All they need to do is smoke it once and they get hooked.” I’m glad you’re moving away from the exaggeration.
So to get back to those very few people you claim get addicted after one use, are you saying a psychiatric disorder is at work in those cases? Sounds like something a psychiatrist should deal with, doesn’t it? Too bad you unquestioningly allowed your counsellor to dismiss psychiatry from the discussion.
After I attacked the claim that marijuana is supposedly ‘riddled’ with impurities, you responded by half-heartedly acknowledging that marijuana is ‘sometimes’ adulterated. Cutting drugs with impurities is generally a problem with heroin, cocaine, meth and other physically addicting drugs, since users don’t care about quality. With marijuana, however, the customer base is much more fickle (since most of them are not anything close to addicted) and they shop around for their high. Marijuana dealers who offer a low-quality product lose their customers.
Indeed, the testing of marijuana has only on occasion turned up truly dangerous impurities. Most of the time, the impurities are things like mould and pesticide residue, which means that it’s no riskier than buying cabbage. Indeed, more people are harmed though contamination of food than are ever hurt through contamination of their smoke.
You lastly try to walk back to your attribution of aggressive behaviour to marijuana by stating that it’s not clear if marijuana alone caused the aggressive behaviour in Jane’s son or if it was the combination with alcohol. Being the kind of person who researches things to double check, I did a quick search on the internet and it seems that mixing marijuana with alcohol has much harsher effects than simple alcohol use. But that’s an indictment of alcohol, a drug whose dangers are far more explicit and severe than marijuana. Despite the framing of your article, marijuana use by itself has a very low correlation with violence and aggression.
I close this letter in a good mood, since it seems Stabroek News has rediscovered the idea of journalists questioning what they are told. I am sure you will have things to say to dispute my letter this time as well. And I’m sure the next time someone makes claims about the effects of drugs as a way of scaring teens and parents, you’ll be just as diligent in questioning them.
Yours faithfully,
Imam Baksh
