Lester Grinspoon blithely dismisses any serious health considerations in the smoking of marijuana. Indeed, Dr. Grinspoon – a longtime proponent of legalization of not only marijuana but also of a wide range of psychedelic drugs – has routinely dismissed most evidence of the deleterious effects of smoked marijuana, attributing it to the propaganda of anti-drug warriors and their friends in the National Institutes of Health. In his article, he rejects the assertions in the 1999 report of the Institute of Medicine on medicinal marijuana that smoked marijuana is dangerous because it increases smokers’ chances “of cancer, lung damage, and problems with pregnancy.”

More recently, on January 23, 2002, Grinspoon was quoted in the Toronto Globe and Mail(1) criticizing a comprehensive position paper on medical marijuana from Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada(2) that labeled smoked medical marijuana risky. Grinspoon is described as calling their report on smoked marijuana dangers an “urban myth.” The highly respected group – which supports research into and therapeutic use of non-smoked medical marijuana and its derivatives such as THC – warned that smoked marijuana produced 50% more tar and 70% more benzopyrene than cigarettes, noting that recent research has shown that smoking two to three marijuana cigarettes a day probably has as much cancer-causing potential as twenty to thirty cigarettes. They point out that even the much ballyhooed treatment of glaucoma with smoked marijuana (used to reduce intra-ocular pressure), requires the smoking of marijuana every two to three hours.(3)

In response, Grinspoon, sounding for all the world like a tobacco industry executive, is quoted saying, “Who has seen the pulmonary consequences of smoking marijuana?” – further predicting that it “will be considered one of the least harmful substances in our entire compendium.”

While Grinspoon minimizes the dangers, even Cannabis News has posted on its own website a January 2000 Washington Post article, “Researchers Link Marijuana to Cancer,” about research at Sloan-Kettering that links marijuana use with cancers of the head and neck, including tumors of the mouth, throat, and larynx.(4)

One recent study at UCLA’s Jonnson Comprehensive Cancer Center found that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), marijuana’s most psychoactive component, may promote tumor growth and weaken the body’s immune response to cancer. That study’s authors warn that marijuana may be much more carcinogenic than tobacco. The study expanded on earlier research findings indicating that THC can lower immune resistance to bacterial and viral infections.(5)

Not only does Grinspoon dismiss the increasing evidence of marijuana’s carcinogenic effects, he also seems to ignore other disturbing research associating marijuana use with problems of aggression, amotivational syndrome, bronchitis/chronic cough and respiratory system damage, chronic anxiety, depression, distorted perception, impaired learning, impaired judgment, impaired problem-solving, complex motor skills impairment, immune system damage, memory damage, reproductive system problems, secondhand smoke effects, and schizophrenia.(6) While some limited medicinal uses for marijuana and/or its active ingredients may be discovered, clearly it is not simply a benign substance nor a wonder herb.

While the dietary supplement business, herbal medicine industry, and other areas of “alternative medicine” may routinely ignore such scientific evidence of potential adverse health effects, one hardly expects a Harvard psychiatry professor to be so dismissive of the many warning signs, especially about smoked marijuana. Why has Lester Grinspoon emerged as such a champion of medical marijuana smoking?

Dr. Grinspoon first engaged in marijuana research in 1968 at Harvard University, research that he claims convinced him of the relative benignity of marijuana. The newly graduated Harvard M.D., Dr. Andrew Weil, assisted Grinspoon in this research.(7) At the very same time, Weil had fallen under the spell of Harvard psychologists Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (a.k.a. Ram Dass) and was extremely busy using marijuana, LSD, and other psychedelics to explore his “natural mind.”(8)

Weil left Harvard, first to pursue a career proselytizing for the revolutionary “mind altering” and spiritual effects of psychedelics, then to be an alternative medicine guru. Weil’s own advocacy of the herbal medicinal uses of marijuana (hemp) and LSD as a treatment for such things as cat allergies indicate that he has effectively combined his two career paths of drug advocacy and alternative medicine.

Grinspoon, too, has made a career out of his 1960s conversion, writing seminal works championed by the marijuana and psychedelic drug sub-cultures with his frequent co-author James B. Bakalar. Their book Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered was published in 1979 and was recently republished by the Lindesmith Center in 1997. Another book of theirs, Psychedelic Reflections, was published in 1983.(9) One of their most recent books, Marijuana, The Forbidden Medicine, was published in 1997. Solo, Grinspoon wrote the book Marihuana Reconsidered, published in 1971, immediately after his Harvard marijuana studies. The book was republished in 1994.

Like Weil, Grinspoon seems to believe there are “no bad drugs.” Over the years, he has insisted on the relative safety of cocaine, ketamine, ecstasy (MDMA), LSD (under proper supervision), and other psychedelics. Many who have maintained their association with him for decades come out of the inner circles of psychedelic spiritualism. In addition to being the Lindesmith Center’s expert on marijuana, he serves as a scientific advisor, consultant and/or collaborator with such psychedelic advocacy groups as the Albert Hofmann Foundation, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, and the Heffter Research Institute. He is currently a scientific advisor to a bizarre “anti-psychiatry” group called the the Alchemind Society, whose executive director specializes in “the jurisprudence of extraordinary states of consciousness, dissident thinking, and shamanic inebriants.” The rest of the society’s advisory board is made up of mystics, paranormalists, psychedelic spiritualists, psychedelic “therapists,” and other psychiatric “dissidents,” including Ram Dass.(10)

Grinspoon’s own commitment to the use of psychedelic drugs as part of spiritual psychotherapy was detailed in a 1986 article in the American Journal of Psychotherapy entitled “Can Drugs be Used to Enhance the Psychotherapeutic Process?” in which he argues that LSD can and should be used to trigger spiritual conversion as a psychotherapeutic treatment.(11) The central “evidence” he presents is a late 1960s experiment run by a paranormal New Age mystic named Stanislav Grof at the Spring Grove State Hospital in Maryland. Grof subjected terminally-ill cancer patients to horrendously nightmarish LSD-induced hallucinations as part of an “experiment” in stress reduction.(12, 13)

Grinspoon’s 1986 endorsement of “therapeutic” psychedelic spiritual conversion is used to give credibility to a resurgent psychedelic mysticism movement that is now arguing for the psychotherapeutic or “self-therapeutic” uses of ecstasy, LSD, ketamine, psilocybin and other currently illegal drugs. Indeed, a 2000 Wired.com article “Lucy in the Sky with Therapy” describes this currently underground movement.(14)

After citing experts warning about research showing potential brain damage from use of Ecstasy and other such drugs, the Wired article mentions Dr. Grinspoon:

“Dr. Lester Grinspoon, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who sued the DEA when it declared ecstasy a schedule 1 controlled substance in 1985, said he doesn’t quite trust studies performed by the National Institute of Drug Abuse. ‘The NIH is a wonderful institution as a whole and truly their interest is in science,’ Grinspoon said. ‘But the NIDA really lost it where science is concerned and has become a ministry of drug propaganda.’”

Indeed, who are we to believe on psychedelics and on smoked marijuana? Will it be the anti-drug conspirators of the U.S. Government’s National Institutes of Health and virtually all of modern medical science…or the estimable Dr. Lester Grinspoon who still delights in those wondrous dreams shared with Andrew Weil, Tim Leary, and Ram Dass at Harvard in the halcyon days of the 1960s? Perhaps the readers of HealthFactsAndFears.com will now have somewhat better information upon which to make their choice.

Documentation:

1. Toronto Globe and Mail, 1/23/02, “Smoking Medical Marijuana Too Risky, Lobby Group Says,” by Oliver Moore: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet /RTGAMArticleHTMLTemplate/C /20020123/wmari2301?hub=homeBN& tf=tgam%252Frealtime%252Ffullstory.html &cf=tgam/realtime/config-neutral &vg=BigAdVariableGenerator&slug= wmari2301&date=20020123&archive= RTGAM&site=Front&ad_page_name= breakingnews

2. Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada Web-site: http://www.smoke-free.ca/

3. Position Paper on Marijuana as Medicine from Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada: http://www.smoke-free.ca/pdf_1 /psc-position-on-marijuana.PDF

4. Washington Post, 1/11/00, “Researchers Link Marijuana to Cancer”, Susan Okie: http://www.cannabisnews.com /news/thread4267.shtml

5. NIH, 6/20/2000, Study Finds Marijuana Ingredient Promotes Tumor Growth; Impairs Anti-Tumor Defenses: http://www.health.org/reality/articles /2000/press/july2000.asp

6. Governmental and medical sources with reports of research:
National Institute on Drug Abuse: http://www.drugabuse.gov/DrugPages /Marijuana.html
MedlinePlus Marijuana Abuse page: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus /marijuanaabuse.html
Note the latest study, “Long-time Pot Users Show Mental Deficits.”
The National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information: http://www.health.org/catalog /ordersystem2.asp?Topic=54#pubs
A British House of Lords report (1997-98) on adverse effects of cannabis use, with many citations, declaring the evidence is stronger than ever of its potentially harmful effects: http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk /pa/ld199798/ldselect/ldsctech/151/15105.htm

7. Andrew Weil describes his research collaboration with Grinspoon in “No Bad Drugs: The Newservice Interview: Dr. Andrew Weil,” 1983: http://www.doitnow.org/pages/weil.html

8. Arnold Relman, M.D., “A Trip to Stonesville: Some Notes on Andrew Weil (1998)”: http://www.quackwatch.com/11Ind/weil.html

9. Review of Grinspoon/Bakalar _Psychedelic Reflections_ on website of the Council of Spiritual Practices, dedicated to the use of psychedelic “entheogens” to achieve spiritualty: http://www.csp.org/chrestomathy /psychedelic_reflections.html

10. The Alchemind Society: http://www.alchemind.org/alchemindadvisors.htm

11. Lester Grinspoon, M.D. and James Bakalar, American Journal of Psychotherapy, Vol. XL, no. 3, “Can Drugs be Used to Enhance the Psychotherapeutic Process?”: http://leda.lycaeum.org/Documents /Can_Drugs_Be_Used_to_Enhance_the_ Psychotherapeutic_Process.16866.shtml

12. E. Patrick Curry, “Carl Jung, Stanislav Grof and New Age Medical Mysticism,” to be published in the Spring 2002 issue of the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine.

13. A chapter on the paranormal, mystical Dr. Stanislav Grof is included in Paul Edwards’ Reincarnation: A Critical Examination, Prometheus Press, 1996. Dr. Grof’s mystical ideas can also easily be determined by simple Web searches. He is a major champion of New Age mysticism.

14. “Lucy in the Sky with Therapy”, Wired.com, November 2, 2000: http://www.wired.com/news/technology /0,1282,39796,00.html?tw=wn20001109

Note: The full text of the Institute of Medicine report “Marijuana and Medicine” is posted at the National Academy Press site at: http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/marimed/
The April 28, 1999 JAMA article “Therapeutic Marijuana Use Supported While Thorough Proposed Study Done” is posted at: http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v281n16 /ffull/jmn0428-1.html

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E. Patrick Curry has written for the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine and has received the 2000 Scientific and Professional Integrity Trophy from The Science & Pseudoscience Review in Mental Health.

Author: E. Patrick Curry
Source: Northwest Center for Health & Safety