A Proponent of Legalization Frequently Referred to By the Media as an “Expert” on Drug Policy

An article in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry (49:2 Suppl. February, 1988) discussing reasons for the increase in cocaine use in the 1980s, stated that we seemed to have forgotten what we learned of the consequences of cocaine use in the decade of 1910. The article cited a chapter on cocaine that Dr.Lester Grinspoon wrote in the 1980 edition of the Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry where he penned the following: “Used no more than two or three times a week, cocaine creates no serious problems. In daily and fairly large amounts, it can produce minor psychological disturbances. Chronic cocaine abuse usually does not appear as a medical problem.” In the 1985 edition of the same textbook, to the same text he simply added: “High price still restricts consumption for all but the very rich, and those involved in trafficking … If used moderately and occasionally, cocaine creates no serious problems.” These assertions have, of course, been thoroughly discredited. In fact, by 1984, the National Institute on Drug Abuse had declared cocaine the drug of greatest national concern.

An article in the May 5, 1988 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, “Cocaine and Other Stimulants,” discusses the upsurge of cocaine abuse. It cites the above chapter by Dr. Grinspoon as claiming that cocaine is “a relatively safe, nonaddicting euphoriant agent.” It then says that historical information on cocaine dependence were dismissed as moralistic exaggerations and that the absence of modern clinical research on cocaine addiction was misinterpreted to mean that cocaine was not addictive.

In the November 10, 1989 issue of The New Federalist in an article entitled “General Staff of Drug Lobby meets in D.C.” reports the following: “Other leading figures of the movement include Harvard Medical School professor Lester Grinspoon, whose infamous work, ‘Marijuana Reconsidered,’ launched the 1970s campaign to legalize marijuana. Grinspoon told the conference that he would like to do for cocaine what he did for marijuana and, like many of the speakers, disparaged the idea that cocaine in any form, including the deadly free base derivative called ‘crack,’ represents a significant health hazard.”

Recently, Dr. Grinspoon was named to the board of directors for the National Organization for the Reform of the Marijuana Laws and has returned his attention to marijuana. In his controversial book, Marijuana, the Forbidden Medicine, he questions whether the information about marijuana being an impairment factor in accidents, arguing that some researchers believe that marijuana doesn’t exacerbate risk taking behavior, as he alleges that alcohol does. Several new studies debunk this hypothesis. A 1989 study conducted at the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services tested the next thousand trauma patients received for the presence of marijuana. Thirty four percent tested positive (forty per cent under the age of thirty). Since the vast majority of trauma patients are injured in vehicle accidents, Dr. Grinspoon’s theory, like most of his theories, is less than compelling. A 1993 study of reckless drivers by Dr. Daniel Brookoff of the University of Tennessee School of Medicine found that as many of those stopped tested positive for marijuana as for alcohol. A 1993 study by the NTSB and NIDA on fatal to the driver truck accidents found that of the drivers killed 13% tested positive for marijuana and 13% tested positive for alcohol. A panel of toxicologists reviewed the accident investigation report and toxicology findings and determined that impairment due to marijuana use was a factor in all cases where the delta 9 tetrahydrocannabinol (marijuana’s active ingredient ) concentration exceeded 1.0 ng/ml and the alcohol impairment contributed to all accidents where the blood alcohol concentration was 0.04% wt/vol or greater.

Grinspoon, a psychiatrist, offers opinions on marijuana being safe and useful as medicine for a variety of illnesses. His views are in direct conflict with most of the top specialists in those areas.

Written by Wayne Roques, DEA Retired
Prevention Specialist
September 1997

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New Information re Grinspoon

High Times, August 2001, page 55, he is quoted as saying at this year’s NORML conference, “I was 44 years old in 1972 when I experienced my first marijuana high. Because I found it both useful and benign, I have used it ever since.”

To quote High Times: “In fact, he credited ’stoned self-critiques’ with helping him reject
the ultimately stultifying practice of psychoanalysis (that is, with the patient prostrate on the couch before the omniscient doctor) in favor of less-distancing therapies. He called for people in the business, academic and professional worlds to come out of the closet regarding marijuana. To that end, he’s pursuing what he calls the ‘Uses of Marijuana Project’ (marijuana-uses.com), an ethnographic exercise on how pot has enhanced users’ lives. As Dr. Grinspoon put it, ‘I cannot possibly convey the bredth of
things it helps me to appreciate, to think about, to gain new insights into.”

Source: Northwest Center for Health & Safety