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HORRIBLE NEWS ARTICLE
Actual news so foolish it needs its own page

REAL HEADLINES - LAMPOON NEWS

SEPTEMBER 20, 2002

From abcnews.com

First, a caveat: I read the below headline at abcnews.com and wrote a brief joke about the headline which had little to do with the actual story. But then I became intrigued with the idea presented by John Walters. What he told the press flew in the face of years and hundreds of tests made by top Universities around the world. What new research came out to disprove all of that and where are the tests duplicated by other researchers and verified? It was an intriguing notion to think that new technologies or new discoveries were made that turned old research on its head. So I checked out all the links on the pages of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which represents itself at mediacampaign.com. What I actually discovered while trying to track down the truth, was instead a dead end play of smoke and mirrors. The rest speaks for itself.

U.S. OFFICIAL WARNS OF TEEN POT USE
John Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, claims that Marijuana addicition is higher among teens than alcohol and all other drugs combined. This despite the fact that every exhaustive medical research investigation into marijuana has shown that the drug is not physically addictive. Of course, John had absolutely no research or evidence of any kind to back up his claim, and saw no need to present any. We should just take his word.

Meanwhile, U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona extoled the virtues of cigarette smoking, saying. "...marijuana contains three to five times more tar and carbon monoxide than a comparable amount of tobacco."

John Walters government site, http://www.mediacampaign.org/marijuana/kids and marijuana.html, makes the claim that the latest research shows that marijuana is actually addictive. If you click on the link, you get moved to another link on the same page. That second link will take you to http://www.drugabuse.gov/Marijuana. When I went there today I got the following message in both IE and Netscape browsers:
Error! The file you requested was not available.

So I go back to the previous page. The site goes on to state (in the same sentence) "In fact, more kids enter treatment each year for marijuana than for all other illicit drugs combined." It provides a link for you to click and when you do, you once again get directed to another part of the same page which states,
"Treatment Episodes Data Set 1994-1999: National Admissions to Substance Abuse Treatment Services," SAMHSA, October 2001"
This statement also has its own link at the very beginning. When you click on that, it takes you right back to where you started in the first place.

The very next statement says the following:
"Sixty percent of teens currently in drug treatment have a primary marijuana diagnosis."
When you click on the provided link, you get directed to a statement which says,
"SAMHSA, TEDS, 2001. Fifty-seven percent of youth admissions were referrals through the court system."
REFERRALS THROUGH THE COURT SYSTEM? Well DUH! Would you rather opt for the "treatment program" or school expulsion and getting gang-raped in the juvenile incarceration? Of COURSE you are going to opt for "treatment"! Unless yer drunk!

Its a fact that juvenile courts, to get convictions like their adult cousins, have prosecutors agree to persue lesser charges. So though the following might seem an rhetorical question: how many well-heeled juveniles have had their crack house operations, prostitution rackets, rapes and thefts - their actual crimes - brought down to lesser charges of marijuana possession, i.e., events that never happened in the first place? While no one keeps a statistical record of this (to the best of my knowledge), we know from experience and numerous news reports that this kind of thing happens all the time.

MediaCampaign ought to be ashamed for their outright tub thumping and ignorance. All of their outraged claims are suspect, not followed-up by evidence, or come from questionable sources.

Take this one:
"Risky behavior . According to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, adolescents age 12 to 17 who use marijuana weekly are nine times more likely than non-users to experiment with illegal drugs or alcohol, five times more likely to steal and nearly four times more likely to engage in violence."

Now before you click on the link, consider what is being said: "adolescents age 12 to 17 who use marijuana weekly are nine times more likely than non-users to experiment with illegal drugs..." How about 100%? Marijuana IS an illegal drug! DUH! What's more, this is about teenagers engaging in risky behavior. What age were you when you engaged in the most risky behavior of your life? Now we click on the link and get this statement:
"Adolescent Self-Reported Behaviors, SAMHSA, 1998"

Since a fair amount of MediaCampaign's "facts" came from SAMHSA, I decided to go right to the source. I went to http://www.samhsa.gov/search. Then I entered in the search, the exact phrase
"Adolescent Self-Reported Behaviors". I got the following link first up dated 8/21/01. Hey! An update, right? The information should be even better than the initial report, right? The link it gave me: http://www.health.org/reality/WhatsNew2000/general/teenrisks.htm was 404.

Oh well. Anyone can have a broken link right? So I tried their alternate link.
http://www.health.org/../reality/WhatsNew2000/general/teenrisks.htm which was 404 as well. Hm! Well hell with it. Let's just find that original study! This looks like the right title:
"Order Here National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information (NCADI) NCADI Publications Adolescent Self-Reported Behaviors and Their Association with Marijuana Use. OAS Working Paper (1998, SAMHSA) 21 pp. RPO979"
and the link is, http://www.health.org/reality/Publications/pubslist.htm , yet when I click on the link I get still another error 404, regardless of what browser I use! I try other links to other places. Sites that have nothing to do with anything. I get them just fine. Not a problem with my connection. I go back and try these links again. I shut down my browser. I re-boot. I try everything and still get a 404 error message. These subjects just do not exist (at the places where they are supposed to exist!).

The 404 page suggests that I go to PREVLINE if I have any problems trying to access the information I'm looking for. The link for PREVLINE took me to http://www.health.org. So I went there, searched through their drop-down box for Marijuana, and looked for that 1998 SAMHSA article that MediaCampaign quoted. that took me to the page http://www.health.org/catalog/ordersystem2.asp?Topic=54 which contains lots of articles and the links to them or how to order the booklets online. Under the heading PUBLICATIONS entitled

Adolescent Self-Reported Behaviors and Their Association with Marijuana Use RP0979
1998 SAMHSA 21 pages
I found what seemed to be the right article. But it was a dead link. Not even 404, it simply is a statement with no follow-up.

So while John Walters' MediaCampaign makes a lot of inflammatory statements, it won't back them up. Funny. After nearly a century of marijuana being illegal; After more than two decades of our "War On Drugs"; you would think that the government would have at least ONE (1) shred of damning evidence. Still, it does give people like John Walters a job.

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