The Pot Report: Still Inconclusive

In the continuing debate over the effects of pot, the heads appeared last week to have gained a slight edge over the straights. Issuing a summary of current scientific knowledge about marijuana, the National Institute of Mental Health asserted that for most people the drug "does not seem harmful." But the institute cautioned that information about marijuana--especially about its long-term effects--is still fragmentary and that final judgments await more research.

Meanwhile, NIMH reported some interim findings:

> There is no evidence that marijuana affects unborn children.

> Use of the drug is sometimes associated with "minor asocial or antisocial behavior," but not with major crime.

> Use may precipitate psychosis in perhaps one out of 300 cases, but only in "those who were about to crack anyway." Attacks of anxiety occur in a small percentage of cases, but the panic is transitory; it disappears when the victim is assured that nothing is seriously wrong with him.

>Although heavy use sometimes is associated with an "amotivational syndrome"--loss of interest in conventional goals--there is no present evidence that the drug causes the syndrome. Indeed, there is the possibility that the syndrome causes the drug use; those without conventional motivation may find drugs especially attractive.

> There is little evidence of progression from marijuana to hard drugs.

Underscoring the need for more facts about pot, NIMH reported that use has increased rapidly in the past few years. In a survey of 10,000 students at 50 colleges. Dr. Peter H. Rossi of Johns Hopkins University found that 31% had tried marijuana at least once, and 14% were using it "every week or two." By contrast, a 1969 Gallup poll showed that 9% of college-trained people had experimented with the drug.

NiMH reported, however, that in California, which was first to experience "the onslaught of drugs," marijuana use may well have "crested." In San Mateo County, for example, seventh-and eighth-graders smoked less pot in 1970 than in 1969. Dr. Bertram Brown, director of NiMH, believes that the decline may well presage similar decreases in marijuana use elsewhere in the next few years.

Inconclusive though it is, the NIMH report will provide a starting point for the commission appointed by President Nixon. A 13-member panel of doctors, educators and Congressmen, headed by Pennsylvania's former Republican Governor Raymond Shafer, will make a two-year study of the use and effects of marijuana and then try to answer one of the most sensitive questions now before Congress: Should pot be legalized?

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