University of Virginia Library

Drug Debate

We have been quite surprised at the
reaction toward the rather mild criticism of
the present marijuana laws which appeared
in The Cavalier Daily last week. While
the University seemed unshaken about the
whole affair-everybody was too busy joking
about the narcotics agents in town-a great
fuss arose in the city of Richmond, many
of whose citizens seemed genuinely surprised
that at the staid quote-unquote University
there was grass other than that on the Lawn.
We were interviewed by one Richmond
radio station, invited to appear on an early-morning
television program, and even
received a letter from Virginius Dabney,
distinguished editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch
and a crusader of late against the
evils of drugs.

Mr. Dabney, one of the leading Southern
liberals of the 1940's and son of the University's
famous professor of history Richard
Heath Dabney, sent us a clipping from the
New York Daily News of February 14th.
After recovering from our initial surprise
that Mr. Dabney ever looked at the Daily
News, a somewhat lurid tabloid, we proceeded
to read about a Miss Florence Fisher,
a young lady who embarked upon a life
of crime and degeneracy after starting to
smoke pot during her years at college.

Miss Fisher did not become a thief
and prostitute simply because she smoked
marijuana. She doubtless had basic
emotional problems to begin with, and she
could just as easily have ruined her life
with drink (it is an interesting comment
on human nature that people can become
so excited about a fad like marijuana yet
ignore the far greater evil in American
society of chronic alcoholism).

It is true, however, that there is a great
deal we do not know about the effects of
the commoner drugs, particularly about
the "psychic dependence" as opposed to
physical addiction developed by the user of
marijuana. There is a definite need for more
public discussion, particularly in the colleges,
and not for the sweep-it-under-the-rug attitude
common to so many college administrators.
There is a definite need for
wider public understanding of drugs, an
understanding not culled from the pages of
the Daily News but gained by an open and
intelligent discussion with the professionals
-doctors, scientists, and counselors-who
know the most about drugs.

For this reason, we reprint below some
remarks by Dr. Nathan B. Eddy, who has
spent some forty years studying the problems
of drug abuse and who was cited in 1963
by the University of Michigan as having
"a fuller and surer understanding of the
nature and use of narcotic drugs than any
other living man." They are taken from the
December 1967 News Report of the National
Academy of Sciences, supplied to us courtesy
of C. D. Meachum. Not everything that
Dr. Eddy states is beyond debate, but we
are anxious to present a point of view
that perhaps has not been expressed in The
Cavalier Daily's coverage of drug use to date.

Efforts to Ease Marijuana Controls: Psychic
dependence is a behavioral response
related to a person's own satisfaction with
a drug effect. This is the sort of dependence-without
tolerance or physical dependence-that
is characteristic of marijuana
abuse. Psychic dependence is of major
importance in drug abuse. It is no less
difficult to manage even when there are no
overt physical disturbances.

"The only use for marijuana is to achieve
gratification; it is useless medically, nor is
it now important in the manufacture of
rope, since the synthetics have replaced
hemp. And since the society is not yet
run by parakeets, we can do without using
the seeds in birdseed.

"Society cares enough about having
alcohol available to pay the immense social
and economic cost of having millions of
people depending on it. If we are thinking
clearly, we will not make freely available
yet another agent of abuse and magnify
the costs we pay."

Young People and Drugs: "It is a difficult,
lengthy, expensive process to get a
drug-dependent person to free himself of
drugs. Much better that we look to preventing
the problem by getting to young
people who are troubled and helping them
to face their problems before they turn to
drugs to escape them. If they don't get
help at home-and a lot of them can't-we
ought to help them get it anyway, in
their schools or in other agencies. Unfortunately,
there is no easy answer to the
problem of mass media that glamorize
drug subcultures or mass marketers that
exploit fashions based on those subcultures.
It is impossible to legislate good sense.
But unquestionably publicity has encouraged
young people to experiment with drugs, and
the media should think long and hard about
the role that they have played in popularizing
drug use."

Drug Dependence in Perspective: "We
need to remember that alcoholism is the
most prevalent, most costly, and most
damaging form of drug abuse that the
society has to deal with. We have perhaps
100,000 people dependent on heroin or
related substances, a great many more
dependent on a variety of agents-amphetamines,
barbiturates, LSD and other hallucinogens,
almost anything for a drug effect.
We have control measures for these
things, and we have educational measures
that haven't been fully utilized; if we use
what we have, we will make it harder for
people to escape with drugs. Certainly
we shouldn't make it any easier."