Pleasure

Just can't get enough

by Nina Willdorf

Under the impression that marijuana isn't addictive? Think again, say the authors of one recent study.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a government agency, placed squirrel monkeys in a chamber with a lever allowing them to dose themselves with THC as frequently as they wanted. Guess what happened? They pushed and pushed. And pushed. The study, published in the November issue of the journal Nature Science, found that the monkeys pushed the lever about as frequently as their cousins in similar cocaine studies did. NIDA says that can lead to only one conclusion: dope is addictive.

But one academic says you'd have to be, well, high to draw such a conclusion. "New research, it's not; solid research, it's not," says Lester Grinspoon, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who is also chairman of the board at the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws Foundation (NORML). Given the option to press a little button and get an immediately satisfying hit of THC, he asks, what animal wouldn't partake?

"Think about it," Grinspoon says. "When you take an animal used to running free, strap it in a contraption, and the only thing it can do is press a button to get something satisfying, to make life a little more interesting, of course it's going to press the button."

Cocaine, heroin -- name an opiate, Grinspoon says, and animals love it. He rattles off a score of studies dating back to the 1970s proving that rats and monkeys can't say no. But that's not necessarily an indication that marijuana, when tested to the same standards, is similarly addicting for humans. "If you know people who use cannabis," he says, laughing, "you just know it's not an addicting drug."

Of course, real scientific research has yet to be done on human subjects. When they're ready to start that study, sign us up.