Calling Dr. Chong. Medical marijuana is the compassion cover for legalization. Its potency can vary greatly from batch to batch. Marijuana is a narcotic. According to the Drug Abuse Warning Network, marijuana use accounted for 87,150 emergency-room admissions in 1999, up 455 percent from a decade earlier.
Medical marijuana is a way to persuade the public that pot is benign.
It's also great for getting kids hooked. An increase in juvenile pot use has coincided with the medical marijuana campaign. The number of eighth-graders who'd used marijuana at least once went from 10.2 percent in 1991 to 20.3 percent in 2000. The drug lobby counters that most causal users never progress to harder drugs. But when an adolescent becomes used to the effects of marijuana, many are prepared, physically and psychologically, to seek a more intense high.