Title: Chemical Warfare
Subtitle: secrets almost forgotten
First published: 2006
Description: Review Written by Bernie Weisz, Historian December 16, 2010 Pembroke Pines, Florda, USA Contact: BernWei1@aol.com
Title of Review:  THC, LSD and BZ Chemical Warfare Research:Selecting Volunteer Astronauts Ready to Go Into "Inner:" Rather Than Outer Space"   James S. Ketchum's book "Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten" is the first and only account that exists revealing the U.S.Army's research into Chemical Warfare that occurred in one of the most tumultuous settings the United States ever has experienced. It is, however, a taboo topic and Ketchum states with chagrin that when he mentions to people that he is a psychiatrist that worked during the 1960's studying chemical methods for "subduing" normal people, most react politely by changing the subject. Perhaps this reflects the times in which these experiments occurred. Ketchum boldly proclaims the goal of his book is as follows: "Many books and articles have been published about the shady and nefarious activities of the CIA in relation to LSD, supposedly contemporaneously with our own officially approved medical research. I have read several of them and it is distressing how often our clinical research program has been confused with the CIA's covert use of LSD. Some authors do not refer to drugs we studied by their correct names, and attribute properties to them that are quite fanciful. A primary purpose of this book, therefore, is to provide truthful, comprehensive, accurate information about the Edgewood Arsenal medical research program, and what we actually learned from our studies." As a historical reviewer with zero psycho pharmacological foreknowledge, I intuitively understood Ketchum's comment when he wrote: "Medical experts enjoy using pedantic language that underlies their erudition, and I must admit I was not immune to this affliction." 

I did understand the cliche of the month of March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb juxtaposed with Ketchum's stay at Edgewood being a reflection of "the times." Did you go through that period of history or did you hear about it from your parents or other elders? Some people mistakenly think the 60's were all about hippies ... well, the 60's were more than just hippies, although they did play an important role during the decade. There was also: Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech, psychedelic music, Kennedy's assassination, the Vietnam War, and the first man to walk the moon! The decade started rather staid in 1960 with the first debate for a presidential election televised between Senator John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon. Nixon seemed nervous, but Kennedy stood tall. The debate on TV changed many people's minds about Kennedy. Gary Powers and the American "U 2" spy plane were shot down over the Soviet Union. In 1961, John F Kennedy moved into the White House. He gave his famous speech, i.e. "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." The Soviets sent the first man into space and the Americans needed to compete. The event came on May 5, 1961 as Alan Shepard was sent to space in the "Freedom 7". On May 25, 1961. J.F.K. announced he wanted to have a man on the moon and back before the decade was over. In 1962 John Glenn became the first man to orbit the earth 3 times. It was a five hour flight. Most important for the predicted outcome of chemical warfare experiments at Edgewood, was Rachel Carson's statement. A scientist and writer, she warned that our earth would die of pollution and chemicals, especially ones that were developed to kill bad insects and defoliate jungles. DDT was a real bad chemical used to kill pest insects. It wound up killing good insects, along with plants and animals. Carson authored a book entitled "Silent Spring" with a warning that resulted in five states banning DDT. 

The Chemical that defoliated jungles was called "Agent Orange." This was a U.S. Government code name for one of the herbicides and defoliants that was used by the military as part of its herbicidal warfare program, "Operation Ranch Hand", during the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1971. A 50:50 mixture of 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D, it was manufactured for the U.S. Department of Defense primarily by Monsanto Corporation and Dow Chemical. It was later discovered to be an extremely toxic dioxin compound. It was given its name from the color of the orange-striped 55 US gallon barrels in which it was shipped. During the Vietnam war, between 1962 and 1971, the U.S. military sprayed 20,000,000 gallons of Agent Orange in S.E. Asia with an intended goal of defoliating forested and rural land and depriving the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese of cover. The ultimate effects on Vietnam Veterans were to be horrifying. Increased rates of nerve, digestive, skin and respiratory disorders, Hodgkin's lymphoma and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, prostate, lung and liver cancers, as well as soft tissue sarcoma occurred. As a side note, over 150,000 U.S. Veterans were affected by Agent Orange, and according to Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to Agent Orange, resulting in 400,000 people being killed or maimed, and 500,000 children born with birth defects. Getting back to a historical reference, on August 28, 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. made the speech, "I have a Dream." More than 200,000 peaceful demonstrators came to Washington DC to demand equal rights for Black and Whites. On November 22, J.F.K. was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. His assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was never sent to trial. While being moved by police to a different jail, a man named Jack Ruby killed him. Who killed President Kennedy nobody will ever know. 

It is understandable that Ketchum wrote: And so it went at Edgewood-a constant oscillation between seriousness of purpose and absurdity." This echoed what was happening in 1964. The Beatles, a British rock and roll band became extremely popular, as John, Paul, George, and Ringo played on radio stations all over the world. They were seen on the "Ed Sullivan Show". While Ketchum experimented with "incapacitating agents, i.e. substances that were thought to pave the way to battle enemy forces with a minimum of lethal outcomes, 1964 was the first year that cigarette boxes had a warning printed on them declaring: "Smoking can be hazardous to your health". While Congress was mesmerized by Major General William Creasy's sales pitch that chemical warfare testing would result in war without casualties, it had not occurred to them to give warnings that smoking lead to cancer and lung deaths. Most important for this decade, the "Tonkin Gulf Resolution" was passed that authorized U.S. military action in Southeast Asia. On Aug. 4, 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin were alleged to have attacked without provocation U.S. destroyers that were reporting intelligence information to South Vietnam. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his advisers decided upon immediate air attacks on North Vietnam in retaliation; he also asked Congress for a mandate for future military action. On August 7, Congress passed a resolution drafted by the administration authorizing all necessary measures to repel attacks against U.S. forces and all steps necessary for the defense of U.S. Allies in Southeast Asia. The Vietnam War was on! In 1965 the war continued to escalate, with L.B.J. ordering bombing raids on North Vietnam and Americans began protesting the war. The Houston Astrodome was built, America's first roofed stadium. fashion started to change, with women wearing short Mini skirts. "Pop Art" became more popular, an artistic technique that used contrasting colors with black and white to make a sort of optical illusion. 

In 1966, Psychedelic clothing was now a hit. Colors worn were brighter and bolder. Men begin to dress "fancy". Walt Disney, the creator of Mickey Mouse and a Pioneer of animated films, died of cancer on December 15. In 1967, The first heart transplant was performed by Dr. Christiaan Barnard in Cape Town, South Africa, and the "Summer of Love" occurred. This was a social phenomenon that occurred during that summer, when as many as 100,000 people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, creating a cultural and political rebellion. James Ketchum, on sabbatical at Stanford for 2 years, was there. While hippies also gathered all over the world, San Francisco was the center of the hippie revolution, a melting pot of music, psychoactive drugs, sexual freedom, creative expression, and politics. Cited as a defining moment of the 1960s, the hippie counterculture movement came into public awareness, with themes of lifestyles included communal living, widespread usage of psychedelic drugs, free and communal sharing of resources, including love and sex. However, the summer of 1967 also saw some of the worst violence in US cities in the country's history, with race riots occurring in places such as Detroit and Newark. The body bags kept coming home from Vietnam, with no end to the war in sight. Distrust of the government ran high, which with the secrecy of Edgewood's operations possibly being their ultimate death knell. With furtive drug testing on Chemical warfare, Ketchum wrote: "The problem, of course, was that Edgewood kept reporters in the dark by classifying most of our work, thus keeping it out of the public's purview." 

The 1960's were about to get ugly. In the early hours of January 31st, 1968, 70,000 North Vietnamese soldiers, together with Viet Cong fighters, launched one of the most daring military campaigns in history. The Tet Offensive was the real turning point in the Vietnam War. The Communists launched a major offensive to coincide with the traditional Vietnamese New Year celebrations (January 29 to 31)called "Tet". It was a time of an agreed cease-fire. NVA/VC suicide troops struck in Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital. News media all over America reported immense damage in the South detailing 80 different cities, towns or military bases that were attacked, more or less simultaneously. Walter Cronkite, America's most respected journalist at that time, asserted that America was losing the war. It was militarily inaccurate, however it created the first significant crack in President Johnson's belief that he could win both the war and re-election. As it turned out he did neither. Anti war protests peaked, with growing reluctance in America to support a war we weren't winning. The assassinations of Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King in Memphis, Tennessee and Robert Kennedy, in Los Angeles left a country that had gone amok. Fear and distrust of anything related to the U.S. Government reached it's apex with nationwide antiwar student demonstrations and the shootings at Kent State on a Ohio campus. Everything was changing since the start of the decade. The "Hippie look" was now popular. The women wore long floor length dresses and skirts called maxies. Men continued to grow their hair longer. Hippies decorated everything, including painting their bodies. Ketchum returned to Edgewood in 1969, his work completed at Stanford. Nearly half a million people headed over to a 600 acre farm in New York for the Woodstock Festival. Many top rock musicians were there. It lasted three days, a weekend of music, love and peace. On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the moon, with astronauts aboard. Neil Armstrong made his famous speech: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." The sun on the 1960's set amongst anti government distrust at an all time high. 

So what was Ketchum doing at Edgewood? He was directing experiments performed at the Edgewood Arsenal, which was northeast of Baltimore, Maryland, and involved the use of hallucinogens such LSD, THC, and BZ, in addition to biological and chemical agents on human subjects. The Edgewood experiments took place from approximately 1952-1974 at the Bio Medical Laboratory, which is now known as the U. S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense. The volunteer would spend the weekend on-site, performing tests and procedures (math, navigation, following orders, memory and interview) while sober. The volunteer would then be drugged by an incapacitating agent and then studied while attempting to perform the same tests. These tests occurred in the Edgewood facility under Ketchum's supervision. Field tests, such as having to guard a check point while under the influence of an incapacitating agent such as LSD or BZ was done to see what effects certain drugs had on the patient. LSD is well known with it's hallucinatory visual and auditory effects. However, there is a stigma on BZ. BZ, or 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, is an odorless military incapacitating agent. It is related to atropine, scopolamine, hyoscyamine, and other deliriants. It could be released as an aerosol for inhalation, injected or dissolved in a solvent for ingestion or percutaneous absorption. It's effects include stupor, confusion, and hallucinations. 
The antidote for BZ is "Physostigmine," which is now commonly stocked in emergency rooms for Atropine overdose. Dr. Ketchum's response as to what happens to a soldier dosed on BZ? Citing his distaste for the ludicrous portrayal of BZ's effects in the movie "Jacob's Ladder", he sets the world straight by giving his version: "They gradually go into a stupor and when they wake up, they crawl around on the floor, frequently take off their clothes, hallucinate and talk nonsense." 

Dr. James Ketchum was recruited in his junior year at Cornell University Medical College in 1955 by a very enticing offer. An Army recruiter promised him that to sign the dotted line, all he had to do was finish his last year as a medical student, joining Uncle Sam as a 2nd Lieutenant with full pay and benefits. After graduation, he did an internship at Letterman Hospital in San Francisco. After a six month officer course at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, Ketchum was offered by Dr. David Rioch, the chief of Neuropsychiatry at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research an internship at Edgewood. Sounding attractive, Ketchum accepted and arrived at Edgewood in early 1961 right after the chemical warfare volunteer testing program began. Soon he would be running things there. The Army's quest was to search for a drug that would temporarily incapacitate someone for a condensed period of time with a assured recovery absent of residual effects. Ketchum throughout the book makes it clear that the erroneous belief that the Army had ulterior motives to develop a drug that would derange people was fictitious. The advantage of testing volunteers at Edgewood was that the facility could keep volunteers safe during the experiments and testing. Edgewood was a facility that had doctors, nurses, padded rooms and a complete medical testing operation. Although LSD and Marijuana were used (THC was synthesized into "Red Oil"), BZ was the main focus. Ketchum, with the exception of two years at Stanford, a hub of anti government, anti Vietnam protests, spent the entire decade of the 60's at Edgewood. Studying under Dr. Karl Pribram, it was hoped that Ketchum could bring back to Edgewood pharmacology and neuropsychology together to achieve insights that would help the Army Medical Corps and the whole world. At least that's the way Ketchum sold it to the Army-and they bought it. To the general public, Pribram is best known for his contribution to ongoing neurological research into memory, emotion, motivation and consciousness. Ketchum's reaction to going to Stanford: "I was not really happy about being suddenly transported from department chief to something approaching non-person hood. 

With freedom hitherto unexperienced, Ketchum went to Stanford in civilian clothes with no one to report to, completely autonomous. However, the "Summer of Love" was in full swing (1967). Stanford was not far from San Francisco, and Ketchum worked one day a week pro bono at David Smith's "Free Clinic" as a volunteer. There, Ketchum medically treated people freaking out from excessive doses or bad trips on LSD, PCP etc, usually using valium instead of thorazine (which acid heads described the effects of as "thorazine on the outside, LSD panic on the inside"). Ketchum also saw private patients in psychotherapy, seeing two clients regularly that had no knowledge he was in the Army doing chemical warfare research. Eventually, he remorsefully had to break the news that he had to go back to Edgewood to resume his work as a Lieutenant Colonel. However, this was 1969, with Government antipathy at it's highest. Ketchum returned to see the chemical warfare research program winding down. The Army was apprehensive of chemical warfare adverse publicity in the wake of post Tet Offensive anti Vietnam public sentiment. Despite claims that the agents they were working on were strictly incapacitating, Ketchum insisted public reaction was unilateral in their steadfast conviction that the Army was just trying to poison people. BZ stockpiles were eradicated. Between the military dumping Agent Orange all over S.E. Asia and CIA dosing without consent unwitting citizens with their MKULTRA CIA Mind Control program, any other military work with chemicals was equally improper. Few programs were sheltered with more secrecy than the CIA Agency's mind control experiments, identified together with the code-name MKULTRA. 

During the 1950 to 1953 Korean war, the CIA was concerned about rumors of communist brainwashing of U.S. POW's. In April of 1953 CIA Director Allen Dulles authorized the MKULTRA program, which would later become notorious for the unusual and sometimes inhumane tests that the CIA financed. Though many of the documents related to MKULTRA were destroyed by the CIA in 1972, some records relating to the program have made it into the public's awareness that the MKULTRA program was one of the most disturbing instances of intelligence community abuse on record. The most notorious MKULTRA experiments were the CIA's pioneering studies of the drug that would years later feed the heads of millions: LSD. Intrigued by the drug, the CIA harbored hopes that acid or a similar drug could be used to clandestinely disorient and manipulate target foreign leaders. (The Agency would consider several such schemes in its pursuit of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who they wanted to send into a drug-induced stupor or tirade during a public or live radio speech.) LSD was also viewed as a way to loosen tongues in CIA interrogations. Frank Olson was a U.S. Army biological warfare specialist employed at Fort Detrick in Maryland, who was at first said to have taken his own life due to depression. In the 1970's, it was later revealed that he had been given LSD without his knowledge at a joint meeting between CIA spies and US Army bio warfare experts, who cooperated on biological weapons. The LSD allegedly drove him to leap out of a hotel window ten days later. Allegations pointed to the CIA having assassinated Frank Olson over fears that he would reveal the entire U.S. biological warfare program, as well as the chemical interrogation program, to the press. 

As far as the Vietnam War was concerned, Jim Ketchum did take a stance, despite his position in the military. It was while he studied at Stanford that he developed this position, which he expressed as follows: "Despite my being a US Army lieutenant colonel, and inclined, at that time, to support whatever the government was doing, my laboratory comrades never treated me disdainfully. Although lacking some of the intensity of the Berkeley confrontations, social upheaval was becoming conspicuous at Stanford. At Edgewood, the "counterinsurgency" operations of the U.S. in Vietnam had been a relatively infrequent topic of conversation. Here, it was difficult to maintain my relatively apolitical views in the face of student demonstrations. Most of the students were in favor of the developing war or opposed to it, but the most counter-culturally inclined students mocked the entire scenario. On a day when anti-war activists decided to wear black armbands, the war supporters responded with white armbands." So, what was Ketchum's verdict on the Vietnam War? Did his Stanford exposure change him? He answers that question, and includes in his response a comment about Iraq here: "Sleeping with the enemy" at Stanford was very pleasurable. I have always considered intelligence and wit more important than political persuasion. I didn't know much about Vietnam, and it was hardly ever mentioned at Edgewood. But I figured if our government thought it was justified, it must be righteous. Only much later was I finally convinced that the war was ill-advised, reflecting an inability to relate to the values of different cultures (as well as less noble territorial ambitions). Cultural incongruence is an even more obvious part of our problems in Iraq today. We believe we are being helpful, and are bewildered when the recipients consider us intrusive and coercive." 

There are other interesting references to Vietnam worth mentioning. When Dr. Ketchum returned from Stanford to Edgewood in 1969, he noticed a change in the temperament of his colleagues. Ketchum asserted: The new physicians were a different breed. Most of them had completed residency training under the recently enacted "Berry Plan," which postponed their military obligations. Many had already established lucrative practices. Now that they had to pay the piper, they preferred a research assignment at Edgewood Arsenal to treating casualties as battalion surgeons in Vietnam. One could hardly blame them. An expanding legion of young protesters had changed national sentiment. The majority no longer supported the war as a patriotic cause." There are other references, one of where Dr. Ketchum requested a reprint of an article written by Thomas L. Perry, a professor of pharmacology at the University of British Colombia. Dr. Perry refused to send the requested material, along with the following comment: "As a physician and scientist, I am appalled at the cruel American military aggression in Vietnam, now escalating over all Indochina. To waste the enormous wealth of the U.S. in killing Asians, instead of spending it for better health, housing and nutrition for the poor of the U.S. and the rest of the world, is grossly immoral. I do not wish my research used for any purpose except for the preservation of health, and the relief of human suffering." During Ketchum's final days at Edgewood, he observed a chemist by the name of Bob Ellin develop a device that collected a subject's breathing and perspiration, and through gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy, could pick up the odors of people. Ketchum was indignant when he found out the true purpose of this device: "Apparently, the "people sniffer's" intended use was limited to the detection of hidden Viet Cong soldiers. We wished the Chemical corps agenda were not so shortsighted. If only the prevailing zeitgeist had been more positive, we could have accomplished great things." 


When the 1960's commenced, no one opposed the work at Edgewood Arsenal, but by the end of the decade, it was the exact opposite. Jim Ketchum justified his work at Edgewood with the rationale that by seeking and identifying incapacitating agents for chemical warfare use, he would save lives instead of killing people unnecessarily. As an example, he give two illustrations in his book, the October 23, 2002 Moscow theatre siege and a fictitious U.S. chemical warfare rescue operation he dubbed "Hot Night in Halifa." In the first paradigm in Moscow, a Russian theater was stormed by a gang of heavily armed Chechen militant gunmen and women, holding the audience and cast hostage. The group packed explosives into the building, and stated they would kill themselves and their captives if Russian forces did not withdraw from Chechnya. The next day, five hostages were released but rescue workers wheeled out a stretcher carrying the blanket-covered body of a woman shot and killed by the captors, showing their capability of violence if their demand was not met with. Subsequent negotiations deteriorated, and the Chechen group declared it would begin killing hostages before dawn the next day. On October 26 the captors killed two hostages and wound two others. Russian officials make a final attempt at talks with the terrorists, but the negotiations once again failed. An unknown gas was released into the building and special forces moved in. All captors were killed, 750 hostages freed and 118 hostages were reported dead. to this day, Russian military authorities refuse to reveal its composition, but Ketchum suspects it was "Sufentanil" that was used successfully as an incapacitating agent. 

James Ketchum elaborates in this book the colorful story of how Major General Creasy, being neither a doctor nor pharmacologist, sold congress his hypothesis of "War without Death" with chemical incapacitating agents. Ketchum wrote: in 1958, Major General Creasy was invited to engage this august branch of government in a lively session. Captivated and at times even amused by vivid images of a cloud of LSD that could disable well-trained troops without causing them physical harm, senators and congressmen voted unanimously to endorse Creasy's proposal to triple the Chemical corp's budget and proceed with studies of this and similar agents in army volunteers. When asked if he could incapacitate members of congress in a similar manner, Creasy cavalierly quipped that so far he had not considered this necessary!" Ketchum points out that congress made up a set of guidelines to be followed in this research. The entire protocol was followed except for one: to keep the public informed of what they were doing at all times. Ketchum points out that by failing to do this, the Army lost all credibility. Ketchum left the Army in 1971 to go into teaching and private practice, and then blissful retirement, the current status quo. Needless to say, Ketchum strongly expressed his reasons for writing this book. the most pressing was misinformation. So much erroneous information exists that the public holds to be true that Ketchum felt that this book was a way of setting the record straight. An example of these falsehoods was that the Army was in collusion with the CIA. This was totally false. Another distortion of the truth was the public's false conception about "BZ". Supposedly, as the movie "Jacob's Ladder" ridiculously portrayed to show the erroneous "super-potent-hallucinogen" effect of BZ, it was a horrible drug that would cause anyone subjected to it to permanently become insane. Ketchum sets the record straight: Such inaccurate descriptions put an unfair Dr. Strangelovian stamp on Army chemical research. Once again, BZ is not a diabolical potion, hidden in some science fiction pharmacy full of mind-bending substances. Boring as it may sound, BZ is just another deliriant. It is, however, a potent and long lasting deliriant. Half a milligram can render a soldier incapable of functioning in a simulated military environment for 2 to 4 days." 

Another reason is because of the "9/11 Disaster". The September 11, 2001 attacks were a series of coordinated suicide attacks by al-Qaeda upon the U.S. On that morning, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners. The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours, destroying nearby buildings and damaging others. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville in rural Pennsylvania after some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane, which the hijackers had redirected toward Washington, D.C. There were no survivors from any of the flights. This caused increased interest in chemical weapons, as the anthrax attacks occurred over the course of several weeks beginning on September 18, 2001, one week after the September 11 attacks. Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to several news media offices and two Democratic U.S. Senators, killing five people and infecting 17 others. The ensuing investigation became "one of the largest and most complex in the history of law enforcement." Ketchum felt that many people feared the U.S. would be a victim of future chemical weaponry. 

Jim Ketchum does make some conclusions about the future of chemical warfare. According to the author, it is not a very practical form of warfare. It is almost impossible to get concentrated lethal gas on a large area. As an example of the logical impracticality, Ketchum cites the 1995 Japanese Sarin attack. Aum Shinrikyo is a Japanese "new religious movement". The group was founded by Shoko Asahara in 1984. The group gained international notoriety in 1995, when it carried out the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. On the morning of March 20, 1995, Aum members released sarin in a coordinated attack on five trains in the Tokyo subway system, killing 12 commuters, seriously injuring 54 and affecting 980 more. Some estimates claim as many as 5,000 people were injured by the sarin. In terms of a BZ attack, an antidote, now a standard in emergency rooms for atropine poisoning, i.e. physostigmine, has been developed as a result of Ketchum's research. Jim Ketchum felt that this book was necessary. All the time consuming research he did in the 1960's was relegated to file cabinets in a back room. The Army no longer wants to talk about it. All the laboratory studies that were classified are now declassified, but no one is interested in publicizing it. In the 1960's over 7000 volunteers passed through Edgewood's doors and the public doesn't even know about it anymore. Without this book, it would be in the ashes of forgotten history. 

As a final example of this Government imposed veil of silence, Jim Ketchum participated in a study in the 1990's where he assisted a criminologist in Sacramento, California. It was noticed that in the collection of blood samples of drivers caught while driving impaired, 11% had THC in their bloodstream. The Dept. of Justice wanted to know if marijuana was decriminalized, would it compound problems? Forty volunteers were tested on a California Highway Patrol "crash course" under different conditions, e.g. alcohol alone, alcohol and marijuana simultaneously, marijuana alone, etc. Surprisingly, the conclusion was that marijuana alone was not a major problem on America's highways. If anything, it counteracted the effects of alcohol. However, not only did this study fail to get any publicity, it was never published in the open literature and Jim Ketchum's contract ended. Ketchum's conclusion, that marijuana alone is not really dangerous on drivers, is not what the government wanted to hear, so because of that it was thrown into the trash can. Ketchum felt that anything contrary to the government's fight against the drug war and doubling the amount of people in jails is against it's best interests. To Ketchum, that is an industry in itself. If marijuana was legalized, it would take the place of the big drug companies pain killers and anti depressants, therefore it's legalization would cause economic hardship untenable to the interests of America's Fortune 500. There is so much more in this book that is impossible to cover within this review. Regardless, this 360 page history lesson of the 1960's is essential reading to any understanding of Americana. Thankfully, the secrets in this book, thanks to Jim Kechum, will never be forgotten!
Subjects: Chemical warfare, Chemical weapons, Cold War, Edgewood Arsenal (Md.), History, Psychotropic drugs, Testing, US Army Edgewood Arsenal Chemical Research and Development Laboratories
Places: United States
People: James S. Ketchum
LC classification: UG447 .K46 2006