Dr. Trebach

These are the quotations from the Shafer Commission that I told you about. An article in your conference book Drug Prohibition the Conscience of Nations, "Ignoring the Great Commission Reports," inspired me to write a history seminar paper about the Commission back in 1991.

The Thirtieth Anniversary of Shafer Commission report occurs on March 22nd of this year. Shafer Commission is the short hand name for the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse. In order to get an omnibus drug act passed its proponents had to agree to a commission for the purpose of studying drug use. An amendment to the Public Health Service Act formed the Shafer Commission on 27 October 1970. It took its name from its chairman Republican ex-governor of Pennsylvania, Raymond Shafer. The panel had on it two congressmen, one from each party, and two senators, one from each party, as well as, nine people appointed by Richard Nixon. These included such persons as the dean of a law school, the head of a mental health hospital, and a retired Chicago police captain. They issued their report, after the most extensive and comprehensive investigation ever done by our government on the subject of marijuana use, on 22 March 1972. They recommended that pers! onal use of marijuana be decriminalized.

I believe that publicizing this important bit of history is worth time and effort because it very effectively counters one of the main tactics used by those who would continue this war. They make the charge that the reformers are just a bunch of tie dyed old hippies whose only purpose is to get stoned legally. They write off the growing success of reform as a product of the money spent by a demented billionaire with evil intent. The Shafer Commission cannot be dismissed in that way.

The Commission had on it nine people who were put there because it was thought that they would reach a different conclusion than the one that they did. They were not supposed to find that it should be decriminalized. Now, why did they do that? Could it be that they were honest men who saw the truth and reported it?

Page numbers come from the white covered paperback edition of the report, titled Signal of Misunderstanding.

[Editor's note: The full text of this report is available from DrugText]

page 3 "President Nixon has frequently expressed his personal and official commitment to providing a rational and equitable public response."

page 7 "Isolated findings and incomplete information have automatically been presented to the public, with little attempt made to place such findings in a larger perspective or to analyze their meanings."

page 23 "An accurate statement of the effects of the drug is obviously an important consideration, but it is conclusive only if the effects are extreme one way or the other."

page 29 "We ask the reader to set his preconceptions aside as we have tried to do, and discriminate with us between marihuana, the drug and marihuana, the problem."

page 36 "No valid stereotype of a marihuana user or non-user can be drawn."

page 41 "The most notable statement that can be made about the vast majority of marihuana users - experimenters and intermittent users - is that they are essentially indistinguishable from their non-marihuana using peers by any fundamental criterion other than their marihuana use."

page 42 "Young people who choose to experiment with marihuana are fundamentally the same people, socially and psychologically, as those who use alcohol and tobacco."

page 44 "The most common explanation for discontinuing use is loss of interest."

page 61 "No significant physical, biochemical, or mental abnormalities could be attributed solely to their marihuana smoking."

page 67 "That some of these original fears were unfounded and that others were exaggerated has been clear for many years. Yet, many of these early beliefs continue to affect contemporary public attitudes and concerns."

page 73 "In sum, the weight of the evidence is that marihuana does not cause violent or aggressive behavior; if anything marihuana serves to inhibit the expression of such behavior."

page 75 "In short marihuana is not generally viewed by participants in the criminal justice community as a major contributing influence in the commission of delinquent or criminal acts."

page 77 "Some users commit crimes more frequently than non-users not because they use marihuana but because they happen to be the kinds of people who would be expected to have a higher crime rate."

page 78 "Neither the marihuana user nor the drug itself can be said to constitute a danger to public safety."

page 79 "The few driving simulator tests completed to date have generally revealed no significant correlation between marihuana use and driving disabilities."

page 79 "Recent research has not yet proven that marihuana use significantly impairs driving ability or performance."

page 84 "No reliable evidence exists indicating that marihuana causes genetic defects in man."

page 88 "No verification is found of a causal relationship between marihuana use and subsequent heroin use."

page 92 "Concerns about marihuana use expressed in the 1930s related primarily to a perceived inconsistency between the lifestyles and values of these individuals and the social and moral order."

page 93 "Concerns posed by an alternate youthful lifestyle are extended to the drug itself."

page 96 "Most users, young and old, demonstrate an average or above-average degree of social functioning, academic achievement, and job performance."

page 102 "It is unlikely that marihuana will affect the future strength, stability, or vitality of our social and political institutions."

page 112 "The salient feature of the present law has become the threat of arrest for indiscretion."

page 130 "Marihuana's relative potential for harm to the vast majority of individual users and its actual impact on society does not justify a social policy designed to seek out and firmly punish those who use it."

page 130 "We suspect that the moral contempt in which some of our citizens hold the marihuana user is related to other behavior or other attitudes assumed to be associated with the drug."

page 151 "In general, we recommend only a decriminalization of possession of marihuana for personal use on both the state and federal levels."

page 167 "Recognizing the extensive degree of misinformation about marihuana as a drug we have tried to demythologize it. Viewing the use of marihuana in its wider social context, we have tried to desymbolize it."

page 167 "We would de-emphasize marihuana as a problem."

Keith Halderman