MPR wasn't even going to write up the comments on a story that broke Saturday, despite it being well within MPR's range of specialties (read: personal obsession). However, the mainstream media won't prevent a fairly trivial news bite from growing to monster proportions of paranoia-inducing size.

The hubbub is all about a new report from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy entitled "Teen Marijuana Use Worsens Depression: An Analysis of Recent Data Shows 'Self-Medicating' Could Actually Make Things Worse"

Some of the statistics in the report included:

"two million teens felt depressed at some point during the past year, and depressed teens are more than twice as likely as non-depressed teens to have used marijuana during that same period";

"Depressed teens are also almost twice as likely to have used illicit drugs as non-depressed teens";

Depressed teens "are also more than twice as likely as their peers to abuse or become dependent on marijuana";

"Marijuana use is associated with depression, suicidal thoughts, and suicide attempts";

Teenaged marijuana smokers "are three times more likely to have suicidal thoughts than non-users";

"The percentage of depressed teens is equal to the percentage of depressed adults, but depressed teens are more likely than depressed adults to use marijuana and other illicit drugs";

"Teen girls who use marijuana daily are more likely to develop depression than girls who do not use marijuana"; and

"Depressed teens are also more likely than non-depressed teens to engage in other risky behaviors such as daily cigarette use and heavy alcohol use."

(Um, isn't that last one a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing...?)

National Drug Control Policy director John P. Walters naturally took the occasion of the announcement to kick in the usual stuff about "Parents must not dismiss teen moodiness as a passing phase. Look closely at your teen's behavior et cetera et cetera blah blah." Walters also stated that "Marijuana is not the answer," to which MPR would respond that surely this depends the question, eh?

Luckily, some calmer, more reasoned voices are speaking (or writing) as well; you just have to claw through the cacophonous clamor to get to them. After the CNNs and FOX News.coms of the world have driven you into a right state of reeferphobia, please check out the nicely thoroughly "New Federal Report on Marijuana Use is Misleading, Groups Say" from Salem-News.com. The comparatively radical intro by the news service's Will King goes:

A new federal government report on the ill effects of marijuana on teens may be a last ditch effort to demonize the medical weed before it sees its own day of emancipation. As it stands, even the most hardcore marijuana legalization advocates do not support children using anything that causes intoxication.

King goes on to check in with Marijuana Policy Project director of communications Bruce Mirken on the fallacies of the report, including the oft-repeated contention that marijuana in America is stronger than it was 40 years ago. A sample:

Mirken ... questions the lack of warning about alcohol's relationship to depression, which is completely left out of their new report.

"Data linking alcohol to depression is much stronger and alcohol use by teens is greater than marijuana use," he notes.

Mirken also stated that "This very week the British government's official scientific advisors on illegal drugs issued a report saying they are 'unconvinced that there is a causal relationship between the use of cannabis and any affective disorder,' such as depression."

The British report Mirken refers to was handed over to prime minister Gordon Brown by a group comprised of doctors, law enforcement officers, judges and drug counselors in late April. That group stated that "cannabis should still be regarded as a soft drug"; Brown responded by declaring essentially that "there is no scientific basis for a change."

Reportedly, turnover is now expected at the UK's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and "Going against the ACMD's decision could spark a massive row and trigger resignations from the committee, which plays a crucial role in setting Britain's drug policy."

Total bummer.