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[Carrie McLaren <carrie AT stayfreemagazine.org>]

"Monkey study finds cannabis addictive"
The Guardian; Manchester (UK); Oct 16, 2000;
Tim Radford Science Editor;

Squirrel monkeys have become addicted to marijuana in laboratory tests,
according to research published today in a science magazine...

"These findings suggest that marijuana has as much potential for abuse as
drugs such as cocaine," Steven Goldberg, from the US National Institute on
Drug Abuse, reports in Nature Neuroscience.

Professor Goldberg and two colleagues at the institute in Maryland, trained
the monkeys to press a lever 10 times to inject themselves with cocaine.
When a salt solution was substituted, the monkeys gradually stopped
pressing the lever.

When the researchers replaced the salt solution with a solution of
delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the chemical in marijuana which alters
mood, the monkeys returned to the lever.

The monkeys gave themselves about 30 injections during a one-hour session.
Prof Goldberg's team calculated that the amount of drug absorbed by the
monkeys in an hour was - weight for weight - about the same as that
absorbed by a human adult smoking a marijuana cigarette.

Prof Goldberg said that self administration was evidence of addiction, a
theory that had been tested repeatedly since the 1950s. "It has been used
with any new drug, to see whether or not it has abuse potential. You check
it in animals before you go on to humans. Those procedures were validated
by checking virtually all psychoactive drugs. There are virtually no
exceptions. Drugs that people abuse, animals intravenously self administer."

But until now, the exceptions have been hallucinogens used in anti-
psychotic treatments - and marijuana. There has been tentative evidence in
the past that marijuana is addictive, but campaigners have been able to
dismiss it as inconclusive.

 [...]

###

Letter: Monkey business
The Guardian; Manchester (UK);
Oct 17, 2000; Paul Bigland;

The results strike me as extremely poor science. All the tests seem to show
is that monkeys enjoy getting stoned. Nothing is mentioned of the monkeys'
behaviour when the supply of cannabis is withdrawn - but as this research
was funded by the US government this is hardly surprising.

Paul Bigland
London
paulbigland AT hotmail.com