Flying Facts

To the Editors of The Crimson:

The Unidentified Flying Idea is pleased that your reporter enjoyed our symposium on Marijuana and Health. However, in your artiste [March 21],you made several omission and factual errors.

First, you seen unsportsmanlike and stingy in your appraisal of credentials Dr Mikuriya who spoke about "Cannabis and the politics of Health Care is eminently qualified speak on this subject. He has served as director of cannabis research for the National Institute of Mental Health, and as a consultant to the treatment center at the New Jersey: Neuropsychratric Institute His anthology of key paper in the field of Western cannabis research--Marijuana Medical Papers (1839-1972 is an invaluable resource lot scholars and will undoubtedly remains so of many years.

David Solomon's incarceration is a political orisoner is not his only credential: he is an internationally known author and editor of two out standing anthologies on psychoactive substances--The Marijuana Papers and LSD The Consciousness-Expanding DrugAs your reporter should have witnessed, he is a vigorous and outspoken defender of personal responsibility and freedom from tyranny, as well as of that precious freedom of the press which you have exploited with your sloppy reportage.

H.L. Humes is not a free-lance author but a novelist and independent researcher. Attention to detail is of course the foundation of accurate journalism. But these omissions are relatively trivial compared to your distortion of the argument that was advanced. We hope your readers understand that Humes argued that mass anxiety-neurosis affect governments, and that weapons fetishism, sometimes a symptom in the individual anxiety-neurotic is affecting the behavior of the super-powers. We consider accurate understanding of this point to be of such importance that we have published two short pamphlets on the subject. Indeed we consider the subject urgent due to the current oscillatory excalation in preparations for war. Perhaps your reporter did not avail himself of this opportunity for clarification because he feels the arguments is trivial. There is an unfortunate tendency throughout the American mass media irresponsibly to trivialize urgent matters and to dwell on the trivial. Let me assure you that the question of the nature of mass social pathology, and the role of diagnosis in combatting it, have been of great concern to psychiatrists and others since before Sigmund Freud was kept under close house arrest by the Nazis.

Your paragraph on the arson question requires some clarification and correction. Anxiety-neurosis is characterized by both phobias and fetishes and sometimes by an oscillation between depression and mania: The so-called "danger junkie" syndrome (often associated with combatneurosis) is a classic instance of the relief of chronic depression through repeated self-stimulation of an adrenalin "rush. "Pyromania is a special case of this adrenalin autoaddiction. Until the discovery that amphetamine is addictive there remained some question about adrenalin, but it now appears that anything that can give temporary (symptomatic) relief can be addictive. The relief cannabis provides from anxiety and neuromuscular tension is cumulative--not temporary and symptomatic, hence its use as a relaxant and tonic herb and as a detoxicant.

The staff of the Unidentified Flying Idea Adam S. Cohen '84, Associate Managing Editor   L. Joseph Garcia '84, Associate Managing Editor   Timothy W. Plass '85, Photography Chairman   Alexander S. Rhinelander '85, Photography Chairman   Michael D. Knobler '85, Sports Editor   James W. Silver '84, Associate Sports Editor   Sarah Paul '84, Associate Editorial Chairman   Errol T. Louis '84, Magazine Editor   Thomas J. Mayer '84, Assistant Magazine Editor   Lavea Brachman '84, Assistant Features Editor   David L. Parker '85, Associate Business Manager   Jonathan M. Weintrauo '85, Advertising Manager   Mathew A. Ross '85, General Manager   Thomas L. Roach '84, Special Publications Manager   Joan I. Cha '85, Production Manager   Anthony R. Miner '85, Assistant Production Manager.