Microgram

Open Secrets, by Michael Erard in Reason

For 36 years the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) quietly published a quirky monthly newsletter called Microgram for a small audience of forensic chemists. It was "law enforcement restricted," which meant you could obtain it only if you were a law enforcement official, a government investigator, or a forensic scientist. As far as the public was concerned, it was a secret. In January 2003 DEA officials started to make Microgram publicly available via the Web (at www.usdoj.gov/dea/programs/forensicsci/microgram/bulletins_index.html), where it joined a vast sea of information about illicit drugs: how to get them, how to use them, why to avoid them, why laws controlling them should be either tightened or reformed.

Microgram’s release was mostly unnoticed, and its reception has been subdued -- so subdued that even the chemical underground, where people in years past might have found in the newsletter a wealth of knowledge about how to synthesize and distribute psychoactive substances, has hardly noticed it. Yet the seeming nonevent is worthy of attention because it reflects the government’s recognition that their strategy to control drug use by controlling drug information has failed.

As in pre-Internet days, drug users continue to share their experiences with each other, but when these discussions take place online they’re available immediately to a wide audience that can respond quickly. On February 26, 2004, at pillreports.com, nine people from around the U.S. and Canada had posted reports on seven varieties of Ecstasy pills, describing them (sometimes with photos), rating them, and discussing their effects.

A poster known as OICU812 had this to say concerning a small, round, pink pill stamped with an envelope logo: "very strong pill i cant really give an accurate report to how strong one is cause i did 5 over the night. but man it was so intence and such a rush for at least 12 hours then the next few days were wacked out 4 sho. all in all they were bad to the bone to say the least." Another poster, Ongie975, complained about a pill stamped with a blue dolphin: "Definitely got ripped off and not too happy about it." Responded Smiley Xer: "Probably more speed than anything else. Bunk dolphins are going around. Be careful! ~peace." Doctorj added, "Dolphins do have an interesting rep. I stay away from them. Peace."

Bluelight’s John Robinson says this sort of exchange illustrates the evolution within the drug culture of knowledge that ultimately helps to keep people safe. "We have always tried to walk the line between the oral culture and the world of academic science," he says. "The Internet allows us to have an open, anonymous environment where people are able to speak freely and share their experiences, but it also means that we can make the effort to support what is said with references."

Other similarly interactive sites serve as the memory of the drug culture. The largest, most extensive of these is Erowid, which covers a huge range of substances, from marijuana to absinthe to morning glory seeds to obscure research drugs such as 5-Meo-AMT. Founded in 1995, Erowid boasts more than 28,000 visitors a day and some 20,000 documents related to psychoactive substances, including plants, illicit synthetics, pharmaceuticals, and "smart drugs." The information includes basic facts, legal status, chemical makeup, trip reports, spiritual associations, and references to scientific articles (including some from Microgram).

Microgram’s Bob Klein complains that "many things that would have been better left buried in obscurity -- like smoking bufo toad skins, sniffing concentrated cow pie fumes, allowing yourself to be stung by scorpions, smoking jimson weed or salvia divinorum, drinking cough syrups, mixing up concoctions of any of dozens of different kinds of drugs and pharmaceuticals, drinking ayahuasca tea, etc., etc., etc. -- have been brought to light by the Internet, and are therefore practiced." But contrary to what the anti-drug crowd warns, many of the posts on these sites hardly glamorize drug use. One writer to Erowid, for instance, describes a 5-Meo-AMT trip as "the worst decision I have ever made." After hours of paranoia, nausea, headache, and pounding heartbeat, he ended up examining his life and deciding "that the current lifestyle of subtance abuse must end. I have truly been scared sober....I am writing this urging people to stay away from this chemical. It is very similar to LSD at the beginning but toward the end all hell broke loose."

Some of the messages at Bluelight read like a Consumer Reports of illicit substances. Wrote Mihgzer on March 3, 2004: "There are some puple gel tabs in america, they taste funny, some people liked them, some people got sick and said they thought it was 5meoamt." But most postings do contain genuine warnings. Mystryman warned people about the appearance of purple pills containing Para-methoxy-amphetamine, or PMA, in Maryland and Pennsylvania. "Not much to say but, these chemicals can make you die low doses. PERIOD!!!!" Rejoined .dR spgeddi, "australian bluelighters are all too familiar with the dangers associated with this drug. one entry in the shrine is dedicated to a beautiful person who passed foolishly experiamenting with pma."

Many of the drug sites appear to be offered in the spirit of harm reduction. Says the welcoming message at shroomery.org: "This site was created to help stop the spread of dangerous misinformation related to magic mushrooms, so that people can make intelligent and informed decisions about what they put in their bodies." The Ecstasy reduction site dancesafe.org includes this disclaimer at the bottom of its home-page: "This website provides health and safety information only. We neither condemn nor condone the use of any drug. Rather, we recognize that recreational drug use is a permanent part of our society, and that there will always be people who use drugs, despite prohibition. The drug information we provide, therefore, is meant to assist users in making informed decisions about their use."

By comparison to the old chemical underground, the connections offered by the online version are vast. Shroomery.org alone provides 25 links to sites in Scotland, England, France, Brazil, Russia, and elsewhere on the use of psychedelic mushrooms. It also contains links to 38 marijuana sites, six Ecstasy sites, and 14 sites dealing with miscellaneous drugs such as the cough suppressant dextromethorphan.

The 2001 report from the National Drug Intelligence Center counted 52 Web sites providing information on the production, sale, or use of Ecstasy, GHB, or LSD. An update (which the NDIC promises but has not yet done) would undoubtedly turn up more. The pro-marijuana site yahooka.com boasts 5,947 links to sites that, among other things, promote drug policy reform, discuss cannabis culture, offer marijuana-related goods and services, and provide growing information. There are links to 1,203 sites in languages other than English, including one in Arabic and one in Latvian.

This plethora of information has altered the drug war in numerous ways, some of them predictable. Web sites that sold pipes and bongs were easy targets for Operation Pipe Dreams, the Department of Justice’s 2003 crackdown on drug paraphernalia merchants, which netted 55 suspects and led to at least 56 indictments (including one that sent actor Tommy Chong to jail for nine months). For those trying to avoid that sort of trouble, the Internet has been a source of advice on how to escape attention and deal with authorities. The experts at Erowid, for instance, answer questions about what substances show up on drug tests, including techniques for beating the tests, as do the message boards at urineluck.com, owned by Spectrum Labs, a Cincinnati-based company that makes detoxification products to beat drug tests.

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Microgram remains so obscure that few drug-oriented sites have linked to it since it went online. It receives only 7,500 or so hits a week, mostly from law enforcement. Klein says he expected a deluge of requests for back issues, but it hasn’t occurred; he suspects that some of the fringe pro-drug groups haven’t figured out that Microgram is now available on the Web. (His theory why: "Because they’re doing too much dope.")

"I think the impact of liberating Microgram will be zero," says Richard Glen Boire, general counsel at the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, a Davis, California-based nonprofit that has mirrored Microgram on its Web site. (He heard that the DEA and FBI were collecting the IP addresses of browsers who came to the site, and he didn’t think people accessing public information should be surveilled.) Last year Boire unsuccessfully sought the release of back issues of Microgram under the Freedom of Information Act -- for older issues the restriction still holds -- but despite that, he says, the now-public newsletter is mainly "a useful P.R. publication for the DEA, for getting increased funding and media attention."

Yet some observers of the U.S. government’s information policy are buoyed by the DEA’s decision, because open publication of Microgram engages a larger pool of scientists and others in forensic science, and it opens up channels of communication -- for example, between the medical community and law enforcement. "I think DEA made the straightforward calculation that in this case the benefits of openness far outweigh the risks," says Steven Aftergood, editor of Secrecy News, a publication that tracks U.S. secrecy laws for the Federation of American Scientists. "The release of Microgram is a rare flash of rationality in government information policy."

John Robinson of Bluelight also praises the release. "We’ve long applauded Microgram’s decision for full disclosure," he says, "and do think it is a positive sign." If nothing else, the DEA’s new openness suggests that drug warriors are starting to see the futility of promoting abstinence through ignorance.



Michael Erard is a writer in Austin, Texas.