Motor and mental performance was tested after smoking a placebo cigarette and after smoking a marihuana cigarette calibrated to deliver 5 mg. of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol. A significant decrement in all motor performance tests and in five of nine mental performance tests was observed after the marihuana cigarette. We were not able to detect any cannabinols in the blood or urine of subjects who smoked the marihuana.Several studies have been conducted in recent years on the pharmacologic, toxicologic, and psychologic effects produced by smoking marihuana cigarettes or ingesting relative pure samples of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC ).3, G, 6, 8-12, 14, 15 Previous studies from this laboratory have shown that the pursuit meter and delayed auditory feedback (DAF) can demonstrate decrements in performance produced by relatively small doses of alcohoU The present study was undertaken to evaluate the sensitivity of these testing systems to effects produced by smoking marihuana. Since we were primarily interested in objective measures of effect, the studies were conducted double blind and the only at-

Propoxyphene in its various proprietary forms is among the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States. As an analgesic which physicians find useful to bridge the gap between aspirin and the narcotics, propoxyphene has reached general application unparalleled by any other “pain-killer.” It is inevitable for any drug with such widespread usage that if it has any toxicity at all, in whatever form or circumstance, it will eventually come to the attention of forensic pathologists and toxicologists. So it has been with propoxyphene in the 1970s through a series of papers in the scientific literature [1–8] suggesting that propoxyphene was increasingly implicated in medicolegal investigations of drug-related deaths. Many groups of cases have been reported by toxicologists in particular areas such as Dallas [3], North Carolina [5], Southern California [1], and the San Francisco Bay area [6], but generally in terms of the analytical toxicology findings alone, and usually as a “snapshot” of an incidence at one point in time.

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