Dr. Gabriel G. Nahais, a controversial medical researcher who became leader of the crusaders against marijuana after being surprised to hear, at a meeting of the PTA in 1969, in the diffusion of the drug, died June 28 in Manhattan. He was 92 years.
The cause was a respiratory infection, his family said.
Dr. Nahaix conducted an investigation to find the physiological effects of smoking marijuana, has written 10 books on drugs and became one of the leaders of drug organizations. It was seen as an ally of Nancy Reagan in her "say no" to drugs campaign, as the first lady in 1980.
Dr. Naharro has seen his campaign against drugs nothing less than a continuation of the struggle against totalitarianism, which began during World War II as a French resistance leader decoration, such as totalitarianism, he argues, drugs of slave mind.
It was awarded the French Legion of Honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the United States and the Order of the British Empire for his wartime heroism.
His research, which he did as a professor at Columbia University and reported in more than 700 articles in scientific journals, has suggested that marijuana has contributed to the head and neck cancers, leukemia, sterility, brain damage and a weakened immune system.
He has also written two books about cocaine, which he said could cause irreversible damage to the brain.
Dr. Nahaix was known both for his defense than his science. He was president of the Scientific Advisory Board of the National Federation of Parents for Drug Free Youth, and the National Association of Family.
He was consultant to the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs of 1980 and '90. In 1985, he appeared in an event against drugs with Mrs. Reagan and the actor William Shatner, who was in costume as his most famous character, Captain Kirk of "Star Trek." Dr. Nahaix often testified in hearings of the Government.
His critics within the scientific community, sometimes attacked their methodology, questioned the large judgments are often made based on the sample size. Organizations that promote the decriminalization or legalization of marijuana is presented as a villain.
The New England Journal of Medicine, once described his work as "psychopharmacological mccarthysme which forces to use half-truths, innuendo and statements not verifiable."
However, Robert L. DuPont, the drug czar in the Nixon and Ford administrations, Dr. Nahaix called "the Paul Revere of the drug," saying. "He just lit the beacon warning of the ongoing threat of epidemic abuse drugs "
Georges Nahaix Gabriel was born in Alexandria, Egypt, March 4, 1920, the son of a Lebanese father and French mother. When I was little, she asked her family about people passing on the street who seemed drunk or lethargic and said they were addicted to hashish.
He was a medical student at the University of Toulouse during the Second World War when the Germans occupied France has found anti-Nazi leaflets in his room.
It was brutally beaten and imprisoned, but refused to speak. He joined the Resistance against the Nazis and helped transport some 200 Allied airmen shot down by security.
After the war, he traveled to the United States by the broader scientific education and graduated from the University of Rochester in New York and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. He completed a doctorate in physiology from the University of Minnesota cardiopulmonary.
Conservatism Dr. Nahaix extended beyond narcotics. In 1970 marshaled his public persona has recently signed with ads in newspapers that criticize opponents of the Vietnam War.
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