UN agency recommends world stop ‘trivializing’ marijuana dangers
Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 11:37 am | By: Radical Russ
VIENNA (AFP) – A UN drugs agency warned Thursday against underestimating the dangers of cannabis.
“The international community may wish to review the issue of cannabis,” the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) wrote in its annual report.
“Over the years, cannabis has become more potent and is associated with an increasing number of emergency room admissions,” the report stated.
Ooh, a swing and a miss! Cannabis has become more potent, but increasing potency does not mean increase in danger, as marijuana smoking is a self-titrating action. If you have schwag, you smoke a lot and get high. If you have kind, you smoke a little and get high. As for emergency room admissions, this myth is taken from the DAWN statistics where they determine if someone has used cannabis prior to admittance, not whether cannabis caused the admittance. Since cannabis is the most popular illicit drug, it is naturally going to be mentioned more often in the ER.
Cannabis was often the first illicit drug taken by young people and was frequently called a “gateway drug,” in that it could lead to later use of hard drugs.
Steeerike two! In 1999, US Institute of Medicine shot down the “gateway theory” and many studies that followed found the same thing. Nowadays no serious scientist even brings it up anymore… but that doesn’t stop cannabiphobic bureaucrats from saying it anyway.
Indeed, many countries allowed the “recreational” use of cannabis, and public perceptions of the so-called “medical” uses of the drug and its recreational use “are overlapping and confusing,” it said.
Hmm, I think that’s a foul tip. There’s nothing “so-called” about the medical uses of cannabis and if its medical use is “overlapping and confusing” then why did teen marijuana use rates decline in the states that implemented medical marijuana?
It also urged governments to “stimulate” the controlled use of opiate-based painkillers to help “alleviate unnecessary suffering of millions of patients.”
“Although the access to controlled medicines, including morphine and codeine, is considered by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to be a human right, it is virtually non existent in over 150 countries,” the report said.
“The WHO estimates that at least 30 million patients and possibly as many as 86 million annually suffer from untreated moderate to severe pain.”
via The Raw Story | UN agency recommends world stop ‘trivializing’ marijuana dangers.
Yerrrr OUT! In fact, not only are you out, but your whole team is out, disqualified, and banished from the league! In the same set of recommendations where you demonize cannabis and its “so-called medical” uses you then remind us access to painkillers is a human right, millions are suffering with under-treated pain, and you recommend we “stimulate” more use of opiates? Who writes your recommendations, the Opium Poppy Growers Union?
Can’t we sue these clowns? ..publicly drag ‘em before a court and make them substantiate their ludicrous claims??
“The World Health Organization’s investigation into the gateway effect of marijuana stated emphatically that the theory that marijuana use by adolescents leads to heroin use is the least likely of all hypotheses”.