What we know about marijuana

Since it has been shown that Canada has the world’s highest rate of cannabis use, the reefer madness has expanded to epidemic proportions.  First we had Barbara Kay and her illogical anti-cannabis ravings in the National Post, now we get Margret Kopala writing in The Ottawa Citizen:

What we know about marijuana
Leading the recent National Post debate on cannabis, columnist Barbara Kay can’t have anticipated Vancouver’s safe injection site, rather than legalized cannabis, would be the Trojan Horse for the legalization of all addictive drugs.

This week, the right of addicts to continue use of illicit drugs was upheld by the B.C. Supreme Court even though no treatment of which I am aware uses the substance that caused the problem to cure it. Smokers use nicotine gum, not more cigarettes, to kick the habit, don’t steal to feed their habit and if heroine [sic] and cocaine are so helpful, why aren’t doctors prescribing them in pill form?

(I agree the heroines are very helpful.  Like Wonder Woman.  I don’t know how you out a heroine into a pill form, though.  I think she’d be quite upset.)

First of all, doctors are prescribing cocaine every time you get that numbing shot in your gums at the dentist, and other opium derivatives, like morphine, are routinely prescribed.

Second, addicts wouldn’t steal to feed their habit if they could buy their drug or a patch-type alternative cheaply and legally, like cigarette smokers can.

And finally, there is a very common medical treatment that uses the dangerous substance to cure or prevent the damages from that substance; they are called vaccines.  A disabled version of a virus is injected into the bloodstream to promote the growth of natural antibodies.

According to The Independent, research in the United Kingdom of an estimated 500,000 cannabis addicts shows some 26,000 sought treatment in 2006.

And how many of those were sentenced to such treatment?  You can’t very well claim that people are so traumatized by marijuana’s effects that they seek treatment in large numbers, when actually they are just caught with marijuana and forced to seek treatment under the law.  It’s the logical equivalent of declaring every attendee at Oktoberfest to be alcoholics in need of treatment.

If brain function is affected by CBD and THC, “Hash Realities” considers how causality is further suggested by the fact psychotic symptoms worsen with continued use and how while family history is a factor, so are the associated genes, and a quarter of the population has them. And while cannabis is addictive and its use commonly precedes the use of hard drugs, the “gateway” theory, formerly discredited, is now being scientifically verified.

The drug warriors must have the “gateway theory” in play; it is the only sure way they have to scare people about cannabis.  Enough people have tried or know someone who has tried marijuana that most of the scare tactics ring hollow.

Most problematic? Four per cent of the global population uses cannabis; world production has doubled since the early 1990s and THC concentrations have escalated. The number of children using the drug is rising. By 2010, one study predicts, “a substantial increase in the incidence of schizophrenia should be apparent.”

Because somehow the cannabis has evolved into some new, psychotic-causing agent that it wasn’t before 1990.  For some reason, thousands of years worth of cannabis smokers, including the heavily indulgent Rastafarian and Coptic Christian communities, as well as super-tokin’ late Sixties Summer of Love generation, never showed any “substantial increase in… schizophrenia”, but this pot, this pot is going to drive us all mad by 2010.

And of course, by 2010 when that hasn’t happened, they will have cooked up another reefer madness scare story.