CANNABIS AND HEALTH
Source Hull Daily Mail, UK
Pub date: Monday, February 7, 2005
Subj: Cannabis and health
Author: Carl Wagner, Legalise Cannabis
Alliance
Web: http://www.thisishull.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=136733&command=displayContent&sourceNode=136395&contentPK=11780539 Cannabis and health I
Sympathise with the anonymous writer who says his daughter took her own life at
the age of 24 after smoking cannabis for 10 years. But the
symptoms described - anxiety attacks, asthma and personality disorder - could
be linked to many substances, legal or otherwise. People
suffer mental problems for all sorts of reasons and, although several studies
looking at this have generally found little or no evidence of a causal link,
there is certainly evidence that cannabis makes the symptoms of schizophrenia
worse in some people. The
question is, how does prohibiting cannabis and criminalising its users reduce
this risk? Legalising
cannabis - bringing it within the law - would make it harder for young people
to get access to the substance. It
would allow the laws on quality, weights, etc, that already exist for alcohol
and tobacco to be applied to cannabis. It
would allow taxation on profits, would divorce supplies from hard drugs, allow
home cultivation and allow public consumption premises. It
would protect the consumer from the type of dealer who sells dubious
substances. Calling
for cannabis legalisation is not "condoning". It is accepting that
the use of cannabis, whether advisable or not, is far too widespread to pretend
any kind of prohibition can control it, and that it is a victimless act that
does not deserve punishment by law. The law
as it stands does not protect children, it endangers them. I shall
continue to call for cannabis legalisation, not because it is safe but because
it provides an infinitely improved way of reducing the harm it can occasionally
cause. Carl
Wagner, Hull.