IS CANNABIS A DRUG? - A DISCUSSION

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WHETHER OR NOT CANNABIS IS A DRUG POSSESSION, CULTIVATION AND SUPPLY OUGHT TO BE LEGAL.

When we talk about cannabis we are not talking about what is not cannabis

Spain: 'Cannabis is not a drug': Spain's anti-drug czar:30 Sept 2013

Under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, the cannabis plant and its derivatives which contain THC are classified as a Class B Drug and prohibited. Some parts of the plant, such as seeds, roots and stalks, do not fall within the Act. On the question of leaves, forensic scientists look for the presence of THC and other active cannabinoids, and if found, the substance falls within the Act. Some argue that cannabis is a drug in any case, as it can be used as a constituent in a medicine. Others argue that parts of the cannabis plant cannot correctly, semantically be called a drug at all, especially as it is neither physically addictive nor toxic in any conceivably consumable amount. The correct meaning of the word 'drug' as applied to cannabis continues to be debated; nevertheless, in British law, cannabis is a drug.

Safety
Cannabis has been described as one of the safest therapeutic substances known to man, and safer than most common vegetables - DEA Judge Young, 1988. Others describe cannabis as "remarkably safe, but not completely harmless" - Prof. Lester Grinspoon MD1997). Some even claim that cannabis is completely harmless and beneficial to man. Yet other scientists have inferred health risks involved the smoking of cannabis, mostly based upon the results of experimentation with THC extracts and synthetic THC carried out on mice, rats and monkeys. It is generally accepted that cannabis is safer than alcohol and tobacco. The question of the risk element attached to the use of cannabis will continue to be a matter for the experts, but irrespective of the answer there exists no just reason to punish cannabis users or those who grow it.

Campaigners, scientists and doctors cannot agree. Cannabis has been used for centuries, both medicinally and for the high, as well as for rope etc, long before the days of drugs and synthetics. Much of the discussion is based on dictionary definitions which change with time. Tell a Rastafarian that his sacrament is a drug and you will be in trouble! Look at a bale of hemp fibre, hemp seed oil soap, paper, cloth or seed-cake - they are all pure cannabis - and then tell me it is a drug.

CANNABIS IS NOT A DRUG.

Drugs are associated with addiction, habit and problems. Cannabis is associated with none of these. "Cannabis is not dope, it's everything from rope to hope!"

The following article is an extract from The Report of the FCDA Europe

Although on average approximately 75 people per annum in the U.S. are revealed by post mortem (autopsy) examination to have cannabis in their system at the time of their death, their deaths were induced by causes not associated with cannabis. In all the long history of its use of which the record dates back approximately 5,000 years, cannabis has never been cause to a single fatality. Medical records and study of worldwide pertinent writings over the millennia show that at no time has any person died from the ingestion of any amount of cannabis, ever.

Cannabis is a NON-TOXIC substance. One hundred per cent of the scores of studies by American universities and research facilities show that toxicity does not exist in cannabis. (U.C.L.A, Harvard, Temple, etc.)

All the in-depth medico-scientific clinical studies conducted (for example, US-Jamaican, US-Costa Rican, LaGuardia, etc) have revealed that cannabis contains no addictive properties in any part of the plant or its smoke, so, unlike and in contrast to tobacco, alcohol, and all the legal or illegal 'recreational' substances cannabis is both non-habit-forming and non-toxic. Therefore cannabis is uniquely safe. In this Report, let it be unequivocal and clearly understood that the use of "safe" in the context of cannabis use, by definition means,: "free of danger, risk or injury".

Cannabis Is Not A Drug: Accurate Language.

From all the medico-scientific aspects, harmless cannabis is not only wrongly defined as a "drug" in any meaningful (semantic) definition of the word but also, by definition and empirical reality, wrongly proscribed as a "drug" (or other substance) under legislation regulations.

Although dictionaries vary slightly in their definitions of "drug", virtually all refer to, and rely for definition on, a drug's habit-forming, addictive properties. Webster's New World Dictionary, for example, defines "drug" as: "a narcotic, hallucinogen, especially one that is habit-forming." As is confirmed by the aforementioned medico-scientific research, cannabis contains no habit-forming properties in the plant itself or its smoke. Evidence from the most fundamental and widely inferred meaning, by definition based on empirical fact, cannabis is not a drug.

The word 'drug' derives from Old Dutch meaning dried herbs, as used in food, for healing and in the dyeing of textiles. There was no connotation of addiction. (viz: the Wealth of Nations, 1776, Adam Smith; Book One, Chapter One). In the twentieth Century, that meaning has been transformed by the specious pseudo-philosophy of Prohibition.

The invalidity of linking cannabis with "drugs" is further confirmed by the U.S. government's Bureau of Mortality Statistics. The table, below, demonstrates in the most obvious manner that cannabis by any meaningful definition, traditional or modern, is not a drug and cannabis cannot (correctly) be categorised or referred to as a drug.