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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Cannabis 'may cause public health disaster'
Jeremy Laurance The Independent
Monday 11 Nov 2002 Doctors warn today that the use of cannabis, the most commonly-used illegal drug in the UK, could result in a public health disaster on the scale of that caused by tobacco because its toxic side-effects are being ignored. Evidence is growing that the drug that inspired a generation to make love, not war, in the 1960s is a trigger of psychotic delusion, lung disease and immune dysfunction. A review by the British Lung Foundation says that the cannabis available on the streets today is 15 times more powerful than the joints being touted three decades ago. Smoking three joints a day causes the same damage to the lungs as 20 cigarettes. Dame Helena Shovelton, the chief executive of the British Lung Foundation, said: "Fifty years ago smoking was thought to be a good thing. Now it is described as a public health disaster. We don't want to see the same happen with cannabis." A survey earlier this year showed 79 per cent of children thought cannabis was "safe" while only 2 per cent understood that it can be damaging to health. The impression that cannabis promised a risk-free high was increased when David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, declared his intention to downgrade the drug from Class B to Class C, reducing the penalties for possession, say campaigners. The report from the British Lung Foundation says that sophisticated cultivation has increased the potency of the plants used today with the result that long-term studies of the drug's effects made in the 1960s and 1970s may no longer be relevant. The evidence indicates that three cannabis joints cause the same damage to the lining of the lungs as 20 cigarettes. Tar from cannabis "joints" contains 50 per cent more carcinogens (cancer-causing substances) than tobacco, and a joint is smoked more deeply than a cigarette. Studies show that habitual cannabis smokers are more likely to have persistent coughs and suffer from bronchitis and wheezing episodes. Cannabis is often mixed with tobacco and the ill-effects of the two drugs together are greater than when smoked separately. Dr Mark Britton, the chairman of the British Lung Foundation, said: "These statistics will come as a surprise to many people, especially those who choose to smoke cannabis rather than tobacco in the belief it is safer for them." It has been observed for more than a century that heavy doses of the drug can induce hallucinations and it is now known that cannabis causes the brain to increase production of the chemical dopamine. In schizophrenia, the hallucinations result from an excess of dopamine, so any drug that increases release of dopamine will worsen the symptoms of schizophrenia. Robin Murray, a professor of psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, London, says regular consumers of cannabis are at higher risk of developing schizophrenia. Studies in Sweden and the Netherlands showed regular consumers of the drug were up to six times more likely to develop psychosis than those who didn't. The British Lung Foundation report says a decreased immune function may explain why there appears to be an association between cannabis use and fungal and bacterial infections in people with cancer, transplant patients and those infected with HIV.
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