Throughout this Guide the studies to which we refer, the words "CANNABIS" and cannabis resin and marijuana) refer to the natural herbal plant material or its crude or purified resin.

We are NOT talking about cannabis mixed with tobacco or polluted with unknown and possibly dangerous substances. We accept that smoking tobacco is a dangerous activity which could harm the health of most smokers in many ways, and we accept that by mixing tobacco with cannabis for smoking one creates dangers which are not there when pure cannabis is smoked. Although we strongly advocate freedom of educated choice we would be bound to sat that whilst smoking natural cannabis is safe, as seen from the expert evidence, smoking of cannabis mixed with tobacco is probably not. Neither is the smoking of the weird concoctions often sold in the illegal market, some of which have never been anywhere near a cannabis plant.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SMOKE AND EAT!

In laying their accusations against cannabis as a cause of harm, prohibitionists often produce evidence based upon experimentation using concentrated and synthetic THC and other cannabinoids, upon the likes of mice and monkeys. Such evidence is not scientific and should be ignored.

Whilst there are similarities between mice, men and monkeys (we are all mammals) there is a big difference between the effects of a human being smoking pure cannabis and the dropping of neat THC on to the inner lining of a mouse's stomach. The latter ought to be illegal!

THC IS NOT CANNABIS

To use the results of experiments with just one of many hundreds of compounds in a plant to infer the observed properties (toxicity etc) is scientifically unsound. It would be like extracting poisonous chemicals from the human body and inferring that the body itself would also be poisonous. It ignores the counterbalances which nature often provides. Both hydrochloric acid, found in a dilute form in our digestive systems, and sodium hydroxide, are poisonous. Mixed they produce salt and water.

Results of tests with chemical THC are as relevant to cannabis safety as would be the results of testing carbon to the properties of the human body.

THE EXPERTS

When The Lancet wrote, in 1995, "The smoking of cannabis, even long term, is not harmful to health", we are convinced they meant smoking neat cannabis, not joints with tobacco, weird concoctions or cannabis mixed with anything. The same applies to DEA Judge Young who said that cannabis is safer than most foods we eat. He was not talking about mixtures.

The scientific evidence from the empirical studies (LaGuardia, US_Jamaican etc), exonerate cannabis from causing harm to human beings. They do not exonerate tobacco mixtures of kak (see the photo)

But the fact that cannabis IS often smoked with tobacco is NOT a reason to blame cannabis, and certainly not a reason to ban it!