Certainly, if this represented the prevailing scientific view, and especially if cannabis were thought to be more dangerous than alcohol and tobacco, it would undermine any argument for relaxation of the law. But theirs is an idiosyncratic interpretation of the scientific and medical evidence.

Of course, all drugs are harmful if taken in excess — even aspirin kills many elderly people every year because of its tendency to cause gastric bleeds. But in judging the risks of cannabis, we need to keep a sense of proportion and listen to the consensus reached by several recent exhaustive reviews of this topic from medical and scientific experts on both sides of the Atlantic. These include the British Medical Association, the Police Foundation, the US Institute of Medicine, and the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee.

Although it cannot be assumed that cannabis use is entirely harmless, many of the points stated as established facts do not seem persuasive. In our opinion, the views of Lady Greenfield and Dr Stuttaford do not reflect the current balance of scientific and medical opinion, and it is questionable whether they would have passed the rigorous process of peer review and editorial control that regulate professional communications between scientists.

It is claimed that cannabis smoke is more harmful to the lungs than tobacco smoke because it contains much the same mixture of noxious substances, and because cannabis users inhale more deeply and deposit more tar in their lungs. On the other hand, cannabis users do not smoke 20 to 40 times a day, as many cigarette smokers do. There may be a health risk, and it is compounded by the combination of cannabis with tobacco, but there is currently no indisputable evidence for a link with cancer. The reports of cancers of the throat, mouth and larynx in cannabis users were based on small numbers and did not rule out effects of the concomitant use of tobacco. A much larger study in the United States monitored the health of a group of 65,000 men and women over a ten-year period. The 27,000 who admitted to having used cannabis showed no association between cannabis use and cancers, nor were there any other serious adverse effects on health.

It is implied that cannabis is inherently more harmful than alcohol. This contradicts received opinion. Unlike cannabis, alcohol in overdose can kill. Chronic alcohol abuse has well-documented health risks, including liver disease and severe brain damage leading to a form of dementia. Use by pregnant women also carries the risk of damage to the foetus, leading to severe mental impairments. There is no firm evidence that cannabis use carries any of these serious health risks.

Several expert groups that have compared the risks of alcohol and cannabis have concluded that cannabis is less dangerous. As the Police Foundation’s report last year stated: “When cannabis is systematically compared with other drugs against the main criteria of harm (mortality, morbidity, toxicity, addictiveness and relationship with crime), it is less harmful to the individual and society than any of the other major illicit drugs or than alcohol and tobacco”.

Cannabis produces a variety of well-documented short-term effects on perception, memory, thought and coordination, which might be expected to compromise driving skills. Lady Greenfield suggests that it does so for more than 24 hours after smoking, but the evidence for this is far from clear-cut. There are many serious studies that show little or no effect on driving even during acute intoxication. The association of cannabis with traffic accidents and deaths is hard to interpret, as most of these also involve alcohol. And, just as for alcohol and mobile telephones, evidence for an effect on driving would not argue for an outright ban.

Lady Greenfield asserts that even tiny doses of cannabis cause brain damage. In correspondence with us she has cited recent research on nerve cells maintained in test-tube conditions, but the lowest concentration of the drug that caused any effect was still many times higher than that likely to be found in blood after cannabis use.

It is generally accepted that observations in living animals and people carry greater weight in risk assessment than experiments on isolated cells. A wealth of such data has failed to show evidence of organic brain damage either in chronic human cannabis users or in animals treated with very high doses of cannabis extract or its active ingredient. In these studies doses up to 1,000 times higher than those needed to produce intoxication in man were given to rats or monkeys every day for 90 days, without causing serious adverse effects on the brain or other organs .

Dr Stuttaford says cannabis is so harmful that it would not pass animalbased toxicity testing. But it already has! The benign results of those tests have allowed the active ingredient of cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), to be registered as a prescription medicine in the US. The data also satisfied Britain’s Medicines Control Agency. In contrast to the title of Dr Stuttaford’s article “Cannabis Kills”, the British Medical Association, in its 1997 report, Therapeutic Uses of Cannabis, concluded that “the acute toxicity of cannabinoids is extremely low: they are very safe drugs and no deaths have been directly attributed to their recreational or therapeutic use”.

For some users, perhaps as many as 10 per cent, cannabis leads to psychological dependence, but there is scant evidence that it carries a risk of true addiction. Unlike cigarette smokers, most users do not take the drug on a daily basis, and usually abandon it in their twenties or thirties.

Unlike for nicotine, alcohol and hard drugs, there is no clearly defined “withdrawal syndrome” — the hallmark of true addiction — when use is stopped. And while some heavy users of cannabis become demotivated and unfit for intellectually demanding work, several studies of regular users have shown remarkably little impairment in academic grades or work output.

The claim that cannabis use can lead to psychosis is a longstanding one. There was a lively debate in the British Medical Journal in 1893, for example, as to whether the endemic use of hashish in Egypt led to mania and insanity. There was also concern that the mental asylums in British-controlled India were filling with cannabis-induced lunatics. In 1894, the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, after questioning more than 1,100 witnesses, concluded that there was no such causal link; this has been the position reached by most subsequent studies. It is accepted that cannabis can exacerbate existing mental illness and may itself cause a temporary toxic psychosis if taken in overdose. But there is no evidence that the actual incidence of the true psychoses — schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression — has risen over the past 50 years, while the number of users has risen from virtually zero to more than half the young population.

Dr Stuttaford claims that cannabis damages the heart and cardiovascular system, and may impair sexual development and function. Even small doses of cannabis do have effects on the heart and circulation, but regular users tend to become tolerant of these effects, and it is not generally accepted that cannabis use leads to increased incidence of cardiovascular illness. The suggestion that cannabis may adversely affect reproductive function is based largely on animal experiments that used very high doses. There is no evidence that cannabis use adversely affects human fertility.

Finally, the portrayal of the Dutch experiment in decriminalising cannabis as a disaster is at odds with much careful analysis performed by Dutch and other experts. It is true that heroin use has risen in The Netherlands since cannabis decriminalisation, but it has risen more here. Significantly, the use of hard drugs has declined in recent years in The Netherlands, while it is still rising in the UK and most other Western countries. The Netherlands has fewer drug-related deaths than any other European country and cannabis consumption is somewhat lower there than here. Significantly, it is substantially lower among schoolchildren — the very group that everyone most seeks to protect.

More than half of Britain’s young people have used cannabis. We think that it is wrong to wish on them a criminal record that could blight their lives, and we hope that the cannabis debate will not be stifled by fears that it is a deadly drug.

Leslie Iversen, FRS, is Visiting Professor of Pharmacology at Oxford University and the author of The Science of Marijuana (Oxford University Press, 2000). He was a specialist adviser to the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology for its review of the medical uses of cannabis.

Colin Blakemore, FRS, is Professor of Physiology at Oxford University, Director of the Oxford Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience and president of the Physiological Society. He is a former president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

Newshawk: Ethan Russo M.D.
Source: Times, The (UK)
Author: Colin Blakemore and Leslie Iversen
Published: Monday, August 6, 2001
Copyright: 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd
Contact: letters@the-times.co.uk
Website: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/

Related Article:

Cannabis Kills - Dr Thomas Stuttaford
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread10473.shtml

Safety on a Godly level.

I would like to repeat a comparison of cannabis to alcohol I posted some months back:

Ganja [Indian hemp preparation equivalent sinsemilla], which has been used by the Indians for thousands of years, with or without moderation is not known to produce tissue degeneration as alcohol is known to produce. I defy the blind supporters of Government including the nom-de-plume corespondent of the “Independent” to come forward and state whether they have, in their practice, met with, or have heard of cases of ganja neuritis, ganja paralysis, ganja epilepsy, ganja stomatitis, ganja cirrhosis of the liver, ganja nephritits, ganja arteriosclerosis etc. We only hear of ganja insanity magnified several thousandfold by authorities whose angle of vision was wholly and inevitably swayed by prejudice and preconceived opinions.
... Man all the world over displays an instinctive liking for substances which have soothing and stimulating effect on the nervous system.
...The brain requires some rest or relaxation after strenuous functional activity. For children after school work the form or recreation to the nervous system is play. For adults the relaxation takes the shape of exercise, social gathering, and the use of drugs which have a stimulating and soothing effect on the nervous system.
...The Orientals chew [betel nuts]. The Occidentals smoke [tobacco]. The former is condemned and the latter is condoned; and the reason is the same- prejudice, that incubus which condemns Ganja smoking and condones alcohol drinking.
---
"In some cases where there is continued pain in the head lasting for a length of time, Cannabis Indica seems to help and this may be given either in the form of extract or tincture. There is no danger in it … The long continued use of this drug will sometimes relieve these headaches when other things seems to fail.” The above authoritative statement was made by Sir T. Lander Brunton, M.D., D.Sc., L.L.D., F.R.S., Physician to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and Lecturer on Pharmacology before the British Medical Association without a dissentient voice.

Pretty interesting, no? Now look at the reference and realize that it was written in 1920!:

Ratnam, E.V. 1920. Cannabis indica. Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the British Medical Association. 17:36-42.

Science rules! Propaganda stools. That's all the Feds have on their WWW sites.

If the powers to be gave every person the right to chose between alcohol and MJ this would be a much better world. I mean why should people have the right to get smashed seven days a week without consequenses and one joint gets you in jail? I think they should let people take a pledge that if are never caught with alcohol in their system they should be able to smoke pot. The world would be a much better place.

I used to phrase it that "Alcohol is a sensible alternative to alcohol." Now I say, "Marijuana is a wiser choice than alcohol." Of course Andheiser Busch doesn't want those words appearing on any TV comercial.

As far as the health effects of the smoke, what can you say? I would rather drink it myself if it were not so expensive. Sure the smoke is not going to improve your health; but,gee, if they legalized it they could make it stronger where one bong hit was all you needed. Of course they are not really concerned about your health or they would realize that they are the ones damaging peoples lungs unnecessarily.

Those two doctors that say MJ is more dangerous than alcohol don't know what they are talking about. Sounds to me that their judgement must be impaired by money. We have some incompentent leadership in this country or more politicians would speak up. We don't just have a problem with the MJ laws, we have a problem with our political leaderlessship in Warshington.

There it is. The real sand in the antis craw. The stone in
their shoe. Their wedgie.

The one thing that they so strenuously avoid mentioning,
and for execllent reason. They are simply terrified
of having to explain punitive cannabis laws. Most
especially of having to explain why a murderer can
get paroled in only 7 years, and someone like Will Foster
get life for cannabis possession. Few things
illustrate the absurdity of their entire position.

And, for the benefit of all you antis: I'm just begging
that you will be so stupid as to come back with the
jejeune answer of "It's against the law!"

Slavery in this country used to be legal.
Sanctified by the highest law of the land, the
Constitution. Untold scores of hundreds died fleeing that
detestable state of affairs. Many were literally hunted as
animals and killed for sport...all quite legal. By men who
thought themselves to be paragon's of Christianity.

By using the antis' moronic criteria, should we then
re-institute slavery? I think the Black folks would have
something to say about that...punctuated by gunshots.

Some laws on their face simply suck. Some laws suck
so bad, they are real annoyances. But what about laws that
strip you of your dignity, your goods, your home, your
career, your family...your freedom...your
life...without a single means of recourse? Such
laws are patently immoral - as are those who promote
them.