TRUTH GOES TO POT

Claims that pot smoked in Australia today is up to 30 times more powerful
than the cannabis of two decades ago is becoming entrenched in folklore
without regard to the facts, experts say.

Professor Wayne Hall director of the National Drug and Alcohol Research
Centre (NDARC) in Sydney, and leading NDARC researcher Wendy Swift point out
that the active ingredient in cannabis - THC - has not been systematically
tested by police anywhere in Australia.

In the US, the limited data available shows that THC content rose only from
3.3 per cent to 4.4 percent between 1980 and 1998.

In an article in Centrelines, the newsletter put out by NDARC and Perth's
National Drug Research Institute, Professor Hall and his colleague suggest
that all that has happened is that there is more potent cannabis around -
perhaps due to the destruction of large scale plantations leading to more
intensive hydroponic "farming" methods.

All this does not diminish concerns about the adverse health effects of
cannabis, the increased risk of accidents among those who drive and more
regular users needing help to give up their habit.

In an editorial Professor Hall cites a study showing that treatment services
which traditionally cater for people with alcohol and heroin problems have
witnessed an increase in people wanting help to quit cannabis from 4 per
cent of clients in 1990 to nearly 11 percent in 1998.

Debate about legalising the drug isn't helping anyone, he says, because the
bottom line is that more evidence is needed to understand the health effects
of the drug.

"The accumulation of better evidence and a reduction in the polarisation of
community views about cannabis should permit the development of more
informed policies to reduce the harms caused by cannabis use," he wrote.