HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE DANGERS OF MARIJUANA

QUESTION: How do you feel about the dangers of marijuana
usage?

I've heard that it isn't addictive and therefore isn't harmful. I've
also heard that it is very dangerous.

What are the facts?

DR. DOBSON: Let me quote Harold Voth, M.D., senior psychiatrist for
the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kan., and associate chief of
psychiatry for education at Topeka Veterans Administration Medical
Center. These are the facts he provided, which speak for themselves:
* Ninety percent of those using hard drugs such as heroin started with
marijuana. * Five marijuana cigarettes have the same cancer-causing
capacity as 112 conventional cigarettes.

* Marijuana stays in the body, lodged in the fat cells, for three to
five weeks.

Mental and physical performance is negatively affected during this
entire period of time.

* A person smoking marijuana on a regular basis suffers from a
cumulative buildup and storage of THC, a toxic chemical, in the fat
cells of the body, particularly in the brain.

It takes three to five months to detoxify effectively a regular
user.

* The part of the brain that allows a person to focus, concentrate,
create, learn and conceptualize at an advanced level is still growing
during the teen-age years.

Continuous use of marijuana over a period of time will retard the
normal growth of these brain cells. * A study at Columbia University
revealed that female marijuana smokers suffer a sharp increase in
cells that damaged DNA (the chemical that carries the genetic code).
It was also found that the female reproductive eggs are especially
vulnerable to damage by marijuana. * A second Columbia University
study found that a control group smoking a single marijuana cigarette
every other day for a year had a white blood-cell count that was 39
percent lower than normal, thus damaging the immune system and making
the user far more susceptible to infection and sickness. * One
marijuana cigarette causes a 41 percent decrease in driving skills.
Two cigarettes cause a 63 percent decrease.

Given these facts, it is unconscionable that people who should know
better continue to advocate the legalization of marijuana. ------
(EDITOR'S NOTE: Dr. Dobson is president of the nonprofit organization
Focus on the Family, P.O. Box 444, Colorado Springs, Colo. 80903; or
www.family.org. Questions and answers are excerpted from "Solid Answers,"
published by Tyndale House.)