CANNABIS - THE TRUTH

Don't Be Fooled By The Legalisation Lobby's Persuasive Campaign - This Is A
Dangerous Drug

In a carnival atmosphere, more than 11,000 people rallied in London's
Trafalgar Square one Saturday last March. They waved banners proclaiming
"Free the Weed" and "Legalise It". At the front of the parade strode tall,
shaggy-haired Howard Marks, the veteran cannabis smuggler who had spent
seven years in a US prison for racketeering. The campaign, organised by the
Independent on Sunday, had also attracted the support of a galaxy of
high-profile business people, actors, academics, rock stars and
politicians. The pro-cannabis bandwagon has been trundling on and off for
more than 30 years. This London rally was peddling the latest fashionable
angle: cannabis, the healing herb. On hand were wheelchair-bound multiple
sclerosis sufferers gratefully expounding on the pain-relieving properties
of cannabis. Several claims made on their behalf were simply the latest in
a long line of myths and half-truths deployed over the years to sustain a
determined campaign to legitimise a dangerous drug.

Myth 1: Smoking cannabis has valuable medicinal uses.

Fact: Smoked cannabis has never been officially accepted as having any
medical use whatever. Cannabis is an immensely complex drug that has over
400 compounds, including more than 60 chemical derivatives - cannabinoids -
which, when ignited, covert to 2,000 chemicals. It is these cannabinoids
that have provided relief from pain, nausea and weight loss in some people
with MS, cancer and Aids.

Yet, as People Cardy, chief executive of the Multiple Sclerosis Society,
says, "Other sufferers have had unpleasant side effects." Doctors agree
that while orally administered THC (delta 9-tetrahydrochloride - the main
psychoactive ingredient of cannabis) may have some limited use as a
therapeutic drug, smoking cannabis does not. Other toxic constituents in
smoked cannabis could actually increase the risk of pneumonia and weaken
the immune system in Aids and cancer patients.

Therefore, while there is support for new research into the effects of
cannabinoids, the British Medical Association's stance on cannabis itself
is unequivocal: "It is unsuitable for medicinal use."

Myth 2: Cannabis does you no harm.

Incorrect: Researchers at the University of Mississippi have collected more
than 13,000 technical studies on cannabis - hundreds of them pointing to
its malign effects. One group of 12 young people, who had never smoked
cigarettes but who'd been regular users, developed head and neck cancers -
formerly seen virtually only in the over sixties.

Doctors note that babies born to mothers who smoked cannabis just before or
during pregnancy, tend to be smaller and prone to sleeplessness.

In adolescent pot-smokers, tests have shown memory loss persisting for six
weeks after they had stopped daily cannabis use. Frequent exposure to THC
can disrupt ovulation and reduce men's sperm counts.

The mental health organisation SANE points out that cannabis can cause
hallucinations and paranoid delusions similar to those in schizophrenia.
"There is evidence that the psychotic effects may trigger a prolonged
schizophrenic illness or cause a relapse in an established illness."

Even more disturbing, today's cannabis is very different from that smoked
in the 1960's. Its new forms of "skunk" and "Nederweed" have a THC potency
up to 40 times that enjoyed by the "hippy" generation.

At an international symposium in Paris in 1992, more than 50 scientists
concluded, "The toxicity of cannabis is today well established,
experimentally and clinically. This drug adversely affects the central
nervous system, the lungs, the immune and reproductive functions."

Myth 3: It's far better to smoke cannabis than cigarettes.

Wrong: Professor John Henry, head of Accident and Emergency at St Mary's
Hospital, London, and for 16 years a consultant at Guy's Hospital poisons
unit, explains: "In smoked cannabis, the tars that cause lung cancer are
far nastier than the ones in cigarettes.

"Not only does the cannabis cigarette have no filter, but it is smoked
differently. With ordinary cigarettes, the smoke is briefly drawn into the
lungs, then puffed out. With cannabis, it is drawn into the lungs and held
there, giving the tars a greater chance to act."

The BMA confirms this view: "Smoking a cannabis cigarette leads to three
times greater tar inhalation than smoking a tobacco cigarette. The levels
of tar retained in the respiratory tract are also three times higher.
Chronic cannabis smoking therefore increases the risk of cardiovascular
disease, bronchitis, emphysema and probably carcinomas of the lung."

Myth 4: Cannabis is not addictive.

False.: In a 1996 survey of 200 long-term cannabis users, the National Drug
and Alcohol Research Centre in Sydney, Australia, found that 92 per cent
were dependant on cannabis and 40 per cent were severely dependant.
Withdrawal symptoms included insomnia, night sweats, depression and
appetite fluctuations. "Many people insist that you can't get addicted to
pot," says Wendy Swift, a psychologist leading the survey. "Our research
shows you can. And the longer you use cannabis, the greater the risk of
dependency."

Professor Heather Ashton, a psychopharmacologies at the University of
Newcastle, has studied the effects of drugs on the human brain for more
than 20 years. She points to recent animal studies showing that the THC in
cannabis activates precisely the same reward areas in the brain as cocaine,
heroin, amphetamines and alcohol, and releases the same chemicals in
similar amounts. "This effect is believed to be the basic common action of
all drugs that produce a recreational "high" and cause drug dependence in
man."

Myth 5: Legalisation would break the link between "soft" and "hard" drugs.

There is no guarantee this would happen - and if it didn't, results could
be disastrous. Legalisation could both give the green light to thousands
more users and take away the legal protection that many young people
actually seem to welcome in reinforcing their own instincts not to take the
drug.

Professor Ashton believes that there will always be a proportion of users
who, having become habituated to the drug's escapist buzz, will want to
move on to harder drugs. "There is evidence that, as you get tolerant to
the "high" you take bigger and bigger doses. After a while you reach a
ceiling, and so you go on to more potent drugs."

Recovering addict Lorne Wing, 30, form north London tells of his natural
progression from cannabis to LSD, amphetamines, ecstasy, crack cocaine,
heroin. "With each new drug, I would always draw a line and say, "This is
it. I'm not going to do the next drug." But I always did. As I moved from
one to another, I kept smoking cannabis. I when I eventually decided to
come off drugs, I found cannabis the hardest to give up. "Thousands of
dealers make obscene amounts of money out of cannabis. What do people
imagine they would do if cannabis was legalised? Become computer
programmers, start running shops? Of course not. They would stick in the
only business they know - and push even harder drugs."

Myth 6: Decriminalising cannabis has worked in other countries.

It hasn't. The Netherlands set cannabis apart from hard drugs - by allowing
its sale in coffee shops - in the hope of keeping young people away from
hard drugs. But many of Amsterdam's 400 coffee shops were supplied by
organised crime and began selling hard drugs as well. More than a third
have now been closed down but the city is left with 6,000 drug addicts, who
are responsible for up to 15 per cent of all property crime. The
Netherland's own Ministry of Justice is reported to have decribed Amsterdam
as "the crime capital of Europe."

In Alaska, the experiment was little happier. After cannabis was
decriminalised for adults in 1975, the rate or drug use by 12 to 17 year
olds became twice as high as the average in other US states; crime went up,
not down. Citizens' groups, believing the law was thwarting drug-prevention
efforts, collected more than 20,000 signatures on a petition, forced a
referendum and in 1991 got cannabis recriminalised.

Myth 7: Cannabis users only put themselves at risk.

Not so. Cannabis causes problems for others as well as for its users. In
many countries it is the most common drug, apart from alcohol, to be
detected in people involved in traffic accidents. In a recent Government
survey, ten per cent of drivers tested positive for cannabis (more than 80
per cent of whom weren't above the legal alcohol limit).

While we can now test for the presence of cannabis, there is no way of
measuring degree of intoxication or behavioural disturbance, as there is
with alcohol. Whereas alcohol can be sweated out at one unit per hour, the
narcotic effects of a single joint can last more than 24 hours and traces
can remain in the body for as long as a month.

More frighteningly still, in 1991 US tests on experienced air pilots -
using flight simulators - showed that they had difficulty landing their
aircraft more than 24 hours after a single joint. Yet, before testing, they
had no idea their competence was reduced. Says Professor Ashton, "With the
time and space distortion created by cannabis, the prospect of a world in
which motorists, pilots, train drivers and doctors could legitimately use
the drug is extremely worrying."

Legalizers endlessly claim that we have lost the war against cannabis, and
so its time to change the law.

However, as Chief Superintendent Peter Gammon, president of the Police
Superintendent's Association of England and Wales, says, "It is frankly
disastrous to suggest that we could ever hope for all out victor, any more
than we can win the war on murder or burglary."

But we could do better. Peter Stoker of the National Drug Prevention
Alliance points to the successful campaign in the US. There, with parents,
teachers, drug workers and police all taking an unequivocal line on the
dangers, the number of people who stated that they'd used drugs in the
previous month fell from 25.4 million in 1979 to 12 million in 1992.

This month the Government issues welcome new guidelines on drug education
in Britain's schools. Too often in the past, teaching materials have
concentrated on harm reduction, aiming to help youngsters use drugs safely.
Yet cannabis can never be used "safely".

States south London GP Clare Roden, a police doctor for 27 years, "There
are some sights you never get used to. Most typically, the young man living
on a rundown estate, taking the new high-grade cannabis in such prodigious
quantities that he is admitted to mental hospital in an acute psychotic
state: anxious, shaking and paranoid." She concludes, "Legalisation of
cannabis would be an act of unbelievable irresponsibility."

Copyright Reader's Digest Association Ltd

Checked-by: Richard Lake