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'GRASS' STUDY SUPPRESSED: MAGAZINE

LONDON, Feb 18 (Reuters) - Officials at the World Health Organisation in
Geneva suppressed a report confirming that cannabis is safer than alcohol
or tobacco, New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday.

The WHO's summary report on cannabis, its first in 15 years, was published
in December but the magazine claims a comparison study of cannabis and
legal substances was dropped because the organisation feared it would give
ammunition to the ``legalise marijuana'' campaign.

``It is understood that advisers from the U.S. National Institute on Drug
Abuse and the U.N. International Drug Control Programme warned the WHO that
it would play into the hands of groups campaigning to legalise marijuana,''
the weekly science magazine said.

Dr Maristela Monteiro, a scientist with the WHO programme on substance
abuse, confirmed that the analysis was dropped from the report but denied
the organisation had been pressured into doing it.

``There were problems with that chapter,'' she told Reuters in a telephone
interview.

``It was not a fair comparison from our point of view and from a public
health perspective it was not very useful. We thought it was biased towards
showing less harm from cannabis.''

Monteiro said the WHO was working with the Addiction Research Foundation
(ARF) in Canada and planned to publish a book on cannabis in June.

According to New Scientist, which published a special report on marijuana
on Wednesday, a leaked document about the analysis concluded that marijuana
posed less of a public health threat than alcohol or cigarettes, even if
people consumed the drug on the same scale as the other substances.

It also showed that while there was evidence of foetal alcohol syndrome,
proof that cannabis can harm foetal development was ``far from conclusive.''

The magazine said researchers had found that marijuana smoke did not lead
to blocked airways or emphysema or impact on lung function, and it was less
addictive than alcohol or cigarettes.

A survey conducted by the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, where
marijuana has been legalised since 1976, found that there was no immediate
increase in use after it was decriminalised.

Although most people questioned in the survey had tried marijuana they did
not continue to use it. The number of hard drug addicts in the Netherlands
has not increased in a decade, the magazine added.