WHAT TO DO ABOUT THE DOOBIE: PART ONE

Interesting ideas can cross your mind at the strangest times.
Recently, my own ruminations were sparked in the men's room on the
fifth floor of Davis Library, where I noticed that someone had
scrawled "legalize it" on the tile wall.

Normally, the graffiti found in UNC's bathrooms is entertaining but
not very thought provoking. But this wasn't your ordinary act of
vandalism. Instead it inspired me to ponder if I could answer the
question of whether marijuana should be legal from an objective point of view.

From the outset, let me say this: I don't smoke pot. Personally, I
don't consider getting high part of a healthy lifestyle. But neither
is smoking cigarettes or guzzling alcohol, and it would be ridiculous
if the government outlawed those.

With that in mind, trying to determine if marijuana is "bad" for you
seems a bit silly. A lot of things are bad for us and still legal.
One of the most important facets of living in a free society is being
allowed to make bad decisions along with the good ones. The
government's job isn't to be our mother.

So the logical first question of my cannabis analysis is whether
pot's worse for your health than other, currently legal, substances?
That's no easy query, not least because the medical community doesn't
have a consensus on it.

Let's start by considering the brain, because conventional wisdom
says that potheads aren't the sharpest tools in the shed. That
stereotype isn't entirely without merit - a preponderance of research
shows heavy marijuana use can affect mental function.

But researchers have had a difficult time distinguishing cause from
effect - does marijuana use lead to poor grades or do poor grades and
bad social groups lead to marijuana use - and even the better
understood cognitive impairments are temporary. One study in the
Canadian Medical Association Journal, found that formerly heavy users
of marijuana did not have a lasting slump in their IQ score.

Other research is more pessimistic, indicating that in some people
the cognitive effects of smoking marijuana might last for up to a few
weeks but still aren't likely to be permanent. Yet cannabis isn't
alone in affecting the mind. Alcohol, as a neurotoxic substance, can
cause long-term brain damage in those who abuse it.

Beyond the brain, smoking marijuana can have other negative health
effects, such as on the respiratory system. Some marijuana advocates
argue that smoking pot is easier on lungs than cigarettes. A nice
try, but simply untrue.

"All the available evidence suggests that the risks of regular
cannabis smoking are similar to those of regular tobacco smoking,"
according to a study from the Internal Medicine Journal. And those
findings are backed up by plenty of other research.

Using marijuana does have other health effects. But try as I might, I
couldn't find any consequences that could be considered worse than
those from using tobacco or alcohol. In fact, at least one study
ranked marijuana as less harmful to your health than either of those
two substances.

Don't get the wrong idea, though - marijuana isn't good for you. It's
just not worse for your health than other, legal substances.

And just because marijuana is no more harmful than cigarettes or
alcohol doesn't mean that it should be legalized in the United States
either. Before we have a final answer, we need to consider the
ramifications of legalizing marijuana from a societal perspective,
which I'll discuss in next Thursday's column.

I know, the suspense is killing you. But in the meantime, take some
advice from Dave Chappelle in the classic stoner flick "Half Baked,"
and, "chill out, man."