IMPORTANT FOR AUTHORITIES TO KEEP PRESSURE ON CANNABIS RACKET

With Health Department action against smoking having gained
considerable public support over the past decade, it is astounding
that so many people still seem to regard tobacco as harmless.

But it is even more amazing that the use of cannabis, seems to be
surviving the many frightening factors which have been highlighted by
health professionals.

Disturbing, too, that so much damage is being done to so many by
alcohol abuse.

Cannabis? Today its advocates bring forth their arguments to put it on
sale and bring in a bundle of taxation money for the Government. How
stupid is that!

As the winds of change have swept through New Zealand society over the
past decade or so there have been intermittent attempts to
decriminalise the use of cannabis.

But time after time there has been evidence in court showing the drug
has its dark side.

Some years ago the Court of Appeal refused to accept a defence plea
against an attempted murder conviction, made on the grounds that the
accused might have been suffering from a psychosis brought on by cannabis.

The court did accept, however, that use of the drug may have
contributed to the accused forming an intention to murder his victim.

The judgement also noted that cannabis can lead a person to form an
irrational intent.

Backgrounding this, findings from the University of California,
Berkley, cited the way in which cannabis leaves a clinically
measurable residue in the user's brain which eventually alters the
personality.

More disturbingly, there is also evidence that the destructive effects
of cannabis do not stop with the user's own generation.

The University of California also found that cannabis can cause
genetic malformation of the heart and blood vessels of yet-to-be-born
children.

That alone is enough to ensure that cannabis should stay out of legal
bounds. No society can entirely protect those of its own who are bent
on self-destruction.

But it would be decadent to legally countenance any risk to the
quality of life for generations to come.