BRUMBY CLEARS THE SMOKE ON MARIJUANA

SLOWLY, slowly, more and more people are waking up to the links
between marijuana and Australia's epidemic mental health problems.
You'd have to be a dope not do so.

Mind you, it's taken Premier John Brumby an inordinate time to do so.
In the past he's wanted to decriminalise the drug, arguing the amount
of money spent prosecuting small-time users simply wasn't worth the
effort. To many minds, perhaps even all the 400,000 Victorians who use
marijuana each year, it wasn't a bad call.

But his change of heart towards cannabis is better late than never. It
reflects a more mature attitude and a recognition of the increasingly
well-documented links between marijuana and schizophrenia, depression,
paranoia, anxiety and other mental health problems.

These are hardly the only negatives attributed to marijuana. A long
and growing list of disorders are suspected to be tied to marijuana
use. Think immuno deficiencies, chromosomal damage, sperm motility
dysfunction, respiratory tract cancer, short-term memory loss ... the
list goes on.

Of course, that's marijuana in its own right. How many users are
inclined to mix it with other substances _ alcohol, heroin, cocaine,
hallucinogenics or amphetamines _ is not altogether clear but the
problems posed by each of these, in their own right and in tandem
hardly suggests a healthy lifestyle.

Indeed, the results of a 15-year study for Melbourne University's
Centre for Adolescent Health released last April suggest all too
clearly that marijuana is serious bad news for long-term mental
health. And it is likely to encourage young users toward other drugs
such as ecstasy, amphetamines and cocaine. Researcher George Patton,
who studied more than 1900 people aged 14 or 15, could hardly have put
it more bluntly: cannabis was the drug of choice for "life's future
losers".

Findings released two months earlier, by the National Drug and Alcohol
Research Centre, showed 78 per cent of people under 30 believed social
problems were associated with marijuana. And 77 per cent thought
authorities should mount public health campaigns about the effects of
cannabis. Half those surveyed thought marijuana use could trigger
schizophrenia or anxiety disorders.

John Brumby's belated common sense about marijuana is therefore a
welcome change of heart and one that should underpin the State
Government's legislative approach to drugs and drug use.

Australia has a mental health crisis it can't handle as it is.
Pretending it's not linked, at least in part, to widespread
dope-smoking is counter-productive in the extreme. And forming public
health policy according to the aspirations of new or old hippies
hardly constitutes any mantle of responsibility.