POT A HEALTH ISSUE REGARDLESS OF LAW

The head of the RCMP drug squad in Sydney offered a revealingly muted
defence of the use of expensive helicopter time in the recent
marijuana grow-op sweep that netted 1,122 plants at 25 sites. Cape
Bretoners pay federal taxes that go to pay for the helicopter so it
makes sense to put it to some use here, suggested Sgt. Loran Gavel.

Const. D.W. Reginato of the regional police force, which found more
than 50 plants at a Millville residence the same day in the
co-ordinated operation, related the bust to crimes committed for drug
money. Though marijuana traffic is often linked to other drugs and
other crimes, it's doubtful that much secondary crime can be
attributed to cannabis itself.

Advocates for the relaxation of pot laws would say the only link
between marijuana and other crime arises from the fact that possession
and sale of this so-called soft drug is by definition illegal, which
makes it a commodity of the criminal underworld. Legalize the drug in
Canada and the crime connection would vanish, it's claimed - except,
of course, for the case of big-time growers smuggling into the U.S.

Police don't really have to defend their enforcement efforts against
marijuana trafficking. They're enforcing a federal law which
governments across the country want enforced. The federal Liberal
flirtation with the partial decriminalization of marijuana, making
simple possession subject to only a modest fine, ended with the
Conservative victory in January 2006.

Meanwhile the debate rages on, with one significant addition. New
research is suggesting that cannabis may not be quite as benign a drug
as the flower children of the Sixties - who now find themselves in the
60s again, in another sense - believed.

A 10-year New Zealand study says smoking a joint affects the lungs to
about the same degree as smoking up to five tobacco cigarettes. Part
of this may be due to the practice of inhaling marijuana smoke deeply
from unfiltered, hand-rolled doobies. The British medical journal The
Lancet has published research claiming use of cannabis at least once
can increase a person's risk by 41 per cent of suffering a psychotic
illness such as schizophrenia later in life.

And on the behavioral side, a study by Melbourne University's Centre
for Adolescent Health that followed 1,900 children to age 25 concluded
that people who start using cannabis as teenagers are more likely than
alcohol drinkers to suffer from mental illness and relationship
problems, and to fail to get decent qualifications or jobs. "Cannabis
really does look like the drug of choice for life's future losers,"
commented Prof. George Patton, who conducted the study.

Marijuana advocates dismiss the new research as just more of the
1950s-vintage reefer madness scare dressed up in academic
respectability. But the studies say what they say: there are risks,
from moderate as well as from heavy use.

Enforcement zealots may cite such studies as clinching their case but
they are wrong. There's ample evidence that enforcement bears little
relationship to prevalence of use, and Canadians are the heaviest
users in the industrialized world. Regardless of where the marijuana
law goes from here, widespread use of the drug must be recognized as a
public health issue which Canadians need to know a lot more about.