CRIMINALIZATION FALLS SHORT: RESEARCH

A British study claiming pot smokers have a 40 per cent higher risk
of developing psychotic illnesses does not prove tougher Canadian
drug laws are needed, experts in this country say.

Canadian researchers say that stiffer penalties here have
traditionally failed to curb marijuana use in a country that has one
of the highest per capita numbers of pot smokers on earth.

As well, they say questions about the harmful effects of the drug
have in no way been put to rest by the new study, which is an
analysis of past research that may well have contained significant
flaws.

"Marijuana, like all drugs, is not completely harmless," says Dr.
Scott Macdonald, assistant director of the Centre for Addictions
Research of B.C. at the University of Victoria.

"But criminalization has its harms as well, it's very costly to
process cases and marijuana is widely used," Macdonald says.

He says that by many important health and public safety standards,
alcohol is a far more dangerous drug than pot and yet drinking is
perfectly legal here.

"It's a matter of weighing the public health consequences versus the
consequences of criminalization," Macdonald says.

"And in Canada it's my sense that the public is seeing that
criminalization has not really achieved much."

Macdonald says education programs would likely be much more effective
that jail terms in curbing marijuana use. He also says the increased
potency of modern marijuana, noted in the study, does in itself cry
out for tougher controls.

Most marijuana users, he says, smoke to a desired high and that the
more potent weed simply allows them to achieve that level with fewer
puffs.

Wende Wood, a psychiatric pharmacist at Toronto's Centre for
Addiction and Mental Health, questioned the study's conclusions, some
of which she feels were hyped in a Lancet press release that many
media outlets picked up on.

"It's being sort of stated or implied by Lancet that this (harm) is a
done deal and this proves it finally," Wood says.

"And from reading the study I don't see that it adds that much to the
already confusing discussion on this."

Wood says there is definitely "some kind of a link" between pot and
psychosis.

"But I still don't think this answers the question of causality or
why," she says.

Wood says that marijuana is likely only one of many potential causes
of psychosis, including genetics, and would not by itself lead to
such things as schizophrenia.

Wood says that even if the 40 per cent increase in psychotic outcomes
from cannabis was true, it might only push the actual number of cases
up to one per cent of the general population, raising the issue of
criminalizing its use for millions of users who are in no danger of
such neurological catastrophes.