Pot 2.0

Part 2

Today's marijuana is increasingly potent compared to a generation
ago, leading some to say it could be causing kids to do poorly at
school and possibly even making them susceptible to developing mental illness.

Marijuana advocates say it's just more of the same fear-mongering
dating way back to the 1930s.

It's a skunky, pungent scent that you can't miss.

It's the smell of marijuana combusting as someone tokes up, and you
don't have to go far to catch a whiff. Just off of school properties.
At concerts. Drifting out of your neighbour's garage.

Just about everywhere, it seems, people are lighting up reefers or
firing up bongs.

Many will ask: what's the harm? Pot's been a part of popular culture
since the hippie days of free love, popularized in everything from
Cheech and Chong movies to the silly spectacle of politicians
admitting to trying it while insisting they never inhaled.

But experts who study marijuana-use trends say the weed being
produced today is not your father's pot. Increasingly, it's a highly
potent product, raising concerns ranging from the dangers of driving
while stoned and students missing out on the building blocks of high
school to a growing body of evidence that marijuana use could be
putting genetically susceptible young people at risk of developing
schizophrenia.

At the same time, there are many -- including a Canadian Senate
commission and even the far right conservative think tank The Fraser
Institute -- who say the so-called war on drugs has failed miserably
when it comes to controlling marijuana, that it highlights the
problems inherent in the enforcement of laws that are generally
ignored by broad sectors of the population, and that the time has
come for the federal government to decriminalize and regulate pot.

Somewhere in the convoluted stew of domestic politics, public health,
law enforcement, international trade, border security and conflicting
statistics are some marijuana truths that at first blush seem
incontrovertible. But accountants will tell you that numbers can be
tweaked and teased to get the statistical outcome you want.

White House drug czar John Walters, director of the U.S. Office of
National Drug Control Policy (NDCP), says that after years of
giggling at outdated pot scare stories, North American society has
become conditioned to think any warnings about the dangers of
marijuana are overblown.

Way back in 1936, the movie Reefer Madness spoke of the dangers of
marijuana, calling pot "the new drug menace which is destroying the
youth of America," and "an unspeakable scourge ... leading to acts of
shocking violence, ending often in incurable insanity."

The movie was a hilarious piece of tripe, for sure. But recent
scientific studies hint the movie may have stumbled upon at least one
truth: the possible link -- however tenuous at this point -- between
marijuana and mental illness.

FManzar Ashtari, a researcher with Zucker Hillside Hospital in New
York State and an associate professor of radiology at Albert Einstein
College of Medicine, led a study a little over a year ago using a
sophisticated brain scanning technique known as diffusion tensor
imaging to study the effect of pot on adolescent brains.

Her study, while considered small and preliminary, suggested
marijuana use could affect or delay development of an area of the
brain known as the arcuate fasciculus, which is still under
development during adolescence.

A 2002 study in the prestigious British Medical Journal found that
while most young people use cannabis in adolescence without harm,
teens at genetic risk of developing schizophrenia are more likely to
develop the disorder in adulthood. Schizophrenia, widely believed to
be caused by a murky combination of genetics and environmental
factors, can be a chronic, life-long condition in which patients
experience hallucinations and delusions, paralyzing depression and
lack of motivation.

A large-scale study of Swedish armed forces conscripts in 1987 found
that heavy cannabis use at age 18 increased the risk of later
schizophrenia six-fold.

The NDCP's Walters said levels of delta-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) --
the active ingredient in marijuana that gives people the sensation of
being high -- were only about one per cent in weed in the 1960s and
1070s. Those levels had increased to more than eight per cent on
average by last year, NDCP figures show.

The University of Mississippi Potency Monitoring Project has analyzed
some 60,000 cannabis samples confiscated by law enforcement officials
since 1975. In its most recent quarterly report earlier this year,
the project said it has found THC levels as high as 32.2 per cent.

Walters said the numbers should dispel the myth of harmless
marijuana, and serve as a "wake up call" to parents.

"We are no longer talking about the drug of the 1960s and 1970s,"
Walters said in a statement. "This is Pot 2.0."

St. Catharines resident Matt Mernagh, 33, an activist fighting for
the decriminalization of marijuana, laments what pot advocates say
are ongoing scare tactics used to fight any moves toward legalizing the drug.

"There's that boogey man aspect," he said. "We're dispelling that
more and more."

Mernagh was among dozens of people who met for the annual
pro-marijuana 420 Rally in Niagara Falls this past spring, lighting
up joints and walking down Clifton Hill to protest the fact even a
simple possession charge of one joint can land you a criminal record in Canada.

He sees pot as being no different than alcohol.

"You come home from a day at work and some people open a beer," he
said. "We like to unwind with a joint."

Mernagh said marijuana helps you to mellow out, and unlike booze
there's no hangover.

"It relieves stress," he said. "There's the feeling of peacefulness.
Everything seems quieter."

Far different than the alarmist language coming out of the U.S., a
Canadian Senate committee struck to study marijuana said in a
landmark study in 2002 that contrary to what young people have been
told for generations, marijuana is not a "gateway" drug that will
lead pot smokers to try so-called hard drugs such as heroin. The
committee report, led by Senator Pierre Claude Nolin, said that while
heavy pot use can impair concentration, learning and the ability to
perform tasks, it was less harmful than alcohol and should be
governed by the same sort of guidelines.

The Senate committee found that the vast majority of pot users do not
get addicted to it, and that the large amounts of public money spent
to discourage marijuana use through the criminalization of it has
been a monumental failure given the number of Canadians who still smoke up.

The Canadian Medical Association estimates 1.5 million Canadians
smoke marijuana recreationally.

"Used in moderation, cannabis in itself poses very little danger to
users and to society as a whole," the Senate committee wrote.

Canadian teens, too, are more likely to roll their eyes when alarm
bells over marijuana are sounded. The Ontario Student Drug Use
Survey, conducted by the Toronto-based Centre for Addiction and
Mental Health, has been mapping trends in adolescent drug use on a
biannual basis since 1977. The survey found that after a lengthy
period of decline during the 1980s, there has been a resurgence in
teen drug use since the 1990s.

In addition to more teens smoking pot, the survey found there has
been a notable reduction in the number of teens in grades seven to 12
who believe regular marijuana use poses a great risk: from 75 per
cent believing so in 1989, to only 57 per cent in 2005.

The scientific link between cigarette smoking and heart disease, lung
cancer and strokes is incontrovertible. But much less is known about
the long-term impact of inhaling marijuana smoke.

The Canadian Cancer Society concedes that not all studies have found
a consistent relationship between long-term recreational smoking of
marijuana and an increased risk of cancer. But the society says pot
has as many as 50 of the same carcinogens as tobacco, meaning the
risk of cancer may be very real.

The society also says the way marijuana is smoked may also contribute
to cancer risks, saying that because pot users tend to inhale more
with each puff and hold it in their lungs up to four times longer
than tobacco smoke, smoking just three to four joints a day is
equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes.

The NDCP in the U.S. goes further, saying pot smoke contains 50 to 70
per cent more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than tobacco smoke, and that
long-term use may increase the risk of bronchitis, cancer of the head
and neck, and emphysema.

Hogwash says Marc Emery, publisher of Vancouver-based Cannabis
Culture magazine, who is often referred to as the 'Prince of Pot' by the media.

Emery said in the last year, more peer-reviewed medical studies
actually demonstrated marijuana is a useful medicine for a variety of
conditions.

A study published in the scientific journal Cancer Research in 2004
found that in people with an extremely aggressive form of brain
cancer, cannabis extracts can block a key chemical needed for tumours to grow.

"(It's) fear mongering," Emery said of the warnings about pot issued
by agencies such as the NDCP.

He considers it ludicrous that governments are willing to send people
to jail to supposedly protect them from the health effects of
cannabis use. He wonders why they don't do the same thing for people
who smoke cigarettes, have guns, get hooked on coffee or who consume
trans fatty acids.

"I assure you, prohibition and the broken families, broken hearts and
ruined lives because of prison far exceeds any health hazard from pot."

(Next Friday, part 3 of this three-part series explores whether the
time has come to regulate cannabis, much like alcohol).