POT CAN BE HARMFUL

Editor:

By promoting marijuana decriminalization or legalization, pro-pot activists
are basically legitimizing its consumption and implying that it's basically
harmless.

As a former pot-consumer myself, I - along with most of my former
pot-consumption peers who I've bumped into these last half dozen years -
can attest to the permanent damage that marjiuana can cause to the
consumer's body and mind.

In addition, the is [sic] a growing body of scientific proof of such damage.

For one, there are the startling facts published in an article last Sept.
17 in London's Guardian newspaper.

It was authored by a professor of psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry
and a hospital consultant, Robin Murray, who said in the article:

"In the mid-'90s, a Dutch psychiatrist named Don Lintzen, from the
University Clinic in Amsterdam, noted that people with schizophrenia who
consumed a lot of cannabis had a much worse outcome than those who didn't.

"This was confirmed by other studies, including a four-year followup at the
Maudsley Hospital.

"Those who continued to smoke cannabis were three times more likely to
develop a chronic illness than those who did not consume the drug," Murray
learned.

"Why does cannabis exacerbate psychosis? In schizophrenia, the
hallucinations result from an excess of a brain chemical called dopamine.

"All of the drugs that cause psychosis - amphetamines, cocaine and cannabis
- - increase the release of dopamine in the brainn. In this way, they are
distinct from illiciet drugs such as heroin or morphine, which do not make
psychosis worse."