Pubdate: Fri, 02 May 2003 Source: Ottawa Sun (CN ON) Copyright: 2003, Canoe Limited Partnership Contact: http://www.fyiottawa.com/ottsun.shtml Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/329 Author: Philippe Lucas Note: Parenthetical remark by the Sun editor, headline by newshawk HIGH TIME FOR A LITTLE BIT OF TRUTH RE "O Cannabis" (April 27): I congratulate you on such an in-depth article about the failure of Canada's cannabis prohibition, although I take exception with Dr. Raju Hajela's inaccurate and misinformed comments regarding the recreational use of cannabis. He suggests that there can be "devastating consequences" to people trying cannabis even once; he must mean the munchies, because unlike alcohol, tobacco, or even aspirin there has never been a single death attributed to the use of marijuana in over 3,000 years of recorded use. Furthermore, many recent studies suggest that cannabis may actually possess anti-carcinogenic properties (P. Massi et al., 1998; Stig O. P. Jacobsson et al., 2000; I. Galve-Roperh et al., 2001). Finally, Dr. Hajela discounts himself completely by stating rather cryptically that the wrong message about cannabis is getting out to the public because "there are a lot of marijuana smokers amongst the media." Yikes! And they say that marijuana makes users paranoid! This kind of alarmist misinformation would be laughable if it didn't lead to such expensive, corrupt, and ineffective policies. From the 1972 Ledaine Commission on, every major public or private study that has ever looked at our drug policy has recommended relaxing our cannabis laws. It's high time for a little bit of truth about marijuana use! Philippe Lucas Director of Communications DrugSense (Ah, we miss the days when we were only accused of being a bunch of drunks - --- MAP posted-by: Beth