Pubdate: Tue, 22 Nov 2005
Source: Mcgill Tribune (CN QU Edu)
Copyright: 2005 The McGill Tribune
Contact:  http://www.mcgilltribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2672
Author: Genevieve Jenkins

CANNING CANNABIS

There are the traditional anti-legalization claims: pot is a gateway
drug; pot makes you less intelligent; legalizing the drug would lead
to increased crime rates; more people would have easy access to it;
like tobacco, cannabis causes lung cancer and has other negative
effects on health.

All of these are easily remedied with the age-old argument that
alcohol and cigarettes do the same things and have been legal for a
long time. You can argue that marijuana isn't any worse than alcohol
or cigarettes until you're blue in the face. The fact of the matter
is, all three of the things are horrible for you and should probably
all be made illegal; the argument certainly doesn't provide a reason
to legalize pot.

For starters, there are government regulations in place on both
alcohol and cigarettes that have been in place for centuries and have
caused countless problems. Since the early 17th century, when
England's King James I proclaimed that tobacco was "loathsome to the
eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain and dangerous to the
lungs," governments have been wary of legal tobacco use. It is only
recently that the greater population understands the drug's provably
nasty effects.

Imagine a society without tobacco. Would anyone stand for the
legalization of the stinking stuff if it could just as easily be banned?

Not a chance.

Simply because tobacco and alcohol have been around for so long and
are a part of our culture, we continue to tolerate them as products
with potentially negative effects not easily removed from society.

Right now, it looks like tobacco is on its way out, and alcohol has
certainly had challenges to its prevalence in social settings, such as
the US prohibition period.

If you're among those still under the naive impression that marijuana
doesn't negatively affect your health, you should do some reading and
think again. Though it has not yet been conclusively proven, daily
marijuana use seems to cause pulmonary infections, respiratory cancer
and chronic bronchitis. And you can't forget about the lung cancer
we've always associated with cigarettes because marijuana has four
times more tar than cigarettes. Finally, marijuana is also closely
linked to mental disorders such as toxic psychosis, panic attacks,
uncontrollable aggressiveness, delusions and paranoia, to name only a
few.

Right now, North American governments make solid profits on tobacco
and alcohol taxes, but there should really be a limit to how much cash
a legitimate government rakes in from people's overindulgence. Aside
from that, the government would then be more responsible for
maintaining only legal production and sales of the drug, a task that
would be costly and time-consuming. Canada supposedly spends $400
million a year to enforce marijuana laws, but if pot were regulated by
the federal government, the onus would be on the government to
maintain control and the money would be pouring out of the federal
coffers at an even faster rate. As it is now, the government isn't
held accountable for health risks associated with pot; once the
government becomes involved, it would be responsible for covering the
health care costs for marijuana-related health problems.

Given how much Canadians already spend on health care programs, it
seems ludicrous to introduce another harmful addictive substance as a
legal option. 
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MAP posted-by: SHeath(DPF Florida)