Pubdate: Fri, 14 Jun 2013
Source: Province, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2013 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact: http://www2.canada.com/theprovince/letters.html
Website: http://www.theprovince.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/476
Author: Jon Ferry

POT LIES SOMEWHERE BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL

If it's not a hard-hitting Province editorial or a major Maclean's 
magazine article, not a day seems to go by without a call for the 
legalization, or at least the decriminalization, of marijuana.

But that doesn't mean pot, the world's most-used illicit drug, is 
harmless. In fact, it's clear that heavy use of it can be dangerous.

That point was hammered home in a TV documentary that aired on CBC 
last Saturday. It told the stories of three young B.C.ers who, along 
with their doctors, believed their mental illnesses were triggered by 
marijuana use.

The Downside of High indicated that teens who started smoking pot 
before age 16 were four times more likely to develop schizophrenia. 
For young adults, smoking pot nearly doubled the risk of recurring 
psychosis, hallucinations and paranoia. As the documentary noted, 
modern "high-octane" pot has a greatly increased amount of 
psychoactive tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), and that greatly increases 
the threat to the teenage brain.

Glossing over that inconvenient truth, as many Vancouver pot 
activists and "progressive" politicians appear keen to do, won't make 
it go away. Indeed, a single quote from leading British schizophrenia 
expert Dr. Robin Murray makes The Downside of High (which first aired 
in 2010) worth viewing.

"The problem with cannabis is that you have those on the one hand 
that say it's a sacred herb, and on the other extreme you have people 
that say cannabis is the work of the devil. But neither of these 
extremes is practical," Murray said.

"What we need is a situation where people know that, if you smoke 
cannabis heavily, particularly if you smoke the potent brands of 
cannabis, then you're more likely to go psychotic."

I put some of the documentary findings this week to Vancouver pot 
activist Marc Emery, who's in a Mississippi jail serving a five-year 
term for selling marijuana across the U.S.-Canada border.

The Prince of Pot replied via prison email that he was in "no 
position to dispute these studies about marijuana having a pronounced 
effect on the mental development of at-risk youth who might be prone 
to schizophrenia."

However, he thought "an appropriate and realistic legal regime" for 
the distribution of pot would discourage pot use before age 17.

Emery said the problem with pot prohibition was that "the information 
government may provide to youth is always suspect ... especially to 
cynical young people sensitized to government falsehoods about most subjects."

Nevertheless, we should all be concerned that Canadian kids and youth 
- - who, as Maclean's writer Ken MacQueen notes, are the developed 
world's heaviest pot users - are being warned appropriately about 
pot's dangers. They should be discouraged from thinking smoking dope 
is somehow glamorous and rebellious.

The way to do that isn't to continue to outlaw the gangster weed, but 
to legalize it and make inhaling it as mundane as smoking tobacco. 
Then, the number of youthful users would start to fall fast.

For years now, marijuana has been treated as either, well, a madonna 
or a whore. The truth, I strongly suspect, lies halfway in between.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom