Pubdate: Sun, 13 Mar 2016
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2016 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact: http://services.bostonglobe.com/news/opeds/letter.aspx?id=6340
Website: http://bostonglobe.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Lester Grinspoon
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v16/n134/a07.html

NO TOXIC BASIS TO CRIMINALIZE MARIJUANA

BACK IN 1966, concerned that so many young people were harming 
themselves through the use of marijuana, I began to review the 
medical and scientific literature to help clarify the nature of this 
harmfulness. Much to my surprise, I discovered that it was a 
substance remarkably free of toxicity. In fact, it is far safer than 
any pharmaceutical or recreational drug. There is no record of a 
single overdose death around the world from its recreational or 
medicinal use. Compare that to aspirin, which is responsible for more 
than 1,000 deaths per year in this country alone.

Many of those who staunchly defend the prohibition against marijuana 
believe we do not yet know enough about it to be able to make the 
kinds of decisions that are now necessary. Despite the US 
government's three-quarter-century-long prohibition of marijuana and 
its confinement to Schedule 1 of the Drug Control and Abuse Act of 
1970, it is nonetheless one of the most studied therapeutically 
active substances in history; to date there are more than 20,000 
published studies or reviews in the scientific literature referencing 
the cannabis plant and its cannabinoids, nearly half of which were 
published within the past five years.

By contrast hydrocodone, a pharmaceutical opioid which is responsible 
for a large and growing number of overdose deaths from illicit use, 
yields just more than 600 references in the entire compilation of the 
available scientific research. The entirety of this research supports 
none of the claims made by Governor Charlie Baker and his colleagues 
in their op-ed in the Boston Globe ("Do not legalize marijuana in 
Massachusetts," March 7).

Lester Grinspoon

Auburndale

The writer is Associate Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, Harvard 
Medical School.
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