The "F*CK YOU" Finale of "Weed Wars"...

[RainDog]

34. there were 2700 separate studies published in 2009

and something like 20k published studies noted in PubMed.

In the 1990s, the World Health Organization asked a team of experts to study the medical/health and social consequences of cannabis in relation to alcohol, nicotine, and opiates. These experts found “Overall, most of these risks (associated with marijuana) are small to moderate in size. In aggregate they are unlikely to produce public health problems comparable in scale to those currently produced by alcohol and tobacco. On existing patterns of use, cannabis poses a much less serious public health problem than is currently posed by alcohol and tobacco in Western societies.”

An interesting book about the comparison between legal alcohol and illegal cannabis is Marijuana Is Safer.

In terms of harm reduction, cannabis seems far more benign than legal substances - you note it is a soft drug but I think it's a plant. Marinol is a drug.

iow, I don't think cannabis is a drug at all. I think it should be removed entirely from the drug schedule. I realize that's not going to happen any time soon and I support an incremental approach as more feasible - to move cannabis to schedule II rather than I.

That rescheduling would be to bring the schedules in line with current medical knowledge and to acknowledge that cannabis, at the least, is no more dangerous than heroin or cocaine.

I don't know if coca leaves are designated as a drug or not. Poppies are definitely legal in the U.S., and not designated as a drug and not scheduled, even tho they are processed to make heroin. they are "illegal" in the U.S. if you grow them with the intent to turn them into a drug - which is craziness - how is law enforcement supposed to read people's minds?

This quote always amazes me - amazes me because it illustrates that the law has nothing to do with reality. That makes it bad law.

“In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume. For example, eating 10 raw potatoes can result in a toxic response. By comparison, it is physically impossible to eat enough marijuana to induce death. Marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within the supervised routine of medical care.
Drug Enforcement Administration's [DEA] Chief Administrative Law Judge, Francis L. Young, 1988.

This followed, of course, Nixon's Commission that recommended decriminalization and found no rational reason for current (continuing) law either.

I find our current approach to cannabis is more akin to a mental illness than any use of the substance.