Pubdate: Sat, 17 May 2003
Source: Burnaby Now, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2003 Lower Mainland Publishing Group Inc.
Contact:  http://www.burnabynow.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1592
Author: Frank G. Sterle, Jr.

POT CAN BE HARMFUL

Editor:

By promoting marijuana decriminalization or legalization, pro-pot activists 
are basically legitimizing its consumption and implying that it's basically 
harmless.

As a former pot-consumer myself, I - along with most of my former 
pot-consumption peers who I've bumped into these last half dozen years - 
can attest to the permanent damage that marjiuana can cause to the 
consumer's body and mind.

In addition, the is [sic] a growing body of scientific proof of such damage.

For one, there are the startling facts published in an article last Sept. 
17 in London's Guardian newspaper.

It was authored by a professor of psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry 
and a hospital consultant, Robin Murray, who said in the article:

"In the mid-'90s, a Dutch psychiatrist named Don Lintzen, from the 
University Clinic in Amsterdam, noted that people with schizophrenia who 
consumed a lot of cannabis had a much worse outcome than those who didn't.

"This was confirmed by other studies, including a four-year followup at the 
Maudsley Hospital.

"Those who continued to smoke cannabis were three times more likely to 
develop a chronic illness than those who did not consume the drug," Murray 
learned.

"Why does cannabis exacerbate psychosis?  In schizophrenia, the 
hallucinations result from an excess of a brain chemical called dopamine.

"All of the drugs that cause psychosis - amphetamines, cocaine and cannabis 
- - increase the release of dopamine in the brainn.  In this way, they are 
distinct from illiciet drugs such as heroin or morphine, which do not make 
psychosis worse."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom