Pubdate: Thu, 13 Sep 2007 Source: Cape Breton Post (CN NS) Copyright: 2007 Cape Breton Post Contact: http://www.capebretonpost.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/777 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Marijuana - Canada) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization) POT A HEALTH ISSUE REGARDLESS OF LAW The head of the RCMP drug squad in Sydney offered a revealingly muted defence of the use of expensive helicopter time in the recent marijuana grow-op sweep that netted 1,122 plants at 25 sites. Cape Bretoners pay federal taxes that go to pay for the helicopter so it makes sense to put it to some use here, suggested Sgt. Loran Gavel. Const. D.W. Reginato of the regional police force, which found more than 50 plants at a Millville residence the same day in the co-ordinated operation, related the bust to crimes committed for drug money. Though marijuana traffic is often linked to other drugs and other crimes, it's doubtful that much secondary crime can be attributed to cannabis itself. Advocates for the relaxation of pot laws would say the only link between marijuana and other crime arises from the fact that possession and sale of this so-called soft drug is by definition illegal, which makes it a commodity of the criminal underworld. Legalize the drug in Canada and the crime connection would vanish, it's claimed - except, of course, for the case of big-time growers smuggling into the U.S. Police don't really have to defend their enforcement efforts against marijuana trafficking. They're enforcing a federal law which governments across the country want enforced. The federal Liberal flirtation with the partial decriminalization of marijuana, making simple possession subject to only a modest fine, ended with the Conservative victory in January 2006. Meanwhile the debate rages on, with one significant addition. New research is suggesting that cannabis may not be quite as benign a drug as the flower children of the Sixties - who now find themselves in the 60s again, in another sense - believed. A 10-year New Zealand study says smoking a joint affects the lungs to about the same degree as smoking up to five tobacco cigarettes. Part of this may be due to the practice of inhaling marijuana smoke deeply from unfiltered, hand-rolled doobies. The British medical journal The Lancet has published research claiming use of cannabis at least once can increase a person's risk by 41 per cent of suffering a psychotic illness such as schizophrenia later in life. And on the behavioral side, a study by Melbourne University's Centre for Adolescent Health that followed 1,900 children to age 25 concluded that people who start using cannabis as teenagers are more likely than alcohol drinkers to suffer from mental illness and relationship problems, and to fail to get decent qualifications or jobs. "Cannabis really does look like the drug of choice for life's future losers," commented Prof. George Patton, who conducted the study. Marijuana advocates dismiss the new research as just more of the 1950s-vintage reefer madness scare dressed up in academic respectability. But the studies say what they say: there are risks, from moderate as well as from heavy use. Enforcement zealots may cite such studies as clinching their case but they are wrong. There's ample evidence that enforcement bears little relationship to prevalence of use, and Canadians are the heaviest users in the industrialized world. Regardless of where the marijuana law goes from here, widespread use of the drug must be recognized as a public health issue which Canadians need to know a lot more about. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake