Pubdate: Sat, 30 Aug 2014
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2014 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Jesse Kline
Page: A17

LET'S TALK ABOUT POT, BABY

If we're going to focus on health, let's discuss how prohibition makes
the drug trade more dangerous

Despite Health Minister Rona Ambrose's assurances that "telling kids
not to smoke pot is not a partisan attack on Justin Trudeau," it is
clear to all but a handful of partisan Conservatives that the federal
government would rather see us discussing whether marijuana is bad for
your health, than discussing whether it should be legalized.

This needless controversy began a couple of weeks ago, when Health
Canada tried to solicit doctors' groups to endorse the public health
agency's anti-marijuana ad campaign, which it plans to launch this
fall. The advertisements are supposed to warn young people about the
dangers of smoking pot. But they come at time when the Tories have
been running attack ads accusing Liberal leader Justin Trudeau of
wanting to make marijuana "more accessible to kids."

The Canadian Medical Association, the College of Family Physicians of
Canada and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada all
declined to take part in the program, because the Tories have been
actively campaigning against Trudeau's plan to legalize marijuana,
which, as CMA president Chris Simpson wrote in Wednesday's National
Post, "created the perception that the issue was, or could become, a
political one."

While it's not all that unusual for the government to run
advertisements warning about the dangers of doing drugs - Health
Canada spent $6.9-million in 2011-12 on anti-drug television
commercials - the timing of the campaign certainly looks suspicious.
Indeed, when Maclean's columnist John Geddes looked at the
government's own planning documents, he found that "the latest
five-year plan for the anti-drug strategy failed to mention any mass
media campaign, even though the previous five-year blueprint did so."

"It seems clear," writes Geddes, "that starting in 2012, advertising
was no longer deemed essential to the antidrug strategy." Then,
Trudeau announced his intention to legalize marijuana and - waddaya
know - the government finds $6-million to tell Canadians that pot
isn't very good for them. But this just serves to obfuscate the issue.

There is some evidence to suggest that marijuana could damage
developing brains - but no serious commentator or political party is
advocating making marijuana available to young people. As the CMA
recently said, the "smoking of any plant material" can have
deleterious health effects. But that doesn't mean it should remain
illegal.

Smoking pot is generally considered less harmful than cigarettes,
because people smoke less of it. And unlike tobacco cigarettes, there
is little evidence to suggest that smoking marijuana causes cancer.

In fact, prohibition makes marijuana more dangerous - something you're
unlikely to hear from a Health Canada public service announcement. For
starters, the fact that marijuana remains illegal means that most
people who consume it recreationally have no way of knowing if the
product they are buying was laced with other, more harmful, substances
or if the plant was grown using toxic chemicals. It is likewise often
easier for kids to buy weed off the black market, than it is for them
to buy alcohol from the liquor store.

It is also the case that marijuana does not have to be smoked. It can
be used in a vaporizer, which heats up the product, in order to
release its active ingredients, without exposing the user to combusted
plant material. Or it can be eaten. In Colorado, where marijuana is
legal, companies are producing a huge variety of marijuana-infused
foods and beverages - everything from brownies and chocolate bars to
pizza and cola. Many stores sell roughly half of their product in
edible form. None of this is possible in Canada, so long as pot
remains illegal.

If we want to talk about health, let's allow cannabis to be sold in a
legal environment, that is not controlled by violent street gangs
(which are also bad for your health), where we have control over the
quality of the product being produced and the ability to offer it in
less harmful forms. Should marijuana be made legal, I would have no
problem with a public campaign designed to give Canadians all the
information they need to make informed choices about cannabis use (so
long as it is based on science, rather than fear).

It is true that consuming marijuana isn't risk-free. Nor is eating
fast food, smoking cigars or drinking alcohol. But in a free society,
it should be up to individuals to decide what products they want to
consume.

Now is the time to recognize this and reform Canada's marijuana laws -
whether it's the Conservatives' proposal of de-facto decriminalization
or the Liberals' legalization promise. We should be talking about the
real harms that come from prohibition, rather than debating whether
doctors should take part in a crass political campaign designed to
muddy the waters and divert Canadians' attention from the issue at
hand.
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MAP posted-by: Matt