Pubdate: Wed, 07 Oct 2015
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2015 The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Mike Hager
Page: S1

POT NOT 'INFINITELY WORSE' THAN TOBACCO, EXPERTS SAY

Is cannabis, as Conservative Party Leader Stephen Harper claims,
"infinitely worse" than tobacco, a substance that kills tens of
thousands of Canadians each year?

Definitely not, say medical researchers and addiction experts, who are
refuting Mr. Harper's provocative comparison between cigarettes and
marijuana.

Mr. Harper has routinely brought up marijuana as a campaign issue,
contrasting his government's tough stance against the drug with the
Liberals' and Greens' plans to fully legalize it and the NDP's pledge
to at least decriminalize it and study legalization.

When quizzed Saturday on his party's repeated opposition to making pot
legal, Mr. Harper said that tobacco "does a lot of damage," but
cannabis "is infinitely worse and it is something that we do not want
to encourage."

The Canadian Cancer Society says smoking tobacco continues to be the
leading preventable cause of premature deaths in the country, claiming
about 37,000 lives each year. The non-profit organization says tobacco
is the main risk factor for cancer, heart disease, stroke and lung
disease in Canada.

In contrast, no deaths have been directly attributed to cannabis use
or overdose, says Dr. Tim Stockwell, director of the University of
Victoria's Centre for Addictions Research.

But it is likely a factor in "a few" fatal crashes and "a few"
lung-cancer deaths each year, he said.

"It's not a harmless herb, but the mortality rate is dwarfed by that
of tobacco," Dr. Stockwell said.

He said cannabis was also deemed less dangerous than tobacco in a
landmark 2010 study that ranked 20 legal and illegal drugs based on
the dependence, social and physical harms they caused. The report,
published in the British medical journal The Lancet, ranked tobacco as
more harmful than cannabis, while both were considered far less
dangerous to users and others than heroin, cocaine and alcohol.

Dan Werb, director of the Toronto-based International Centre for
Science in Drug Policy, said research also shows there is a "massive
disparity" between how easy it is to get addicted to each substance.
Studies show 68 per cent of smokers become addicted over their
lifetime, while about 10 per cent become dependent on cannabis, he
said.

"If we are prohibiting drugs based on their addictive potential, then
tobacco would be the first to be prohibited as it, by some estimates,
has a greater addictive potential than heroin," he said.

Dr. Werb said evidence that showed marijuana damages lungs or the
heart is "highly equivocal," whereas tobacco has been proven to be
very damaging.

M. J. Milloy, an infectious-disease epidemiologist who is studying the
therapeutic effects of marijuana at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in
HIV/AIDS, also rebuked Mr. Harper for his claim that there are
"overwhelming and growing scientific and medical evidence about the
bad long-term effects of marijuana."

Dr. Milloy said there are obvious short-term risks, such as driving
when using cannabis, but there is no evidence that moderate, long-term
pot use incurs substantial health costs.

Some research has linked teens' long-term use of pot heavy with the
psychoactive THC compound to mental health issues such as psychosis
and schizophrenia. But Dr. Milloy said no causal link has been proven
and these young people might be genetically predisposed to such
mental-health issues.

Still, there is growing evidence that adolescents and young adults
"should be very careful if they choose to use marijuana" because their
brains are still developing, he said.

A Conservative Party spokesman said Mr. Harper is against Liberal
Leader Justin Trudeau's plan to legalize marijuana and introduce a
regulatory system, as with alcohol and tobacco. The Conservatives
state that such an approach only makes the drug more accessible to
kids and cite figures showing their anti-drug strategy helped produce
an overall decline in pot smoking among Canadian youth over the past
decade.

A 2013 Unicef report showed just over a quarter of Canadian
15-year-olds had reported smoking cannabis in the past year, down from
37.5 per cent a decade earlier.

Dr. Werb said younger Canadians had been smoking less and less pot way
before the Conservatives gained power in 2006 because of cultural, not
political, forces.

Richard Johnston, a political science professor at the University of
British Columbia, said Mr. Harper's approach is likely aimed at
appealing to his party's morally conservative base while trying to
exploit the issue as a way of underscoring the narrative of his rival
Mr. Trudeau being a novice and "not really a responsible player."

"Even though a majority of Canadians support [legal marijuana], the
devil is always in the details," Prof. Johnston said. "[The
Conservative approach to cannabis] is consistent with [their] broad
moral posture that the country needs to have its backbone stiffened."
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MAP posted-by: Matt