Jamaica: Ganja and crime (shocking new suggestion that pot may be related to crime in some way)

The Jamaica Gleaner ^ | November 27, 2005

[Stoat]

Ganja and crime
published: Sunday | November 27, 2005

The scientific debate in Jamaica about the dangers of marijuana use is often obfuscated by a subtle cultural bias based in part on a support of Rastafarians who claim that the herb is a sacramental part of their religious practice, but also by years of its use in folk medicine.

Now comes Dr. Winston De La Haye, director of the detoxification unit at the University Hospital of the West Indies and president of the Psychiatry Association of Jamaica, who believes that the use of ganja may well be a major contributing cause to the level of crime and violence in the society.

Dr. De La Haye points out that marijuana contains tetrahydro cannabinol which has been proven to exacerbate aggressive behaviour. If this is so, and given the wide use of ganja in Jamaica, the doctor's warning certainly deserves serious consideration and further objective assessment.

He contends that the drug can drive a person mad and, with understandable prudence, asks: Why take a chance?

We note that Professor Fred Hickling, another respected expert, while not disagreeing with Dr. De La Haye's bottom line warning about the dangers of using the drug, defuses the argument by listing a number of other social causes of violence such as poverty and despair, a position that can readily be conceded without in any way detracting from what might be a significant breakthrough in lessening the degree of violence in Jamaica.

Other causes of violence there may well be, but if smoking ganja is like throwing gasolene on smouldering coals, the unequivocal condemnation of its use may be worth trying, backed up with a strong public education campaign to bring home to the populace, especially the youngsters, that by smoking ganja, they may be playing with fire in more ways than one.

This suggestion runs counter to the present popular attitude that the use of ganja should be decriminalised, supported by the recommendations of the National Commission on Ganja which was set up in November 2000.

But in light of Dr. De La Haye's pronouncement, a renewed debate about marijuana use would seem to be in order, one that is non-emotional and focused, not on the general question of whether marijuana is good or bad, but whether it is indeed a contributory cause to violent behaviour.

Certainly there has developed in Jamaica an almost knee-jerk violent reaction to 'dissing' or other relatively minor provocations which needs some explanation. Dr. De La Haye has provided one such possible reason and we think his warning should be heeded.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

What time does Nurse Ratched come around with the pills?

Whenever you need them, which should be any second, unless you go sniveling to the moderator, as is your custom to do so while you busy yourself slandering others...

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Nobody's claiming that Prohibition created organized crime, but that it enriched organized crime.

The repeal of prohibition legitimized the Kennedy fortune. You love it.

[Hemingway's Ghost]

Whenever you need them, which should be any second, unless you go sniveling to the moderator, as is your custom to do so while you busy yourself slandering others...

Piss-poor comeback---I'm very disappointed. And I've never hit the abuse button, my friend, so now you're "slandering" me.

[Know your rights]

The repeal of prohibition legitimized the Kennedy fortune. You love it.

I don't love it, but as a practical conservative I'd rather have seen that fortune "legitimized" than continue to grow.

[halfright]

Who's Hugh? Perhaps you mean huge? This is serious! :-)

[Kenny Bunk]

Alas, The State Department, having long ago been struck by Political Correctness and Affirmative Action, is usually as about as useful as an air compressor at a tea party, when a yank is in difficulty abroad.

[Kenny Bunk]

"I'd rather have seen that fortune "legitimized" than continue to grow.

Fat Ted and the Kennedy Trust collect a royalty on every botle of scotch sold in this country. Last thing Old Joe arranged as Ambassador to the Court of St. James before being cashiered for betting on the NAZIs.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

...as a practical conservative I'd rather have seen that fortune "legitimized" than continue to grow.

All too often liberals trot out a statement with “as a conservative...”

It is their phony ‘good-guy’ badge they hope will impress everyone.

I didn't see the Ku Klux Kennedy fortune diminish either, so that is a red herring as far as how the repeal of Prohibition legitimized the Kennedy fortune.

[halfright]

Yup, Insert "drug and alcohol" testing of every employee including the CEO, board and owner/bosses of every company in the USA. We cant have drinkers coming to work all hung over....its a safety issue

[little jeremiah]

Hmm - note the word "inTOXICation". All substances that intoxicate are toxic to some degree. In fact, some poisonous mushrooms get you high before you die. So yes, marijuana is toxic - iow, considered as a poison by the body - to some degree. Obviously it won't kill a person. But it does kill some synapses, and the liver views it as a toxin that it must filter out and deal with. MJ also stresses the CNS (centeral nervous system) and it takes around 3 days for the THC to clean out (so you notice it, it can be detected in the body longer). In fact, after abstaining from MJ for around 10 years I smoked 3 hits - just THREE - and could feel the fuzzy, mentally dizzy, clouded, mode of darkness effect for three days. It certainly didn't tempt me to smoke any more.

So yes, it is toxic to some degree, as are all substances which intoxicate. But it's not lethal.

[PaxMacian]

When I eat MSG I swell up like a balloon.

[little jeremiah]

A. Poison oak has its uses.

B. If you bothered to read my comments above, I am in favor of legalizing personal use of marijuana and opium if the user grow it himself, with absolutely no selling.

So you are tilting at a straw man.

And for the bleeding hearts who pity those who can't grow it, they can learn gardening. How hard is it to grow one or two plants under a grow light? Even someone in a wheelchair can manage that.

[little jeremiah]

I avoid all chemicals in food such as artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, as well as MSG.

There are artifical toxins and natural toxins.

[eleni121]

can you imagine if pot were legalized? Just more general decline...something this country does not need. We have enough as it is.

Why do you include aspirin in your short list of seriously dangerous substances? Are you allergic to it?

[TKDietz]

"Since when has MJ use in Nederland dropped below that of the US?"

"Dropped below?" Has Holland ever had per capita marijuana use rates higher than the United States? I have never seen evidence of higher use rates in Holland than here. Maybe there was a year or two when that occurred, but I couldn't find statistics showing this with a quick Google search. What I did find was similar or lower use rates throughout most age groups in the Netherlands and use rates a good bit lower there for adolescents. If all these Chicken Little scenarios about how everyone would smoke pot if it was legal and the sky would fall in were true, we should see significantly higher rates of marijuana use in the Netherlands over the long term. Coffeeshops openly selling marijuana and hash to adults have been tolerated there since the mid 1970's. Why don't we see several times as many Dutch on a per capita basis smoking marijuana? Why is it that we see similar or lower per capita use there as we have here?

I think the reason for this is pretty clear. People who want to smoke marijuana are going to do it whether it's against the law or not. This isn't a crime like theft or something where there is always a victim. People who want to smoke tend to feel like whether they smoke marijuana or not is their business, not the government's. They tend to feel a certain sense of justification for violating the marijuana laws. That's never going to change. Moreover, we're never going to catch and punish enough marijuana smokers to give the laws against it any real deterrent effect. When one in several thousand "pot smokings" results in arrest it's hard to scare people into not smoking it with the threat of punishment. They tend to laugh off the laws and ignore them and feel justified in doing so because they believe they aren't hurting anyone by smoking pot, and that the government's laws with respect to marijuana possession are illegitimate, unfair, and should be broken. And again, this is never going to change.

Our prohibition against marijuana will never be effective. As long as people want to smoke marijuana they are going to smoke it. As long as there is demand for marijuana there will always be people who to step up and bring product to market to meet that demand. Our attempts to stop this have and always will be futile. If marijuana wasn't relatively benign compared to other drugs, and alcohol for that matter, maybe it would be worth it to go to all the trouble and expense of enforcing these laws, even though it brings all of the problems that come with prohibition. But marijuana isn't that bad. It's a bad habit, no doubt about that, but certainly no worse than drinking alcohol. Marijuana prohibition will end someday. I say the sooner the better.

[PaxMacian]

Hundreds overdose every year on aspirin and die.
Nobody overdoses on herb.

[eleni121]

"Nobody" is a word that connotes absolutism. In fact there are thousands whose lives are cut short by using marijuana...ok if you feel better about it we can call it a "herb" - but what it is canabis whose main ingredient is delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol.

[PaxMacian]

Facts are absolute. Nobody can overdose on marijuana and that is why nobody has overdosed on marijuana. Alcohol is another story.

[eleni121]

So overdosing on a substance is the criteria for prohibition? See how your argument falls flat...

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Insert "drug and alcohol" testing of every employee including the CEO, board and owner/bosses of every company in the USA.

I did say all employment, all motor vehicles, all air and water vehicles, along with any professional licenses. (Now the one that would really be good is broadcasting licenses.)

I don't want some half drunk, hung over jerk off next to me on the freeway having a blackout, nor do I want some doped up idiot wiring a 480 power grid or handling hot fat fryer grease at a fast food joint (they are all just as much an equal danger to others around them).

So just exactly what is your point?

Pay special attention to the jpeg below... there it is...