High anxieties : What the WHO doesn't want you to know about cannabis

New Scientist ^

[WindMinstrel]

Health officials in Geneva have suppressed the publication of a politically sensitive analysis that confirms what ageing hippies have known for decades: cannabis is safer than alcohol or tobacco.

According to a document leaked to New Scientist, the analysis concludes not only that the amount of dope smoked worldwide does less harm to public health than drink and cigarettes, but that the same is likely to hold true even if people consumed dope on the same scale as these legal substances.

The comparison was due to appear in a report on the harmful effects of cannabis published last December by the WHO. But it was ditched at the last minute following a long and intense dispute between WHO officials, the cannabis experts who drafted the report and a group of external advisers.

s As the WHO's first report on cannabis for 15 years, the document had been eagerly awaited by doctors and specialists in drug abuse. The official explanation for excluding the comparison of dope with legal substances is that "the reliability and public health significance of such comparisons are doubtful". However, insiders say the comparison was scientifically sound and that the WHO caved in to political pressure. It is understood that advisers from the US National Institute on Drug Abuse and the UN International Drug Control Programme warned the WHO that it would play into the hands of groups campaigning to legalise marijuana.

One member of the expert panel which drafted the report, says: "In the eyes of some, any such comparison is tantamount to an argument for marijuana legalisation." Another member, Billy Martin of the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, says that some WHO officials "went nuts" when they saw the draft report.

The leaked version of the excluded section states that the reason for making the comparisons was "not to promote one drug over another but rather to minimise the double standards that have operated in appraising the health effects of cannabis". Nevertheless, in most of the comparisons it makes between cannabis and alcohol, the illegal drug comes out better--or at least on a par--with the legal one.

The report concludes, for example, that "in developed societies cannabis appears to play little role in injuries caused by violence, as does alcohol". It also says that while the evidence for fetal alcohol syndrome is "good", the evidence that cannabis can harm fetal development is "far from conclusive".

Cannabis also fared better in five out of seven comparisons of long-term damage to health. For example, the report says that while heavy consumption of either drug can lead to dependence, only alcohol produces a "well defined withdrawal syndrome". And while heavy drinking leads to cirrhosis, severe brain injury and a much increased risk of accidents and suicide, the report concludes that there is only "suggestive evidence that chronic cannabis use may produce subtle defects in cognitive functioning".

Two comparisons were more equivocal. The report says that both heavy drinking and marijuana smoking can produce symptoms of psychosis in susceptible people. And, it says, there is evidence that chronic cannabis smoking "may be a contributory cause of cancers of the aerodigestive tract".

[Xenalyte]

That would be the best excuse call ever!

"Um, dude, I'm not gonna come in today, 'cause, like, my roommate from college was in town last night, and, um, we kinda got to reminiscing, and, um . . . where was I? . . . oh, yeah, it's kind of a bummer, 'cause I spilled bongwater all over my carpet, and I gotta . . . shut up, y'all, I'm on the phone . . . anyway, uh, I'm like sick or something."

[Xenalyte]

How does one get on your ping list? I'd love to be on it - and five bucks says Hap does too.

[Xenalyte]

Who exactly supports legalizing drugs, and the whole counter-culture, anti-American crap line anyway? Conservatives? Wrong.

Man, am I glad you're here. I've been calling myself a conservative for so long, and I'm embarrassed as all hell to find out I was wrong.

So tell me: if I'm for Ron Paul, school vouchers, the NRA, legalization, capitalism, and Ann Coulter, and against abortion, Amnesty International, Susan Sarandon, government interference, and Hillary, am I a leftist?

I sure hope not. I hate to think I've been voting the wrong ticket for the last 15 years.

[Xenalyte]

Oxygen deprivation was indeed the terminal affect of smoking so much pot, something a voluntary smoker couldn't possibly attain because a human would eventually forget to smoke the thing.

True story: when I was in high school, a buddy of mine decided to try to OD on pot. He gave up after a few hours, when he realized that he didn't have that kind of time. (And we didn't have jobs, so we had all kinds of time.)

[Xenalyte]

Yowza! Where do I get me one a them jumpsuits?

[Lady Jag]

to overdose, you would have to consume 40,000 times as much marijuana as you needed to get stoned.

In other words it is not possible to get a toxic dose of marijuana. 40,000 times a usual dose must be 1200-1300 pounds of the stuff and only the government burns that much all at once.

[Xenalyte]

Shut up the both a ya, or I'll sic the Master Control Program on you.

[Xenalyte]

Welcome home!

[Dakmar]

Most of the drug-warrior types are quite socialist in their thinking. They talk a good line on many issues, but when the fat is in the fire they really seem to think the government should be the final authority on morality.

[Dakmar]

You can't do that, I'll just morph into another class or execute the biggest interrupt known to mankind. :-)

[Lady Jag]

Back in the 60s, A friend of mine quit college, was between jobs, and decided to see how much pot she could smoke in one day. She called to tell me she rolled seven joints and sat down to watch a movie. I split a gut laughing when she said that by the end of the day she had six and a half joints left but her apartment was really clean. Said she never did see the end of the movie, though.

[A. Pole]

In other words it is not possible to get a toxic dose of marijuana. 40,000 times a usual dose must be 1200-1300 pounds of the stuff

So it must be much less than toxic dose of sugar or salt. BTW, I read that in China people commit suicide by eating a lot of kitchen salt. In Easter Europe people happen to try it by drinking too much vodka.

[Lady Jag]

Salt and seawater are very toxic and it doesn't take much to kill a person. Even fresh water can kill as evidenced by the Florida woman who went on Stillman's water diet years ago. Her problem is she ate nothing, just drank water, which resulted in a severe electrolite imbalance. I don't recall how long it took, but it killed her.

[Dakmar]

If this salt and seawater you describe is so toxic, why aren't there HHS, DEA, or Coast Guard protecting folks from runnin out there in the ocean just to have a shot at gnawing on turtles and sea-rocks?

[Lady Jag]

You could gnaw on turtles and sea rocks, just don't drink the ocean. Unless they're protected turtles and endangered sea rocks. They are protected but in this case, we are not. Dakmar, how about coming up with a seawater diet that we can sell to the Democrats?

[oceanperch]

I was taught that a stone was a razr but where I was adopted to the stone did not work on my Europeon/Irish skin.

But the hair is vanishing as I grow in to my Forties.

I still have a great pair of legs and strong shoulders.

Coast Guard Fly Over Still. LOL

[tacticalogic]

execute the biggest interrupt known to mankind. :-)

We call that "The Big Orange Switch". ;)

[Dakmar]

Well, I suppose we could talk about all the oppressed people forced to drink sea water, but then we'd have to scout some up. It would be easier and cheaper to just hire some folks to look downtrodden for an afternoon, I suppose. Would we still have to rent real turtles?