More Bad News for Prohibition

1. Long-term marijuana use is associated with lower risks of certain cancers, including head and neck cancer.

The moderate long-term use of marijuana is associated with a reduced risk of head and neck cancers, according to the results of a population-based case-control study conducted by investigators at Rhode Island's Brown University and published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research

2. WE All Know that pot is safer than booze. Despite over 70 years of government propaganda alleging that cannabis is far more dangerous than alcohol, the reality is that few Americans believe it. Nor should they.

According to an August 2010 national Rasmussen poll, fewer than one in five Americans believe that consuming pot is more dangerous than drinking alcohol. By contrast, fifty percent of respondents, including the majority of those who said that they drank alcohol, rated the use of marijuana to be less dangerous than booze.

3. The enforcement of marijuana laws is racially discriminatory. Minorities, particularly African Americans and Hispanics, disproportionately bear the brunt of marijuana arrests despite using cannabis at rates similar to – or in some cases, less frequently – than whites.

For example, an August 2010 study (PDF) commissioned by the Drug Policy Alliance reported that African Americans are arrested for marijuana possession offenses in California at more than twice the rate of Caucasians. Authors determined: "Young blacks use marijuana at lower rates than young whites. Yet from 2004 through 2008, in every one of the 25 largest counties in California, blacks were arrested for marijuana possession at higher rates than whites, typically at double, triple or even quadruple the rate of whites.”

4. Marijuana may be helpful, not harmful, to people with schizophrenia.

For years now the mainstream media has run rampant with reports that smoking cannabis causes or exacerbates mental illness, particularly schizophrenia. Yet several overlooked studies published earlier this year indicate that pot may actually be helpful to some patients with the disease. For example, in May a team of researchers writing in the Canadian Journal of Nursing Research reported male schizophrenic subjects consumed marijuana "as a means of satisfying the schizophrenia-related need for relaxation, sense of self-worth, and distraction." (Survey data published in 2008 in the International Journal of Mental Health Nursing also reported that many schizophrenic patients obtain relief from cannabis, finding that subjects consumed cannabis to reduce anxiety, mitigate memories of childhood trauma, enhance cognition, and "improve their mental state.")

5. Workplace drug testing programs don’t identify impaired employees or reduce on-the-job accidents. Workplace urine testing programs are an inadequate method for identifying employees who are under the influence, and do not significantly reduce job accident rates, according to a completely ignored study published this past March in the scientific journal Addiction.

...FULL ARTICLE HERE...