I posted this in 420 a while ago.. but i found it and Copy and pasted.. enjoy.
So i wrote this article for my school newspaper, it is fairly controversial as far as highschool newspapers go because the newspaper isnt being printed next year and this is the last issue. It will of course be printed under a pen name because i would still probably get in trouble... here it is (btw it focuses on canada because that is where i live)
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Marijuana- How Bad is it?
Marijuana is a commonly used and practically harmless recreational intoxicant. Why then is it illegal?
Drug prohibition in Canada despite common belief actually came before the United States. The first drug law in Canada was the Anti-Opium act of 1908. It all began on September 8th 1907 in Vancouver British Columbia, the railway was completed, the gold mines were running low, and more and more Asians continued to come into the country. On September 8th an anti-Asian riot broke out and the windows of the businesses Vancouver’s Asian community were smashed. Two Chinese men who were licensed to sell opium asked the government for reimbursement. The deputy labour minister, future prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King went out to Vancouver to help these two Gentlemen. Unfortunately for these two they were in fact blamed for the riot under the accusations that their opium dens sold opium (which was legal at the time) to white women and girls, and instead of receiving compensation King created the Anti-Opium act which at first disallowed the sale of opium in only Chinese opium dens, but still allowed it to be sold in botanical medicine stores owned by white people. This was North America’s first national drug law.
Cannabis as a medicine has been used throughout the world for centuries. Canadians were scared into supporting the prohibition by a set of articles by Emily Murphy, first published in Maclean’s Magazine in 1920. The Majority of these articles were about the Chinese and opium. Marijuana was thrown into a few stories that Murphy took from American Newspapers, one of the most famous stories being from a newspaper published by William Hearst. There were rape crimes committed by black men who frequently used cocaine, just before the 1920’s when jazz music was beginning to take off; Hearst changed the stories from “Cocaine crazed Negroes” to “Marijuana crazed Negroes” in an attempt to stop the growth of “voodoo satanic” jazz music, because many up and coming jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong, used marijuana regularly, the drug was demonized and made to look bad. Stories such as these were published to scare Canadians and make them support marijuana prohibition… the problem was nobody knew what marijuana was, only in Mexico and the southern States was Cannabis known by that name. It is easily speculated that had Canadians known they were prohibiting cannabis, it never would have happened. The second main reason Marijuana was prohibited in Canada was because of the owner of Standard Oil, J.D. Rockefeller Sr. Rockefeller had a number of large investments in synthetic pharmaceuticals. Rockefeller knew that with the medicinal, especially pain relieving abilities, of cannabis, and the fact it is easy for anyone to produce, would mean a lot of money would be lost in his investments in synthetic pharmaceuticals. Rockefeller paid King to do his best to make cannabis illegal in Canada. It is also speculated that the reason president Roosevelt was later on Rockefellers pay roll was because the seed oil is easy to refine into many fuels and the fact it is a renewable resource meant that there was a serious threat to his oil empire.
Everyone who is reading this has been told at some point about how bad marijuana smoking is for you. A study in 1974 at Tulane University, done with Rhesus monkeys, was designed to show the effects of heavy marijuana smoking. The monkeys were given what would have been the equivalent of 30 joints a day began to atrophy and die within 90 days. It was not until 1980 when playboy magazine did an article and the truth came out. For the first time after threatening a law suit, the government released the method of research. The monkeys were strapped to a chair where they were made to inhale the equivalent of 63 Columbian strength joints in five minutes through gas masks losing no smoke, for a period of just over three months. The study originally suggested they wanted to find out what would happen to someone smoking 30 joints a day for a year. Though the amount of marijuana used in the end was the same there is a big difference. Dr. Heath later admitted that he wanted to save money by not having to pay an assistant for a full year. This study only ended up proving one thing… breathing pure smoke 5 minutes through a gas mask every day for three months kills brain cells, yet to this day anti drug campaigns use this study in pamphlets and commercials.
Another study from 1974 which was quickly shut down and destroyed by the DEA and was never repeated until the year 2000 by researchers in Madrid Spain, showed that activity of chemicals found in cannabis (cannabinoids), actually shrank, and in some cases destroyed brain tumours in many different mammals, and that it also receded and slowed the growth of lung and breast cancers, as well as a virally induced form of leukemia. The rats which were not given brain tumours but still given THC showed no destruction of any brain material, however rats given tumours and no THC all died within 12 days. After this study was first done in 1974 American president, Gerald Ford made all cannabis research illegal, except for pharmaceutical companies who intended to find a way to harness the medicinal effects of cannabis without producing the ‘high’. This study was not ever published in North America and was awarded by ‘Project Censored’ as the top censored story of the year 2000.
The latest study done in the United States was just over the past year and the results were published at the end of may, this study was allowed to happen because it involved the link between marijuana smoking and lung cancer, this study from the university of San Diego was allowed because it was thought that marijuana smoking would cause lung cancer just as, if not more quickly than tobacco smoking, however, there was no link found whatsoever to marijuana smoking and lung cancer. It was actually discovered that marijuana smoking dilates the airway and makes it easier for the body to remove tar previously placed there by tobacco smoking.
So if it isn’t as bad for you as tobacco or alcohol, isn’t it still bad because it leads to harder drugs? There is no proof marijuana use leads to other drug use, most people drink before they smoke marijuana so by that reasoning Alcohol is also a ‘gateway’ drug. There is in fact overwhelming proof that the legalization of marijuana would prevent movement to harder drugs because there would be less connection to the underground drug trade. In Amsterdam heroin addiction has gone down 35% since marijuana has been allowed in cafes, this is because there is no longer a need for people who want to smoke marijuana to deal with those who also deal with harder drugs, lowering exposure to them, and thus lowering the likelihood of further experimentation with addictive drugs.
An article published in 1994 in the New York Times displayed a chart comparing the addictiveness, withdrawal symptoms, and levels of intoxication. When compared to caffeine, THC was half as addictive, so to do a little calculation comparing a can of coke which contains 150 milligrams of caffeine, to a joint (approximately 0.5g) of high quality 15% potency marijuana, (contains 75 milligrams of THC). This means the can of coke is twice as addictive as an average joint. The withdrawal symptoms of alcohol addiction were also rated 3 times more severe than those of caffeine addiction, which were still 2 times more severe than the withdrawal of a THC addiction.
Marijuana Prohibition has now gone beyond the racist and economical reasons it was originally demonized and prohibited for. Cannabis prohibition has now reached a point of ignorance where people have been told it is so bad that to look for a different possibility would seem like a waste of time and have gone on to preach it is bad simply because they were told so, without looking at hard scientific fact.
