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The Real Dope on Drugs!
Posted by FoM on April 13, 1999 at 11:41:09 PT
Source: Calgary Herald
Re "Medical study throws water on marijuana smoke," Calgary Herald, April 8. This article on the Institute of Medicine study was informative but somewhat one-sided. It failed to tell us that it was commissioned by White House drug policy director Barry McCaffrey who is on record as saying that "there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that marijuana has any medical benefits." That it contradicted him at all is surprising. 

On this point, Harvard professor Lester Grinspoon, MD, comments: "The average tobacco user consumes 19 cigarettes a day. The average marijuana user consumes two to four joints per day. The exposure a cannabis smoker receives is negligible." (Report for the American Society for Cannabis Research, May, 1988, p. 4.) While we know that tobacco causes 400,000 deaths annually and alcohol 125,000, there have been "no reports of lung cancer due solely to marijuana smoking." (Marijuana myths, marijuana facts, Zimmer and Morgan, 1997, p.112.) Perhaps people who use drugs are immoral, maybe they are foolish, but as long as it is legal to smoke or drink oneself to death, it makes little sense to prosecute some of our seriously ill immoral fools and not others. Pat Dolan Vancouver, B.C.
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