cannabisnews.com: Writer Drew Hasty Conclusions About Pot 





Writer Drew Hasty Conclusions About Pot 
Posted by FoM on September 12, 1999 at 08:49:30 PT
By Terry Phelan
Source: The Daily Gazette
Clif Tygert's contention (Aug. 27 letter) that pot is hardly harmless because he knows of three deaths - two by auto accident and one by suicide - caused by it, deserves some scrutiny before being accepted as fact.
Studies conducted under the auspices of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) suggests that fatal accidents resulting solely from cannabis consumption occur rarely, if ever. One study of 1,882 drivers killed in crashes in 1990-91 found alcohol in more than half of the cases, but cannabis traces in just 6.7 percent - the majority of whom also had intoxicating levels of alcohol in their systems at the time of the crash.When the data were analyzed, cannabis consumers actually showed a lower likelihood of being involved in a fatal crash than that of a drug-free control group, though the difference was not judged to be statistically significant. A related NHTSA-sponsored study of driving performance under the influence of marijuana, conducted in the Netherlands, found that "that alcohol encourages risky driving whereas THC (marijuana's active ingredient) encourages greater caution, at least in experiments. Another way THC seems to differ qualitatively from many other drugs is that users seem better able to compensate for its adverse effects while driving under the influence."As for the suicide example, pot smokers do sometimes commit suicide, just as non-pot smokers do, but it is not so easy to pin the blame on pot. If Mr. Tygert is trying to claim that the use of marijuana resulted in a suicidal mental state, his claim is tenuous indeed. One could just as easily make the claim that persons commit suicide because they are unhappy living in a police state that brands them as criminals simply for acting on the belief that they own their own bodies and have the right to decide what goes into them.And, on the other side of the coin, no one knows how many suicides marijuana may actually have prevented, as would be the case whenever a suicidally depressed person smoked a joint to elevate their mood and then decided not to carry out the self-destructive actions they had planned.So, while I would wish to offer my condolences to Mr. Tygert over the three lives that have been lost, I would also wish to encourage those who read his letter to adopt an "innocent until proven guilty" attitude toward the "murderer" that he has blamed.TERRY PHELANAlbanyPubdate: September 12, 1999
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