Unlike tobacco, smoking marijuana – even when done regularly – does not damage the performance of people’s lungs, according to a recent study published by The Journal of the American Medical Association.
The two-decade research, which followed 5,000 people who smoked an equivalent of one joint per day over the course of seven years, found out that despite their regular marijuana use, subjects were still able to push out a normal amount of air in one second after taking a deep breath. This means that only minimal if any pulmonary obstruction has developed, contrary to findings involving tobacco.
“Recent evidence indicates that smoking marijuana, for lung cancer, is not as bad as smoking tobacco is,” said Lyle Craker, a plant sciences professor at the University of Massachusetts who has studied medical marijuana for several years now. “Marijuana is relatively less dangerous than some other drugs.”
One possible explanation from the authors of the study states that because marijuana users “train” themselves to hold in the smoke, they were able to maintain proper breathing cycles.
Still, smoking marijuana can result in heavy coughing and is linked to mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and depression, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). The NIDA also states that cannabis impairs users’ senses by reducing attention span and motivation, which makes them prone to accidents.
“All drugs contain alkaloids, and alkaloids are bad for you,” Craker said. “Getting hooked on anything is bad for you.”
Marijuana, which is now the most widely-used illegal drug in the country, has gained popularity among youth in recent years, according to the National Institutes of Health’s Monitoring the Future study. The study shows that one out of 15 high school students smoke the drug daily.
“National surveys say that kids have a much easier time getting marijuana than they are getting alcohol because alcohol stores ask for an I.D., while underground drug dealers don’t have a card policy,” said Will Snyder, a UMass student and a member of the Cannabis Reform Coalition (CRC) on campus.
Snyder said that the government’s anti-drug campaigns, such as AboveTheInfluence.org, fail to regulate marijuana use among teenagers because they “find a way to get [marijuana] anyway.” He said that marijuana should instead be legalized with a minimum age restriction as with alcohol.
In addition, he said that marijuana is less fatal than other vices popular with youth, such as tobacco and alcohol, which kill 443,000 and 80,000 Americans each year, respectively, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
UMass student Rob Jacobs expressed concern over marijuana legalization if it was not sufficiently taxed and regulated.
“To just make it a legal substance doesn’t enact the necessary control of it,” Jacobs said.
The CRC has also been pushing for the legalization of growing marijuana for medical research. In 2007, it backed Craker as he pitched the idea of growing medical marijuana in the University for research purposes to the Drug Enforcement Administration. However, the DEA rejected his proposal.
At the moment, only the University of Mississippi is authorized to grow marijuana to be handed down to and studied by the Food and Drug Administration.
While he insisted that recreational usage of marijuana is still disruptive, Craker said that making marijuana a total taboo is not fair. Many have already speculated that marijuana could help to cure glaucoma and post-traumatic stress disorder, and may even help women to conceive better, he said. Currently, marijuana has no legal medical use according to federal regulations.
“Because it’s not been tested in a scientific study, all we have is lay evidence,” Craker said. “That’s why we want to be able to grow this here at the University to provide material to medical doctors so it can run on clinical trials.”
Craker and Snyder both agree that the ban on experimental marijuana growth hinders probable medical breakthroughs involving marijuana.
“If you say that there’s no science behind [the medical use of marijuana], why can’t someone like Professor Craker study it?” Snyder said.
“We live in an age of science, and these things should be tested,” Craker said.
According to Craker, marijuana has been prohibited primarily because hemp was overtaking wood as a better fiber for paper production during the early 1900s. Because businessmen, such as publisher William Randolph Hearst, relied on their timber lands and did not want any competition, they insisted that “marijuana is the worst thing in the world.”
This point of view, he said, was passed on from generation to generation, and at present, organizations such as the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the DEA employ people to promote a drug-free society. Consequently, legalizing marijuana would hurt certain people’s jobs, he said.
“I don’t want to accuse anyone, but things get into trends, and they’re not willing to look at alternatives,” Craker said. “I think it’s those with an interest in keeping it restricted [who] demonize marijuana.”
On the other hand, Snyder is optimistic that with findings that clarify people’s knowledge about its health effects, marijuana would gradually become more accepted by society.
“Our generation’s attitudes towards cannabis have become much more positive,” he said.
Ardee Napolitano can be reached at [email protected].
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Schiz Life • Dec 10, 2012 at 8:51 am
To the guys saying that “drug induced psychosis” is akin to being high or drunk is not remotely what the term means. It’s a lasting psychosis that requires medical and psychotherapeutic attention to resolve. It may only occur in those who have latent issues hiding underneath and are triggered by the substance use, but regardless, it happens and wouldn’t without the substances. Does that mean they should be illegal? No. But it happens, and there’s no sense in denying it. It’s in tons of research and results with it’s inclusion in the DSM and ICD manuals as well. I had my own experience with this after some psychedelic usage. It is very real. Thanks!
Winston. • Oct 26, 2012 at 5:40 am
At present it is estimated that marijuana’s LD-50 is around 1:20,000 or 1:40,000. In layman terms this means that in order to induce death a marijuana smoker would have to consume 20,000 to 40,000 times as much marijuana as is contained in one marijuana cigarette. NIDA-supplied marijuana cigarettes weigh approximately .9 grams. **A smoker would theoretically have to consume nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana within about fifteen minutes to induce a lethal response
Virginia • May 10, 2012 at 9:31 am
The idea that marijuana causes schizophrenia is an unproven lie dispensed by the government in in the 1930′s to scare white people into believing that the “black animal” smoked marijuana and became crazed and raped white women. The government has been lying about marijuana since they changed the name TO marijuana. Lest we forget the government was the one that pushed the monkey study to say that marijuana kills brain cells..the joke being that the monkeys were subjected to nothing but marijuana smoke (up to 63 grams) pushed into their lungs through a nose and mouth covering tube for 5 minutes at a time.
QwertyK • Mar 24, 2012 at 2:37 pm
Sometimes things have to fall apart to make way for better things and this has now become necessary for society, the problem is not the governments and their blatant disregard for the evidence presented to them or their defiance of reasoning and logical thinking when dealing with such evidence. instead i believe the problem lies with society and the misconceived notions which have been passed on, this is also true of religion, culture, tradition all of which lead people down paths of ignorance be it blissfully or kicking and screaming.
Getting back to the matter at hand, cannabis has never been found to be dangerous in any independent study and even studies carried out by governments and anti-drug agencies have all shown that it is a non lethal substance regardless of dosage.. quite literally impossible to over dose on cannabis.
Throughout its long documented history of use, many medical uses have been listed and observed (pain relief, anti-inflammatory, stress reduction and appetite induction to name but a few) all of which can go toward helping large groups of people around the world at a cost lower than any pharmaceutical compound or medicine in production today. This perhaps is the reason pharmaceutical companies are not willing to carry out in-dept research into medical uses of unmodified cannabis or cannabis extracts instead opting to carry out research into highly concentrated extracts which cannot be attained naturally to negate the use of natural cannabis for medical purposes and to keep their pockets filled
Cannabis has never been proven in any studies to be addictive or to cause addiction though it should be noted that there will always be people who will become addicted to any substance and in these cases the addiction is not a physical one but a psychological one stemming from mental instability leading to reliance on a object or substance.
Some will argue that there are true addicts and this is somewhat true, there ARE indeed addicts of cannabis but this is largely due to chemical modification. Some of the cannabis grown contains higher levels of THC and various other cannabinoids contained in the plant to provide a better psychoactive and sensory experience. These changes can be made passively through the use of proper lighting, correct exposure and type of fertiliser used or actively through the use of chemical sprays and chemically enhanced fertiliser. The end result is a higher profit yielding product with wider appeal due to its effects. The additional chemicals used can often be the cause of the addiction (some ‘manufacturers’ have been known to cut their product with addictive compounds to build a returning customer base)
The prohibition of cannabis and drugs in general serves no real purpose other than create a very large demand for the product (Don’t we all want what we can’t have?), since this demand cannot be met in legitimate ways, nefarious paths are taken to meet the demand but with no process in place and no quality or quantity regulations the users have no rights and all risk must be assumed by them at purchase. This creates a new model of business-customer relation whereas in normal business-customer relation the business can be made liable for the effects of their product in this case the customer has no such rights. Since sales cannot be carried out legally and importing/exporting the products cannot be done legally many extra processes are put into place, this is generally why only large illegal organisations are able to take control since manufacturing and shipping the quantities required to meet demand require organisation and who’s more organised than criminals (police may fail against a criminal N times and succeed once and they will be successful, a criminal must succeed every time to be successful)
we are spending billions a year to fight a battle against something that could potentially, if given the proper funding, resources and rights help a lot of people. If made legal it could be regulated for quality and price and taxed like everything else creating jobs and helping the economy (people are going to continue regardless so why not have the right people profit?)
It could also be age regulated to prevent its use in younger people from getting into it too early and since it would be legal getting it illegally would be far more difficult.. people don’t go around with bottles of $10 vodka trying to sell it for a 50 because it falls outside the purview of customer demand.
But we all know the story, question is ‘is there anything we can do to change it right now?’
Short answer.. NO
Change is slow and seems slower still the faster you move, people have learned to move very fast in modern society which is always connected, always on and always increasing the pace is has set for itself.. but society does not move as a whole and when it does it does so silently too embarrassed to share, so few revolutions happen because people know they are unhappy and don’t share but they don’t know that other people are unhappy because they don’t share either and until this knowledge changes from individual knowledge to communal knowledge it will remain that way.
This has in recent times become less of a problem since everyone is willing to share their thoughts (albeit anonymously) so now we know that we aren’t happy and others know we aren’t happy and we know they aren’t happy yet this shared knowledge has not lead to any action, the reason for this?
well some fear the consequences of simply coming forward due to all the propaganda spread against the use of cannabis and its many many ill effects (seizures, mental instability, schizophrenia, depression, weight gain, weight loss, anti-social behaviour, brain cell damage, lung damage to name but a few things attributed to cannabis over the years.. all of it unfounded and never proven yet at least one of those symptoms will come into everyones mind.
with all this, the subject itself has been made taboo which shames people into not talking about it, simply admitting you have part taken in consuming cannabis can often result in backlash for any public figure. The propaganda used to inhibit its use in masses is not only to inhibit its use but also to provide a subjective view of how society should function and the detrimental impact cannabis would have on said society.
so until perceptions of what is appropriate in a society are changed, we are unlikely to see any changes in laws.
– Change the world one mind at a time
Bill Lancaster • Feb 26, 2012 at 8:09 pm
Kalimba7 says:
People that want to ban this substance clearly have not smoked it, otherwise the only reasonably response would be utter ambivalence.
====
I don’t need to ban this drug to know that I don’t want my aircraft pilot, or train engineer, or bus driver partaking in this “innocent substance.”
futureatavist • Feb 12, 2012 at 10:57 pm
The prohibition on marijuana is about as successful at preventing drug use as a prohibition on contraception would be at preventing pregnancy. In some European countries young kids grow up drinking wine with meals. When they get older they simply aren’t inclined to “binge drink” because alcohol is no big deal to them. Prohibition leads people to overcompensate and often to crime. Al Capone and all he represented would essentially never have existed were it not for prohibition. Legalize pot and other drugs and you change the culture of addiction to a culture of understanding. Medicalizing the dangerous drugs – making them available to addicts under medical care – would eliminate the need for the drug war by eliminating the market for the cartels. That would free up the roughly $23 billion a year! Now I can think of a whole-lotta ways that kind of money could help in these times…
Journo • Feb 7, 2012 at 12:33 pm
This might be my favorite –
-“Drugs used in medicine are routinely given what is called an LD-50. The LD-50 rating indicates at what dosage fifty percent of test animals receiving a drug will die as a result of drug induced toxicity. A number of researchers have attempted to determine marijuana’s LD-50 rating in test animals, without success. Simply stated, researchers have been unable to give animals enough marijuana to induce death.”
-“At present it is estimated that marijuana’s LD-50 is around 1:20,000 or 1:40,000. In layman terms this means that in order to induce death a marijuana smoker would have to consume 20,000 to 40,000 times as much marijuana as is contained in one marijuana cigarette. NIDA-supplied marijuana cigarettes weigh approximately .9 grams. **A smoker would theoretically have to consume nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana within about fifteen minutes to induce a lethal response**.”
Just because they put it on a shelf in a pharmacy doesn’t mean it’s safe – Over the counter asprin kills hundreds of people per year. Next time you have a headache, smoke a joint.
Journo • Feb 7, 2012 at 12:26 pm
‘Alkaloids’ are also present in local anesthetics, analgesic morphine, an antibacterial, an anti-cancer compound, an anti-hypertension agent, an anti-arhythmia compound, an anti-asthma therapeutic, and an anti-malarial drug. But I guess since it also occurs in other drugs that can be abused, it must be bad for you. This is what we call propaganda people – They try to give you a word you don’t know to incite fear .. Ignorance breeds fear, so DO YOUR RESEARCH! If you did do your research, you would find this:
-“Indeed, epidemiological data indicate that in the general population marijuana use is not associated with increased mortality.”
-“Nearly all medicines have toxic, potentially lethal effects. But marijuana is not such a substance. There is no record in the extensive medical literature describing a proven, documented cannabis-induced fatality.”
-“First, the record on marijuana encompasses 5,000 years of human experience. Second, marijuana is now used daily by enormous numbers of people throughout the world. Estimates suggest that from twenty million to fifty million Americans routinely, albeit illegally, smoke marijuana without the benefit of direct medical supervision. Yet, despite this long history of use and the extraordinarily high numbers of social smokers, there are simply no credible medical reports to suggest that consuming marijuana has caused a single death.”
I could go on .. But if you visit the page where I got this info, check out the table (http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/30). In 2009, nearly 45,000 people died due to lack of health insurance. 36,000 took their own lives. 31,000 were killed by firearms. 23,000 alcohol induced deaths. 7,600 died of hepatitis. Marijuana related deaths? 0. Use your heads people, there are a lot more dangerous things in this world than people smoking pot. The war on this “drug” needs to end.
Old Hippie • Feb 6, 2012 at 4:52 pm
If you don’t actually *smoke* marijuana, but vaporize or use edibles instead, you can avoid all these silly arguments and be much healthier at the same time!
Good Weed Girl • Feb 6, 2012 at 4:43 pm
I want to open a marijuana rehab center. Non-violent pot smokers + government contract = PROFIT!
Chris • Feb 6, 2012 at 11:32 am
yea…if a kid or young adult is charged with possession of marijuana once or mulitple times…they judge will say you can go to juvi for this amount of time or he’ll say to the adult you can go to jail for this amount of time or pay this fine……or you can go to rehab. i guarantee that maybe 1 in 20 people at marijuana rehab facilities are there by choice. the rest are forced.
aaron • Feb 6, 2012 at 5:17 am
I just want to say to everyone that thinks marijuana is addictive. You are an idiot. Just because there is rehab centers full of people using marijuana does not mean its addictive. That is just a statistic. If someone is caught with marijuana they are given a choice of going to rehab or going to jail the obvious choice there is to go to rehab. Next time do some research before you say something stupid.
Mike • Feb 5, 2012 at 9:47 pm
@Karelia
The reason for rehabs being filled with people who only smoke weed is because of the judicial system. You can get a shorter sentence when you’re arrested for marijuana possession by claiming you’re an addict and going to rehab. This benefits groups who are against pot by creating inflated statistics about “pot head drug addicts filling rehabs”
gümüş alyans • Feb 5, 2012 at 8:00 pm
one more thing. if you are a smoker, after smoking weed you dont need to smoke cigarettes for a few hours, or even more. does anyone else get this?
Fyrehed • Feb 5, 2012 at 3:46 pm
We want a drug* free society.
*Except caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, prescription drugs, and naturally occurring chemicals that flood our systems whenever we experience heightened emotion or senses.
Fyrehed • Feb 5, 2012 at 3:42 pm
“According to Craker, marijuana has been prohibited primarily because hemp was overtaking wood as a better fiber for paper production during the early 1900s.”
Yeah, I’m sure it had nothing to do with the ban on alcohol being lifted leaving thousands of government employees out of job–unless another drug fills miraculously slides in to fill the slot. Seriously, what a stupid argument. Why, in a capitalist society that is obsessed with production and profit, would they outlaw a plant because it has a variety of uses, high production value and therefore high potential for big profits? That makes ZERO sense. For being a professor, Craker apparently doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking.
Ben • Feb 5, 2012 at 12:47 pm
Someone already got to it, but cannabinoids are NOT alkaloids, they do not contain a nitrogen group. Also, depression and schizophrenia are GENETIC diseases, I should know it runs in my family. Seriously, this is what our fucking funding goes towards? ABSOLUTE SHITE.
Kalimba7 • Feb 5, 2012 at 12:13 pm
Did a anti-marijuana lawyer go over this article with a fine tooth comb… or is it just me? “Less lethal than other drugs” *cough* It’s not lethal, you smoke to much pot and you fall asleep, drink to much booze and you take a dirt nap. This pretty much ends the argument here.
NIDA is wrong, the studies used to attribute smoking marijuana with (LOL) Schizophrenia are hideously flawed and inconclusive… it’s literally absurd.
“All drugs contain alkaloids, and alkaloids are bad for you”
Uh… I am not sure. Alkaloids come from plants, and are quite important to the medical sciences. For instance, quinine, which is used to treat Malaria, is an alkaloid. The various chemicals found in the Foxglove plant are used to save people in cardiac arrest, if you’re not in cardiac arrest they will kill you though.
Something tells me if we asked this person to distinguish between alkaloids and other molecules that contain nitrogen a atom (cyclic or acyclic) they wouldn’t be able to. +1 science
Our prohibitionist policies have clearly failed because they fail to protect people. Pot heads are not a menace; pot heads don’t go home and hit their partners because they got to stoned and couldn’t control themselves. Pot heads will not go into lethal spasmodic fits if their family decides to have an intervention and deprives them of marijuana. Marijuana doesn’t slowly destroy your brain, kidneys and liver. Marijuana doesn’t really do much of anything other than get you stoned… it’s literally the most benign substance on the planet. Panic attacks, sure, no attention span… perhaps, but they won’t literally smoke themselves brain-dead (in the clinical sense folks, super-stoners who smoke out there house are pretty hard to communicate with.
People that want to ban this substance clearly have not smoked it, otherwise the only reasonably response would be utter ambivalence.
smotpoker11332147859 • Feb 5, 2012 at 10:58 am
The most recent “marijuana…may…cause…schizophrenia” study I remember was used by many media outlets as another sensational fear-mongering kind of attention-grabber. My University’s student paper did the same thing, on the front page! The title was “Marijuana makes you CRAZY.” That was at Purdue in 2005. An excellent engineering school with loads of cash dedicated to scientific research from about a jillion donors. So clearly, not many scientists are writing for that paper (or many others LOL). Anyway, I digress. The study actually demonstrated a link between marijuana use and the development of psychosis IN PEOPLE WHO ARE GENETICALLY PREDISPOSED TO HAVING PSYCHOSIS. All I could say to that study is, “Thanks, Scientific Method, but jeez; herp derp da teetly herpy derpy DUH”
Some journalists do anything for a headline. That’s non-science for ya. Always writing about fashion and other non-issues. Political “science,” really? loallzorssszz. Anywho, legalize it.
D. Brown • Feb 5, 2012 at 9:26 am
” But, sit in on a rehab group for people whose drug of choice was “only” pot and you’ll see how “safe” it is.”
I would bet you a weeks wages that the author of that statement never attended a marijuana “rehab” session! LMAO
Rob • Feb 4, 2012 at 6:31 pm
Karelia, because they were ordered by the court to be there. Or they are already criminals, and since marijuana may have been found on them, it was part of their sentancing.
Cyrus • Feb 4, 2012 at 6:16 pm
To Karelia..
Rehab clinics are filled with marijuana users because when they get to court they’re given a choice. Potentially go to prison and pay thousands of dollars of fines for having a joint, or plead guilty and get probation on the promise of completing rehab. Naturally they take rehab and probation, even though rehab has never done a single thing for a marijuana user.
The idea that marijuana causes schizophrenia is an unproven lie dispensed by the government in in the 1930’s to scare white people into believing that the “black animal” smoked marijuana and became crazed and raped white women. The government has been lying about marijuana since they changed the name TO marijuana. Lest we forget the government was the one that pushed the monkey study to say that marijuana kills brain cells..the joke being that the monkeys were subjected to nothing but marijuana smoke (up to 63 grams) pushed into their lungs through a nose and mouth covering tube for 5 minutes at a time.
Joe Wolf • Feb 4, 2012 at 4:29 pm
I am just about ROFLing right now at that comment by the NIDA spokesperson about plant alkaloids being bad for you, and marijuana being an alkaloid.
The phytocannabinoids in marijuana are PHENOLS not alkaloids, and phenols tend to be good for you. Most of those phytonutrients those who are health conscious hear about (like circumin) are also phenols and they tend to have some pretty amazing properties like killing cancer cells and supressing inflammation.
CO 80420 • Feb 3, 2012 at 11:47 am
As someone who just moved here from CO and has/had a Medical card; I quite enjoy these comments.
Karelia • Feb 3, 2012 at 3:41 am
If marijuana isn’t bad for you, why are rehabs filled with marijuana users. Some rehabs are for people who only smoke marijuana. They don’t use other drugs. It’s important for people, especially kids who are experimenting, to know that marijuana is often addictive. It also can contribute to or cause psychological problems that range from depression to schizophrenia. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar or is relying on wishful thinking. It’s harmful to spread opinion and wishful thinking as if it were fact. Yes, some people use marijuana and it has no negative impact on their health or other aspects of their lives. But, sit in on a rehab group for people whose drug of choice was “only” pot and you’ll see how “safe” it is.
EMF • Feb 2, 2012 at 1:18 pm
Where did this photo come from? Really?
Rob Sims • Feb 1, 2012 at 5:23 pm
CO buddyboy… I think you read the article wrong. It’s clearly a neutral stance, along with the title giving it a slight slant toward pro-cannabis use.
Also, much as I hate to say it, I think this article posted on Daily Collegian is for the most part preaching to the choir.
Michael Miller • Feb 1, 2012 at 1:15 pm
If you estimate that about 80% of adults drink or basically accept alcohol you can understand why bars exist. It is only because so many people drink that it is possible to excuse businesses that intoxicate people then allow them to climb into their cars to drive home. Driving under the influence is illegal and in many cases they are drunk. If politicians, cops, and judges did not also drink this could not happen. Cannabis illegality is caused by bigotry. If only 10% of the population drank booze then we would be having this conversation about alcohol too.
JoeDawg • Feb 1, 2012 at 12:53 pm
Give me a break, peanuts kill more people on a daily basis then marijuana has in 5000 years. If you think spending another 1.3 trillion dollars trying to stop people from doing something that they are going to do anyway is intelligent policy, your an idiot.
J.T. Chronic • Feb 1, 2012 at 12:10 pm
The war on cannabis is a political game at the expense of the sick and injured. The fed’s have no rite scaring and tourching MMJ patient’s but it happens everyday. They need to do away with all of these anti drug organization’s and and the fed’s need to realize they work for us and enough of us could oust their org. And the DEA is ran by a little girl that doesn’t know a thing about compassion or MMJ. May-be if we wern’t lied to by all of these polotician’s in Washington we wouldn’t be suffering near as much.Proibation has never worked and Mr. Puppet president your not even allowed to be your-self.I’m ashamed I voted for you. We still have a chance to get it rite with RON PAUL. The other canidate’s either lie through their teeth or flip flop like a fish out of water. God Bless America and may his medicine be set free along with the criminalized sick and injured people of America.
CO buddyboy • Feb 1, 2012 at 9:08 am
We already have a structure that fits a much more harmful drug – alcohol. Marijuana is much safer than that. This article says marijuana is “less fatal” than alcohol and tobacco – the implication being that it causes death. It doesn’t. There has never been a case in which marijuana has caused a death. Ever. Look it up, do your research. The prohibitory tone of this article sounds like someone who has been drinking the government’s Kool-aid for too long. NIDA has a mission to assure that marijuana never comes off Schedule I. Seriously. Look it up, they will do or say anything to stop it – despite the fact that if people switched from alcohol and tobacco to marijuana we would save tens of thousands of lives (!) annually. Should high school students be smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana? No. Is it a good thing that they are substituting marijuana which won’t kill them for the other two? Yes. C’mon people, quit swallowing what the government is feeding you and think for yourselves. The time has come to end the failed “War on Drugs” Prohibition didn’t work in the 20’s and 30’s and it’s not working now. Stop it!
Malcolm Kyle • Feb 1, 2012 at 5:00 am
Prohibition is overwhelmingly responsible for an immense increase in organized crime, international terrorism, rampant official corruption, a broken economy, mass unemployment and a serious undermining of international security and development.
Corporate greed and individual bigotry have accelerated us towards a situation where all the usual peaceful and democratic methods, which can usually be employed to reverse such acute damage, no longer function as our founders intended. Such a political impasse coupled with our great economic tribulation is precisely that which throughout history has often ignited extreme social upheaval and violent revolution.
“To function as the founders intended, our republic requires that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
– Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to William Stephens Smith, November 13, 1787
Fortunately we are left with one last peaceful avenue for change – Jury Nullification.
Jury Nullification is a constitutional doctrine that allows juries to acquit defendants who are technically guilty but do not deserve punishment. – All non-violent ‘drug offenders’ who are not selling to children – be they users, dealers or importers – clearly belong in this category.
If you sincerely believe that prohibition is a dangerous and counter-productive policy then you must stop helping to enforce it. When it comes to acquittals, you, the juror, have the very last word!
* It only takes one juror to prevent a guilty verdict.
* You are not lawfully required to disclose your voting intention before taking your seat on a jury.
* You are also not required to give a reason to the other jurors for your position when voting – just simply state you find the accused not guilty.
We must create what we can no longer afford to wait for – PLEASE VOTE TO ACQUIT!
Mark • Feb 1, 2012 at 4:01 am
““All drugs contain alkaloids, and alkaloids are bad for you,” Craker said….”
HUGE respect for Craker, BUT… cannabinoids are NOT alkaloids, nor are alkaloid-based.
Oh, I guess that’s why people don’t get “hooked” on cannabis.
Charlie • Feb 1, 2012 at 2:24 am
“Still, smoking marijuana can result in heavy coughing and is linked to mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and depression, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).”
It’s clear that the vast majority of drug-induced “psychosis” that harms both individual and society is caused by alcohol. However, alcohol and its extremely negative effects on our society have become so normalized in our culture that not even psychiatrists (many of them drinkers) bother to label these tendencies towards violence, recklessness and promiscuity as alcohol-induced “psychosis.” In fact, a psychiatrist would become the laughingstock of the world if they published a study saying that people who drink experience “psychosis” earlier than non-users and that such symptoms may lead to developing a permanent mental illness later in life.