Yet another positive use of pot - a treatment for ADD and ADHD. Add this to being a cure for nausea, insomnia, depression, helping cancer and AIDS patients, and more. Further whittling away at the reefer madness myth.
Sadly, government officials continue to be ignorant of, or else are misrepresenting, their own facts. The comprehensive 1999 study by the National Academy of Sciences (the government’s official scientific advisory body) on marijuana actually showed that the supposed health risks of pot are less than many common foods we eat, and certainly less than other drugs or even alcohol. No proof of brain damage, gateway drug effects, or the rest of the doom and gloom.
Yet we continue to get statements like the one by Jennifer DeVallance, spokeswoman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy: "It flies in the face of responsible medicine to advocate a drug that had been known to have over 300 carcinogens and has proven to be as damaging to the lungs as cigarette smoking,"
In point of fact, the NAS study found that while pot does have carcinogens (anything you burn and inhale would), most people smoke pot on occasion, unlike tobacco cigarettes, which are often smoked at a rate of 15-60 a day, every day. So even when you take away all the chemical additives in cigarettes, you'd have to be a millionaire and chain smoking Cheech and Chong sized joints to get anywhere close to the same level of carcinogens.
In the end, the NAS study found no evidence that smoking pot led to increases in lung cancer.
And of course, teens with ADD or ADHD wouldn't have to smoke pot, so guess what? No carcinogens. Next excuse?
I find it encouraging that this was the best argument that they could come up with. Maybe they are finally running out of excuses. It will be nice when we can get past the cycle of conservative BS. Of course, as long as the very people who promote the misinformation control whether or not pot can even be studied or used in order to prove them wrong, and as long as a part of the DEA's funding relies on pot being illegal, that could take a while.
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Written by Randy Henderson of NEXT
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