Advantages of cannabis

Answer 1

In countries that have relaxed the ban on cannabis (The Netherlands, for example) cannabis use has dropped. In spite of its draconian drugs laws, and 70 years prohibition, cannabis use in the United States is the highest in the world.

In the 12 US States that have legalized medicinal cannabis, recreational use by youth has gone down.

The total prohibition of cannabis on the federal level has put a huge damper on promising research which has shown time and time again, the cancer fighting qualities of cannabinoids extracted from cannabis. As a result, most studies, except those allowed to demonstrate harm only, are done in other countries. A study from Spain showed that cannabis kills gliomas, the kind of brain cancer that Ted Kennedy has. A recently published multi-national study from Italy and Great Britain demonstrated that cannabis can combat multi-drug resistant pathogens such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

A recent NIDA study in the United States (by Donald Tashkin, MD) which was designed to show that cannabis smoking caused cancer, demonstrated exactly the opposite. The study showed that even long term, chronic smokers of cannabis, had no elevated risk of cancer.

The United States Government, itself, filed for and was awarded a patent (#6,630,507) on cannabinoids as neuroprotectants, useful in the prevention and treatment of a wide variety of diseases including stroke, trauma, auto-immune disorder, HIV dementia, Parkinson's and Alzheimers.

The cost of the failed "War on Drugs" runs to the billions of dollars. There are 730,000 arrests each year for simple cannabis possession. That amounts to five percent of all arrests. This is the equivalent of saying that 5 out of every 100 police officers does nothing but arrest people for having cannabis on their person. That means those 5 police officers are not arresting murderers, or rapists, or burglars.

It is virtually impossible to overdose on cannabis. There are no recorded deaths from cannabis. Contrast this with over 400,000 deaths from tobacco each year. If everyone who smoked tobacco switched to smoking cannabis, over 400,000 lives would be saved each year. Cannabinoids are non-addictive, (as opposed to nicotine), so smokers would find it much easier to quit, should they choose to.

If cannabis was legal, farmers could once again grow hemp, which is a source of plastic, paper, oil, fiber, food, diesel and other bio-fuels. Hemp is a renewable resource which impacts the earth much less than cutting down trees for paper, growing pesticide dependent cotton which depletes and poisons the soil, and using food crops like corn for bio-fuel which drives up food prices.

Prohibition of cannabis has engendered the same problems that prohibition of alcohol did in the first part of the twentieth century: organized and gangland crimes, disdain for Law and Order on the part of the general population, the arrest and incarceration of otherwise law abiding citizens, with the concomitant loss of voting rights, loss of student loans, loss of employment and family connections.

Whatever problems the use of cannabis may hold, they would be much more effectively addressed by regulation, and education.

Answer 2

No proven causes of death by cannabis. That can't even be said of anything consumed by Americans's today.

Answer 3

people smoke cannabis because it makes them feel better about themselves

Answer 4

So of lifes greatest misteries go un-answered...