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 From NORML News Winter 2004 - Legalisation does not increase cannabis use: study
- Legalising cannabis would generate billions in taxes
- Study finds cannabis does not cause psycho-social harm
- This is your brain on drugs
- Latest Driving Study Finds No Increased Risk After Smoking Pot
Legalisation does not increase cannabis use: studyA comparative study finds no evidence that legalisation of marijuana leads to increased drug use.
Teams working at the University of California and the University of Amsterdam have compared the behaviour of cannabis users in San Francisco and Amsterdam in an attempt to discover the effects of criminal drug policies on human behaviour, and found that drug laws, from prohibition to legalisation, have little effect on actual drug use.
The two cities were chosen for their similarity in climate, size and liberal politics, while contrasting in terms of their laws governing cannabis: Amsterdam among the world's most tolerant, San Francisco among the world's most draconian. The results of the research in both cities were nearly identical.
"We compared representative samples of experienced marijuana users to see whether the lawful availability of marijuana did, in fact, lead to the problems critics of the Dutch system have claimed," said Craig Reinarman, professor of sociology at UCSC, who coauthored the study. "We found no evidence that it does. In fact, we found consistently strong similarities in patterns of marijuana use, despite vastly different national drug policies."
The study also found no evidence that lawfully regulated cannabis provides a "gateway" to other illicit drug use.
In fact, marijuana users in San Francisco were far more likely to have used other illicitdrugs - cocaine, crack, amphetamines, ecstasy, and opiates - than users in Amsterdam.
"The results of this study shift the burden of proof now to those who would arrest hundreds of thousands of Americans each year on the grounds that it deters use," said Carl Reinarman of the UCSC.
According to the Netherlands' Central Bureau of Statistics, 15.6 percent of people 12 and over in Holland have tried cannabis versus 32.9% of all Americans. Here in New Zealand official drug stats show 52% of people between the age of 15 and 45 have tried cannabis, and Prof Fergusson of the Christchurch School of Medicine has found 74% of 21 year olds have tried cannabis despite the law.
The study was funded by the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the DutchMinistry of Health.
Source: American Journal of Public Health, May 2004. Web: http://press.ucsc.edu
Legalising cannabis would generate billions in taxesVANCOUVER - Legalising marijuana in Canada could provide a tax windfall of more than $C2 billion (NZ$2.2 billion). British Columbia's marijuana growers produce a crop with a street value of more than $C7 billion (NZ$7.8 billion) annually, and according to a study by Vancouver-based Fraser Institute released in June, taxing it would bring in $C2 billion a year in government revenue money that is now going to organised crime.
"The industry is simply too profitable to prevent new people moving into production and old producers from rebuilding," the group said in a news release on the study by Simon Fraser University economics professor Stephen Easton.
Study finds cannabis does not cause psycho-social harmA comprehensive study by University of Birmingham researchers published in the Lancet which reviewed 48 long-term studies contradicts claims that cannabis use causes psychological or social problems such as mental illness or school failure.
While the study did not completely exempt cannabis users from such problems, Dr John Macleod, author of the study, said "this association could have several explanations." The cannabis users in the study were not consistently associated with having antisocial tendencies or psychological problems.
THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON DRUGSA researcher at Otago University took this previously unpublished picture showing cannabinoid receptors in an area of the brain not previously thought to contain them.
A very thin slice of rat brain was treated with CB1 antibodies linked to fluorescent agents. A strong ultra-violet light was shone on the slice and it glowed distinctively as can be seen in the image, taken using a Zeiss CCD Microscope magnified several hundred times. The blue blobs are the nuclei (control centres) and the intense green areas are CB1 receptors for cannabinoids.
The image is interesting primarily because it shows cannabinoids binding to CB1 receptors - apparently quite strongly - in a brain area that was previously not known to respond to cannabinoids. The area is the choroid plexus, which is located in the middle-rear area of the brain, mainly inside the ventricles, and regulates the formation and composition of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), the fluid that bathes the whole brain.
Latest Driving Study Finds No Increased Risk After Smoking PotDutch researchers studying the association between drug use and traffic accidents have found iono increased riskle amongst drivers who have been using cannabis.
The new study - conducted by scientists at the Institute for Road Safety Research in the Netherlands - is the latest in a long line to find that cannabis use does not cause impairment related to driving. Rather, the use of marijuana alone can make drivers slow down and take more care than even sober drivers.
Unsurprisingly, the study found that driving under the influence of alcohol dramatically increased the odds of having an accident. People who consumed less than the legal limit had a five-fold increase in the risk of serious accident, while drivers above the legal limit were 15 times more likely to get in a bad wreck. Even drivers using prescription drugs such Valium were five times more likely to have a serious accident.
On the other hand, researchers found that drivers using amphetamines, cocaine, or opiates showed some increased risk but qualified it as "not statistically significant". As for cannabis users, there was "no increased risk" whatsoever after smoking.
The full study results were published in the professional journal Accident Analysis and Prevention and are available online at www.sciencedirect.com.
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