Listen Up!

Hemp Rope

I was unsure about this topic, but that is not to say I wasn't interested. The nervousness is more as a result of certain stereotypes associated with marijuana. In society we now view any association with the plant Cannabis Sativa as criminal (ignore law for a second, I mean the image of a criminal for simply embracing the use of a plant).  I know that if I pursue this topic I could shed light on a 'drug' which has been in the bad books for so long that many are unaware of the reasons why it was made illegal in the first place.

Cannabis Indica

In the original Marijuana Transfer Tax Act of 1937 prohibited the production of hemp as well as marijuana. This sparked debates, why would a resource, although it comes from the same plant as marijuana, be banned. The answer is about as obvious as you could imagine; they were shut down by those with the money; Andrew Mellon, wealthiest man in America and Secretary of the Treasury had invested in the Du Pont families production of nylon a product which could possibly take over the market and Randolph Hearst who was a large investor in timber holdings. They, together, brought about the prohibition of a resource both more efficient and cheaper than timber and nylon.

 The medical benefits of marijuana have already been discovered, if there were none, why would it be legal in certain places? Are these places just playing the ignorance card cause they 'just wanna get hiiiggghhh maaaan" or are they ahead of the curve? Anticipating that humanity will eventually realise that the benefits of marijuana legalization out weigh the reasons for keeping it illegal ten-fold. I don't think marijuana is without it's faults but what isn't, how many critics of marijuana have a taste for alcohol, when 1 in 25 deaths worldwide is caused by alcohol* while deaths related to marijuana consumption is nil, infact an article published stated; "Indeed, epidemiological data indicate that in the general population marijuana use is not associated with increased mortality."(Joy.J.E 1999)

So, we are seeing a clearly biased opinion of marijuana, we reject the use of hemp, ignore the figures which indicate that although it is a supposedly dangerous drug there have never been any deaths recorded as a result of marijuana use.




Now media and stereotypes have given us an image of what stoners must be like; lazy, demotivated and, to be honest, stupid. Now in my experience, stupidity is a problem in and of it's own, but to say that just because someone indulges in marijuana use, they are stupid, or lack the basic abilities to function at the same level as one who is sober. We cannot say that marijuana use does not make one perform at the peak of their abilities, work done by Dr Andrew Welier states that;


 " There are three conditions under which marijuana can be shown to impair general psychological performance in laboratory subjects. They are:

1. by giving it to people who have never had it before;
2. by giving people very high doses that they are not used to
   (or giving it orally to people used to smoking it); and
3. by giving people very hard things to do, especially things that they have never had a chance to practice while under the influence of the drug.

That is, if a marijuana user is allowed to smoke his usual doses and then to do things he has had a chance to practice while high, he does not appear to perform any differently from someone who is not high. Now, this pattern of users performing better than nonusers is a general phenomenon associated with all psychoactive drugs. For example, an alcoholic will vastly outperform a nondrinker on any test if the two are equally intoxicated; he has learned to compensate for the effects of the drug on his nervous system. But compensation can proceed only so far until it runs up against a ceiling imposed by the pharmacological action of the drug on lower brain centers. Again, since marijuana has no clinically significant action on lower brain centers, compensation can reach 100 percent with practice."

Another report has also been written (Reid 1999), suggesting that although there are a few effects on the actual health of  marijuana users, they prove to be of less harm than other chemicals readily used by society. Smoking marijuana shows no cardiovascular damage and the effects even on an infant who's mother used marijuana while pregnant show little effect and any that has been caused dissapears as the infant matures.

Research has been done though, suggesting the opposite; that infact marijuana use can have detremental effects on a users health, stating that "Smoking marijuana regularly (a joint a day) can damage the cells in the bronchial passages which protect the body against inhaled microorganisms" I don't know about you but that just sounds like inhaling smoke is bad for you, which, because I'm not 3, would be the same as saying don't drink fizzy drinks cause it's gonna be bad for your teeth. Smoking is an inherant risk to using marijuana, same with cigarettes, we know it's bad for us, there are warnings all over the thing, but does it stop a smoker from buying them?  Along with these health risks though are the mental risks, the article states that marijuana use will cause "flashbacks, delusions, depersonalization, hallucinations, paranoia, depression, and uncontrollable aggressiveness"...it also states that" impairs perception, judgment, thinking, memory, and learning; memory defects may persist six weeks after last use." If a lung infection and a little short term paranoia scares you, the list for the side effects of alcohol is your worst nightmare. Abuse of alcohol can cause massive damage to your nervous system, your cardiovascular system, your digestive system and weight, compared to alcohol marijuana is like a fluffy little puppy next to a growling pitbull.

Politics surrounding marijuana have been around for many years, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws or NORML began in the U.S.A in the 1970's and has protested and supported the legalization and decriminilization of marijuana and even in New Zealand we have our own NORML organization.

Marijuana law reform will probably continue to be debated for decades, but all we can say is this, how can we ignore the benefits of a natural resource in this day and age when even fresh water will become something faught over, maybe not in our lifetime's but possibly in our childrens future, a plant with benefits far greater than the hops the beer we drink. The world is changing but when something that has been used by so many different peoples in so many different ages how can the benefits be ignored. Everyday more and more people in places like California are being issued prescriptions, prescriptions given to them by doctors risking their licenses, so they can be treated, by a plant that you or I could grow quite easily if laws were different. In New Zealand we also have the Aotearoa Legalize Cannabis Party. They're policies are as follows;

Immediately tolerate adults’ personal possession and cultivation.

Establish regulated R18 cannabis commerce, like alcohol and tobacco. (Policy Council fine tunes ‘best practice’)

Make provision for expungement of cannabis convictions.

Establish therapeutic and medicinal applications of cannabis.

Enable full-scale cannabis-hemp production and utilisation.

Also promoting education about the dangers of other drugs and promoting safer and smoke-less methods of use such as mouth sprays and vaporizers and believe that if marijuana were to be made illegal the New Zealand economy would take a huge boost considering the amount of money in the cannabis trade.


It would only take a small reform of our current laws to stop the arrests of tens of hundreds of people for benefiting from something that grows from the earth, the benefits span just beyond the stoners pissed off cause the cops put them in the cells for having a tinny, cancer patients will benefit, farmers with land to cultivate could benefit, government would benefit off the tax they would be receiving. The worlds beginning to catch on, I think we should catch up.










Sources:


http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/evidence99/marijuana/Health_1.html


http://www.norml.org.nz/


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090626102332.htm


Marijuana (Cannabis) and the Body. Reid. K Kester Ph.D. http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/article/marijuana-effects

Janet E. Joy, Stanley J. Watson, Jr., and John A Benson, Jr., "Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base," Division of Neuroscience and Behavioral Research, Institute of Medicine (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999), p. 109