Right before the heat hit the Dominion of Canada this past summer, legislators were confirming a highly controversial bill that will affect not only Canadians, but likely the rest of the world, too. That bill was passed in late July, and it brought sweeping changes regarding controlled substances not seen since Prohibition. The substance in question was cannabis, and the new law legalized its use for specific medical illnesses. As a nation on the lookout for its citizens, this was a questionable move: not only would medical legalization send mixed signals to recreational users and increase availability of cannabis, universal health care would have to shoulder the burden of treating chronic lung disorders associated with smoking. Indeed, it would be a pretty steep tab to foot for any medical drug.
First, a little background information. The Canadian government is currently growing marijuana in a secure abandoned mine shaft: an excellent idea from both a legal and a biological perspective. Access can be tightly regulated, as can growing environment. Growers minimize the plant's maturation period by controlling the interval and duration of high-intensity sodium light exposure, protecting it from possible pests, and capitalizing on the high carbon dioxide levels. The mine shaft used for the plants has already succeeded with less controversial crops, thus cannabis cultivation won't be a big stretch, aside from security concerns.
So we have a pothead's paradise, as it were: Half-Baked, only users don't have to steal the herb from the clinic, they merely have to present a prescription to receive it - direct from the government - for their personal use. This is where the irony begins: not only has the United States been fighting Big Tobacco for years on end - even suing for damages incurred from cigarette smoking - but Canada has also been battling it, arguably to a greater extent than even us. Go to any sizeable city in Canada, and you'll notice smokers covering their packs with little jackets. Why? Because half the pack is emblazoned with a Surgeon General's warning depicting a disturbing image of an habitual smoker: yellow and brown teeth, blackened lungs, you name it. DÈgoutante, as they say in QuÈbec. This raises the obvious question: why have it out with tobacco and open your arms to marijuana?
One answer is that bud is kinder. Kind enough that it destroys your ability to breathe several times quicker than our arch-enemy tobacco. Gentle enough on your mind that 15 year-old Charles Williams of Santana High School was smoking up the morning he pulled a "Columbine" in an unsuspecting San Diego suburb. So kind, in fact, that Kinder of all sorts would light up earlier in their lives, if it weren't for a lack of availability in kindergarten.
But we know better. We are the educated and rational, and dismiss these remarks as either propaganda or something that we wouldn't do anyhow. Herein lies the problem: how to distinguish fact from fiction? Controlled studies help: one published in the 1987 American Review of Respiratory Disease study of almost 500 smokers found that both tobacco and marijuana smokers experienced symptoms of chronic bronchitis in identical proportions, despite the fact that the tobacco group had smoked 7 times as much. Similarly, a National Cancer Institute study conducted in 1998 found that sampled smokers who consumed 21 marijuana cigarettes per week had cellular abnormalities equivalent to or greater than those seen in tobacco smokers, even though the cigarette smokers consumed more cigarettes per day than the pot smokers did in a week. This evidence alone should deter any government concerned about its citizens' welfare from allowing a substance as medicine, but clearly, that's not the case in Canada. Public opinion is surging for the decriminalization of the drug, and though decriminalization with respect to recreational use is related to laws governing medical use, it is certainly distinct from the latter.
It seems that most people who favor legalization for either medical or recreational use feel that medical use is the more acceptable of the two. Doesn't the reverse make more sense? Drugs marketed by pharmaceutical companies take years to produce and test - why are we lowering our standards for cannabis, a drug that comes with such a high physiological price? Perhaps because ignorance is strength? Neurobiological research shows that cannabis disrupts normal neural connections, and investigators like Prof. Ronald Harris-Warrick (Dept. of Neurobiology and Behavior) concede that if nothing else, cannabis isn't making you any smarter. Harris-Warrick has his reservations about the late Carl Sagan, who, during his life was a proponent of decriminalization and a brilliant, accomplished faculty member of the Department of Astronomy. The fact that Sagan credited marijuana with inspiration for many ideas will make anyone wonder: just how much does cannabis affect your intelligence, or better yet, would Sagan have been "smarter" if he hadn't smoked?
We may be able to reconcile the opposing facets of cannabis as a detriment to mental health, and as a boon to intellectuals like Sagan, opening their mind to new worlds. The answer: nonlinear thinking. The similarity between the insane and the genius is well-documented, and with good reason: both think in an unorthodox manner. The former thinks in a way that marks them as irrational; and the latter thinks in a way that, though irrational at the time, eventually becomes orthodox. So this creature known as unorthodox thinking is just unusual, lateral thinking. If a drug can emulate or induce this, then it will produce similar effects. Lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD or just acid, can cause users to experience mind-bending episodes, resulting in decidedly errant and dangerous behavior. A person on a "bad trip" may act how you might think an insane person might act. Similarly, someone on a good trip may have multiple revelations regarding anything and everything. Cannabis, another drug that rejects the usual flow of neurotransmitters, tends to produce the more desirable, constructive effect, possibly suppressing the "insane" side because of the mood it induces.
That's where things start going wrong: the psychoactive effects of cannabis are so consistently pleasant and benign to the user that we wind up seeing smokers compromising their decisions because they're too mellowed out to care. Now, cannabis may be a good tool for pain reduction, but as a medicine, it defeats itself. A fundamental rule medical students learn is primum non nocere, that is, whatever treatment a physician prescribes to a patient, first, that treatment must not harm the patient. By prescribing cannabis, the doctor is already violating that rule, even if the pot is easing the grueling pain of chemotherapy. This wouldn't be so bad if patients only took as much as they needed, and no more. But marijuana's evil is that it's too good of a drug: the euphoria induced by a typical high comes with little immediate consequence (such as overdoses, nausea, headaches, etc.), and smoking more simply extends the good feeling. Too much smoke, mixed with psychological and cardiovascular damage at any dosage of the substance makes a successful frat party - but not a medicine.
Want proof of pot's attractiveness? Just look to studies like the one by Prof. Charles Tart of the University of California, who found that alcohol use only preceded cannabis use among teens because alcohol was available first. After trying cannabis, an overwhelming majority chose it over alcohol, and barely 5% said they would prefer alcohol 50-100% of the time. Profs. Jack Mendelson and Michael Rossi of Harvard Medical School found the same thing in their study, noting that "subjects will consume large amounts of marijuana on a free choice basis." Luckily neither study was intended to investigate medical benefits, otherwise the professors would have had some displeased subjects afterwards.
Cannabis, as mentioned before, may be a godsend compared with other recreational drugs, but in the face of insufficient evidence in favor of medical applications (testing is rather difficult when a drug is as restricted as cocaine) and striking evidence against it, pot cannot be accepted for modern medical use. Granted, opponents of cannabis have often made presumptuous claims about the drug, confusing correlation and causation, but the grounds for rejecting its medical use are rooted in cellular changes, not headline stories. It is not surprising that young Charles Williams was smoking it before his trigger-happy spree: an outsider violating the law is hardly surprising, and marijuana, like many other substances, lowers inhibitions. What is surprising, if we are to assume that marijuana had an effect on his actions that morning, is that he didn't do anything unusual; it was just a copycat killing that could have been carried out without any unorthodox thinking whatsoever.
Until we find benefits that outweigh lung disease, neural interruption and potential for overuse, we'll just have to stick with the tried-and-true painkillers. Many more issues surrounding cannabis are surfacing, and once medical use is widespread in Canada, increased trafficking, more incidences of driving while intoxicated, etc., may become the norm. But for now, let's try to sift the medical from the recreational reasons, and the circumstantial from the hard evidence. Just count me in for a cigarette break: tobacco may be the worst thing in the world, but hey - now it's proven to kill you slower than cannabis - how can I refuse?
Further readings:
A. Huxley. Brave New World Revisited. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1958.
J.E. Joy, et al. Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999.
Maclean's [magazine], August 6, 2001.
J. Mendelson, M. Rossi, R. Meyer. The Use of Marihuana: a psychological and physiological inquiry. New York, NY: Plenum Press, 1974.
C. Tart. On Being Stoned. Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books, 1971.
D.P. Tashkin, et al. "Respiratory symptoms and lung function in habitual, heavy smokers of marijuana alone, smokers of marijuana and tobacco, smokers of tobacco alone, and nonsmokers." American Review of Respiratory Disease 135:209-216. 1987.
