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  MARIJUANA MYTHS
  by Paul Hager
  Chair, ICLU Drug Task Force

  1. Marijuana causes brain damage

  The most celebrated study that claims to show brain damage
  is the rhesus monkey study of Dr. Robert Heath, done in the late
  1970s.  This study was reviewed by a distinguished panel of
  scientists sponsored by the Institute of Medicine and the
  National Academy of Sciences.  Their results were published under
  the title, Marijuana and Health in 1982.  Heath's work was
  sharply criticized for its insufficient sample size (only four
  monkeys), its failure to control experimental bias, and the
  misidentification of normal monkey brain structure as "damaged".
  Actual studies of human populations of marijuana users have shown
  no evidence of brain damage.  For example, two studies from 1977,
  published in the Journal of the American Medical Association
  (JAMA) showed no evidence of brain damage in heavy users of
  marijuana.  That same year, the American Medical Association
  (AMA) officially came out in favor of decriminalizing marijuana.
  That's not the sort of thing you'd expect if the AMA thought
  marijuana damaged the brain.

  2. Marijuana damages the reproductive system

  This claim is based chiefly on the work of Dr. Gabriel
  Nahas, who experimented with tissue (cells) isolated in petri
  dishes, and with researchers who dosed animals with near-lethal
  amounts of cannabinoids (i.e., the intoxicating part of
  marijuana).  Nahas' generalizations from his petri dishes to
  human beings have been rejected by the scientific community as
  being invalid.  In the case of the animal experiments, the
  animals that survived their ordeal returned to normal within 30
  days of the end of the experiment.  Studies of actual human
  populations have failed to demonstrate that marijuana adversely
  affects the reproductive system.

  3. Marijuana is a "gateway" drug -- it leads to hard drugs

  This is one of the more persistent myths.  A real world
  example of what happens when marijuana is readily available can
  be found in Holland.  The Dutch partially legalized marijuana in
  the 1970s.  Since then, hard drug use -- heroin and cocaine --
  have DECLINED substantially.  If marijuana really were a gateway
  drug, one would have expected use of hard drugs to have gone up,
  not down.  This apparent "negative gateway" effect has also been
  observed in the United States.  Studies done in the early 1970s
  showed a negative correlation between use of marijuana and use of
  alcohol.  A 1993 Rand Corporation study that compared drug use in
  states that had decriminalized marijuana versus those that had
  not, found that where marijuana was more available -- the states
  that had decriminalized -- hard drug abuse as measured by
  emergency room episodes decreased.  In short, what science and
  actual experience tell us is that marijuana tends to substitute
  for the much more dangerous hard drugs like alcohol, cocaine, and
  heroin.


  4. Marijuana suppresses the immune system

  Like the studies claiming to show damage to the reproductive
  system, this myth is based on studies where animals were given
  extremely high -- in many cases, near-lethal -- doses of
  cannabinoids.  These results have never been duplicated in human
  beings.  Interestingly, two studies done in 1978 and one done in
  1988 showed that hashish and marijuana may have actually
  stimulated the immune system in the people studied.

  5. Marijuana is much more dangerous than tobacco

  Smoked marijuana contains about the same amount of
  carcinogens as does an equivalent amount of tobacco.  It should
  be remembered, however, that a heavy tobacco smoker consumes much
  more tobacco than a heavy marijuana smoker consumes marijuana.
  This is because smoked tobacco, with a 90% addiction rate, is the
  most addictive of all drugs while marijuana is less addictive
  than caffeine. Two other factors are important.  The first is
  that paraphernalia laws directed against marijuana users make it
  difficult to smoke safely.  These laws make water pipes and
  bongs, which filter some of the carcinogens out of the smoke,
  illegal and, hence, unavailable.  The second is that, if
  marijuana were legal, it would be more economical to have
  cannabis drinks like bhang (a traditional drink in the Middle
  East) or tea which are totally non-carcinogenic.  This is in
  stark contrast with "smokeless" tobacco products like snuff which
  can cause cancer of the mouth and throat.  When all of these
  facts are taken together, it can be clearly seen that the reverse
  is true: marijuana is much SAFER than tobacco.

  6. Legal marijuana would cause carnage on the highways

  Although marijuana, when used to intoxication, does impair
  performance in a manner similar to alcohol, actual studies of the
  effect of marijuana on the automobile accident rate suggest that
  it poses LESS of a hazard than alcohol.  When a random sample of
  fatal accident victims was studied, it was initially found that
  marijuana was associated with RELATIVELY as many accidents as
  alcohol.  In other words, the number of accident victims
  intoxicated on marijuana relative to the number of marijuana
  users in society gave a ratio similar to that for accident
  victims intoxicated on alcohol relative to the total number of
  alcohol users.  However, a closer examination of the victims
  revealed that around 85% of the people intoxicated on marijuana
  WERE ALSO INTOXICATED ON ALCOHOL.

(Note, previous text was incomplete.  I have not been able to locate the
second, half.  If anyone has a copy, please let me know.)