| Michael 2005-04-28, 5:51 pm |
| The article below was printed more than 7 years ago... and the deleted
section of the subject World Health Organization report *still* has yet to
be made available to the world's researchers, educators, medical
professionals or anyone else.
"The official explanation for excluding the comparison of dope with legal
substances is that "the reliability and public health significance of such
comparisons are doubtful". However, insiders say the comparison was
scientifically sound and that the WHO caved in to political pressure. It is
understood that advisers from the US National Institute on Drug Abuse and
the UN International Drug Control Programme warned the WHO that it would
play into the hands of groups campaigning to legalise marijuana."
Bullshit.
What the NIDA and IDCP advisers (and the US government who directs them) are
*really* worried about is there might be a total breakdown of public order
when mainstream America learns that their government has been knowingly
lying to them and calculatingly keeping them all in the dark about marijuana
for more than seven decades.
((U))
M
From
http://www.newscientist.com/
Marijuana Special Report:
High anxieties
What the WHO doesn't want you to know about cannabis
Health officials in Geneva have suppressed the publication of a
politically sensitive analysis that confirms what ageing hippies have
known for decades: cannabis is safer than alcohol or tobacco.
According to a document leaked to New Scientist, the analysis
concludes not only that the amount of dope smoked worldwide does less
harm to public health than drink and cigarettes, but that the same is
likely to hold true even if people consumed dope on the same scale as
these legal substances.
The comparison was due to appear in a report on the harmful effects of
cannabis published last December by the WHO. But it was ditched at the
last minute following a long and intense dispute between WHO
officials, the cannabis experts who drafted the report and a group of
external advisers.
As the WHO's first report on cannabis for 15 years, the document had
been eagerly awaited by doctors and specialists in drug abuse. The
official explanation for excluding the comparison of dope with legal
substances is that "the reliability and public health significance of
such comparisons are doubtful". However, insiders say the comparison
was scientifically sound and that the WHO caved in to political
pressure. It is understood that advisers from the US National
Institute on Drug Abuse and the UN International Drug Control
Programme warned the WHO that it would play into the hands of groups
campaigning to legalise marijuana.
One member of the expert panel which drafted the report, says: "In the
eyes of some, any such comparison is tantamount to an argument for
marijuana legalisation." Another member, Billy Martin of the Medical
College of Virginia in Richmond, says that some WHO officials "went
nuts" when they saw the draft report.
The leaked version of the excluded section states that the reason for
making the comparisons was "not to promote one drug over another but
rather to minimise the double standards that have operated in
appraising the health effects of cannabis". Nevertheless, in most of
the comparisons it makes between cannabis and alcohol, the illegal
drug comes out better--or at least on a par--with the legal one.
The report concludes, for example, that "in developed societies
cannabis appears to play little role in injuries caused by violence,
as does alcohol". It also says that while the evidence for fetal
alcohol syndrome is "good", the evidence that cannabis can harm fetal
development is "far from conclusive".
Cannabis also fared better in five out of seven comparisons of
long-term damage to health. For example, the report says that while
heavy consumption of either drug can lead to dependence, only alcohol
produces a "well defined withdrawal syndrome". And while heavy
drinking leads to cirrhosis, severe brain injury and a much increased
risk of accidents and suicide, the report concludes that there is only
"suggestive evidence that chronic cannabis use may produce subtle
defects in cognitive functioning".
Two comparisons were more equivocal. The report says that both heavy
drinking and marijuana smoking can produce symptoms of psychosis in
susceptible people. And, it says, there is evidence that chronic
cannabis smoking "may be a contributory cause of cancers of the
aerodigestive tract".
From New Scientist, 21 February 1998
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© Copyright New Scientist, RBI Limited 1998
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