But the "suggestions" of the self-serving poll (reported by Mr. McKenzie of the Canadian Press on May 26, 2002) implemented and financed by those very same who lie about smoking for a living, are not really the issue of this piece. The issue here is that Mr. Sweanor, counsel for the Non-Smokers' Rights Association in Canada, goes beyond any limit of decency with the statement: "…But now, it's at the stage where smoking in the house is generally seen as something like 'Do you mind if I defecate on your floor'?" But then he surpasses himself with this breathtaking assertion: "There's no question that cigarette-smoking is massively more harmful than marijuana. The reality is that marijuana is not killing people and tobacco is killing 45,000 a year."

Reality? Come on, David: I know that the addiction to public money has really got to your head, but this is really too much! Let’s put aside the fact that you cannot prove that ONE single death is caused uniquely by smoking – and that you can’t even quantify the contribution of tobacco to one single death on earth, because it is impossible. Thus the trash 45,000-deaths figure means absolutely nothing.

Let us talk about marijuana instead. Like too many antismokers, Mr. Sweanor suffers from conveniently severe schizophrenia about this drug. The schizophrenia goes just about like this: smoking tobacco is baaaad -- but smoking cannabis is not. Hmmm… let’s see: don’t they both burn organic materials? Isn’t it true that in joints there is often a large amount of tobacco? Isn’t it true that marijuana emits a very thick, irritating passive smoke, that can be smelled from blocks away? I find absolutely absurd that people who call themselves "anti-prohibition" (on marijuana) often support prohibition of tobacco, and are "disturbed" by tobacco smoking! Perhaps this is a generational revenge, going back to the times when mummy and daddy, cigs dangling from their lips, were giving their babyboomer progeny hell for being stoned all the time. Clearly, too many of my generation (the hippie one) never grew up and out of the Sixties. They are still protesting that ma and pa had it all wrong, but now, unfortunately, they have power -- or perhaps they have smoked so many joints that they are permanently stoned.

Let me say upfront that I am a real anti-prohibition type. I am against the war on drugs and the war on tobacco. Junk science mortality aside, I believe that the individual is sovereign, and he can do with his body what he sees fit (even when it kills him), and that the state has no right to intervene; finally, I am a strong supporter of intelligent drug legalisation, that would shut down the factories of crime, and ensure the quality of drugs and delivery devices, thus preventing countless real deaths due to OD and AIDS, which unlike the computer-generated statistical associations for tobacco can be properly documented and pinned down as to causality.

With those qualification, no one can say that I am an anti-marijuana type. Smoke it and be happy! On the other hand, individuals like Sweanor truly make me sick, because (once again) they intentionally mislead people to advance an agenda which clearly wouldn’t mind seeing the marijuana prohibition swapped with the tobacco prohibition, and advancing that agenda with the flat and absurd statement that tobacco kills people while cannabis does not. Do you smoke joints, Mr. Sweanor? Smoking a joint today seems to be the politically correct way to smoke and be "in," and "acceptable. The very cheats who tell us that tobacco kills millions can smoke marijuana and get away with it by even calling it "therapeutic". Look at this, mom and pop, I have done it! Roll in your grave with your cigarettes, you bastards – I am smoking a joint and you can’t stop me anymore, see?

Let us touch upon how things really are with cannabis:

• Marijuana is fat-soluble, and it stays in the body for weeks, unlike alcohol, which is water-soluble and leaves the body in hours. It is a complex mixture of over 400 chemicals and over 60 cannabinoids, (missing in tobacco) including delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive ingredient. ^[1] THC, the marijuana ingredient associated with health "benefits", is currently available in pill form as Marinol ^TM,, and it can be administered in known and precise doses, unlike smoked marijuana. ^[2] For each medical condition for which smoked marijuana is claimed to be beneficial, there are other drugs available that are superior to marijuana. ^[3] But we don’t wanna hear about that, right? It would remove the real reason we want people to believe that cannabis has unique therapeutic characteristics: because we like to smoke it, and get stoned!

• One study based on instrumental quantitative analysis of toxic components of cannabis smoke found that smoking a "joint" of marijuana caused over 10 times as much lung damage as smoking one cigarette. ^[4] Where did lung cancer go, dear anti-tobacco/pro-marijuana activists? Shouldn’t we be at least 10 times as concerned about marijuana as we are about tobacco, assorted ministries of health and antitobacco freaks?

• Marijuana has not been shown to be a safe and effective drug in lowering intraocular pressure and preventing optic nerve damage for glaucoma patients. To maintain a low intraocular pressure with marijuana, a person would have to smoke a joint every 1 to 2 hours, 10 to 12 joints a day, and 4,000 a year. ^[5] That would put the toxic chemical intake at an equivalent of 100 to 144 cigarettes a day (or 36, 000 to 52,000 a year) – a far cry from the 20 cigs of an average tobacco smoker.

• Smoked marijuana threatens patients with bacterial and fungal infections; it has been demonstrated that infectious agents can be found on marijuana leaves, ^[6] because it is clandestinely produced, and not subject to the obsessive quality controls that the targeted tobacco industry is. Cancer and AIDS patients are immuno-compromised and are extraordinarily sensitive to invasion by bacteria and fungi. ^[7] It is true that legalisation would go toward eliminating this problem, but Mr. Sweanor certainly does not refer to any future.

• According to a leading medical journal, marijuana users had 55% more industrial accidents than non-users. The same study found that marijuana users had 85% more injuries at work than non-users. ^[8] But there is positively no need for studies or medical skills to observe that marijuana decreases motor skills, concentration and coordination, and that accidents result from a distortion of time and space relationships. Not surprisingly, none of this is a problem for tobacco smokers, who do not fall into an idiotic, dumb stupor every time they light up. Furthermore, marijuana users have been shown to have a 78% increase in absenteeism over non-users. ^[9]

If we want to legalise cannabis, let’s do it for the right reasons of personal liberty and choice, and common sense -- not by hypocritically misrepresenting a narcotic as "good" (or at least "acceptable-because-it-is-better-than-tobacco"), not by exchanging one demon weed for another in a propaganda and junk science shell game.

How can we say that marijuana is not killing people? How much do we really know about it? Cannabis has been illegal for the last 70-100 years, depending on the country. If, for the sake of argument, marijuana kills slowly by creating disease conditions over decades, how could we possibly know about it? Cannabis is a major – although illicit -- cash crop for the Canadian province of British Columbia. How many people buying this product go around telling the neighbours, or confessing their consumption habits on the federal census? How many tell their own doctors?

The state cannot make money on this illegal substance through tax. Thus, marijuana – differently than tobacco -- has not attracted opportunistic scientists, Big Pharma, and so on to produce the mountain of junk science "evidence" about mortality and disease "attributions" on an industrial scale to get state grants, justify replacement "therapies," taxation increase, false propaganda, and all the rest of the mumbo jumbo that makes tobacco so lucrative today for the legions of hypocrites seeking to "control" it. There is no "marijuana industry" to sue, and to prey on with multibillion-dollar settlements. Tobacco smokers, however, who use a legal substance, can be easy targets of the social leaches of the antitobacco industry which, together with "public health," come one inch short of telling tobacco smokers to become marijuana smokers instead – presumably in order to be more socially acceptable. Once again, people who respect the law are the easy prey of the do-gooders.

Shame on you, Mr. Sweanor. Since you brought up the subject of defecation, we suggest that it is something that you stop doing to the truth. The personal and social consciences of a lot of antismokers seem to be comfortably numb - perhaps stoned permanently by what "is not killing people."

Gian Turci
FORCES International
FORCES Italy

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[5] American Academy of Opthamology. The Use of Marijuana in the Treatment of Glaucoma. As cited at http://eyenet.org/public/glaucoma/gl_maryj.html . 1999.

[6] Dr. Keith Green, Ophthalmologist at the Medical College of Georgia, CNN Interactive. "Study Casts Doubt on Marijuana’s Effectiveness as Glaucoma Treatment." As cited at http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9811/13/marijuana.glaucoma/ . Nov. 13, 1998.