Published in the Tuscaloosa News

Yesterday I sent the following LTE to the Tuscaloosa News and today they were gracious enough to publish it. Thanks Tuscaloosa News!

Reefer Madness Returns

Dear Editor: In the last week two “studies" on the effects of marijuana use have been spreading like some sort of aggressive disease. This happens every year or so and it seems to always be the same two studies.

The first one proposes the idea that smoking even one joint could raise your risk of developing schizophrenia later in life by an astronomical 40 percent.

However, if one takes the time to look at actual rates of schizophrenia among the entire world population they will see that the rate has always been around 1 percent with no real fluctuation. If the schizophrenia claim were actually true then we would have seen a huge jump in the number of people diagnosed with schizophrenia.

The second one claims a link between marijuana and lung cancer. It states that one joint is as bad as five cigarettes.

However, a gentleman by the name of Dr. Donald Tashkin, who for many years worked in cahoots with the DEA to try and prove this theory, recently released a study that shows smoking marijuana does not cause lung cancer and may even have some preventative effects.

This kind of fear mongering about marijuana is true “Reefer Madness."

Endless, Shameless Reefer Madness

In the last week two 'studies' on the effects of marijuana use have been spreading like some sort of agressive disease. This happens every year or so and it seems to always be the same two studies.

The first one proposes the idea that smoking even one joint could raise your risk of developing schizophrenia later in life by an astronomical 40%.
However, if one takes the time to look at actual rates of schizophrenia among the entire world population they will see that the rate has always been around 1% with no real fluctuation. If what the propaganda scientists say was actually true then we would have seen a HUGE jump in the number of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. We have not seen that. Period.

The second one claims a link between marijuana and lung cancer. It states that one joint is as bad as five cigarettes. However, a gentleman by the name of Dr. Donald Tashkin, who for many years worked in cahoots with the DEA to try and prove this theory, recently released a study that that shows smoking marijuana DOES NOT cause lung cancer and may even have some prevantative effects. THC, you see, has lots of anti-cancer properties.. The government has known since the 1970's that this is true.

Both are absolute government sponsored propaganda orgies and quite frankly I am getting a little tired of having to refute the same nonsense studies year after year after year. You'd think they would come up with something new once in a while.

And let me just say that even if both of these studies were the absolute, unvarnished, truth would placing non-violent users of marijuana in a government cage really be the best solution? Sure, you might keep someone from getting lung cancer or schizophrenia from weed....but they'd likely contratc HIV/AIDS and Hep C instead.