Marijuana - There must be an election comming

Seems Peter Costello has started cluching at straws to try and divert attention away from the real issues for the election next year.

Yep he is making all these unsubstantiated claims about the harm marijuana causes! Well Mr Costello we know this is a furphy designed to alienate somewhere between 20% and 30% of the population distracting them from the real issues of the next election, such as global warming, homelessness in Australia, youth suicide etc etc, all brought on by the Howard government selling Australia off to foreign interests and implementing IR laws that give the worker no control over their wellbeing.

If we look at Wikipedia and the abundance of information posted we find marijuana is in the lowest catagory of addiction:
A 1998 French governmental report commissioned by Health Secretary of State Bernard Kouchner, and directed by Dr. Pierre-Bernard Roques, classed drugs according to addictiveness and neurotoxicity. It placed heroin, cocaine and alcohol in the most addictive and lethal categories; benzodiazepine, hallucinogens and tobacco in the medium category, and cannabis in the last category. The report stated that "Addiction to cannabis does not involve neurotoxicity such as it was defined in chapter 3 by neuroanatomical, neurochemical and behavioral criteria. Thus, former results suggesting anatomic changes in the brain of chronic cannabis users, measured by tomography, were not confirmed by the accurate modern neuro-imaging techniques. Moreover, morphological impairment of the hippocampus [which plays a part in memory and navigation] of rat after administration of very high doses of THC (Langfield et al., 1988) was not shown (Slikker et al., 1992)." Health Secretary Bernard Kouchner concluded that : "Scientifical facts show that, for cannabis, no neurotoxicity is demonstrated, to the contrary of alcohol and cocaine."[9]

Yet in Mr Costello's support for pharmacutical profits he totally ignores the benefits of marijuana in medical applications, highlighting the dependance of the government on profits made from getting people addicted to substances like morphine, valium etc etc which are in the highest addiction catagory!

What a corrupt polititian Mr Costello is to totally ignore the sick and infirmed from being able to legally use something that will benefit their lives and instead yeild to the pharmacutical companies and their awesome profits, maybe he gets a cut? But certainly the government does from taxes and the like for which Mr Costello is treasurer so even if he doesn't recieve a direct cut from getting patietns addicted to morphine and like he certainly gains a huge benefit, making him corrupt in the highest degree by alienating people with illness such as cancer, MS, glucoma, arthritis, and hundreds of other pain related illnesses.

It is even shown to be an effective anti inflammatory but the government would rather us take Vioxx and the like causing heart disease so they can make $billions in taxes from peoples deaths.

The worst part is a lot of people believe his unsubstaintiated lies! And these people with illness will find out how addictive the alternatives are and how violent they make people, for example morphine makes you indistructable and violent and when you are on it you do not realise how violent and abusive you become becuase everything seems normal to the taker (from 3 years experience 140mg a day) but this is legal so the pharmacutical companies and governments can make their $billions.

Some of the benefits even include it as an effective treatment to Alzhiemer's disease oh but that wouldn't make the government money would it so they won't legalise it for medical purposes. In 2006 a study[10] was released that shows THC to competitively inhibit AChE and, furthermore, binds to the AChE PAS and diminishes β-amyloid peptide aggregation. These effects have been the goal of Alzheimer’s medication since the discovery that there was an association between the AChE PAS and Alzheimer’s disease[11]. The study concludes that AChE inhibitors such as THC and its analogues may provide an improved therapy for Alzheimer’s disease, but warns that THC is a psychoactive compound.

Oh and all these safety people who lack any relevant knowledge to safety will use drug testing to justify their jobs but as can be shown by statistics drug testing for marijuana does not save one life! It is just used as a tool to keep in the safety field that they don't belong in becuase if they knew anything about safety they would recognise the statistical information showing it actually decreases the risks of injury. But it also diverts attention from the real killer in our workplaces and on our roads that being alcohol and note alcohol is far more addictive that marijuana will ever be and shrinks the brain with long term use. (hypocritical safety institute of australia to blame for that, the majority will all be drinking at the Christmas parties)

Cancer has shown many times over two hundred years of research on cannabis to actually show a slight decrease in lung cancer rates over the general population even though smoking is the most common form of use! I quoted studies from the 60's showing this with large research groups in both Canada and West Indies but as governments and pharmacutical companies are pumping $billions into research to try and find a down side to marijuana's medical use I will quote the latest study showing a decrease in cancer: Cannabis smoke contains numerous compounds known to cause cancer [5],[6], [7]. Surprisingly, however, scientific studies have failed to show higher cancer rates in cannabis smokers. A study published in 2006[35] on a large population sample (1,200 people with lung, neck, or head cancer, and a matching group of 1,040 without cancer) failed to positively correlate a lung cancer risk, in fact the results indicated a slight negative correlation between long and short-term cannabis use and cancer, suggesting a possible therapeutic effect. This followed an even larger 1997 study[36] examining the records of 64,855 Kaiser patients (14 033 of whom identified themselves as current smokers), which also found no positive correlation between cannabis use and cancer.

Again the lies are exposed from Mr Costello!

As for road safety statistics out of the ACT suggest cannabis users are actually at a slightly less risk of a serious accident!!! And research backs this up from the U.K. and as we haven't heard from Swinbourne University I suggest their research backs these finding that cannabis users are at no greater risk than the general public when driving!!!! The effects of cannabis on laboratory-based tasks show clear impairment with respect to tracking ability, attention, and other tasks depending on the dose administered. These effects however, are not as pronounced on real world tasks, like driving or simulator tasks. Both simulation and road trials generally find that driving behavior shortly after consumption of larger doses of cannabis results in: a more cautious driving style; increased variability in lane position (and headway); and longer decision times. Whereas these results indicate a 'change' from normal conditions, they do not necessarily reflect 'impairment' in terms of performance effectiveness since few studies report increased accident risk.

Drug testing for marijuana is morally wrong because The total duration of cannabis intoxication when smoked is about 1 to 4 hours. Yet drug testing can reveal it's use weeks or even months later making the drug test invalid for the purpose of safety, sure if someone was off their face while performing a dangerous task it may be seen as reasonable to stop this behaviour but someone using the night before or on the weekend being caught up in these drug tests is ridiculous and given the proven low risk of those off their face it would even be debatable whether they posed any greater risk anyway.

So Mr Costello stop lying about a beneficial drug and do something positive by pushing for it's legal medical use over the addictive and highly dangerous substitutes the Pharmacutical companies keep pushing on those with an illness!

And the Safety Institute of Australia should be absolutely disgusted in it's workplace drug testing push especially focussed on marijuana as it shows no increased risk! But then as I've said the Safety Institute is run by people who haven't the committment to safety to even get a qualification that proves they are competent so they will have to keep down this track to cover up the corruption of banning people who have the committment!

Regards
Daniel