Re: “More marijuana research needed,” editorial, Sept. 13.
It should come as no surprise that the Medical Cannabis Research Roundtable is calling for more funding for cannabis research. The usual bottom line on most cannabis studies — and there have been thousands of them — is that more research and research grants are warranted.
More knowledge and research never hurt, but in reality, we know far more about cannabis than we do about many of the foods we consume, not to mention food additives and pharmaceuticals emerging from the lab.
Studies intended to find the benefits of cannabis have been actively suppressed, but there has never been a lack of funding for studies intended to find harms, to retrospectively justify prohibiting cannabis in 1923 with no science or debate beyond the bald statement in parliament that “there is a new drug on the schedule.”
Setting aside the costs of prohibition, suppose we discovered that cannabis is as addictive as cheese, as impairing and criminogenic as alcohol, as carcinogenic as roasted coffee and as demotivating as Facebook. Would this knowledge justify our continuing to abrogate control of this exceptionally dangerous herb to criminals and teenagers who sell myriad drugs of unknown potency, purity and provenance, on commission, tax-free, to anyone of any age, any time, anywhere, no questions asked?
Or would it make some form of regulation even more tragically overdue?
Matthew M. Elrod
Victoria
