Pot may lead to Mental Illnesses

[Nickatilynx]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4218851.stm

Cannabis mental health risk probe

Cannabis was reclassified so police could target harder drugs
The government says it will review all academic and clinical studies linking cannabis use to mental health problems.
The Department of Health says it is now generally agreed among doctors that cannabis is an "important causal factor" in mental illness.

It follows a mental health group's call for the government to investigate "the link between cannabis and psychosis".

Rethink said its reclassification from a Class B to Class C drug sent a "confusing message" to young people.

The charity wants the Commons Health Select Committee to launch an inquiry into the effect cannabis has on users.

Its call was also backed by health campaign group Sane which wants the classification of cannabis to be reversed.

A Department of Health spokesman said it was already commissioning a review.

"We have no objection to the health select committee looking into this," he said.

'Common consensus'

"However we are in the process of commissioning an expert review of all the academic and clinical evidence of the link between cannabis use and mental health, particularly schizophrenia.

"There is medical clinical evidence now that there is an important causal factor between cannabis use and schizophrenia - not the only factor, but an important causal factor. That is the common consensus among the medical fraternity."

It should be legalised, not reclassified.

Iain, Cambs, UK


Your views on cannabis

Cannabis was reclassified last year so that police could target hard drugs.

Home Office figures released on Friday showed that arrests for possession of cannabis fell by a third in the first year of its reclassification.

However, Rethink said there had been a 60% increase in people who smoked drugs and had mental health problems in the last five years.

Most medical experts agree that smoking cannabis in itself does not cause mental illness, but that people who are predisposed to psychosis are much more likely to develop symptoms if they use the drug regularly.

"Cannabis is not risk free," Rethink chief executive Cliff Prior said.

"We have known for years that using cannabis makes the symptoms of schizophrenia far worse in people who already have the illness."

Calling for further research, Mr Prior said the government should "concentrate on the real and specific mental health dangers, not general warnings that no-one takes seriously".


It is Russian roulette. For some people it can ease pain, but for others it can be an absolute disaster

Terry Hammond

Marjorie Wallace, Sane chief executive, said Sane has campaigned for 18 years about "the destructive link between cannabis and schizophrenia" and that professionals and governments had ignored years of "mounting evidence".

"Far from it being a relatively harmless recreational drug - for vulnerable people, especially teenagers, the innocent spliff in the playground, or chilling out, could trigger a journey of lifelong disintegration," she said.

Campaigner Terry Hammond says his son, Steve, developed schizophrenia after taking cannabis resin.

'Trigger'

"I have got absolutely no doubt at all, and neither has Steve - Steve is absolutely clear about it - that it was the cannabis that triggered it.

"It may not have been the absolute cause of it, but it was the trigger.

"It is Russian roulette," he said. "For some people it can ease pain, but for others it can be an absolute disaster."


But Steve Barker, of the Campaign to Legalise Cannabis Association, said that by prohibiting cannabis it was preventing information about its use being readily available, while cannabis could in fact aid those with medical problems.

"There is a larger proportion of people with mental health problems who claim cannabis reduces their symptoms than those for whom it is a problem," he said.

"To criminalise people and to put them though the criminal justice system rather than give them the medical support they need is completely wrong."

[TheEnforcer]

Don't gte me started on the drug war stuff. All it does it piss me off. I hardly even drink anymore and I quit smoking or anything else years ago but the drug war is the biggest fraud and waste of money that taxpayers in the US contribute to each year. The USSC, and the government in generasl, wipes it's ass with the constitution when it comes to drug issues. The 4th amendment is basically useless at this point.

Assest forfeiture is a fraud of epic proportions perpetuated on an all too willing public. The novel idea that even if you are cleared of a crime your property can still be guilty and kept and sold off by the government is just one of the insane results of the drug war. And this isn't a liberl/conservative issue as people on both sides of the aisle are worthless when it comes to this issue. A few brave souls across a broad spectrum of political ideals sees the drug war as the farce that it is but FAR too many choose to ignore the erosion of peoples rights the drug war has caused.


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,145529,00.html

Drug War Shrinking Bill of Rights
Thursday, January 27, 2005
By Radley Balko

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that if you're pulled over by the police for speeding or, say, not wearing your seatbelt, they may bring out drug-sniffing dogs to investigate your car without violating the Fourth Amendment.

On the Volokh Conspiracy blog, Orin Kerr observes that Justice John Paul Stevens (search), writing for the majority, indicated that the Fourth Amendment protects not against violations of privacy or invasiveness, but against violation of property rights. Since one can't have property rights for illicit drugs, a search can't violate the Fourth Amendment.

It's a troubling precedent. It's hard to see how any police search would violate any rights under Justice Stevens' ruling, so long as the search turned up something illegal. That sort of undermines what the Fourth Amendment (search) is all about.

That case is just the latest in a number of court rulings and pieces of legislation that have been chipping away at the criminal justice rights of substance-abuse suspects. Ours is quickly becoming a two-tiered criminal justice system, one in which there are one set of criminal protections for drug and alcohol defendants, and a broader set of protections for everyone else.

Last month in Virginia, pain physician Dr. William Hurwitz (search) was convicted on dozens of counts of drug distribution. Prosecutors and the foreman of the jury that convicted him conceded that Hurwitz didn't knowingly participate in a drug trade, but because the pain medication he prescribed made it to the black market, he was nevertheless found guilty. He faces life in prison. Proving intent — as is required to secure a conviction in nearly every other crime — apparently wasn't necessary.


The drug war has been eating at the Bill of Rights since its inception. Asset forfeiture laws, for example, allow law enforcement to seize the assets of suspected drug dealers before they're ever convicted of a crime. Even if the defendant is acquitted or the charges are dropped, the mere presence of an illicit substance in a car or home can mean the loss of the property, on the bizarre, novel legal principle that property can be guilty of a crime.

Thanks to mandatory minimum sentencing laws, a judge in Utah recently had no choice but to sentence a first-time marijuana dealer to 55 years in prison (he had a pistol strapped to his ankle during the one-time deal, though he never brandished it). Frustrated but hamstrung by drug laws, the judge in the case noted that just hours earlier, he had sentenced a convicted murderer to just 22 years for beating an elderly woman to death with a log. Courts have carved out a "drug war exemption" in the Bill of Rights for multiple search and seizure scenarios, privacy, wiretapping, opening your mail, highway profiling, and posse comitatus — the forbidden use of the U.S. military for domestic policing.

The other area where criminal protections are withering in the face of substance-abuse hysteria is in Driving Under the Influence or Driving While Intoxicated cases.

The most notable example is the 1990 case of Michigan vs. Sitz (search), where the Supreme Court ruled that the problem of drunk driving was so pervasive, the Court could allow "random sobriety checkpoints" in which cops stop motorists without probable cause and give them breath tests, a practice that would otherwise again violate the Fourth Amendment.

The Court has since ruled that the urgency of the drunken driving problem gives states the option to legislate away a motorist's Sixth Amendment (search) right to a jury trial and his Fifth Amendment (search) right against self-incrimination. In 2002, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin ruled that police officers could forcibly extract blood from anyone suspected of drunk driving. Other courts have ruled that prosecutors aren't obligated to provide defendants with blood or breath test samples for independent testing, even though both could be done relatively easily.

State legislatures have pounced on these rulings. The state of Washington just passed two laws remarkable in their disdain for everything our criminal justice system is supposed to represent. The first instructs juries in drunk driving cases to consider the evidence "in a light most favorable to the prosecution," an evidentiary standard that's unheard of anywhere else in criminal law. The second mandates that breath test evidence be admissible, no matter what — even if the defense can prove that the breath test machine was broken, or jiggered toward higher readings.

Last year, Pennsylvanian Keith Emerich had his license revoked by state authorities after he revealed to his doctor during an emergency room visit that he sometimes drinks a six-pack of beer per day. His doctor reported him. Emerich wasn't accused or charged with drunk driving. In a bizarre twist on the principle of "presumption of innocence," Emerich must now prove to the state that he doesn't drive after drinking before he can get his license back.

More and more states are taking advantage of the Supreme Court's granted exemption to a right to a jury trial for DUI-DWI suspects, particularly in states where judges are elected, not appointed. That, of course, is because elected judges deemed insufficiently harsh on such defendants can have their "leniency" used against them when it comes time for re-election.

Though no such bill has yet to be signed into law, several state legislatures have also now considered bills that would mandate ignition interlock devices in every car sold in the state. New Mexico's version of the law would require all drivers to blow into a tube before starting their car, then again every ten minutes while driving. Drivers over the legal limit would not be able to start their cars or, if already on the road, given a window of time to pull over. Onboard computer systems would keep data on each test, which service centers would download once a month or so and send to law enforcement officials for evaluation.

The problem, as Thomas Jefferson famously said, is that the natural process of things is for liberty to yield and for government to gain ground. It would take a rare and brave politician to stand up and say that we need to roll back or reconsider our drug laws, or that it's unfair to give accused murderers or rapists more rights than we give DWI defendants. But that's exactly what needs to happen.
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I guess you got me started!! <_<

[JoesHO]

You know I gotta admit, I feell bettter and actually sharper since I have not been smoking...

21 days as of tomorrow..

I may take up wine now to regain my loss of cells .....

do the reds or whites make you smarter?