Urdedpal
New Member
Advocates of decriminalization or legalization of marijuana are hallucinating if they think their vision would mean less law enforcement, says renowned cannabis and psychosis expert Dr. David Fergusson. "If you think about tobacco and alcohol, there are huge regulatory behaviours and procedures that need to be put in place," the New Zealand professor told a cannabis and mental-health seminar at Simon Fraser University Harbourside yesterday.
Fegusson said a cannabis-legalization framework would have to deal with a way to ensure product quality, advertising regulations, package warnings/labeling, under-age prohibitions like those on tobacco and alcohol, impaired driving/boating/flying standards, smoking-in-public rules, criminal-code punishments, designated growing and retail outlets and control of products entering Canada.
Increased research budgets would be needed to study long-term mental and physical effects, as well as more health-care capacity to treat psychosis or lung-damage cases, he said.
Fergusson said there is a clear connection between heavy marijuana use -- at least one joint per day -- and psychosis. "We estimate if all cannabis use was eliminated, probably in the region of 10 per cent of psychosis cases would disappear," he said.
Benedikt Fischer, incoming head of an illicit-drug policy and public-health unit at the University of Victoria, said the doubling of Canada's marijuana users in the past 20 years shows the current approach is "not very effective."
Pubdate: Fri, 24 Feb 2006
Source: Province, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2006 The Province
Contact: provletters@png.canwest.com
Website: The Province
Details: MapInc (Cannabis - Canada)
Bookmark: MapInc (Decrim/Legalization)
Fegusson said a cannabis-legalization framework would have to deal with a way to ensure product quality, advertising regulations, package warnings/labeling, under-age prohibitions like those on tobacco and alcohol, impaired driving/boating/flying standards, smoking-in-public rules, criminal-code punishments, designated growing and retail outlets and control of products entering Canada.
Increased research budgets would be needed to study long-term mental and physical effects, as well as more health-care capacity to treat psychosis or lung-damage cases, he said.
Fergusson said there is a clear connection between heavy marijuana use -- at least one joint per day -- and psychosis. "We estimate if all cannabis use was eliminated, probably in the region of 10 per cent of psychosis cases would disappear," he said.
Benedikt Fischer, incoming head of an illicit-drug policy and public-health unit at the University of Victoria, said the doubling of Canada's marijuana users in the past 20 years shows the current approach is "not very effective."
Pubdate: Fri, 24 Feb 2006
Source: Province, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2006 The Province
Contact: provletters@png.canwest.com
Website: The Province
Details: MapInc (Cannabis - Canada)
Bookmark: MapInc (Decrim/Legalization)
