Columnist needs to learn more about ganja

THE EDITOR, Sir:

I THINK before Desmond Henry writes anything more on marijuana, perhaps he should learn a bit more about marijuana. He could read, for instance, Ganja in Jamaica ­ A Medical Anthropo-logical Study of Chronic Marijuana Use by Vera Rubin and Lambros Comitas, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health. I am suggesting this because his column reflects an abject lack of knowledge on the subject.

Were he to read the Indian Hemp Commission Report of 1894, the 1972 Shafer Commission Report, or even the Report commissioned by the anti-drug zealot Barry McCaffrey, which came out only a very few years ago, he would understand that the Gateway theory holds no water, nor is there impairment of sensory and/or motor performance or lack of drive in those who smoke even large quantities of marijuana.

When I read his rather histrionic comments, they remind me of those comments Harry J. Anslinger made when manipulating Congress into passing the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. People in general, and Congress in particular, may have believed the claims of marijuana's destructiveness before they really knew what we know now, but those claims were based largely upon conjecture and fear-mongering and have long since been discredited as the result of legitimate scientific studies.

Now, we know better. Therefore, printing an article such as Desmond Henry's does not reflect well upon a newspaper trying to deal with facts.

I am etc

RAY CARLSON

key89@earthlink.net

952 7th Ave.

Redwood City

California

USA

Back to Letters