Thoughts on pot

Re: “Smoking pot hard on health.”

The reason that “disparate points of view on the whole issue” exist is simply because those in the prohibitionist camp seem to be highly selective about what they choose to acknowledge as fact. Tobacco use provides the No. 1 source of preventable deaths in Canada and no one in the span of recorded history has ever died just from smoking cannabis.

At the same time, studies that indicate that the use of cannabis slows or even stops the growth of tumors are completely ignored.

Some of the chemical compounds that Whitcombe speaks of can be dramatically reduced by simply choosing a different method of smoking (i.e. using a vaporizer).

The use of pesticides in growing the actual plants, which lack a standardized government control at this time, may also be a factor in unwanted chemicals ending up in the lungs of users.

In any case, any negative health impacts of smoking cannabis that may or may not even exist would already be among us; they’re not going to overwhelm the system in some sudden unforeseen health crisis.

If anything is giving us lung cancer, it’s industrialized eco- nomics and the endless toxic miasma of vehicular traffic. In such a carcinogenic atmosphere, you’ve got no standing whatsoever asserting that cannabis is causing lung cancer in anyone, especially in the absence of quality-controlled, non-biased case studies. Legalization sounds like a pretty good step in finally getting a grip on real information behind the use of cannabis.

The only filter cannabis needs is the one that separates the myths and propaganda from actual knowledge. Scott Harris Prince George