Dagga not funny
AS A delegate attending the Pan African Congress of Integrative Medicine in Stellenbosch, I realised again that nothing under the sun is new.
I could not help to think of the now infamous cigarette advertisements of doctors smoking Camel cigarettes, appearing in the Medical Journals of the sixties. (“Camel – The doctor’s choice”).
These pictures, it seems, will now be replaced by cannabis-smoking doctors.
My colleagues in the audience found the images of drivers performing a driving skill test, under the influence of cannabis, and not being able to walk on a straight line, or to stand on one leg, very funny.
The chairman jokingly commenting that the organisers left a bit of cannabis under every chair for everyone to try was also very “funny”.
I could not help wondering to myself if these people would find these same videos and jokes funny if it was their teenage sons on the screen – being woken up at two in the morning by the police to be told that your son or loved one was killed in a vehicle accident caused by a driver under the influence of cannabis.
Just the previous day we as delegates were shown how statistics of violent deaths in the Western Cape are rising rapidly, to now be the second cause of mortality – alcohol and drug abuse is one of the main culprits in this.
Surely, cannabis is this good herb, with wonderful medicinal abilities, but it has the bad tendency to cause long term brain and mental deterioration, and is associated with the same cancer-developing potential as tobacco smoking.
Its ugly sister however is the one that is being exploited by so called cannabis entrepreneurs, growing “medicinal cannabis” in green houses under artificial lights for their own profits, and certainly not to cure our sick society. This is the same cannabis causing the destruction of families, dragging teenagers into the deep hell of addiction and illegal drug abuse.
If we as the medical fraternity put our stamp of approval on cannabis (not hemp – which is a different story) then we must take full responsibility for the effect it will have on the health of the next generation.