Science beats witchcraft

Science — not folklore, pop culture and politics — should lead the way in reforming marijuana laws. The Supreme Court of Canada took a step forward last week when it ruled medical marijuana can legally be consumed in a variety of ways, not just in its dried form. The case was a victory for Victoria’s Owen Smith, charged in 2009 for possessing pot cookies and other cannabis-infused food.

Before that ruling, the law said marijuana can be prescribed as a medicine, but only in its dried form, which, for most users, would mean smoking it. And yet, no medical textbook, no scientific study, no logical reasoning would ever say it’s a good thing to inhale smoke from burning vegetation into your lungs.

It’s a symptom of today’s reefer madness — a hodgepodge of illogical, inconsistent laws and vastly polarized views on the harms and benefits of marijuana.

Health Minister Rona Ambrose said she was “outraged” by the marijuana decision, saying judges, not medical experts, “have decided something is medicine.”

She should channel her outrage into working toward more sensible laws that decriminalize the use of marijuana. Too many police resources, too much court time and too much public money have gone into enforcing marijuana laws that make criminals out of people who are usually doing no harm, at least not to anyone but themselves.

But Ambrose is right in noting that marijuana has never faced a regulatory approval process through Health Canada.

It’s true marijuana has harmful effects, but far more harm is caused by alcohol and tobacco, substances that are legal but regulated. No death has ever been reported from an overdose of marijuana; death by alcohol poisoning is too common.

That doesn’t mean marijuana is an innocuous substance. Raphael Mechoulam, one of the world’s most renowned marijuana researchers, cautions that prolonged use of high-potency marijuana can change the way teenagers’ brains grow. He told National Geographic cannabis can provoke severe anxiety attacks in some people, and that it might trigger the onset of schizophrenia in people genetically disposed to the disease.

But Mechoulam’s research has done much to advance marijuana as medicine, aiding in treatment of an array of diseases. And certainly, many medical marijuana users have found relief from pain and other symptoms. Still, more research is needed. Let’s not be blind to either the hazards or benefits of marijuana, but decide the issue through vigorous scientific study, not on paranoid myths or wishful thinking.