Marijuana has often been touted as the evil sleeper drug, the "gateway" that will inevitably lead users down a slippery slope of abuse, leaving even the most casual experimenter in the dregs of society, with needle marks and an expensive habit supportable only by an illicit life of crime.
But how accurate is such a portrayal? Research tells a different story. According to the Drug Enforcement Agency, 1,500 lbs. (or 720,000 joints) must be smoked or ingested within 15 minutes in order to be deadly. Such figures seem ludicrous when you consider the fatal equivalent of alcohol, which is legalized. Marijuana has been deemed "relatively physically harmless," even described by the DEA's Administrative Law Judge Francis Young as "one of the safest therapeutic substances known to man."
When asked what he thought about the legalization of marijuana, health teacher Bob Montgomery said, "I don't think it should be allowed. There would be just too many problems. There are already too many problems with alcohol, and there would be more people driving impaired and more dysfunctional families, more kids missing pages in their life because of short-term memory loss, and they couldn't develop personalities under the influence." When asked what he thought about how it could help the economy and terminal medical patients, he said, "I'm not worried about the economy. And there are better (medical) drugs than marijuana available, other wonder drugs."
Long-term smoking can do damage to the lungs. But because of lower number of chemicals, the damage done by marijuana is nowhere near as harmful as that done by cigarettes, another legalized substance. Tobacco alone will cause the premature death of 5 million teenagers smoking today, and kill more people than all illegal narcotics combined. Some researchers believe that marijuana decreases male sperm count, but this fact is often disputed. And so far, no one has actually overdosed from using marijuana. Although some critics argue that fatal accidents may occur due to the effects of marijuana (like altered depth perception and sense of timing), it hardly figures into the scope of automobile accidents, while alcohol is linked to 1/3 of all deaths and injuries in car accidents.
As for its reputation as a gateway drug, statistics again suggest otherwise. For the 80 million Americans who have currently used marijuana, 3.75 percent are cocaine or heroin addicts. It seems as though marijuana has earned its reputation through the social stigma which has been attached to it. There is no significant difference between the GPAs of college/high school student users and non-users.
Recreational use aside, the United States may be depriving themselves of an astonishingly prolific industry by prohibiting the production of hemp (the name used for marijuana when it's grown for industrial purposes). It has nearly 50,000 possible uses, has few insect enemies (therefore requiring few or no pesticides), and returns nutrients to the soil unlike other "cash" crops (corn, cotton, sugarcane, and tobacco.) The American Farm Bureau calls hemp "one of the most promising crops in half a century."
But the most auspicious use for hemp would be to replace wood pulp in producing paper, which depletes � the forest land razed by logging industries yearly. For every 4 acres of timberland, 1 acre of hemp would produce just as much paper, and the short growing season would allow several crops to be produced in one year, while timberland takes about 50-70 years to be regrown. The logging industry is notorious for its pollutive methods, while hemp actually restores ozone to the atmosphere. Also, paper made from wood pulp deteriorates in less than 1 century, while hemp paper last for about 1500 years, making it ideal for archives, books, and currency. Yes, the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were both written on hemp paper, and they're going on 200 years.
Hemp can be used to produce rope, twine, sailcloth, clothing, cellophane, plastics and fuel. It's also edible, and hemp cheese has no cholesterol! (Or narcotic effect, for that matter.) As cloth, hemp rivals "linen for durability, cotton for comfort, and wool for insulation and absorbency." It's also biodegradable, environmentally safer to produce than cotton fiber, and the strongest natural fiber in the world.
But as a fuel, hemp could do a whole lot more for the economy. From natural plant sources (like hemp, or corn) comes something called biomass fuel, which is safer to produce than fossil fuel, and contain no sulfur, making it burn cleaner. Not only that, if 6 % of current agricultural lands in the U.S. were used for these biomass crops, all gas and oil energy needs currently met by fossil fuel would be matched.
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