Go ahead and file this diary under the "Things Kossacks Already Know" category.
Hopefully the most recent news about Gov. Richardson and Medical Cannabis has already filtered through to the dkos community.
However, in the continuing debate against ongoing reefer madness, including the UK as well as the USA, it is helpful to stay current on the latest science.
Curiously, one must go to the International version of cnn to access the article to this study, since it is not featured on the regular cnn.com.
I'll briefly discuss the highlights over the hump; join me in comments for
discussion.
For those who haven't heard of The Lancet, it's a popular and respected research magazine.
This new study by Prof. David Nutt is another step forward in a debate that is remarkably mostly for the hilariously wrong government propaganda that drives the prohibitionists. Unfortunately, there is probably little that the Democratic Congress can do to call off the dogs at the DEA, and the sat truth is that Cannabis reform is not going to make progress on the federal level until 2009. However, this debate is not dead, as there are many more battles to be fought between now and November 2008 on the local and state level. These include local initiatives that de-prioritize the enforcement of cannabis-related misdemeanors by local police. Here in CA, several cities such as Santa Monica, West Hollywood, and San Fransisco have passed ballot-initiatives to that effect. Hopefully more states will follow the lead of Nevada/Colorado in putting initiatives on the statewide ballots.
Some nuggets from the article:
Heroin and cocaine were ranked most dangerous, followed by barbiturates and street methadone. Alcohol was the fifth-most harmful drug and tobacco the ninth most harmful. Cannabis came in 11th, and near the bottom of the list was ecstasy.
"The exclusion of alcohol and tobacco from the Misuse of Drugs Act is, from a scientific perspective, arbitrary," write Nutt and his colleagues
Tobacco causes 40 percent of all hospital illnesses, while alcohol is blamed for more than half of all visits to hospital emergency rooms. The substances also harm society in other ways, damaging families and occupying police services.