Science Cannabis

266 THE SCIENCE OF MARIJUANApublic health than either tobacco or alcohol, but would this remain thecase if the use of the drug became more widespread? At the moment lessthan 5% of the adult population in the West use cannabis on a dailybasis, while around one-third are daily cigarette smokers and more thantwo-thirds regular users of alcohol. There seems little doubt that an increaseduse of cannabis would bring an increased public health impact.Treating the recreational use of cannabis as a crime, however, seemsto be both unnecessarily harsh and as a policy Very unsuccessful in limitingthe use of the drug. In the United States in 1998, 695,000 peoplewere arrested for cannabis offenses, in Britain in 1997 there were 86,086cannabis offenses. In both countries policing cannabis accounted fornearly 80% of police time on all drug offenses. Although many of thosearrested were let off with a police caution (almost two-thirds in Britain)and not prosecuted, they still retained a criminal record for a very minoroffense. Many young people have their careers wrecked by expulsionfrom their schools or colleges for cannabis-related offenses. Others sufferprison sentences, thereby gaining access to a criminal world, whichteaches them a great deal more about drugs than they had known before.Surely the laws on drugs should exist to protect society from the ill effectsthat drug use may cause, not to protect the individual citizen from thefolly of their ways. The original prohibition of cannabis was based onfalse claims that its consumption would lead to criminal behavior, butthis proved to be untrue and this rationale no longer exists. Many of ourcurrent problems with cannabis stem from the hasty manner in whichthe drug was classified as a Schedule I narcotic in the 1920s and 1930sand how this classification was not changed when the opportunity laterarose. Leo Hollister, a respected academic expert on psychoactive drugs,summed up this point in his testimony to the United States House ofRepresentatives Ways and Means Committee Hearings on the ControlledSubstances Act in July 1970:I have been unable to find any scientific colleague who agrees that thescheduling of drugs in the proposed legislation makes any sense, nor have Ibeen able to find anyone who was consulted about the proposed schedules.The unfortunate scheduling which groups together such diverse drugs as