Special Report

From the New Scientist, an informative special report on cannabis (marijuana, pot, weed, bud, ganja, mota) that explores the subject from a scientific and rational, rather than political or emotional, perspective. The lead article states:

"After thirty years of research into the harmful effects of cannabis, there can be no hidden dangers left to discover. We know that it is plain nonsense to regard cannabis as a performance-enhancing drug, just as it is a myth to think the substance rots the brain or leads inexorably to harder substances.

"And despite the anti-dope propaganda that circulates in the US, most people are thankfully well aware that no great social disaster has befallen the Netherlands, where cannabis has been sold openly in coffee shops for years. It would take a perverse mind to twist the data from Amsterdam into an argument for continued prohibition (see The Dutch experiment).

"While no sensible person believes cannabis is totally safe, even police chiefs back moves to decriminalise the drug. Only the politicians still seem irrationally terrified by the idea of any relaxation in the law: they think they can continue in the old way, lumping all drugs together."

Another article includes this intriguing tidbit:

"A few years ago, researchers discovered a cannabis-like substance in the brain called anandamide (after the Sanskrit for "bliss"). Like THC, anandamide stimulates cannabis receptors to dampen the electrical activity of neurons and reduce the flow of neurotransmitters across synapses. But nobody has a clear idea why. The best guess is that the brain uses anandamide as a central fine-tuner of electrical activity."