It should never have been fully legalized
By Warner Todd Huston, The Western Journal
For years, marijuana advocates claimed that if only America would loosen restrictions, we’d all see how beneficial the drug is. But now, more than 10 years after the first efforts to do just that, we are seeing that the critics were right. Liberal pot laws and increased usage are far from the panacea pot-lovers claimed.
Starting back in 2012, Colorado passed a law to allow private use of marijuana. Soon the state of Washington joined the Centennial State in loosening its pot laws. And many more came in the following years, especially when the states began to realize it could tax “legal” marijuana and bring millions into their state treasuries.
Now even the federal government is looking to loosen the reins and is preparing to take pot off its Schedule One prohibitions, a move said to be the first step in decriminalizing marijuana.
But now these states are finding that it is time to pay the piper, as a raft of ill-effects are spreading like wildfire all across the country. From mental illness to addiction and impaired driving, the effects on many are not as beneficial as advocates claimed.
There do seem to be a very few beneficial uses for pot for a small number of people. It does help in pain relief for the chronically afflicted, it can help with nausea from chemotherapies and it is sometimes effective for those with anxiety. But all those benefits are limited and are far outweighed by the deleterious effects seen when widespread use is factored in, according to a raft of new studies reported by the Daily Mail.
With a pool of more than 40 million pot users to look at, researchers are finding that recreational use of the drug is becoming an increasing problem everywhere it is being tried.
As the Mail noted, researchers from the Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark have found that despite claims by pot advocates, the drug is just as addictive as any other drug. And 41 percent of users have developed major problems with depression.
The research found that chronic marijuana use quadrupled risk of developing a bipolar disorder and added to a rise in psychotic breaks, including thoughts of, and deaths by, suicide, with pot linked to 30 percent of cases of schizophrenia.
The researchers added that people who already have a propensity for these mental disorders often find that pot makes them worse, not better.