Transcription: The Facts on Grass
By John Von Kannon
A Gallup Poll of December, 1970 showed that forty-two per cent of college students have used marijuana at least once, as compared to twenty-two per cent in the spring of 1969.
Coinciding with the increased use of marijuana, has been a step-up in studies on the drug. At the present time, there are approximately forty study programs related to marijuana operating under the auspices of the Federal Government, as well as over two hundred private studies.
Though research is far from complete, many questions concerning marijuana have been answered:
In some cases, marijuana can cause injury to the brain. The ability to memorize nonsense syllables and to remember things previously learned are both affected by drug. These “black-outs” become more frequent among users as time goes on, and they tend to last longer.
Marijuana also causes an immediate effect on a user’s mechanical skills. It works very quickly intensifying and prolonging the effect of glare on the eyes. It slows down reaction time. It causes confusion in people who try to perform complicated tasks.
However, there is no evidence at present to prove that marijuana users become physically addicted, and no withdrawal symptoms have been noticed in heavy users taken off the drug. The amount of marijuana needed to cause a frequent user to get high is still subject for debate, however one set of data finds heavy users show a “reverse tolerance” – as time goes on a person get the same high with a smaller amount of grass. Another study report a “clear evidence that tolerance to marijuana increases with heavy use.”
Many veterans who smoked marijuana in Vietnam, return home only to find the quality of the American stuff so poor that they don’t want to use it. Some stop using drugs altogether; others turn to hard drugs; and still others switch to alcohol to relieve tensions. The direction any individual takes depends on his personality and the degree of his dependence on artificial stimulation.
Nearly all drug researchers agree that signs of psychological addiction are common. Most students who are heavy users perform at a lower level in their classes and tend to drop out of school more than non-users.
To determine the long-range psychological effects of the drug, studies have been made of North African Arabs. In this are of the world, the use of hashish-a potent relative of marijuana-is common, and large numbers of people completely drop out of society. These dropouts take on the same mental and physical ailments that characterize the chronic alcoholics of an American skid row.
But these studies of American college students and North African Arabs, have both failed to establish a nexus between the use of marijuana and the act of dropping out of society. According to one group of scientists, “some individuals lacking the conventional goals may find heavy marijuana use appealing. Their behavior may then be inaccurately attributed to the drug.”
At the present time it seems to be very difficult for an intelligent person to take a stand on favoring or opposing legalization of marijuana. Recent studies have revealed many hitherto unknown effects of the drug, but the door has just been opened.
Let us hope that legislators, on both the national and state level consider this research very carefully in their decisions concerning legalization of marijuana.
