Why Cannabis is Permitted and Cigarettes not?
Scientists found that cannabis use is less harmful than drinking or smoking cigarettes, and that’s why many people think that it should be legalized.
The Beckley Foundation’s Global Cannabis Commission said: "Although cannabis can have a negative impact on health, including mental health, in terms of relative harms it is considerably less harmful than alcohol or tobacco."
Why is cannabis safer than cigarettes and alcohol? Only one answer can be, statistically only two deaths worldwide attributed to cannabis, whereas alcohol and tobacco together are responsible for an estimated 150,000 deaths per annum in the UK alone.
For example many of the harms associated with cannabis use are the result of prohibition itself, particularly the social harms arising from arrest and imprisonment. The Beckley Foundation’s Global Cannabis Commission thinks that legalizing cannabis would allow it to be regulated, and make it easier to stop children becoming users. They write: "It is only through a regulated market that we can better protect young people from the ever more potent forms of dope, known as ’skunk’."
In 2004 police was unlikely to arrest people carrying small amounts of cannabis that was downgraded to class C. But Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has pledged to reclassify the drug to class B to avoid "risking the future health of young people". In recent year mental health experts found that cannabis became stronger, more damaging, and more widespread and this is not a good result.
