Well, tough break for the green team, and for countless Americans who may stand to benefit from the potential therapeutic properties of medicinal herb. From the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s 2011 National Drug Control Strategy, released Monday: Well, tough break for the green team, and for countless Americans who may stand to benefit from the potential therapeutic properties of medicinal herb. From the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s 2011 National Drug Control Strategy, released Monday:

The science, though still evolving in terms of long-term consequences, is clear: marijuana use is harmful. Independent from the so called “gateway effect” — marijuana on its own is associated with addiction, respiratory and mental illness, poor motor performance, and cognitive impairment, among other negative effects. . .

That is why no major medical association has come out in favor of smoked marijuana for widespread medical use. For example, the American Cancer Society, American Glaucoma Foundation, National Pain Foundation, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and other medical societies are not in favor of smoked “medical” marijuana. The American Medical Association has called for more research on the subject, with the caveat that this "should not be viewed as an endorsement of state-based medical cannabis programs, the legalization of marijuana, or that scientific evidence on the therapeutic use of cannabis meets the current standards for a prescription drug product.”

The sky is falling, according to the 108-page White House report, which maintains marijuana’s long-standing Schedule I classification alongside heroin, MDMA, DMT, LSD, peyote, psilocybin, and others. Cocaine, PCP and oxycodone, for comparison’s sake, are all less menacing, Schedule II substances.

Recreational marijuana use is at an eight-year high. Among high school students surveyed last year in Monitoring the Future, a rolling University of Michigan study of the “behaviors, attitudes, and values” of American adolescents and young adults, daily use increased “significantly.” One in 11 users will become addicted – one in six, should dabbling begin during adolescence. Marijuana was behind 376,000 “emergency department” responses throughout the country in 2009. And “confusing messages” advanced by entertainers, the media and medicinal advocates only compound the scourge, the “false notion” that weed is harmless, the push for the drug’s wholesale commercialization.