“Laws are changing everything around us as well as the world that cannabis lives in. Sometimes it is time to sit down the bowl and really focus on the issues. Well then pick it back up, politics is stressful…”

The British Medical Journal or BMJ is an international peer reviewed medical journal that generates continuous research data on many of the relevant issues to society today. One such section from the journal hosts research articles that quantify the information that they are attempting to represent like sociological, psychological, and anthropological studies. One of these studies on October 10th by Robin Room detailed whether or not the prohibition of cannabis (as it was/is supposed to) effectively stopped people from using the “drug”. Here is a small portion of the overall results of the study:

“It shows that efforts to suppress the selling and use of cannabis increased substantially. Adjusting for inflation, the US federal anti-drug budget increased from about $1.5bn (Ãƒâ€šÃ‚Â£0.95bn; ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚Â¬1.1bn) in 1981 to more than $18bn in 2002. Between 1990 and 2006, annual cannabis related arrests increased from fewer than 350,000 to more than 800,000 and annual seizures of cannabis from less than 500,000 lb (226,798 kg) to more than 2,500,000 lb. In the same period the availability of illicit cannabis and the number of users rose: the retail price of cannabis decreased by more than half, the potency increased, and the proportion of users who were young adults went up from about 25% to more than 30%. Intensified enforcement of cannabis prohibition thus did not have the intended effects.”

In short, prohibition sucks and it cannot fulfill the ends that it claims it has the ability to create. This can be seen time and time again in alcohol, cigarettes, and hell even in the story of Adam and Eve (forbidden tree). Prohibition simply does not work, perhaps it is because of curiosity or just the innate human drive to gain multitudes of perspectives and experiences. Why not? I say, let us embrace it.

The full article is available (need log-in) HERE.