"Marijuana Is Safer" authors Tvert and Armentano appear at Oaksterdam University
The student union at Oaksterdam University in downtown Oakland was buzzing yesterday afternoon as several dozen people gathered together with Marijuana is Safer authors Paul Armentano of NORML and Mason Tvert of SAFER to celebrate the brand new book's release. (Co-author Steve Fox of MPP was on the East Coast. The book also boasts a foreword by Norm Stamper, the former police chief of Seattle.)
After an hour or so of schmoozing, book selling, and signing, Armentano and Tvert were joined by Oaksterdam's Greg Grimala for an informal discussion about the book, whose thesis--that marijuana is safer than alcohol--is an outgrowth of work originally done by Tvert as he organized college campuses around the issue of inequality in punishments for students got smoking pot as opposing to underage drinking. Armentano, who has been keeping a keen eye on marijuana research for years, supplies much of the hard science.
"The fact that we're even having this discussion is a measure of marijuana's relative harmlessness," Tvert pointed out, adding that he thought the alcohol vs. marijuana comparison was an excellent tactic. "Parents can understand alcohol, and we can make the comparison between it and marijuana. Within that framework, you get them to start thinking about marijuana the same way they think of alcohol. The discussion of alcohol provides a reference point, and that will only further the debate."
Tvert will be hitting the road to promote the book in coming weeks. Armentano said yesterday the book was shipping to bookstores in the East now and would be showing up on the West Coast soon. He also said he had directed that a review copy be sent to StoptheDrugWar.org, so look for a book review here next week. (The Chronicle is on vacation this week.)
Tvert, Armentano, Grimala
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Go OU!
But as Steve, Paul, and Mason so brilliantly demonstrate in this book, an even more persuasive reason is that by prohibiting marijuana we are steering people toward a substance that far too many people already abuse, namely alcohol."
—Norm Stamper, former Chief of the Seattle Police Department
I have a problem with this reasoning. In the Netherlands, marijuana is legal to purchase and the population still overwhelmingly prefers alcohol and tobacco over marijuana than people do here in the states. If people preferred the safer drug, marijuana would be a lot more popular with the world long before anyone heard of Prohibition.
All Things in Moderation
It always pays to do the research.
A recently published study indicates that heavy alcohol consumption increases a person’s chances of getting esophageal cancer by sevenfold, colon cancer by 80-percent, and lung cancer by 50-percent. Three other types of cancer were also implicated in heavy alcohol consumption.
By contrast, drinking alcohol in relative moderation has been shown to reduce the incidence of rheumatoid arthritis by 50-percent.
Marijuana, even though it supposedly contains carcinogens, has shown a definite negative correlation with head and neck cancers. Lung cancer risk for smoked marijuana showed a small and completely unexpected negative correlation.
Giordano
The federal government causes cancer.
The federal government wants people to get cancer because the federal government is a known carcinogen.
help
I am doing a college research paper on marijuana can you point me in the direction of a few good sources for this topic?
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