| COFFEEHOUSE CULTURE -- Issue 1 | ||
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PAGE THREE; ARTICLE SIX; NEWS Damn! The predictions are being fulfilled before they have even been made NEW SCIENTIST BACKS CANNABIS |
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| IN THE SAME ISSUE AS its story on the WHO, the New Scientist also included a wide-ranging nine-page report and a hard-hitting editorial on cannabis. The prominently featured editorial, headed 'Let's be adult about this', established its stance with a subhead saying: 'Politicians will just have to bite the bullet -- dope will be decriminalised.' In a key paragraph, the editorial highlights the fact that 'no great disaster has befallen the Netherlands' and suggests that it would 'take a perverse mind to twist the data from Amsterdam into an argument for continued prohibition.' Extending this and other themes over the nine page report, the New Scientist explores the whole issue of cannabis in a well-reasoned and even-handed fashion. In the six-page lead feature, headed 'A safe high?', the New Scientist places cannabis' bad press firmly in the United States' court. 'Cannabis faces serious charges from the US government,' says the feature, before telling us to make up our own minds. Taking on the claims made against dope one by one, the NS feature starts its exploration by discussing the effects on attention, memory and learning ability. In a key statement it says that even when test subjects had smoked 10 joints a day for more than 30 years, 'their ability to learn and remember lists of words is only mildly impaired.' INLater in the article it goes onto refute the addiction hypothesis, the suggestion that smoking dope can lead to abnormal functioning of lung tissue and that it causes longterm changes in the brain. NWinding up its report in an equally positive fashion, the New Scientist looks at 'The Dutch Experiment.' Clearing the way for a more reasoned approach to decriminalisation, the article shows that Holland is well behind the market leaders in the smoking tables with under 15% of the population using cannabis. (Top of the smoking pops this time around are: Denmark with over 30%, the USA with over 25% and the UK with over 20%.) Pointing out that Dutch teenagers get the highest scores in the world in international science and mathematics tests, the article concludes: 'If there are any serious problems caused by legalising marijuana, then twenty-plus years of the Dutch experiment has not revealed what they are.' |
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Or read these Page Three articles in Plain Text: Hi! Or Do We Mean "High?' Vote Rigging Scandal; Amsterdam Shrugs Its Shoulders The Cannabis Conspiracy Confirmed The Haarlem Shuffle Green Finger |
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