Leading Research Magazine Claims WHO Suppressed Report Showing Marijuana To Be Safer Than Legal Intoxicants
February 19, 1998,
London, England

Health officials at the United Nations suppressed a report confirming that marijuana poses less of a public health threat than alcohol or tobacco, according to an article in the current issue of a leading English research journal, New Scientist.

"The analysis concludes not only that the amount of [marijuana] smoked worldwide does less harm to public health than drink and cigarettes, but that the same is likely to hold true even if people consumed [marijuana] on the same scale as these legal substances," states the article, entitled: What the WHO doesn't want you to know about cannabis.

The World Health Organization's summary report on marijuana -- its first in 15 years -- was published in December, but the magazine alleges that a comparison study of marijuana and legal substances was dropped because the findings might call into question federal policies criminalizing the drug. Sources leaked a draft version of the report to the magazine shortly after WHO officials decided to kill the story.

"It is understood that advisers from the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse and the U.N. International Drug Control Programme [sic] warned the WHO that it would play into the hands of groups campaigning to legalise  marijuana," the article stated. "Insiders say the comparison was scientifically sound and that WHO caved in to political pressure."

Allen St. Pierre, Executive Director of The NORML Foundation, called the WHO comparison study the latest in a long line of favorable marijuana findings suppressed by political officials. "Let's hope that this report doesn't fall into history's scrap pile like it's numerous predecessors: the British Indian Hemp Drug Commission of 1894; the Panama Canal Zone Report of 1925; the LaGuardia Commission Report of 1944; the Canadian LeDain Commission Report of 1970; the 1972 National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse; or the 1982 National Academy of Science Report: Marijuana and Health. When the scientific communities continuously recognize marijuana as a substance that presents little harm to public health or safety, citizens must ask the question: 'Why do governments like the United States so vehemently oppose the consistent recommendations of the very commissions they appoint?'"

According to New Scientist -- whose special report on marijuana appears today -- the WHO report found that marijuana "fared better in five out of seven comparisons of long-term damage to health." For example, the report stated that "in developed societies, [marijuana] appears to play little role in injuries caused by violence as does alcohol."

The magazine said WHO researchers also found that marijuana smoke did not lead to blocked airways or emphysema or impact on lung function, and that it was less addictive than alcohol or cigarettes. New Scientist further stated that the use of marijuana did not appear to lead to the use of harder drugs.

NORML Executive Director R. Keith Stroup, Esq. said that the suppressed report appears to corroborate many of the organization's own arguments. "NORML does not suggest that marijuana is totally harmless or that it cannot be abused. That is true for all drugs, including those which are legal," he said. "We do believe that moderate marijuana use is relatively harmless -- far less harmful to the user than either tobacco or alcohol, for example -- and that any risk presented by marijuana smoking falls well within the ambit of choice we permit the individual in a free society."