PHILADELPHIA – Recently the media has been buzzing about the new research that links marijuana use with an increased risk of psychotic disorders. This research has reignited the debate over whether or not marijuana use is safe.

The study, conducted in the U.K. and published in The Lancet, a prestigious European medical journal, concluded that marijuana use can increase the risk of psychotic illnesses by 40 percent for casual users and up to 200 percent for heavy users. The findings scared many, and have the U.K. government considering more arrests, tougher laws and longer jail sentences to combat marijuana.

It sounds bad, but by contrast a study done by Johns Hopkins University found that alcohol increases the risk of psychosis by 800 percent for men and 300 percent for women. The study conducted in The Lancet; however, could not directly link marijuana to increased psychotic illness.

It did suggest a correlation between the two, but did not find that marijuana was the cause of the increased risk. The Statistical Assessment Service (STATS), a non-profit organization affiliated with George Mason University, looked into the new study and found something interesting.

They said: “If marijuana produces what seems like such a large jump in risk for schizophrenia, have schizophrenia rates increased in line with marijuana use rates? A quick search of Medline shows that this is not the case – in fact, some experts think they may actually have fallen.”

What people have failed to see is the difference between correlation and causation. This study uses some correlations between drug use and psychosis that imply that marijuana is the cause of this increased risk, but nowhere can it prove this conclusion.

What news reports have failed to mention is that in another study on marijuana, published in the same medical journal, it was concluded that: “The smoking of cannabis, even long-term, is not harmful to health. ƒ_Ý It would be reasonable to judge cannabis as less of a threat ƒ_Ý than alcohol or tobacco.” So just how does marijuana compare to alcohol and tobacco? For starters, unlike nicotine and alcohol, marijuana does not contain addictive properties. Marijuana is also less dangerous. According to The Drug Awareness Warning Network Annual Report, published by the U.S. government, there has never been an overdose death recorded from the use of marijuana. Animal testing has found that in order to ingest a lethal amount of marijuana you would need to consume 5,000 to 40,000 times the amount needed to get you high.

To put this in context, with alcohol a lethal dose is only four to 10 times the amount needed to get you drunk. So it isn’t surprising that in 2001 the Center for Disease Control (CDC) found that over 5,841 men and women died from alcohol abuse and alcoholic dependency. The CDC also found that in 2005, 16,885 people died in alcohol related motor vehicle crashes, which accounts for 39 percent of traffic-related deaths. All other drugs, including marijuana, accounted for 18 percent of deaths, but were most often used with alcohol.

And as for tobacco, the CDC also found that 400,000 people in the U.S. die every year from cigarette smoking. They estimated that one in every five deaths in the US is smoking related. Marijuana has also not been linked to cancer.

Another thing we hear a lot about is how marijuana is a “gateway” drug. The theory essentially admits that marijuana use is harmless on its own, but argues that it can lead to the use of more harmful drugs. It’s estimated that 20 million Americans have smoked marijuana in the past year, and between 80 and 100 million have smoked it at some point in their lives. For the gateway theory to ring true we would see most of these people moving onto harder drugs, but there isn’t a single piece of evidence to support this theory. In fact, studies have shown that most people start using alcohol and tobacco before using any other drug.

But the most important aspect of marijuana is its medicinal benefits, which still remain controversial today. Dr. Jerome P. Kassirer wrote about the benefits of medicinal marijuana in the New England Journal of Medicine. He wrote: “The advanced stages of many illnesses and their treatments are often accompanied by intractable nausea, vomiting, or pain. Thousands of patients with cancer, AIDS, and other diseases report they have obtained striking relief from these devastating symptoms by smoking marijuana. The alleviation of distress can be so striking that some patients and their families have been willing to risk a jail term to obtain or grow the marijuana.”

Doctor Lester Greenspoon, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at the Harvard Medical School, has experience in this matter. He studied marijuana for two years and was shocked to find that it is “remarkably non-toxic.”

In 1967 his 10-year-old son was diagnosed with leukemia, and had terrible nausea and vomiting with every chemotherapy session. He found that when his son smoked marijuana 20 minutes before his chemotherapy, it completely eliminated his son’s nausea and vomiting.

Unfortunately Dr. Greenspoon’s son only lived another year and a half after that, but he did so with a vastly improved quality of life.

On this subject Dr. Greenspoon said: “There is now a growing body of evidence that marijuana is a medically valuable treatment . . . It appears that the medical dangers of marijuana have been vastly overstated while the medical value grossly understated and ignored.”

If alcohol and tobacco are both legal, more harmful and have no medical benefits, then why not legalize marijuana? Just like alcohol, marijuana should be regulated, taxed, not served to minors, and you should be barred from driving under the influence of the drug. The legalization of marijuana would save this country billions every year, and in fact it would create revenue from taxes. With regulation it would be safe from tampering with other street drugs like cocaine, and would end the violent crime that surrounds it due to the black market trafficking.

Most importantly though, people who are sick and suffering would be able to get the relief they need. Right now many patients take morphine and other drugs to ease their pain, but these drugs can cause addiction and in some cases hasten death; by contrast, there is no risk of death with marijuana. Let’s end this wasteful prohibition and begin a real workable system of taxation and regulation that will allow people to get the medical treatments that they need.