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Robin Room, director of the Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, says marijuana should be legalised under strict controls because the social harm associated with it was significantly less than from drinking.
“It makes sense to legalise marijuana in a controlled market,” he told the Herald Sun yesterday. “We are in a situation where we need to look ahead. I think we need to have the discussion and it makes a lot of sense in terms of, among others, cutting down government costs to have a fairly highly controlled legal (cannabis) market and, while we are at it, tighten up the legal market of alcohol in the same way we tightened up the market of tobacco.”
Prof Room, a leading academic at Melbourne University, is funded by the Department of Human Services.
In an ideal world, Prof Room said teens would not smoke marijuana or drink alcohol to excess.
But if an 18-year-old was going to use substances, he said they would likely land themselves in less trouble after using cannabis rather than bingeing on alcohol.
Teens were “better off” on a mixture of booze and marijuana rather than just pure alcohol in social settings, he added. Alcohol was more dangerous than cannabis because it had a closer association with aggression and violence, loss of co-ordination and impacts on work and family life, he said.
Full Article:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/lifestyle/health-fitness/expert-calls-for-marijuana-to-be-legalised-to-reduce-harm-of-binge-drinking-in-teens/story-fni0diac-1226676714223