{"id":107064,"date":"2020-09-28T15:22:34","date_gmt":"2020-09-28T22:22:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=107064"},"modified":"2020-09-28T15:22:34","modified_gmt":"2020-09-28T22:22:34","slug":"the-college-of-community-physicians-of-sri-lanka-media-release-on-attempts-to-legalise-cannabis-in-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/09\/28\/the-college-of-community-physicians-of-sri-lanka-media-release-on-attempts-to-legalise-cannabis-in-sri-lanka\/","title":{"rendered":"The College of Community Physicians of Sri Lanka media Release on Attempts to Legalise Cannabis in Sri Lanka"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Nihal Abeysinghe College of Community Physicians of Sri Lanka<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

The College of Community Physicians of Sri\nLanka (CCPSL) is the apex professional body for the practice of public health\nin Sri Lanka. The CCPSL is responsive to the current and emerging public health\nchallenges and see it as our duty to advocate on issues with an impact on\npublic health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cannabis or marijuana is an addictive\nsubstance that leads to many negative consequences to public health. Addictions\nreduce productivity and wellbeing of the individuals, reduce quality of\ninter-human relationships, incur costs on households and health care systems\nand burden communities and society with direct anti-social impacts such as\nthefts, violence and poverty. In the recent past, tobacco and pharmaceutical\nindustries\u2019 interests on cannabis had led to a well-funded global lobbying\nmovement for its legalisation. As tobacco is going out of popularity, tobacco\nindustry is searching for an alternative and many major tobacco companies have\nnow invested on cannabis trade. For them, it\u2019s simply replacing one leaf by the\nother in their supply and manufacturing processes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

World Health Organization highlights cannabis\u2019\npotential to be a gateway drug, which may lead to tobacco, alcohol or other\nillicit drug addictions in youth. Studies show that the concentration of the addictive\nchemical (Tetrahydrocannabinol – THC) in cannabis in the market today is as\nhigh as 30%, a drastic increase from what it used to be in the past (around\n3%). Thus, the current cannabis varieties in the market have a huge potential\nto be addictive and cause more harm if its availability and accessibility is\nimproved by legalisation of the trade. Just because a drug is legalised, its\nillegal form will not disappear from the market as evident from tobacco and\nalcohol trades. There is plethora of evidence of harms of its use, including addiction,\npsychosis, memory disorders, permanent damage to developing brains of young\nusers, respiratory diseases, subfertility and even acute cardiovascular effects\ncausing sudden cardiac deaths. It has also led to increased road traffic\naccidents in Canada and the few states of United States of America in which the\ndrug is legalized for recreational use. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We acknowledge the use of cannabis in\ntraditional medicine, and as currently it is legal and available for use for\nthat purpose in Sri Lanka, we don\u2019t see a justification to change the current\nstatus quo related to cannabis legalization status in our country. Recently we\nhave noticed increased lobbying by different individuals and parties, who\nopenly declare that they are cannabis users. We are surprised that the\npolicymakers are publicly accepting the arguments of individuals addicted to an\nillicit drug and contributing to normalise its availability in the market. In\naddition, we observe that these lobbyists are publicly attacking the advocates\nof public health who raise their voices against this movement. We condemn such\npersonal attacks on professionals and believe that these incidents indicate the\nnegative impact on the society if this addictive substance become more\navailable. We sincerely hope the government will show its interest in\nprotecting the health of the public by not supporting this detrimental movement\nto legalise an addictive substance in Sri Lanka. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Nihal\nAbeysinghe<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

23rd<\/sup>\nSeptember 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Nihal Abeysinghe College of Community Physicians of Sri Lanka The College of Community Physicians of Sri Lanka (CCPSL) is the apex professional body for the practice of public health in Sri Lanka. The CCPSL is responsive to the current and emerging public health challenges and see it as our duty to advocate on issues […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107064\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}