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Advocates of medical marijuana say pot has all sorts of health benefits. Maybe so,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], but a new study from Australia suggests that smoking pot can drive some people crazy – or at least make them go crazy sooner than they would have if they had never picked up the pipe. The study, published online in “Archives of General Psychiatry,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych],” shows that potheads develop severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia about 2.7 years earlier than people who don’t use marijuana.
The link between smoking pot and mental illness appears strongest in children 12 to 15 years of age, Reuters reported. They develop mental illnesses that might not have shown up until their late teens or twenties – if they showed up at all. “The results of this study provide strong evidence that reducing cannabis use could delay or even prevent some cases of psychosis,” study author Dr. Matthew Large, of the University of New South Wales, said in a written statement.
Even through a recession in which other tax revenues have ebbed for the state,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], about $700 million or more each year continues to flow into the state Treasury from New Jersey’s $2.70-per-pack tax on cigarettes — the sixth highest cigarette tax in the nation. There may be legislation on the books that called for millions to be spent on anti-smoking and smoking cessation programs from this hefty pot of cash, but there are no dictates about how money is spent in the state budgets that are passed each June.
“The budget overrides the law. . . . A lot of people don’t understand that just because we have a law that calls for spending on these things, that doesn’t mean it happens,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych],” said Edward Kazimir, an ardent anti-smoking campaigner who helped start the Comprehensive Tobacco Control Program in the state Department of Health and Senior Services when he worked there for more than two decades. Of course,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], while less money is being put into efforts to stop New Jerseyans from picking up the smoking addiction, opportunities to smoke in New Jersey have been reduced.
New Jersey was one of the first states in the nation to prohibit smoking in workplaces — including bars,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych],[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], restaurants, bowling alleys and other traditional smokers’ hangouts — when the state’s smoke-free air act became law in January 2006. Oddly, while Jacobs, Kazimir and others credit that law with protecting the public health in New Jersey by ensuring that fewer New Jerseyans are exposed to secondhand smoke and by taking away some of the allure of smoking, they also acknowledge that the law may have made it easier for legislators and the governor to dismiss the value of funding anti-smoking programs.
Smoking is banned in virtually every public indoor place in New Jersey, so why is there a need to spend millions on anti-smoking programs — “That’s exactly what I’ve heard some legislators say,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych],” Jacobs said. Kazimir has heard the same thing. “It’s one of these things where they say, ‘We’ve done what we need to do and we ain’t going to do no more.’ ”