Editing 79-12-B4 (section)

=== Transcript ===
From time to time I've used these commentaries to report an update on the continued
research into marijuana. Medical science has come a long way since the 1972 report by
the National Commission on Marijuana & Drug Abuse which gave the weed a relatively
clean bill of health.

Everyone who had the urge to light up a joint somehow became aware of that report
and could recite it as a litany, exhaling smoke at every line. Strange to say, however,
(or maybe not so strange) the confident and happy pot smokers overlooked a follow-up
report by members of the same commission which in effect says, "Oops, we overlooked
a few things in the first report."

Further research has continued to repudiate that first report, research by increasing
numbers of scientists here and abroad. And yet, none of these subsequent
findings seem to have caught the attention of the estimated 16 million regular users
in our land -- four million of whom are between the ages of 12 and 17.

Those who have no axe to grind, except to report the scientific facts they have
uncovered, say that marijuana has a far greater potential for harm than was previously
believed.

The toxic ingredient which provides the effect pot smokers want has a jawbreaker
of a name which I may not pronounce correctly -- Tetra-hydracannabinal -- which I will
henceforth refer to as T.H.C. This T.H.C. lodges in the body's fatty tissues and that
includes the brain and the reproductive organs. Now, for those hard to sell souls
who liken a "joint" to a martini, the difference is our body eliminates the martini in
24 hours. T.H.C. stays in the body for a month. A person who lights up a couple of
times a week is keeping his most essential bodily organs permanently soaked in this
toxic drug.

Does this have an effect? You can bet on it. Science now knows that it reduces
the ability of the brain to transfer information from short term to long term memory,
in addition to I other adverse and irreversible effects on the mental processes.
It slows the body's production of the white blood cells which pay a major role
in fighting infection. And it lowers the male hormone and sperm count in men which,
if I may be blunt, leads to sterility.

But there is another effect, which, in this day and age of warnings about the
danger of cancer from smoking tobacco, should give an pot smoker pause to think. The
smoke from burning marijuana contains many more cancer causing substances than tobacco.
And, if that isn't enough, it leads to bronchitis and emphysema.

If adults want to take such chances, that's their business. But surely the communications
media and those public figures whose words get some attention should let the
four million youngsters I talked about earlier know what they are risking when they
light up a "joint" and pass it around because they think it's the in-thing to do. 

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.
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