THE CONNECTICUT GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

MAY 23, 2007

...

Would the Clerk please call Calendar Number 348.

CLERK:

On Page 26, Calendar Number 348, Substitute for House Bill Number 6715, AN ACT CONCERNING THE PALLIATIVE USE OF MARIJUANA, Favorable Report of the Committee on Appropriations.

. . .

REP. BOUCHER: (143^rd)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it is no surprise to you or to anyone in this room, I'm sure, that I rise to oppose this Bill.

Mr. Speaker, sometimes you do not choose an issue, it simply chooses you. This Bill has been portrayed as a Bill about compassion. Well, it most certainly is, compassion for our sick, compassion for our addicted, for those suffering mental and emotional turmoil and for our children.

The issue of compassion drives us today, for each one of us is touched personally by cancer. I know that you and others here have their personal experiences, some that you might be living right this very minute.

I [inaudible] my eight-year-old nephew, my 29-year-old niece, and my own husband. It is also true that every family inside and outside this Legislature is touched by the ravages and destruction of addiction and all that it can bring.

Mr. Speaker, though well intentioned, I strongly believe that this Bill could very well be one of the most damaging proposals that have come before us in a very long time.

It's a Bill that will increase the demand for an illicit drug at a time when marijuana has been engineered to be ten times more powerful, and more addictive than in the sixties, and represents nearly 60% of our new admittances to our drug treatment centers.

It does not seem logical, or even responsible, for us to go down this very dangerous path when tobacco, and even secondhand smoke is being banned throughout the country.

But this is still being proposed to help the sick, I would like to begin this afternoon's discussion about health issues and why this Bill will not help the sick, but in fact potentially could make them much, much sicker.

Mr. Speaker, what troubles me about this proposal is that marijuana is a powerful and often dangerous drug that fills a person's lungs with carcinogenic smoke.

Why is this Bill not drafted to address only those with a terminal illness, rather than those that have a chronic illness, a condition that a person can live with for a very, very long time?

You know, let's be clear about this, because I think there's still some confusion by those that might agree with us on the outside and here as well, that this Bill is not about the terminally ill. Many think it is. But it could affect those who could live a very long time. We would want them to do so.

My concern, and the concern of others, is that this Bill potentially can even reduce the patient's prospects for a very long life.

At a time when their system is already debilitated, is already trying to recover, a person trying to live a very normal life, we are going to actually allow them to take something that can reduce their immune system, that could potentially give them more illness, and certainly, if there may be one out of ten that gets addicted, we're adding and compounding the conditions that they're suffering from already.

I'm going to also discuss how this has actually happened to a number of individuals, and as well, as we have a Member of our Legislature who has a personal experience with this within their own family.

Mr. Speaker, there are at least seven major problems. I'll restrict myself to those seven this afternoon, as the way it is currently drafted, and I'm going to outline them briefly right now, and then we'll elaborate a little further as the afternoon progresses.

First of all, this Bill harms the critically ill much more than it helps them. The FDA states that medical marijuana is not effective medicine. They just came out with another release on this because of so much talk about this issue just in the last couple of months.

It conducted a testing program that you might not know about that was terminated in the early 1990s because it determined at that time, that marijuana was not effective, and might even harm patients. So it's not like they haven't even looked at this issue yet.

Number two, there are very [inaudible], and very effective alternatives and new ones about to come on the market right now that are in clinical trials at the FDA.

Number three, allowing a person to grow four plants four feet high, and remember, I'm not a very tall person. In fact, maybe I'm slightly over four feet, so let's imagine a marijuana plant that would reach maybe up to my nose.

Now, someone's going to have to come and measure that, a plant that has been known to be one of the most hearty of all plants that can grow to eight, even ten feet high, producing crops far in excess of anything that a sick person could possibly use.

So I want you to take that visual with you when we're discussing the Bill. Just take a look at me, and then look right about where my nose to my mouth is, and that's about as high as that plant can be.

Number four, this Bill promotes an illegal act. It goes against federal law, and our Executive Branch is committed to upholding federal law.

Other states, and you've seen a few of them are experimenting with this because there are lot of very powerful forces that are trying to move states in this direction, but those states that have moved in the direction are now in further jeopardy, as the Supreme Court decision announced on June 6, 2005, which was two days by the conclusion of our Legislature just two years ago, in a very unanimous vote, not even close, supported the federal government's right to prosecute growers, to prosecute users, patients, to prosecute caregivers, to prosecute states that move in the medical direction of using marijuana.

The State of Connecticut, Connecticut doctors, this is our number five objection to this, Connecticut doctors' healthcare centers, businesses, open themselves up to litigation.

I'm going to discuss and bring to you the knowledge that we have, because quite frankly, folks, we really haven't had a large informational Session on this where we can bring the experts in to really discuss this thoroughly from all sides.

Usually, a public hearing is held with less than, or at a 24-hour minimum notice when very few people can get there. So we're going to discuss those potentialities.

There are also, number six, objection, is that this is going to increase cost, make no mistake about it, to our substance treatment centers, both locally and on the state level.

The Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services in fact has been opposed to this every single year, and in fact have provided me with the initial information, along with parents who had had sick children and why this would be very difficult for the state, the Department of Public Safety, as well as all of our state monitoring agencies.

And I will also bring to you a letter just received this morning from our own Department of Consumer Protection on their concerns about how they should move forward with this.

And lastly, but maybe it's most importantly, for many of the reasons just stated, number seven, we are harming our children by sending them the wrong message that drugs are okay at a time when we're experiencing serious problems in our communities and in our schools.

With this Bill, we have already, by the way, by the mere discussion of this Bill, already hurt some of our treatment centers' programs when they tell me that kids are coming in with addiction to marijuana and they say it's okay, it's just medicine. Why am I here?

We definitely will undermine our current anti-drug efforts and substance abuse programs by contradicting a very strong anti-drug effort.

Now, most of you have received a great deal of information regarding the dangers versus the merits of approving medical marijuana by a lot of us, or a few of us in the General Assembly, who are to put it mildly, very passionate about this issue on both sides.

We do have opposing beliefs in how to help the seriously ill, to reduce their pain, increase their prospects for recovery.

We also have different views on how health patients function as normally as possible over the course of their life if they have a chronic condition.

Now, you might say, why do I spend so much time and quite a bit of heartache on this Bill, and even risk alienating many of you in both Chambers by sending you in the past, I'm afraid, countless e-mails and letters on the proposal.

And the primary reason is not necessarily legal, but it is for healthcare reasons. It shows, this research shows that credible healthcare organizations say that smoking a marijuana cigarette, or smoking any other drug, tobacco or otherwise, is not safe or effective medicine. That's intuitive.

I believe deeply that by passing this Bill, we will be not only harming our constituents and our loved ones, but we will be increasing the demand for a very dangerous drug, and we have to ask ourselves.

If just one person, one person out of ten, becomes addicted, will we be doing more harm than good right here today?

By passing this Bill as it is currently written, we will be breaking a trust that we have with our constituents.

We're here to help improve their lives, in this case, their health. A smoke-filled lung, think about it, a smoke-filled lung from whatever the source, including a smoke-filled drug such as marijuana is harmful and should be avoided at all costs.

There are some that may point to surveys, and have told me personally, that suggest the public is highly supportive of the use of medical marijuana. Some had sent out actually, some surveys this Session.

They're supportive of using it as medicine, but the very same surveys if you send them out, they change dramatically when you ask them about growing a plant in their home.

If you tell them this, if you actually explain what's in the Bill, you tell them it's for not terminally ill patients, and it's also for growing plants in the home, anywhere from 60% to 70% vote against it.

This response reflects the very same reaction I received from a cancer victim. You know, it's interesting, because over the years you get to be associated with a particular issue, as many of you are.

So I'll get a phone call after some debate on this from someone from any part of the state, and they'll say, why are you doing this? They admonish me for opposing the Bill until I talk to them about it, and tell them what this Bill actually does.

And there was a gentleman, he remarked when I said that, I understand you have been one of the Legislators that have worked against this Bill, but why?

I explained the Bill would allow him to grow four plants in his home, and that he would have to process it. He was astonished it. He said, well, I can't do that. First of all, I'm sick, and secondarily, I don't know very much about growing a plant at all.

He immediately realized that medical marijuana, caregiver or patient, he was not going to have the scientific expertise to grow the specific blend that would be required for his medical condition.

He wouldn't know how much to take, what the proper dosage, what other harmful effects. I asked him if he hoped to recover from his cancer and he said yes.

I further inquired if he understood that smoking marijuana could also subject his immune system to a higher risk of other cancers or even heart ailment. He remarked he had not even thought about it until we had had that conversation on the phone.

This particularly gentleman withdrew his support for this medical marijuana Bill, and he excused himself for being so harsh at the beginning of our conversation. Not everyone is quite as forgiving, I must add.

You know, I've spoken to many other cancer patients or their family members, including my 29-year-old niece, and my young nephew, whose parents who are all now facing these very difficult decisions as well. We talked about the wisdom of putting a chronically ill person at risk for further damage to their health.

Just think about it. Asking the person you love to inhale deeply and to hold as long as possible, an unfiltered smoke of a marijuana cigarette that contains over 490 ingredients, some of them known to be lethal carcinogens.

You know, like many of us in this Chamber, they could support a Bill that allows a harmful addictive smoke drug to be prescribed who is terminally ill.

You know, if there's no chance, a prospect of recovery, it doesn't matter what you put in someone's lungs. But they would not support dangerous, immune-suppressing smoke, be it marijuana or tobacco, to fill the lungs of their loved ones if there was any chance of getting better, and that really is the reaction I get from many individuals and groups when we talk about this Bill.

You know, I have frequently stated that if this Bill truly was about the terminally ill and dying, I would be the first one to sign on, and in fact we wouldn't be going through this exercise this afternoon.

I have done that consistently over the last couple of years that this Bill has been suggested. The suggestion goes nowhere. People do not want to restrict it for the terminally ill. It is, in some places, only for those individuals, because they understand the negative consequences.

You know, like any of the proponents of the Bill who have sat beside a loved family member who is dying, hooked to all kinds of medical devices and in horrible pain, we would be glad to relieve the pain of them, and protect them.

But on the other hand, we still want to be careful about anybody that has a chance of recovery, and certainly our children around them.

Shortly, I plan to offer several amendments that will provide the proper safeguards to make this Bill better, including an Amendment to restrict the Bill to the terminally ill.

Let's talk about the first major reason to oppose House Bill Number 6715 as it is currently written. This Bill does more harm to sick people, and could actually hurt them more than help.

Of the many reasons we should not take Connecticut down this dangerous path, certainly the most serious and most compelling reason, legal issues notwithstanding, and there are many of those as you've probably already heard, is that smoking marijuana is not safe or effective.

Proponents of this marijuana Bill have gone a long way to try to convince the public that there are pain relief benefits to smoking marijuana.

Well, I'll tell you, after exhaustive study and consultation with many states and national experts, as well as cancer patients, there's increasing evidence that the argument that smoke marijuana is medically necessary is untrue. Really, the facts simply are not there.

You know, there's a great deal of research available on the effects of smoke marijuana. In Connecticut alone, Yale and the Connecticut Medical Society have determined that smoke marijuana causes damage to, and this makes sense, think about it, when you think about tobacco smoke, it changes and damages the brain, the heart, the immune system and the lungs, as well as impairing memory, perception and judgment.

It contains cancer-causing compounds. It's also linked, of course you already know this, to a high percentage of automobile crashes and workplace accidents.

Other studies link marijuana with the loss of motor skills, increased heart rate, and impairing the ability of the body's T cells to fight off infections. This is particular critical for those suffering from HIV.

You know, marijuana's not a do drug. We all know that has been around a very, very, very long time, but really, you know, what is new? It's that there are now real scientific studies on the subject.

You know, just as it took a very long time for us to know the dangers and the ill effects of tobacco, it's taken a long time to investigate this increasingly stronger and modified plant.

This is a fact. The potencies or strength of the marijuana today is ten times greater than it was back in the '70s, with greater use and abuse of the drug that we're now seeing, these actual health effects that smoke marijuana can produce.

In fact, it's associated, again, it's intuitive and logical, a greater concentration of tar, a greater concentration of carbon monoxide and carcinogens.

Even more, by the way, and this I learned myself that surprised me more than a nicotine based cigarette, there's now conclusive evidence that smoking marijuana gives you greater exposure to carcinogenic chemicals than from tobacco.

In fact, you know how much one marijuana cigarette can deliver? It can deliver four times as much cancer-causing tar as one tobacco cigarette. Now why is this?

One cigarette, one marijuana cigarette versus four tobacco, although cannabis cigarettes are smoked less frequently than nicotine cigarettes, their mode of inhalation is very different. Some may be associated with how you do this, but maybe a lot of folks are not. They're uninitiated to the world of smoking marijuana cigarettes.

Compared with smoking tobacco, smoking cannabis entails two-thirds larger puff volume, a one-third greater inhaled volume, a fourfold longer time holding the breath, and a fivefold increase in concentration of the very cancerous producing components and ingredients.

The products of combustion from smoked marijuana are thoughts retained to a much higher degree. And in addition, you know that unlike nicotine, it stays in your blood stream a very long time, and has been even detected in those that are exposed to it second-hand smoke in drug tests.

In fact, it can be in your system for over 30 days. You know, if you got, and you were asked for a drug test for a job, as two of my three children were before they were able to go to work.

They didn't ask them to run right off and get a sample or a blood test. No, they told them to go ahead, take a week or two, get an appointment, because they knew that that drug residual would be detected in their bloodstream. That is very much unlike alcohol.

It's very much unlike nicotine as well. This is one of the main reasons that no FDA approved medication is smoked. It makes sense. Smoking is a poor way to deliver medicine of any kind at all.

It's also impossible to administer safely regulated dosages of medicine in a smoked form or even simply eaten, as many have alluded to. We can just put it in food, and you can eat it.

How many patients or caregivers are horticulturists or pharmacists, who would have known how or have the expertise to determine what is a safe and effective quantity of the THC, which by the way, that's the only thing in it that people allude to that would have any kind of medicinal purpose.

How much of that should they consume? Would they overdose? And don't think you can't overdose on marijuana. You know what? It was interesting.

Someone sent me a copy of a Michigan 911 case just this last week on May the 11^th, there was a 911 call by a fellow that was watching some ballgame, he and his wife. It was one Edmund Sanchez of Dearborn, by the way, now he's a former police officer. It wasn't very smart of him to call in to 911 if he was a policeman.

He was in a total state of panic after he and his wife ate a batch of marijuana-laced brownies they had just cooked up. The Detroit Free Press reported the Department's investigation began with a bizarre 911 call from Sanchez's home in Dearborn Heights on the night of April 21, 2006.

A panicky Sanchez told an emergency dispatcher he thought he and his wife were overdosing on marijuana. This is what he said in the call.

He said, I think we're dying. He said it on a five-minute tape. He kept repeating this for five minutes, which was obtained, by the way, under the Freedom of Information Act in Michigan. We made brownies, and I think we're dead. I really, really do. I think we're dead.

If marijuana was a safer, even viable alternative medicine, why do so many organizations that advocate on behalf of the illness, mentioned here in House Bill Number 6715, reject it?

In fact, it's been rejected, as you've heard recently, by every reputable medical association in the country, including the American Medical Association, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the American Glaucoma Society, the American Academy of Ophthalmology, and the American Cancer Society.

And by the way, just this last week, our own Connecticut Medical Society, oh, I'm sorry, that was last year our own Connecticut Medical Society testified against this Bill, many times in Committees in the past year. They're opposed to this Bill as is the American Society of Addiction Medicine.

The American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, I can go on and on. But just this last week in Fairfield County, which a lot of us represent, they also met a group of doctors to talk about the actual health benefits of this, and they voted formally to reject the smoking of crude marijuana for patients.

They all reject it. Not that it is illegal, though it is, because there's no pharmacological or medical justification for the use of leaf marijuana in the treatment of these specific ailments or other ailments.

The American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement entitled Marijuana: A Continuing Concern for Pediatrics, some of the significant neurological as well, are well, well known, as are the negative health effects with repeated use similar to effects seen with smoking tobacco. They get it, folks. It's like smoking tobacco.

But as I just explained, it's even worse because one marijuana cigarette is like smoking four or five tobacco cigarettes. So if it's just one joint a day, just figure it out.

Marijuana has been toted as ameliorating chemotherapy-induced nausea. This is the principal thing that it has talked about. It's purported that it helps wasting anorexia associated with AIDS. It supposedly helps the pressure in glaucoma patients and muscle plasticity arising from such conditions as multiple sclerosis.

However, two very comprehensive reviews evaluating the scientific basis of these claims, one conducted by the Institute of Medicine, and the other by the American Medical Association have now been published, and sometimes it pays to read these reports, folks.

Both reports acknowledge the lack of rigorous data to support, that support the use of smoked marijuana as medicine, while they call for additional research into the medical use of cannabis, especially those that can offer very rapid delivery systems that are smoke-free, which by the way, we are going to talk about that.

They have isolated it. They have put some of this in an aerosol that bypasses the lungs, can be metered, can be prescribed, can go through a pharmacy, can be used if that becomes one of the methods that folks need.

The Institute of Medicine reported that marijuana smoke delivers harmful substances as well as so many tetroid dry cannabinoids. I'm working hard at trying to get these medical terms, to the body, and that marijuana plants cannot be expected to provide precisely defined drug effects, so nobody knows if it really does what it's purported to do.

For these reasons, their report concluded there is very little future in smoked form of marijuana as a medically approved medication. That was underscored again by just recent reports by the FDA. Imagine, promoting smoke in someone's lungs.

It should also be said that although some patients using marijuana to alleviate certain symptoms say they may feel better, they're not actually getting better.

I know that we'll hear some testimony by our own Representative on our side of the aisle that will talk about a relative who was feeling better, but not actually getting better because of the way that marijuana as a chemical works within the human body.

The overall health of the patient may actually be worsening instead of improving but they don't know it. The reason that some patients report they feel better is because marijuana is an intoxicant. You would feel better after drinking a few glasses of wine, too. We have, as I said, we're going to really talk about how this can impact individuals specifically.

Now, why is it bad for cancer? You know why? Because two-thirds, thankfully, thankfully, thankfully, two-thirds of cancer patients actually recover.

In 2004, a report that reported that in Connecticut 17,000 people were diagnosed with cancer and less than one-third were considered terminal.

We could be exposing by this Bill, the other two-thirds to harmful smoke that actually could aggravate or contradict the very therapies that they were designed to help the patients, our loved ones, my loved one, from recovering from this very, very terrible disease.

[inaudible] as past smokers of marijuana are at increased risk of developing cancer of the neck, of the head, including tumors of the mouth, the throat, the larynx, and lungs, a new study has found as well. This is important for us to be listening to this, again, underscoring my premise that we actually could potentially be making someone sicker than helping them recover.

The study, the first to link medical marijuana with cancer suggests that the drug's popularity in recent decades could have serious long-term health consequences for some users.

Remember, the generation of Americans who were teenagers in the '60s, and I'm one of those. I'm sure there's a number of others here. I'm sure you all, you could even raise your hand if you don't want to say your age, I certainly understand. We were those teenagers in the '60s, brought to a lot of good stuff, folks.

Women's lib, civil rights, but we also brought in and ushered in a drug culture as well. Back then when recreational use of marijuana became so widespread, we are now reaching the age when many types of cancers start to become more common and are identified.

As we've just mentioned, marijuana smoke is higher in tar and carcinogens than tobacco smoke and previous research has found that marijuana smokers, like cigarette smokers, can develop pre-cancerous changes in cell linings and the respiratory track.

Recent [inaudible] said that they, therefore, were not surprised at the news that smoking marijuana predisposes users to head and neck cancers. In fact, I have a very good friend who's a photographer that is undergoing this right now for that very reason.

But they also found to increase the risk of lung cancer as well, it's what I expected to see, said the doctor, who was a professor of medicine at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He has followed this research in the field. It appears marijuana smoke is a stronger carcinogen than even cigarette smoke.

Just January 2005, our own Yale study, Richard Moser, a research psychologist at the National Cancer Institute and co-author of the research was referenced by Brett Moore, the Yale School of Medicine.

Most marijuana is co-related with an increased risk of conditions similar to those produced by smoking tobacco and can compound health problems resulting from smoking tobacco as well.

You know, I'm not the expert in this, but let me tell you, there are an awful lot of people who are, that have brought a lot of information to the table that should be in front of us when we discuss something as serious as this.

You can now begin to get just a little clue of why I have become so involved in this issue and feel so passionately about it.

Another, the Director of Epidemiology at the American Cancer Society said the new findings underscore the long-term danger of smoke marijuana and the need for research into better ways of delivering the drug's active ingredient if it is to be used by people with chronic illnesses.

Okay, so we talked about cancer. But let's talk about the immune system and HIV AIDS because that's another very big issue that everyone wants to use this medicine for.

The leading research in AIDS, HIV, Donald Paskin, M. D. , effects of smoke marijuana on lungs and its immune defenses implications for medicinal use for HIV infected patients. He is by the way, at the UCLA School of Medicine. He is Medical Director for the Pulmonary Function Laboratory, someone that specializes specifically in the lungs.

What he has said to us and to all others on this issue is the most potent argument against the use of marijuana to treat medical disorders is that marijuana may actually cause the acceleration or aggravation of the very disorders it's being used to treat.

Smoking marijuana regularly, say just one joint a day, can damage the cells in the bronchial passages that protect the body against inhaled micro-organisms and decrease the ability of immune cells in the lungs to fight off fungi, bacteria and tumor cells.

For patients' already weakened immune systems like HIV patients are, which by the way, was once a death sentence is no longer so. You can live a very long life, thankfully so, with this kind of condition.

But what this would mean for the immune system is an increase in the possibility of dangerous pulmonary infections, including pneumonia, which often proves fatal. It can kill someone with AIDS.

So that is not a compassionate thing to do for one of your friends, one of your partners, to provide them with this to alleviate their pain when we could actually aggravate and maybe speed up the process of getting sicker.

He further explains that smoking marijuana has been shown to materially affect the overall ability of the smoker's body to defend itself against infection by weakening various natural immune mechanism, the all-important T cell.

The use of marijuana as a medical therapy can and does, have a very serious negative effect on patients with pre-existing immune deficits, including from AIDS, organ transplantation or cancer chemotherapy.

Again, the very conditions for which marijuana has most often been touted to help and be suggested as treatment.

It's also been shown that marijuana use can, as I said, accelerate the progression of AIDS to, excuse me, the build up of HIV to a full-blown AIDS. That is the material argument here, guys.

Do we want to do that? We want to keep it in remission. We don't want AIDS or HIV to go to full-blown AIDS, but it can actually aggravate that and increase the occurrence of infection and [inaudible] sarcoma, which is a death knell to those with HIV and AIDS.

You know, I can also recount to you, as I would have, if we had had as I said, an informational hearing on the subject, research also from other countries that are even further along as often many other countries will have approved the use of drugs to a greater degree.

But we even have researchers from my home country of Italy in Rome that concur with this assessment and add that cannabis smokers had higher levels of a protein that may promote tumor growth known as interleukin pen. Some folks familiar with cancer know exactly what that is.

The changes to the body by smoking marijuana can dampen the immune system, its response to infection increasing, as we said before, the susceptibility to infections and promoting the growth of tumors.

Maybe that is why the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology further validate that marijuana can have an immune suppressant effect on the persons that smoke it.

Smoking of marijuana alters the membrane function immune cell response according to those investigators that are really concerned about people with severe allergies, and many of us have that as well.

Cannabis has also been, or has an immune suppressant property resulting in a very significant reduction in resistance to bacterial and viral infections. These chemical activities place HIV positive patients at a greater risk as we've just said about AIDS.

Now let's talk about why the lung impairment in a person's lungs might be as bad, or even worse than tobacco. As we have said previously, it could lead to breathing problems, greater exposure to cancerous chemicals than tobacco.

Remember that one cigarette can deliver four times as much cancer causing tar as one tobacco cigarette. I wonder how many of us knew that before today.

You know, these reports and studies have been published by the way, in the world's most prestigious medical journals in the United States and Canada and the United Kingdom and Sweden and Australia, and further research disseminated in Yale, at Harvard, at major cancer centers in recent press announcements. All we have to do is look them up. You can find it.

You know, for a minute, now we've talked about cancer. We've talked about the lungs. I want to talk for a minute on something that will really shock you. We're going to talk about the heart.

My father and my mother-in-law and my father-in-law all died from the results of tobacco smoke particularly as it affected the heart and lungs.

I distributed to you a shortened version and maybe you don't remember, it's been a while ago, of a 2005 Yale study that shows marijuana use is co-related with increased risk of conditions similar to those by tobacco, of course, resulting from smoking tobacco.

But did you know that also it can result in heart failure, and I'm serious. It can result in heart failure. It may be a surprise, but it is and has been seen as a cause for sudden death syndrome and near death due to stopping of the heart.

And I have to admit to you in college, back in those sixties, it's something that I unfortunately witnessed firsthand, and it is one of the many reasons that compel me to strongly oppose this legislation.

Another study indicates that the user's risk of heart attacks more than quadruple. Imagine that, four times greater by smoking pot. Heart disease. And that is usually in the first hour after smoking marijuana. That is when you're at greatest risk.

The researcher suggests that such an affect might occur from marijuana's affect on blood pressure and heart rates and reduced oxygen carrying capacity of blood. So in other words, it's not bringing you the blood that you need to survive.

In 2002, the British Lung Foundation had strong words of warning for those that smoked pot. British researchers have found that smoking pure cannabis harms your lungs as much as tobacco does.

Smoking three cannabis joints are dangerous and can cause the same damage to the linings of the airways as 20 cigarettes, so I think that they had an even more damning result than some of the other research that I found.

They go on to say, in fact, that tar from a joint contains 50% more cancer-causing substances as tobacco, and these statistics come as a surprise to many people, especially those who chose to smoke cannabis rather than tobacco, and the belief, you know, that this is safer. This is better than tobacco. It's a lot safer.

Folks, it is not safer. It is more dangerous. There is a reason that we have so many programs to teach young people to stay away from them. As with tobacco smoking, the research shows a possible link between cannabis smoking and emphysema, again, something that my father died from.

The FDA despite anecdotes to the quantity says, there is concern that the use of smoke marijuana may be harmful to individuals suffering from the conditions for which it is touted.

They have stated that respiratory difficulties associated with marijuana use preclude the inhaled route of administration as medicine.

Smoking marijuana is associated with higher again, as we said before, and I don't want to repeat it because you have heard it from me before, but it doesn't hurt, you know, because some day it's going to trigger this thought.

It's going to trigger in your head, and hopefully maybe I've helped just one somebody here to be a little bit more cautionary about it.

We talked about that it adversely impairs some aspect of lung function and causes abnormalities in the respiratory cell line's large airways to the [inaudible].

You know, and marijuana smoke causes inflammatory changes in the airways of young people that are very similar to the effects of tobacco, on and on. It goes on and on.

Now this is another little known fact that I think is very important to discuss, and that is, is there a way that you can extract what's good about this plant, just as we've extracted what's good about the bark of a tree.

What's good about the bark of a tree is that it gives you an aspirin to help you with a headache. Of course, we aren't going to go chewing and recommending that someone chew on the bark of a tree, but we can extract what's good from it.

You can extract, if in fact what's good from a marijuana plant, the THC, and put it in something called Marinol. It's a pill. It is FDA approved. Those doctors that know about it prescribe it or suggest it to people, and it doesn't contaminate the lungs.

So we're going to talk about that as well, as another way to take the THC and put it in aerosols and get it to your bloodstream instead of going through the lungs.

But I want to also talk about another very little known effect, and that's the effect on newborns, and on pregnancy. This is very important, because we know that sometimes someone can be undergoing a treatment for a very debilitating disease, but can also be pregnant.

Research has shown that babies born to women who use marijuana during their pregnancies display altered responses to visual stimuli. They increase tremulousness and had a high-pitched cry, which may indicate neurological problems in development.

Certainly we tell people not to smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol because there is a problem as a baby, particularly the first two months, and being the mom of three children, you learn some of this stuff.

Wish I'd known more of this when I was pregnant earlier, but that it can severely damage the growth and development of the brain in those first two months. So alcohol is bad for you. Tobacco is bad for you. Marijuana is very bad for you.

During infancy and pre-school years, marijuana exposed children have been observed to have more behavioral problems than unexposed children, and poorer performance on tasks of visual perception, language comprehension, sustained attention and memory.

It's not surprising therefore, that we would put pregnant women in great jeopardy if we used medical marijuana or they were exposed directly or indirectly to marijuana smoke.

Remember, I had told you that we, this has been detected in people that 30 days after taking it, second-hand smoke is detected on blood tests of someone that was in the same room. That was validated, by the way, by one of our own Representatives in this Chamber who was an ER nurse, who saw that firsthand. Something to consider.

We have now briefly discussed some of the physical problems that this Bill could present to very, very serious ill patients.

I want us to now consider another very damaging aspect of this, one that gives us great pain and cost to the State Department of DSS, the State Department of DCF, our Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse.

We need to consider that this Bill, which by the way, could be very addictive as I said. If only just one in ten were to become addicted, what would it do to our system?

We need to talk about the mental and psychological harms of this Bill. So why do the following associations oppose this legislation? The American Academy of Family Physicians, Pediatrics, the Society of Addiction Medicine.

Many people in this Chamber work for nonprofits that deal with these issues on a daily basis, substance abuse clinics, recovery organizations, and our own agencies on Mental Health and Addiction Services.

It is because we now know that the regular use of cannabis is associated with an increased incidence of mental illness, most notably schizophrenia and depression, and very recently, surprisingly some, that in tests to paranoia psychosis as well.

Again, we have a leading research institution right in our very back yard in the City of New Haven. They have a very large department that deals with children with severe problems. That research institution findings raises very grave concerns.

Recent studies there have shown that cannabis triggers transient schizophrenia-like symptoms. Do you know how many people that have this condition are now wards of our state, and our different state departments are supporting because they cannot leave their homes or have a normal job?

The principal active ingredient in marijuana causes transient-like schizophrenic symptoms. They range from suspiciousness and delusions to impairment in memory and attention, and of course, many have very violent behavioral patterns that can't be controlled unless it's under severe medication.

The lead author of this research was Dr. DiSousa, the Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, which said in the study was attempt, it was his and their attempt to clarify, make it known to everyone, that there is a long-known association between cannabis and psychosis in the hopes of finding another clue about the path of physiology of schizophrenia. They tried to find this out.

What they found was the contribution of cannabis and/or any other abnormalities in the brain, because there is a cannabinoid receptor system in this process to schizophrenia.

So as with tobacco, we are now more and more uncovering previously little known harmful effects of this drug, and it isn't a drug.

Are you getting a little bit of a clearer view as we go through this, why this is still a Schedule One drug after much review, and again, much challenges and many challenges all the way to the Supreme Court on this to take it off of the Schedule One most dangerous drug list?

You know, by the way, just two weeks ago, on May 1, 2007, just a couple weeks ago, there was a new finding on marijuana's damaging effect on the brain, which shows that the drug triggers temporary psychotic symptoms in some people, including hallucinations and paranoid delusion, doctors say.

We have anecdotal stories, all of us, some people take it and they think they're fine, but then how about the others that are not, that have long-term sometimes permanent, effects.

British doctors took brain scans of 15 healthy volunteers. They were given, well, I don't know if I'd want to volunteer for that particular study, but they gave them small dosages of two of the active ingredients of cannabis, not even the 490 that have tremendous ill effects, but just two, as well as a placebo.

One compound, CBD made people more relaxed, but even smaller dosages of another compound, the one we're all touting that is this miracle drug that's cure, THC, produced temporary psychotic symptoms in people, including hallucinations, paranoid delusions, the doctor said.

These results were presented at an international mental health conference in London just recently, providing physical evidence of the drug's damaging influence on the human brain.

You know, we long suspected they said, that cannabis is linked to psychosis but we never before had a chance to show how that mechanism works. And analyzing the MRI scans of the, again, we have new equipment now that can really elucidate us on what's really going on with the brain.

So they analyzed these MRI scans of the study's participants and they found that the THC interfered with activity in the interior frontal cortex of the brain, the region of the brain that specifically is associated with paranoia.

THC is switching off that regulator effectively unleashing the paranoia usually kept under control by the frontal cortex.

In another study being presented at the conference, a two-day gathering of mental health experts discussing the connections between cannabis and mental health, they found that marijuana worsened psychotic symptoms of schizophrenics.

So in other words, if someone is already sick and has a severe mental illness, this exacerbates it and makes it better.

You know, I have a friend who is a psychiatrist, a wonderful woman with two kids. We were discussing this just last weekend with coffee, and she told me personally that she says that any of her patients that have a drug problem at all, she personally tells them, do not take any of it, it is poison to your system.

Hey, how many of us in this Chamber have a family member, I can certainly count, that have some sort of a mental illness of some type that is just kept under control or some cases not.

Doctors at Yale University in the United States tested the impact of this THC on 150 healthy volunteers. We just don't take London or England's research, but right here again, it's amazing the amount of research, isn't it, that goes on at Yale. We are so lucky to have them in our state.

They tested the THC on 150 healthy volunteers and 13 people with stable schizophrenia. Nearly half of the healthy subjects experienced psychotic symptoms when given the drug.

While the doctors expected to see marijuana improve their conditions of the schizophrenic subject, this really, really shocked them.

You know, especially since a lot of their patients reported that the drug calmed them, that they found by doing this testing, that the actual reverse was true. I was surprised by the results Dr. DiSousa said. In practice, we found that cannabis is very bad for people with schizophrenia.

Now, while Dr. DiSousa had intended to study marijuana's impact on schizophrenics in more patients, the study was actually stopped. They wanted to find out more, but they had to stop it. Why did they stop it?

They stopped it prematurely because the impact was so pronounced that it would have been unethical for them to test it on more people with schizophrenia. They could not do this.

One of the great puzzles is why people with schizophrenia keep taking this stuff when it makes the paranoia worse, said Dr. Robin Murphy, Professor of Psychiatry at the King's College.

There is an active nature of the drug that is now becoming more clear that may answer that question. You know, we have a crisis in this country and it is a, and it's not just in this country, it's international.

In the London Times in 2004, inner-city psychiatric services were nearly at a crisis point. Up to 80% of all new psychotic cases reported a history of cannabis use.

The British Medical Journal in its January issue revealed that smoking cannabis once or twice a week almost doubled the risk of developing psychotic symptoms later in life.

And they have said that since the 1980s, doctors have begun to see a link between psychotic symptoms and cannabis. And again, they reiterated the fact that it's a contributory course of schizophrenia.

So anyway, we have gone through quite a bit of the various problems that we have with this. I can also go on to discuss what has happened in Sweden and Canada and so many others that are finding the same thing.

You know, we can talk about the depression and how depression is exacerbated by this, and it also changes the brain similar to what's caused by cocaine and heroin.

We also haven't really dealt with the issue of addiction, and that is one of the problems that we have with this, if we're adding to the problem of addiction that we have in this country.

Remember that marijuana is associated with an upwards of 50% of all emergency room psychiatric visits as well.

Now, we have to ask ourselves, if as we hope, the majority of the chronically ill will recover, will they be left with another health problem especially when the sick need all their strength and a clear head to recover and to get better?

Let me give you a final word on the harm associated with this Bill, by one of America's best doctors, Dr. Andrea Bartle, by the way, who came to Connecticut from Chicago on her own ticket to discuss how awful this would be for us.

She made these points. She's a black woman, one of America's top 100 doctors of 1997. After 30 years in the field of medicine, AIDS and substance abuse in Chicago and Washington, D. C. , as founding members of Chicago AIDS Task Force, National Institute of Drug Abuse, she was famous for her work in ethnic minorities.

She said smoke marijuana is unsafe for use even under medical supervision. Now, remember the THC in this has gone up 7% in the last few years, and now I'm going to propose to you, Mr. Speaker, because of all of these problems that we have, a couple of Amendments.

Because we have seen now the dangerous, dangerous direction that we're going, and that it may actually raise the rank of the problems that we have in this state and in this country.