The Collegian has recently printed letters declaring the innocuousness of marijuana use. The writers, however, failed to provide factual evidence to support their opinion.

A partial summary of the results of a scientific study of marijuana use is as follows:

-- THC, the principal psycho-active factor in cannabis, tends to accumulate in the brain and gonads and other fatty tissue in the manner of DDT.

-- Marijuana, even when used in moderate amounts, causes massive damage to the entire cellular process.

-- Tied in with its tendency to accumulate in the brain and its capacity for cellular damage, there is a growing body of evidence that marijuana inflicts irreversible damage on the brain, including actual brain atrophy, when used in a chronic manner for several years.

-- There is also a growing body of evidence that marijuana adversely affects the reproductive process in a number of ways, and that it poses a serious danger of genetic damage and even of genetic mutation.

-- Chronic cannabis smoking can produce sinusitis, pharyngitis, bronchitis, emphysema and other respiratory difficulties in a year or less, as opposed to 10 to 20 years of cigarette smoking to produce comparable complications.

-- Cannabis smoke, or cannabis smoke mixed with cigarette smoke, is far more damaging to lung tissue than tobacco smoke alone. The damage done was described as "pre-cancerous."

-- Chronic cannabis use results in deterioration of mental functioning, pathological forms of thinking resembling paranoia and a "massive and chronic passivity" and lack of motivation -- the so-called "amotivation syndrome."

Thank you for helping to clarify this issue.

(This information was taken from the introduction to Marijuana-Hashish Epidemic and its Impact on United States Security, hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate, 93 Congress, Second Session).