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Cannabis Stigma Call
Amy Marshall | Warrnambool Standard | 08/12/2005

AUSTRALIA'S cannabis laws should better reflect the crime and consider the stigma of a conviction, according to a New Zealand professor who was in Warrnambool yesterday.

Professor David Fergusson presented a workshop on the links between cannabis use and mental health at the drug and alcohol conference.

He said cannabis users played Russian roulette with the risk of psychosis and schizophrenia, but most people did not experience those symptoms.

"There is one part of our genes which makes us susceptible and about 25 per cent of people have that gene, but being susceptible does not mean they would actually be psychotic," Professor Fergusson said.

Professor Fergusson has been the principal investigator and executive director of the Christchurch Health and Development Study for the past 25 years.

It is an internationally renowned study of 1265 babies born in New Zealand in mid-1977, which followed the children for 21 years.

Professor Fergusson said a conviction for using cannabis damaged the right to travel around the world. "The social stigma is disproportionate to the punishment," he said.

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