Dozens of senior officials in Israel's mental health system claim that legalization is a health disaster • "The ruling parties are leading a law without understanding the damage that will be done"
Medical marijuana, Uruguay, August
Photography:
AP
A petition by dozens of psychiatrists, psychotherapists, social workers and cannabis activists in recent weeks calls on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "stop the run for drug legalization," in what they call a health disaster.
According to them, the health damage from the corona is nothing compared to the expected damage to the State of Israel as a result of the legalization of the cannabis drug.
"I call today on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop the run for the legalization of drugs that he began when he decided to fulfill the promise he made to Moshe Feiglin, for half a mandate, that he did not add anything and it is not clear if they voted for him at all," said Advocate Shai Lal. In the last two years against the legalization of cannabis and centralizes the opinions of professionals in the field.
According to Adv. Lal, the allegations come from dozens of past and present senior officials in the mental health system in Israel and prominent activists in the field of drug addiction, each of whom has decades of experience with drugs in general and with cannabis in particular.
"This is a war"
The legalization and non-discrimination law is led by the ruling parties - the Likud and Blue and White, according to Adv. Lal, without understanding the damage that will be done to the public and the state's economy. According to opponents of the laws, the damage will reach billions.
"This is a very difficult war, because there is Likud support, blue and white and Meretz and parts of Mish Atid and they have no real information and they have been feeding more from the media in the last ten years," said Advocate Lal, adding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his proposal to Moshe Feiglin, sold The public health in a lentil stew of barely half a mandate and also blue and white contributes to the fact that it is the one that proposed this bill.
"There is a directive from above, probably from the Prime Minister's Office, to pass these bills without knowing what they mean, and this is against a dubious political ethnographer whose scope is not clear at all."
Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak was recently interviewed and claimed that cannabis is not addictive, but according to opponents of legalization, one in ten or 11 adults who use cannabis is addicted to it, and one in six minors is addicted to cannabis.
The number of cannabis addicts in the State of Israel currently exceeds the number of all other drug addicts.
MK Tamar Zandberg, former chairman of Meretz, who also served as chair of the Committee to Combat Drugs and Alcohol, in the 20th Knesset, supports the legalization of cannabis.
According to Advocate Lal, she, unlike other MKs, agreed to visit a mental health hospital, to examine the situation, where she met an addict who told her that she was willing to sell her body over and over again for a joint. "Former government Ehud Barak makes such a declaration that cannabis is not addictive, it is better for him to visit a mental health department in the country and see the real facts," says Adv. Lal.
The number of hospitalized has increased
According to Adv. Lal, the fight against the legalization and non-incrimination law is difficult, as ignorance is celebrated in both the Knesset and the government. Touched the drug.
So far, it has been signed by senior directors of psychiatric wards, past and present, and prominent activists in various drug treatment frameworks across the country have already signed the petition clarifying that both the legalization and non-discrimination laws in question must not be passed.
According to Advocate Lal, there are verified data on the harms of cannabis in Colorado, USA, where legalization was passed back in 2012 so that experience was gained with the effects of the change in the law, when the proportion of adults who used the drug increased by 94%.
The data also show that the number of drug-related hospitalizations increased by 101%, the annual figure of the number of cases in which emergency services were involved in drug use increased by 54% after legalization, the number of suicides where the drug was tested for toxins increased from 14% in 2013 to 23% in 2017, and the number of deaths from road accidents in which drivers were under the influence of the drug increased by about 109%, while the rate of all deaths from road accidents increased by only about 31%.
