"Cannabis saved my life."

Shelly Martinez was known as Ariel in WWE’s version of ECW, and as Salinas in TNA, but the only identity crisis she ever faced in her life is when the former Diva and Knockout realized that she had a prescription pill addiction.

“I realized I was an addict after I had a near-fatal overdose. I almost died,” Shelly recalled, “and I am here to give credit to what saved my life.”

“Cannabis saved my life,” Shelly states in the new video entitled “The Weed Chronicles,” which you can preview exclusively here on THE HEYMAN HUSTLE. “I was going to die,” Shelly stated, “No doubt about it. I was on the wrong path. Now, I’m healthy, happy, pain free, and here to sing the praises of how my life is so much better today because of Cannabis!”

Shelly, we have something in common; cannabis saved my life, too. We’re also both very fond of elbow-length black leather gloves.

I’ve received two forwards of this PR blitz by the executives at Forterus Inc. and their rehab center, “A Better Tomorrow”, promoting their appearance on a talk radio show. I decided that they ought to just come over here to the Stash or NORML SHOW LIVE and make those claims to someone who can and will debunk them:

Gentlemen, I produce the online news and interviews podcast and talk radio programs for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. I invite you to come onto any of our shows for a respectful discussion of these statements below:

“Proponents of marijuana are promoting a ‘drug’ lifestyle, claiming it is so safe that it can be used before going to work in the morning and cause no harm,” said Mr. Menz. Mr. Fent added: “Over 90 percent of our clients for heroin abuse report that they used marijuana prior to heroin. Marijuana is a drug and if we legalize it, we are making the concession as a society that we can’t control illegal substances.”

Since we are proponents of ending adult marijuana prohibition (and have never proposed that marijuana is harmless or that it should be used prior to work), I figure we could have a very interesting “point / counterpoint” style discussion.

We can do an interview live or recorded via telephone at your convenience, if you feel strongly enough about your message to present it to our audience of marijuana users who’ve never tried heroin.

Of course, I’ll ask them if they polled their heroin abusers about prior alcohol use, which I’m betting would be 99% of those who’ve become addicted to heroin.  Then I’d wonder why is it that ending Alcohol Prohibition wasn’t a concession that making substances illegal doesn’t control them in any way.  I also want the names of these marijuana proponents who claim it is harmless and should be used before work.

If I’m feeling snarky (who, me?) I might ask if they’ve ever taken a college logic course and can explain why “all who do A did B” doesn’t equal “all who do B will do A”.  There are 14,000,000 people who will use cannabis this month and there are only 135,000 who will use heroin.  That means for every one heroin junkie you can find at “A Better Tomorrow”, I can find 721 pot smokers, nearly all of them who’ve never tried smack.

We reported last week on the new law in Mexico decriminalizing personal possession of drugs. As is often the case, what can look like a great law on first read can have many unintended consequences in actual practice. We received an email from Jorge Hernández Tinajero of the Mexican drug reform organization CUPIHD (Colectivo por una Política Integral Hacia las Drogas) explaining the issue (official news release in English / Spanish):

The new law determines the quantities of drugs allowed to be carried for personal consumption, and it is here where some important concerns arise. First of all, the amounts of drugs permitted (5 grams of marijuana, equivalent approximately to 4 or 5 cigarettes, 0.5 gr. of cocaine, close to four lines, 0.04 g of methamphetamine or ecstasy, maybe 2 pills) are not realistic in terms of the illicit drug market. Cocaine, for example, sells by the gram on the streets. Also, these quantities are not realistic in terms of what a user actually consumes. In comparison, Paraguay for example allows 2 grams of cocaine for personal consumption, four times as much as Mexico.

Establishing such low thresholds can be dangerous because it can become a way to improperly categorize a large number of users as traffickers. Under the new Mexican law, a person is considered a small scale trafficker if caught with more drugs than the quantities allowed, with sentences from 4 to 10 years if they have the “intent to sell”. It remains unknown how this intent will be determined or proven, opening up the door to extortion and increasing the possibility of corruption of both police and the judicial power, already a significant problem in Mexico. The risk of corruption and extortion is now even greater because the new law allows local and state institutions to pursue, prosecute and sanction small level trafficking
—something that was limited before to the federal level. It is a this local level where corruption and inefficiency is greatest and where reforms have not been implemented.

Worse, even when the intent to sell cannot be proven, users found with quantities of drugs greater than those allowed can receive a sentence of up to three years in jail, an increase from before the law was passed. The new law now establishes these quantities of drugs as the determining factor to distinguish between a user and a trafficker. For these reasons, this law runs the risk of criminalizing a vast group of users, as well as those who make a living off the small-scale dealing but who in reality are not part of the organized crime networks. Imprisoning these users and dealers will not diminish the supply of drugs on the street, nor will it improve Mexico’s current public security situation and overwhelming violence. It will however allow the government to justify its current strategies against organized crime by boasting about the number of people incarcerated, but in reality worsen Mexico’s already serious prison overpopulation problem.

Marijuana on the street is usually sold in eighths, which is 3.5 grams (if your dealer’s honest), so the 5g limit for personal possession seems reasonable.  However, as Jorge points out, many people who are mere personal users will have more than 5 grams and low-level dealers are more than likely to carry more than that.  This new law is supposed to put the focus on the high level traffickers, but they have the bribe money to avoid prosecution, so once again the low-level dealer and unlucky who possess more than a “personal” amount will be the true targets

Decriminalization of personal amounts is a step in the right direction, but only under legalization will the problems at both the low-level personal-use/dealing range and the high-level murderous and corrupting cartels range be solved.

(People)

Marijuana Found at Michael Jackson’s Home

By Howard Breuer

Originally posted Thursday August 27, 2009 07:20 PM EDT

Indeed, Michael, the whole world's gone off the wall

Really?  You posted it at 4:20pm in California.  Go on…

Marijuana and numerous empty drug bottles were found by police officers at Michael Jackson’s home shortly after he died, according to search warrants unsealed on Thursday.

Two bags of marijuana, a bottle of temazepam (used to treat sleeplessness), empty bottles of the sedatives lorzaepam and diazepam were discovered during the search. They also found four other empty pill bottles with no indication as to what may have been in them.

Detectives were concerned that, when Jackson died, he had “received injection of an unknown medication, prior to his death,” the warrants say. Other documents revealed that Jackson’s doctor, Conrad Murray, had been giving the singer the anesthetic propofol intravenously.

Only under the insane war on a plant could Michael Jackson die from propofol, diazepam, lorzaepam, temazepam*, and probably kitchensinkzepam**, but the shocking headline is “Marijuana found at Michael Jackson’s house”.  Really.  You found an herb that couldn’t possibly kill him in a state where he can use it medicinally?  Shocking.  Can you even imagine People Magazine running “Half-finished bottle of Merlot found at Michael Jackson’s home”.  Oh, yes, you’re right, it is People Magazine…

In a house that big with as many people running around in it as he’d have, it’s possible the marijuana was the stash of some of the staff.  If it was Michael’s, I’m just sad that he didn’t stick to the pot and leave the pams and propofol alone.

*All I can hear in my head is Monty Python’s “I don’t like spam!  Spam spam spam spam…”

**Kitchensinkzepam™, from RussCo Phamaceuticals, the makers of Hypocrisol™, Fuqitol™, Dammitol™, and Scroughitol™.  Kitchensinkzepam.  We don’t know what the hell’s wrong with you.  Here, take this.

NORML’s Paul Armentano has already done a stellar job taking on the latest reefer madess on ABC News.  This is another one of what seem to be an increasing number of stories (NY Times, Dr. Drew, The Tenneseean, CNN, TransWorldNews, Christian Science Monitor)  that bring up the idea of “marijuana addiction” by telling the personal stories of people whose lives became full of turmoil and regret when they just couldn’t give up the doobies.

Many years ago the former head of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Alan Leshner made this statement when forced to confront the fact that tens of thousands of patients were successfully using cannabis as a medicine:“The plural of anecdote is not evidence.”

Someone ought to pass on Lesnher’s cop out to ABC News, whose recent feature, “Reefer Madness Redux: Is Pot Addictive?“, is little more than a series of anecdotes from folks claiming that it’s becoming harder and harder for some individuals to quit weed.

Yes, if 10,000 people say that using marijuana helped them medicinally, that’s just anecdotes and no basis for medicine.  But if a dozen people say that they were daily tokers, it ruined their lives, and they had a hard time quitting the bong, that’s enough for the mainstream media to question “Is Pot Addictive?”.  Which, by the way, is one of those sneaky ways the media tries to push a narrative by just asking the question and not declaring the fact.  “Is President Obama a Kenyan-born Illegal President?” or “Has Former President Bush Returned to His Hard Drinking Ways?” would be similar examples of the technique.

It’s the old “some people say” trick where media presents an issue as if it has two sides when the facts are all on one side.  “Some people say pot is addictive,” they’ll intone, and bring on three anecdotes of wasted lives, “and some people say it isn’t,” they’ll continue by presenting three doctors who tell the truth and present the evidence that it isn’t addictive in the potential-death-from-withdrawal sense.  See?  Three pot smokers who blame marijuana for their life’s failures vs. three well-educated doctors with studies of thousands of pot smokers whose lives turned out just fine.  Fair and Balanced!

Let me pick this apart a little.  In the piece, we meet “Vicky”, a 53-year-old who started smoking pot at age 13.  Well, there’s a clue!  We know marijuana use before age 18 can have detrimental effects and we here at NORML have been very forthright about explaining that.

Since the 1970s, when marijuana was the symbol of political protest, the risks of marijuana dependency have been clouded by the legalization debate and long-held beliefs that the illicit drug is harmless.

You’re not finding those beliefs here.  I’ll be the first to tell you marijuana is not harmless.  Neither is water.  But it is far less harmful than other drugs we allow even our teenagers to consume, like a Starbucks Frappacino loaded with caffeine, for instance.

Today, there are no FDA-approved drugs to counteract withdrawal symptoms, although the synthetic cancer drug Marinol shows some promise.

So, the treatment for the new “Pot 2.0: Not Your Father’s Woodstock Weed™”, the deadly addictive skunkweed that can be up to (gasp!) 25% THC, is a synthetic THC pill that’s 100% THC?  Sheesh, next they’ll tell us that lithium is a good treatment for marijuana “addiction”!  Whoops, too late.

The reclassification of marijuana is important, according to the APA because its omission as an addictive substance then professionals might not see treatment regimens for dependence as necessary.

Ah, so the association representing psychiatrists is telling us that if we don’t classify marijuana as addictive, psychiatrists might not declare people marijuana addicts in need of expensive treatment from psychiatrists.  Got it.

As the most commonly used illicit drug in the United States, marijuana produces dependence and relapse rates comparable to other drugs some researchers believe.

About 9 percent of all those who used marijuana became dependent, compared to rates of 32 percent for tobacco, 23 percent for opiates and 15 percent for alcohol, according to the 1994 National Comorbidity Survey.

In what branch of math are values 255% greater, 155% greater, and 66% greater considered “comparable”?  This is like saying my one minute eight second time in a 200 meter dash is comparable to Usain Bolt’s 19.3 second world record time.

For daily smokers, that dependency rate soars to between 33 and 50 percent, say more recent studies.

And what is the dependency rate for daily tobacco smokers, 100%?  Or daily beer drinkers?  Doesn’t it seem a good thing to you that half to two-thirds of daily marijuana smokers can quit cold turkey without any negative withdrawal effects?

With stronger pot, emergency rooms have reported more associated accidents. Just this week, seven people were killed when the driver — drove the wrong way on a New York highway and collided head on with a pickup truck. Although the drivers family has disputed the results, toxicology tests showed high levels of alcohol and marijuana.

Yes, high levels of alcohol, as in a .19 BAC!  So naturally this is the perfect example to show how stronger pot is causing accidents.

All addictive drugs have a “common signature,” according to NIDA director Nora D. Volkow. “They increase dopamine levels in the brain’s pleasure center and produce repetitive behavior. Marijuana appears do both, though at intermediate levels compared to other drugs.

Absolutely untrue, according to a new study published this June in NeuroImage, which concluded, “In the largest study of its kind so far, we have shown that recreational cannabis users do not release significant amounts of dopamine from an oral THC dose equivalent to a standard cannabis cigarette.”

Roger A. Roffman, a professor of social work at University of Washington… argues that the reform movement makes a “tragic mistake” to convince the public that marijuana is relatively harmless.

We’ve never claimed marijuana is harmless!  We’ve always claimed it is less harmful than alcohol.  Quit putting your words in our mouths!

(About.com) In order to stop drinking, some people who have become dependent on alcohol will take the controversial step of substituting the use of marijuana for alcohol, a practice that is known as the Marijuana Maintenance program.

Although the use of marijuana may indeed be less hazardous than heavy drinking — especially to someone who has been drinking excessively for a long period of time — smoking pot comes with its own set of negative effects and consequences:

• In most jurisdictions, the possession and use of marijuana is illegal. [TRUE link]
• According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, marijuana can contribute to mental health problems. [FALSE link link]
• Use of marijuana can also have long-term effects on the health of regular users. [FALSE link]
• Smoking marijuana can affect the user’s learning and social skills. [FALSE link]
• Long-term marijuana use can affect a smoker’s memory and speed of thinking. [FALSE link]

Also, for those who later decide to quit smoking marijuana, the withdrawal symptoms when they try to quit smoking can be similar to those experienced by people who quit smoking cigarettes. [FALSE link]

Here’s what I know:

• I am the child of an alcoholic.
• I had my first drinks at age 16
• By age 19, I too was an alcoholic.  I could drink a case of beer a day.  I could drink faster than you.  I could drink more than you.  My drinking helped me flunk out of college (me, a 3.44 GPA high school honors student who’d been in “gifted & talented” programs all my life)
• At age 22 I had my first puff of a joint.
• Up to about age 32 I continued to drink more than smoke, but I was no longer chugging beers every day.  My drinking was limited to a shot or two (or four or six) at my weekend music gigs.
• Since age 32 (I’m 41 now) I have drastically increased my marijuana intake and my drinking now may be a margarita or a glass of wine every other month.

Or we could just refer to the work of the late great Dr. Tod Mikuriya:

Ninety-two Northern Californians who use cannabis as an alternative to alcohol obtained letters of approval from the author. Their records were reviewed to  determine characteristics of the cohort and efficacy of the treatment, which was defined as reduced harm to the patient. All patients reported benefit, indicating that for at least a subset of alcoholics, cannabis use is associated with reduced drinking. The cost of alcoholism to individual patients and society at large warrants testing of the cannabis-substitution approach and study of the drug-of-choice phenomenon.

(CBS News) “Medical marijuana,” the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says, “already exists.”

They don’t just mean in California. A pill known as Marinol has been legal and approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use with a prescription anywhere in America since 1985.

It’s active ingredient? Dronabinol, better known as THC, the primary psychoactive element of the cannabis plant.

“Marinol provides standardized THC concentrations, does not contain the other 400 uncharacterized substances found in smoked marijuana, such as carcinogens or fungal spores, and is not associated with the quick high of smoked marijuana,” said Neil Hirsch, a spokesman for Marinol manufacturer Solvay Pharmaceuticals.

Once again, it’s about “smoked marijuana”.  Prohibitionists cannot conceive of a vaporizer of a pot brownie.  The lack of quick relief (not a high) and lacking the other cannabinoids (not uncharacterized substances) are exactly the problems with Marinol.

“[One] problem with Marinol is that it’s orally administered,” Dr. Mitch Earleywine, an associate professor of Clinical Psychology at the State University of New York at Albany, said in an email. “Therefore, it takes longer to work than cannabis inhaled from a vaporizer. (Usually 90 minutes at best rather than 15 seconds – a meaningful amount of time to the nauseated.)”

“It’s harder to control dosage, too, so folks end up discombobulated or without symptom relief,” he added. “In addition, folks who are vomiting can’t hold down the pills.” Earleywine also said that a dose Marinol costs three to five times as much as a comparable dose of medical marijuana.

The supporters of Marinol will cling to the “smoked marijuana” point in order to have some measure of harm, like the negative health effects of smoking anything and the presence of carcinogens in any smoke, while blissfully ignoring all the research showing cannabis to have an anti-tumoral effect and actually reducing the risk of head and neck cancers.

But what it really boils down to is the “high”.  They just can’t stand the idea that people feel a certain euphoria from using cannabis.

Dr. Herbert Kleber, a professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University and the former deputy drug czar under President George H.W. Bush… said he has prescribed Marinol to a patient and found it to be effective, [and] points to what he characterizes as a significant advantage of the pill over traditional marijuana: “People don’t abuse it.”

“Marijuana addiction is becoming common and as a result I’m seeing an increasing number of people who have trouble stopping marijuana,” he said. “Contrary to popular beliefs that there is no marijuana withdrawal, there is marijuana withdrawal. It’s very clear cut.”

Yes, there is a clear-cut definition of marijuana withdrawal.  It happens to about 9% of the people who try marijuana, compared to 32% of tobacco users and 15% of alcohol users.  Symptoms of the withdrawal, according to the Institute of Medicine, may include restlessness, irritability, mild agitation and sleep disruption, and this has been observed only under unique patient settings. These remain limited to adolescents in treatment facilities for substance abuse problems, and in a research setting where subjects were given marijuana or THC daily.

But let’s think about this idea of dependence and withdrawal.  Anybody here ever try to quit smoking cigarettes?  How would you compare a tobacco “nicky fit” to a cannabis “dry spell”?  Anybody here ever help an alcoholic quit drinking?  How would you compare an alcoholic “dry drunk” to a cannabis “dry spell”?  Anybody here ever known or been a cocaine or heroin or meth addict?  How would you compare quitting those drugs “cold turkey” to a cannabis “dry spell”?  Heck, even quitting a long-term coffee habit is tougher than putting down the joint!

Part of the problem here is the concept of marijuana as a medicine rather than as a supplement.  Medicines are either a short-term fix that you quit once the particular affliction is cured or a long-term fix that you use for the rest of your life to cope with an incurable affliction.  So medical marijuana causes cognitive dissonance in the minds of the prohibitionist; they might accept the notion of smoking a joint to deal with a migraine or chemo, but when that person is feeling well and smoking a joint anyway, that is as odd to them as someone chugging Pepto-Bismol just for the taste of it.

I prefer Lanny Swerdlow’s notion that cannabis is a supplement you take to mitigate the effects of aging, a supplement like multi-vitamins, fiber powders, or calcium chewables, something you take to maintain your body’s health, not something you take to cure your body’s sickness.  Our body has an endocannabinoid system and this flower has evolved to supplement it, thereby attracting creatures that will reproduce it, much like other flowers evolved to provide honeybees with food so they’d pollinate the flowers.  I’ve always felt cannabis was nature’s gift to us to make up for the curse of sentience, knowing our death is inevitable and having the tools to extend our life far beyond the years our bodies were designed for.

Do some people get restless, irritable, mildly agitated and sleep disruption when they stop using cannabis?  Well, if cannabis was helping them relax and sleep, then sure!  You might as well call excessive thirst a symptom of water withdrawal!  The point is that you can only consider cannabis withdrawal a problem if you believe regular cannabis use is somehow problematic.  Since most of the problems associated with regular cannabis use are caused by prohibition, not cannabis itself, in a legalized world regular cannabis use would be seen as something akin to regular coffee use – some people like it, a few use it a lot, can’t get through their day without it, and have trouble quitting it if they are having problems with it, but nobody considers a coffee jones serious enough to require rehab.

Thank you for writing to express your opposition to the continued criminalization of marijuana. I appreciate having the benefit of your comments.

More than 11 million Americans buy illicit drugs and use them more than once a month, spending by most conservative estimates over $50 billion – and perhaps as much as $150 billion or more – annually in a diverse and fragmented criminal market. Supporters of decriminalizing marijuana believe it is not addictive, but nearly all studies show that most abusers of Schedule 1 drugs began by using marijuana. The National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health found that marijuana is indeed addictive with chronic use, and can have detrimental affects on the brain, the heart and lungs. It is absolutely essential that more studies be performed before approving a federal policy that discounts the harmful effects of marijuana.

I guess 17,000 studies just aren’t enough.  By the way, most abusers of Schedule 1 drugs began with alcohol, marijuana has less dependence risk than alcohol, and does not cause head, neck, or lung cancers, cognitive declines, memory loss, emphysema, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.  It may, with long-term chronic use, cause increased cough, sputum, or in rare cases, bronchitis.  Not anything like a legal tobacco cigarette would, however.

Legalizing marijuana would also set a dangerous precedent of undermining warnings to our children about the harmful effects of drug addiction. Today’s youth already view all drug use as less harmful and more socially acceptable and, as a result, usage is up. Sociologists agree that this increasing drug use exacerbates our worst social problems — crime, spiraling health costs, welfare dependency, domestic violence, teenage pregnancy and homelessness.

Actually, teen usage of marijuana is down since states began legalizing it for medical purposes.  What’s up lately is abuse of the legal prescription drugs that are advertised day and night on TV.

Measured in dollar value, at least four-fifths of all the illicit drugs consumed in the U.S. are of foreign origin, including 60-75 percent of marijuana. The foreign drug cartels that smuggle these drugs into the United States use murder and violent intimidation every bit as heinous as international terrorists. Enforcement experts in both the United States and Mexico argue forcefully that legalizing marijuana would increase competition and violence among these cartels, not reduce it.

Uh, wouldn’t legalization mean we can grow our own openly and domestically?  How many Mexican cartels are battling it out over tobacco fields, hops farms, or wine vineyards right now?

The federal anti-drug initiative has two major elements: (1) reduction of demand and (2) reduction of supply. Our foreign allies in this war on drugs deserve all of the efforts we can make to reduce the demand here in the United States.

Again, thank you for expressing your views on this issue. Please feel free to contact me with further comments or questions.

Sincerely,

Jerry Lewis
Member of Congress

Joyce, 52 and a writer in Manhattan, started smoking pot when she was 15, and for years it was a pleasant escape, a calming protective cloud. Then it became an obsession, something she needed to get through the day. She found herself hiding her addiction from her family, friends and co-workers.

“I would come home from work, close my door, have my bong, my food, my music and my dog, and I wouldn’t see another person until I went to work the next day,” said Joyce, who like most others in this article asked that her full name not be published, because she does not want people to know about her past drug use.

“What kind of life is that? I did that for 20 years.”

She tried to stop, but was anxious, irritable, sleepless and lost. At one point, to soothe her cravings, she took morphine that she found at her dying father’s bedside. She almost overdosed.

Two years ago, she checked into the Caron Foundation, a treatment center in Wernersville, Pa. Even there, she said, some other addicts — cocaine and heroin users or alcoholics — downplayed her dependence on marijuana.

“The reality is, I was as sick as them,” Joyce said. She now attends Alcoholics Anonymous, which is also open to drug addicts, and recently married.

Smoking pot, she said, “was a slow form of suicide.”

Uh, sure, in the sense that if you smoke pot for sixty to eighty years, you’ll die.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: a few people do have an identifiable dependence on marijuana, but calling it an “addiction” demeans the truly physically addicted.  Those alcoholics, cocaine and heroin users can die when they quit using their drug.  You got “anxious, irritable, sleepless and lost”.  You are experiencing the same kind of life and same kind of withdrawal as a problem gambler, the “shop-a-holic”, the sexually compulsive, and World of Warcraft players.

The article goes on to sound the alarm about the new “Super Pot 2.0: Not Your Father’s Woodstock Weed!” that allegedly makes people more “addicted”, as if somehow alcoholics who drink cocktails all night are somehow more addicted than the case-of-beer drinker because liquor is a higher proof alcohol.

“It’s like drinking beer versus drinking whiskey,” said Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a government agency and a strong opponent of legalizing marijuana. “If you only have access to whiskey, your risk is going to be higher for addiction. Now that people have access to very high potency marijuana, the game is different.”

No, it’s not.  My dad was a beer-drinking alcoholic; he had plenty of access to whiskey, but preferred beer, and became addicted anyway.  People who become dependent on pot smoke it to get high.  If it is low-potency, they smoke the whole joint, if it is high-potency, they take a puff or two.  The potency is irrelevant to the nature of the dependence.

I’m happy to see people who truly have an issue with marijuana finding support to help them recover.  It’s not for everyone.  Some people can drink a glass of wine every day, but for some that would be a problem.  If you really need help quitting pot, I wish you all the luck in the world… because then there is more for the rest of us.

(PubMed) This report examines whether participants in a study of treatments for marijuana dependence may have increased their use of alcohol when they reduced or ceased marijuana use. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four psychosocial treatments and followed at 3-month intervals for 1 year. Findings are from 207 cases with data at posttreatment and at least one other follow-up. 73% of cases reported an increase of at least 10% in drinking days over their level at intake, and 65% reported an increase of at least 10% in drinks per drinking day. Drinking increases were not related to treatment condition nor to change in marijuana use, but were related to baseline drinking: those with less baseline drinking tended to increase their drinking during treatment and those with more baseline drinking reported less drinking during treatment. Thereafter, drinking levels remained fairly stable throughout the follow-up year. The results are most likely reflective of a regression to the mean effect, and indicate that use of alcohol and marijuana are independent of one another.

Sounds like a question for Paul Armentano, author of the new book “Marijuana is Safer, So Why Are We Driving People to Drink“.  But if I’m reading this right, it sounds like pot smokers who don’t drink will drink more when they are in marijuana “rehab” and pot smokers who do drink will drink less.