Teen Marijuana Use Linked to Later Illness - washingtonpost.com
Teenagers who smoke marijuana put themselves at risk for future mental illness and higher rates of depression, according to a report to be released today by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Although fewer teens overall are smoking marijuana, the report said, there is growing concern that those who do, particularly those who view the drug as a way to cope with depression, do not understand its consequences. It also is not clear whether their parents, who might have indulged when they were younger, understand the risks, experts say.
The report, whose release coincides with the start of Mental Health Awareness Month, said studies show links between marijuana use and risk of mental illness later in life, and that use could increase the risk by as much as 40 percent.
Teenage girls who smoke marijuana are particularly at risk, the report said. It found that teen girls who smoke marijuana daily are more likely to develop depression than those who do not.
The report also found that teenagers who smoke marijuana at least once a month are three times more likely to have suicidal thoughts than non-users. It said that even though the percentage of teens who are depressed is equal to the percentage of adults who say they are depressed, teenagers are more likely to seek solace in marijuana or other illicit drugs.
“Significant numbers of teenagers are self-medicating,” said John P. Walters, director of the White House office. “They’re turning to marijuana to reduce [symptoms of depression], and [the depression] is getting worse.”
Walters said advances in technology allow researchers to better understand the effect drugs such as marijuana have on brain function. The research being done today “is breaking new ground in showing the role marijuana use is playing in depression,” he said.
[T]he report’s conclusions mirror many of the findings of a 2005 survey of Fairfax County youth. According to that study, Hispanic, Asian and African American teens reported higher percentages of depression than their white counterparts.
Contributing to the risk is the higher potency of marijuana being distributed today compared with what was available in the 1970s, when federal officials began analyzing the drug. A study done last year by researchers at the University of Mississippi found that, since the 1980s, the potency has doubled.
Walters said that despite a drop in usage among teenagers, those who are using are becoming more dependent on it. About 60 percent of first-time users are under the age of 18.
“We forget because we think of marijuana as something that’s the least dangerous of illicit drugs, but far more teens are in treatment for dependency on marijuana than alcohol,” Walters said.
If you smoke the reefers, it’ll make you insane! Who would have thought we’d get a whole new round of marijuana scaremongering just in time for Mental Health Awareness Month?
I’ll let Dr. Earleywine tear into this new report next Wednesday, but initially, I would have to ask these few questions about the study:
This “report” ignores so many of the factors that lead to teen depression. Suppose a kid is depressed and he smokes some pot. Then he’s subject to the stigma of being a “pothead”. Maybe he gets busted and loses college money, or a job, or gets grounded, or gets sent to jail or rehab - doesn’t that all sound pretty depressing to you? In other words, did anyone think to control for the effects of the prohibition of pot on someone’s depression?
As for the “40% more likely to develop mental illness” point - could it be that people at higher risk for mental illness tend to use marijuana? And could you show me, please, where rates of mental illness have risen and fallen along with the rates of marijuana use? Clearly there should’ve been some massive spike in mental illness after the Summer of Love, right? No, the rates of mental illness do not seem to fluctuate with the rates of marijuana use.
Minority kids are more depressed than white kids? While I believe it, what does that have to do with marijuana?
At least they said that marijuana is only twice as potent, and not thirty times more potent like they say in the UK. But again, they misunderstand the effect of potency on the experience. More potent marijuana doesn’t cause a more harmful high, it just gets you to the same high by smoking less of it.
Finally, more kids are in treatment for marijuana than ever before because when we catch them with marijuana, we force them into treatment. When you factor out the people forced by the criminal justice system to attend rehab for marijuana, the numbers of self-referred treatment-seeking marijuana abusers is quite small.
Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, announced the reversal yesterday of the Government’s earlier decision to downgrade the drug. But under18s caught with it will not be treated any more harshly, to avoid criminalising them.
Punishment for the over18s will increase from the existing “confiscate and warning” for a first offence to a possible penalty notice for disorder on a second offence followed by arrest and prosecution for a third offence.
Although the new jail term for possession rises from two to five years, it is unlikely that anyone will be imprisoned for simple possession of cannabis for personal use.
Reclassification will not take effect until early next year because Parliament has to approve the decision.
A report from the advisory council concluded that the health dangers from cannabis did not justify its inclusion in the higher category and that it should remain a Class C drug. Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, chairman of the council, said: “Changing the classification of cannabis is neither warranted nor will it achieve the desired effect.”
Ms Smith said that the Government was overruling the council because she was unwilling to “risk the future health of young people”. She told MPs: “Where there is a clear and serious problem, but doubt about the harm that will be caused, we must err on the side of caution and protect the public. I make no apology for that – I am not prepared to wait and see.”
The Home Secretary said she was concerned about the mental health effects of smoking super-strength skunk cannabis, which now accounts for 81 per cent of cannabis seized on the streets. There were also suggestions that young people were “binge smoking” to get the maximum high.
The reefer madness of Gordon Brown continues. The public health and law enforcement experts on the prime minister’s advisory body voted 20-3 that cannabis should remain in the lowest classification of drugs - Class C - and that Britons should not be arrested for its possession.
But politicians love to look “tough on crime” and by treating cannabis use as a crime, they can score easy points in the political arena, despite the overwhelming evidence that cannabis use is not a serious social problem and what few problems it does present are best treated in a public health model, not a criminal justice one.
Jacqui Smith says we can’t afford to “wait and see”, yet since cannabis has been downgraded from Class B to Class C, we’ve found that cannabis use has gone down in the UK. Furthermore, cannabis has been in widespread use since the 1960s - how much longer does Ms Smith need to wait and see?
This is driven in the UK by the tabloid headlines of the dreaded “skunk” cannabis, otherwise known by realists as “quality marijuana”. They trumpet false stats like “skunk is 30 times more potent than regular cannabis”. Since “skunk” tests out at about 12%-14% THC, then they must consider hemp rope to be “regular cannabis”. Actually, “regular cannabis” tests out to 7%-10% THC, so maybe it is at most twice as potent.
However, as we all know, more potent cannabis does not equal more public danger. Cannabis is non-toxic, so smoking more of the more potent varieties isn’t going to cause any more physical harm. Cannabis is self-titrating, which means users smoke to get high, and if the cannabis is more potent, they just smoke less of it to get high. Considering that inhaling the smoke of burning vegetable matter of any kind isn’t the nicest thing for your lungs, smoking less of it is probably a good thing.
We here at NORML call on all our friends in the United Kingdom to call your member of Parliament and tell them to vote no on the upgrade of cannabis from Class C to Class B.
New centre will fight marijuana - National - smh.com.au
Cannabis use and addiction have become such a problem, particularly among the young, that the Federal Government is funding a $12 million research centre at the University of NSW to try to turn the trend around.
Cannabis is the most popular illicit drug in Australia, with 33.5 per cent of adults having used it, [The centre’s director] Professor [Jan] Copeland said.
Australian Bureau of Statistics figures from last year showed that 750,000 people used cannabis weekly and 300,000 used it every day.
The number of those seeking treatment had tripled since 1992, but many young people still did not understand the significant potential for harm to their health nor that there were treatment services available, Professor Copeland said.
She said about one in 10 people who tried cannabis would develop a dependence.
Those under 16 who had used it at all were three times more likely to either drop out of school or finish without attaining their Higher School Certificate, she said. Professor Copeland said those who began smoking cannabis in the 1970s were starting to develop respiratory, head and neck cancers.
A single cannabis joint has the same effect on the lungs as smoking up to five cigarettes in one sitting, according to research published in the respiratory medicine journal Thorax last year.
Nothing like starting the week out with a trifecta of drug war lies.
Yes, admissions for drug treatment, both in Australia and the US and elsewhere, have increased since 1992. This is because courts are increasingly sentencing people to drug rehab when they’re caught with marijuana. Imagine if they sent to rehab people who are ever found to be buzzed on alcohol - would there be a mass media frenzy about the incredible increase in alcoholism? Of course not, because not all use is abuse. If you factor out those forced into marijuana rehab, you find the number of pot smokers choosing to enter rehab is quite small.
The “one joint = 5 / 10 / 20 cigarettes” myth has been debunked as well. Marijuana does not cause emphysema and marijuana smokers show much better respiratory function than tobacco smokers.
Brown says message must be sent on cannabis | UK | Reuters
LONDON (Reuters) - Gordon Brown said on Tuesday the government needs to send a message that cannabis is “unacceptable,” increasing speculation he will decide to tighten drug laws.
Brown has received a report from The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) on cannabis and will decide soon whether to upgrade it to Class B from a Class C, although a decision is not expected this week.
Newspapers have predicted that Brown will reclassify the drug even though the council has reportedly advised the government to keep cannabis in Class C.
“I don’t think that the previous studies took into account that so much of the cannabis on the streets is now of a lethal quality and we really have got to send out a message to young people — this is not acceptable,” Brown said.
Cannabis was downgraded to Class C — which includes substances such as anabolic steroids — in 2004. That means possession of the drug is treated largely as a non-arrestable offence.
But Brown launched a review by the advisory council, which comprises doctors, police, judges and counsellors, soon after he became prime minister.
And now he’s just about ready to completely ignore his advisory council, which is said to favor keeping cannabis decriminalized by a vote of 20-3.
But surely, when someone is quoted as calling cannabis “lethal”, you can’t expect them to accept pesky things like facts, logic, and science. Brown wants to change the cannabis laws in the UK for purely political reasons.
Despite efforts by the university to control access to campus, thousands of people, many of them students from UCSC and other California colleges, gathered at Porter Meadow to commemorate the so-called 4/20 cannabis culture holiday.
UCSCs once student-only gathering to smoke marijuana is now known nationally. It has grown to 5,000 people strong over the years, its popularity attributed to articles published in high-profile magazines like Rolling Stone and High Times Magazine — along with newer forms of social media, like YouTube.
Though smoking pot is illegal, no one was arrested at the weed-smoking exhibition that unfolded Sunday.
And that’s because Santa Cruz is one of the cities that has voted to make enforcement of marijuana laws the lowest priority for police.
As I scan the news reports of 4/20, I’m finding very few arrests and no reports of violence or disruptive, anti-social behavior. Most police understand that marijuana smokers are not a threat to ordered society. Ask any cop whether he or she would like to try to control 5,000 marijuana smokers or 5,000 beer drinkers in public.
Like other articles, this one tries to scare the reader by bringing up the two shibboleths still trotted out by drug warriors, “Driving While Stoned” and “What About The Children?” Concerned citizens called to wonder why police weren’t arresting attendees for DUI as they left the gathering, and some teenagers were able to get into the gathering.
For the former, could it be that most police recognize that a couple puffs on a joint isn’t the biggest traffic danger in the world? Or perhaps the people who drove away didn’t show any signs of driving impairment? Until taxicabs and buses are the only vehicles I see entering or leaving bar parking lots, I think our police have far more drunk drivers to worry about than stoned drivers cruising a little too slow, missing their freeway exit, or idling at the In’N'Out drive-thru window.
As for the latter, whether it is alcohol or marijuana, teenagers will get a hold of it. Marijuana is far less harmful. But if this were a outdoor microbrew festival, the legality of beer lets security and police set up restricted areas with checks for ID and sometimes ID wristbands. You don’t see any spontaneous open-air beer festivals popping up nationwide - since it is legal we can do a better job of keeping the minors out.
Pennsylvania officials are poised to classify indoor grown marijuana as hazardous.
Indoor marijuana is normally grown in a solution of nutrients and other chemicals. The chemicals and mold can be dangerous to breathe, said state police Sgt. Tracy Futcher, who directs the state police’s Claudestine Lab Response Team for the Alle-Kiski Valley and other western counties.
In the recent past, police have been sickened by hydroponically-grown marijuana which was indoors in two parts of the Alle-Kiski Valley. The marijuana is grown in liquid in a closed room. Growers also control humidity and light. The process produces the unintended growth of mold, said National Marijuana Initiative director Tommy Lanier.
“The danger is that mold spores can give off toxins,” Lanier said. The toxins can cause illness. He said there are 300 to 500 percent more mold spores in growth rooms than outside because there isn’t ventilation, Lanier said.
“This is strong stuff. The potency is way up there. The THC content is way up,” he said. “It’s 10 times more potent,” Futcher agreed.
A Web site for the White House Office on Drug Policy said marijuana smokers have a greater risk of lung infections and a “greater tendency toward obstructed air-ways” as well as causing memory loss.
The office also asserts that marijuana smoke “contains 50 percent to 70 percent more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than does tobacco smoke” and consequently “has the potential to promote cancer of the lungs and other parts of the respiratory tract.”
Futcher said he will attend a training program this year and will write a standard operating procedure for state police about marijuana safety.
Cannon said indoor grows remain a challenge to deal with. “Alle-Kiski Valley courts don’t always take marijuana charges as seriously as heroin or crack cocaine unless there is a lot of it. Yet we have to remember that this is the drug of choice of the younger kids,” he said.
Cannon and other detectives said there is enough marijuana in the area that they could be totally occupied by it. But they have to spend more time investigating cocaine and heroin sales because those drugs are deadly.
Now this is the first time I’ve seen this tactic from the drug warriors - trying to cast indoor grows as something as dangerous and toxic as a meth lab!
First of all, if you’ve got a grower with any decent knowledge of how to build an indoor grow, the room will be built with adequate ventilation and air filtration. No grower wants mold, and most do everything they can to prevent it.
Second, the increased potency of pot (not 10 times stronger… maybe twice as strong) owes directly to the Iron Law of Prohibition, which says that if you prohibit a drug, you can guarantee it will become more potent. It happened during Prohibition, when sales of beer plummeted in favor of harder whiskeys, because bootleggers had limited supplies and storage. It’s happened with cocaine in the form of crack and with heroin which is cheaper and purer than ever.
However, more potent pot isn’t bad like more potent cocaine, heroin, or alcohol, because pot can’t kill you. Pot smokers smoke to get high, and the effects of smoked marijuana kick in almost instantaneously. So if you had a joint of poor marijuana, you might smoke it all before you felt high, but if you had a joint of potent marijuana, you might smoke a puff and feel quite high enough.
Third, it’s a bald-faced lie to say that marijuana may promote lung cancers when studies by Dr. Donald Tashkin at UCLA Medical School showed, in fact, that marijuana smokers showed no increased risk of lung cancer and that THC may actually have tumor-suppressing properties. Studies also show no increased risk of head and neck cancers.
Finally, I had something to write on that part about memory loss, but it escapes me at the moment… Oh, yeah, studies show that short-term memory loss is shown in marijuana smokers, but only while they are high. Once the marijuana wears off, there are no appreciable differences in the memory skills of tokers and non-tokers.
Seems to me that the police should be concentrating more of their time on heroin and cocaine. Those drugs are deadly, and marijuana is not.
Los Angeles Loyolan - Marijuana revisited
LMU’s Division of Student Affairs’ recently released newsletter, “Cannabis Conundrum,” showcases an increased level of drug use on campus, raising issues of social and cultural dimensions behind the use of marijuana.
The newsletter cites marijuana as one of the most used drugs on campus, analyzing its increasing consumption on campus and the reasons why a student would begin using marijuana.
The “Cannabis Conundrum” claims the short-term side effects of marijuana include “impairments in learning, memory, comprehension, concentration, intense anxiety, paranoia and immediate increased risk of heart attack.” The newsletter further states that in the long term, marijuana usage may also cause “psychosis, schizophrenia, and other mental, physical and social problems.”
Once again, we have overzealous college administrators leaping on the reefer madness bandwagon, spouting such nonsense about marijuana leading to psychosis, schizophrenia, amotivational syndromes, and heart attacks. (For a minute, I thought Loyola Marymount must be in the UK!)
However, it is refreshing to read that many of the students at Loyola are better informed about the facts regarding marijuana use and enforcement than are the administrators trying to protect them from the “devil weed”.
One student remarked, “To say marijuana causes schizophrenia is ridiculous. It’s a latent psychological disorder and smoking more weed does not make you more likely to experience it.”
Another student observed, “It makes no sense to me that a girl coming home from a party who throws up into a bush has nothing to worry about, while a kid sitting in his dorm with a bong and a towel under the door gets hunted down like a criminal.”
Regarding so-called amotivation, another student said, “I believe in the power of self-determination. I feel like some people have the ability to make [marijuana] part of their lives and others don’t.”
The pamphlet tries to scare students by showing an graph of the increase in marijuana busts on campus alongside a decrease in overall GPA during the same four year stretch. Even one of the faculty weighed in on that argument, saying, “I don’t feel like [the graph] is reflective of an increasing use of pot on campus; rather, I feel like it’s reflective of enforcement being increased.”
The only conundrum about cannabis on campus is why we continue to steer our young people toward socializing and relaxing with alcohol and not cannabis, which is proven to be far safer.
Iowa Senator Tom Harkin didn’t go nearly far enough when he suggested that smoking pot makes you sell your children. Thankfully we have anti-drug organization Above The Influence, which has created a series of documentaries tracking the behaviors of savage pot smokers on “Cannabis Isle.” Watch as this old white man goes out of his way to stare at two teens smoking pot in a basement by themselves, then spends hundreds of millions of dollars on new technologies to crack down on them. The War on Drugs is in full swing on Cannabis Isle.
Here are some of the funniest comments from their readers:
The latest prejudicial stereotyping of cannabis consumers comes as part of the ONCDP’s “Above the Influence” ad campaign. It is a website and interactive Flash video called “Stoners in the Mist”, and it copies the look and feel of a National Geographic-style safari documentary, complete with a white-mustachioed “explorer” in a pith helmet introducing us to the hunt for his elusive prey:
It is a beautiful day. And while most people are out and about enjoying friends, activities, life in general…the creature that we seek is sedentary, uninspired, and remarkably unmotivated. My associate and I are in search of the lair of a magnificent specimen: the mature stoner.
Oh, goody! I wonder which mature, sedentary, uninspired, unmotivated stoner he’s seeking out? Ricky Williams, that former NFL running back? That guy is so lazy, what with his two-a-day workouts, yoga, and 3% body fat. Willie Nelson? Yup, there’s a mature stoner who never amounted to anything. Montel Williams? Talk about amotivational syndrome, hosting a TV show and running an MS foundation! Too bad Carl Sagan is dead, because there you had one completely uninspired stoner.
In this interactive feature, we will explore and attempt to explain the social interactions and natural responses of this elusive and baffling creature. I am your host, Barnard Puck and this… is Stoners in the Mist.
Apparently, “Dr.” Puck and his assistant have no problem being peeping Toms. Well, this should be fun. More screenshots and offensive stereotypes follow after the jump…
NORML’s Paul Armentano wrote a nice opinion piece in the Vallejo (CA) Times-Herald. They had written about the new record 1 in 99.1 Americans in prison figure. The first reply he got back in the comments section claims to be from a narcotics officer. It provides a great illustration of someone in the deepest throes of drug war addiction:
Let me give you a an Narcotics supervisors ideas. First, No money, aid, nothing from the U.S. to countries who allow drug manufacturing. No U.S. travel for it’s citizens to these countries (no tourists). Any country who wants our money and help MUST allow our military (narcotics officers) into it’s country to stop the manufacting of drugs if they cannot do it. This also means stopping the manufacture of drugs in Afganastand unstead of allowing it because it’s the countrys main product.
Next, in the U.S. stop wasting money on telling the kidds No to Drugs as you can see IT JUST DOES NOT WORK. Next, for any tho manufactures or sells drugs first offense 10years. Second offense Life……….3rd offense Life w/o parole. Now this is for a larger quanity. Lastly, for juveniles selling we set up a School/prison where they go for high school and have no one to sell drugs to.
Next, No drugs in prison and any Guard, Attorney, ets who is caught bringing it in gets 25 years…….No time off.
Think about this! Drugs are brought into this country with no problem yet we think small weapons of mass destruction cannot come in easily. How about spending the time, money and energy to sniff out drugs that we have on stopping the terrorists.
I could go on put there are a lot of businesses in America that do not want drugs to go away because it is American big business like oil.
Bob (Logan, IL)
First of all, no aid or tourism to any country that manufactures drugs? Since marijuana grows wild everywhere, does that mean we don’t get to travel anywhere? And then you want to use our military to invade countries that can’t wipe out a weed? Do we even have that much military?
Then you want from ten years to life with no parole for drug offenses. If you think 1 in 99.1 Americans in prison was something, if this gets enacted, it would be about one in ten. Harsher penalties do not equal less drug use. It’s not like someone about to smoke a joint thinks, well, it’s OK, I’ll only go to prison for a year. What, they raised it to ten years? Well, then, no more weed for me. One year would be OK, but ten years is ridiculous!
Finally, no drugs in prison? Excuse me while I get up off the floor from laughing. That’s already the rule and lawyers, guards, etc. who get caught bringing them in already face hard time. And the idea about the prison/school for druggie juveniles - hey, what a splendid idea! Prisons have worked so well to keep adults off of drugs that we should extend that model to our children in school.
Gordon Brown is facing a dilemma over whether to overrule his own panel of experts and increase the penalties for being caught in possession of cannabis.
The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs is understood to have decided at a private meeting that it will not recommend tightening the law on the drug.
The decision presents a potential embarrassment for the Prime Minister, who earlier this week said that he regarded cannabis use as not just illegal but also unacceptable.
It is understood that 20 out of the panel’s 23 experts decided on Wednesday that there was not sufficient new scientific evidence to justify a change.
If Mr Brown decides to press ahead with reclassification, he will risk becoming only the second Prime Minister to over-rule the council, which is a statutory non-departmental public body dating from 1971.
The Government reclassified cannabis as a Class C substance - dropping the penalty for possession from five to two years in jail - in 2004.
Since then it has reviewed the decision twice, in 2005 and 2008.
Conservative leader David Cameron said: “There are all sorts of cannabis on the streets today. Skunk and super skunk are incredibly powerful and can lead to people having all sorts of mental health problems.”
The mental health charity Rethink, which gave evidence to the committee, said Mr Brown should heed the committee’s advice.
Paul Corry, a spokesman, said: “Gordon Brown should put aside his personal views on cannabis and accept the fact that it does not make sense to reclassify.
“Use of the drug has gone down since it was downgraded in 2004 and research by Rethink shows that only 3 per cent of users would consider stopping on the grounds of illegality.”
The committee is understood to have concluded there was no need re-classify after new research found no evidence that rising cannabis use in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s had led to increases in schizophrenia.
This is despite many reports pointing to a links between super-strength skunk cannabis, which accounts for 80 per cent of street cannabis, and mental illnesses such as schizoprenia and psychosis.
The prime minister and the conservatives are completely in the grips of reefer madness. The media in the UK flood the airwaves and newsstands with scare stories of the dreaded “super skunk” causing violent psychosis and schizophrenia, stories that would make American 20th century prohibitionists Harry J. Anslinger and William Randolph Hearst proud.
The reason 20 of 23 of the experts on Brown’s committee on misuse of drugs recommend against upgrading cannabis to a higher class of dangerous drugs is because they pay attention to the science, not the lurid British tabloids that want to peddle reefer madness stories to sell copy and suck up to the conservative government.
Next Wednesday, I’ll discuss this story with Dr. Mitch Earleywine, who has all of the science on these reports of “super skunk” in the UK. Meanwhile, if there are any tokin’ Tories, sinsemilla subjects, or bong-hittin Britons who want to weigh in on cannabis culture across the pond and the crazy reefer madness in the media, please email me at stash ‘at’ norml.org.
The Arizona Republic newspaper ran a story about medical marijuana and the push to decriminalize its use in Arizona by sick and debilitated people. While overwhelming majorities support medical marijuana, there are still some people who buy in to the reefer madness. Witness this one letter to the editor:
Marijuana dangerous; don’t legalize it
Marijuana should not be legalized and it is not medicine. It is a dangerous, addictive substance, which can cause physical and mental-health problems, traffic accidents, and can lead to worse addictions, such as heroin.
If people want to cure cancer, they should look elsewhere and not try to legalize marijuana, even for such purposes. - Susan Bengston, Phoenix
Got it? Even if marijuana turns out to be the cure for cancer, it shouldn’t be legalized, because people might get addicted to heroin. Sorry, cancer patients, you’re just going to have to die, because we don’t want there to be any traffic accidents. Here, have a beer instead!
This is the mindset we are up against. Good luck, reformers!
More prohibitionists are weighing in on the New Hampshire House passing a measure to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana. Let’s see what sort of reefer madness will justify this latest editorial:
Concord Monitor - Mistake to weaken state’s marijuana laws
The quarter ounce of marijuana the House refers to is in no way a “small amount.” In fact, a quarter ounce of marijuana can equate to 14 joints - not the seven that has been reported.
Or two joints, if you’re Dr. Bob Bitchin, Ph.D, M.A., B.A., B.M.F.… Sorry, couldn’t resist. So, exactly how is a quarter ounce rolled into fourteen joints scarier than the same quarter ounce rolled into seven joints? Is that like getting a better deal on your large pizza by cutting it into sixteen slices instead of twelve?
The Monitor cites a study done by a Harvard psychology professor in the 1970s. However the marijuana of today is not the marijuana of the 1970s. It is significantly stronger, with some reports estimating today’s strength to be five times that of a comparable amount from that time period. We have seen some types of the drug with such a high potency that “just a couple of joints” can lead to serious impairment.
The old “this ain’t your father’s Woodstock pot, this is superpot!” argument. This is often used because so many parents have tried marijuana in the past and realize it isn’t the killer weed the prohibitionists claim it is. First of all, pot today is more or less as potent as you could get in the 1970s. Secondly, THC isn’t hazardous, so more of it doesn’t equal more danger, it equals less smoking. Marijuana smokers smoke to get high. If the marijuana is potent, they smoke a little of it and get high. If it is less potent, they smoke a lot of it and get high. Since the prohibitionists also like to argue (falsely) that marijuana smoking causes lung cancer, wouldn’t smoking less of it be a good thing?
This press release begins by explaining the trial and conviction of Dr. Mollie Fry and Dale Schafer in California. Dr. Fry has been helping medical marijuana patients in California by writing recommendations for the therapeutic use of the herb, and Mr. Schafer has been growing the plants and providing the buds to patients. Let’s take a look at how our federal law enforcers view the plight of these compassionate caregivers, (and note how they always use quotation marks around “medicinal”, because in the bizarro world of the DEA, a plant found to be medicinal by the American College of Physicians and the Institutes of Medicine and twelve US states isn’t medicinal):
News from DEA, Domestic Field Divisions, San Franciso News Releases, 03/20/08
These recommendations enabled the holder to avoid arrest under California’s “medicinal” marijuana law, Proposition 215. The proposition provides a legal defense to state (not federal) criminal charges when marijuana is possessed for treatment of a serious medical condition.
Evidence introduced at trial, however, showed that FRY sold these recommendation statements to people for diagnoses such as asthma, alcoholism, and sore elbow.
California’s law allows a doctor to recommend marijuana for any condition for which he or she believes marijuana will help. It may seem counter-intuitive, but vaporized marijuana is a bronchodialator that helps some asthmatics, it can definitely help as an analgesic for a chronically sore elbow, and yours truly will testify that without marijuana, I’d have been in some severe trouble with the alcoholism of my youth.
Against expectations, the New Hampshire House passed a bill that would decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana. This shocking development brought out the following editorial from the state’s largest newspaper, the Union-Leader. It’s almost funny that the editorial is some boilerplate reefer madness that we’ve read a thousand times before:
Start with the ad hominem attack that equates any rational change in drug policy to the crazed ravings of the intoxicated. “What were they smoking?” I don’t know, what are the editors of the Union-Leader drinking?
If you haven’t followed the War On (Certain British Subjects Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs going on “across the pond”, then you’re missing some Reefer Madness reminiscent of the days of Harry J. Anslinger and warnings of marijuana being more frightening than Frankenstein and the devil’s tool to make Negroes kill white men and rape white women.
The tactics are familiar. Anslinger took “cannabis” and “hemp”, which almost every early-20th Century American knew to be a common medication and a source of rope and canvas, and re-branded it “marijuana”. That way he and his buddy, William Randolph Hearst, could spread sensationalist lies about cannabis in Hearst’s newspapers, and the scary, Mexican-sounding word helped frighten people about weed in a way that scaremongering on “cannabis” and “hemp” would not.
But the British version of this, happening right now in the 21st Century, is to re-brand the popular herb as “skunk”, with the addition of the scaremongering “this ain’t your father’s pot” rhetoric (”’skunk’ is fifty times more potent than the ganja of the 1960s!”). And this time, it’s not the Negroes coming to hurt whitey, but rather the patently false claim that ’skunk’ triggers psychosis and schizophrenia.
Here is a typical article, from The Argus in the UK…
A mother driven insane by cannabis stabbed herself repeatedly through the chest with a carving knife after claiming she was spoken to by a dog.
Julie Cross told friends the animal was “trying to tell her something” before picking up the 5in blade and ramming it at least five times into her chest and abdomen.
An inquest was told the former receptionist, from Goring, used speed and cannabis on a daily basis and in the weeks running up to her death had slashed her wrists and smeared her blood across a crucifix and also hung a noose from her attic.
Cannabis and speed! Do ya think, perhaps, the speed had more to do with the psychosis? That’s a link that has substantial basis in research and plenty of anecdotal evidence that I’ll testify to as a former club musician who’s seen his share of tweekers.
Oral sex, marijuana use linked to throat cancer - Examiner.com
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND - The sexually transmitted virus that causes some cervical cancers can also cause cancer in the upper throat, researchers at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center report.
The human papilloma virus, more commonly known as HPV, is linked to throat cancers most often in younger, married college graduates, according to the study published in the March 12 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The connection grows stronger with larger numbers of oral sex partners and increasing marijuana use.
Other head and neck cancers are more often associated with smoking tobacco, alcohol use and poor oral hygiene, suggesting they may be a separate disease, said Dr. Maura L. Gillison, associate professor of oncology and epidemiology at Hopkins and lead researcher on the study.
More research will need to be done to clarify the relationship to marijuana use, she said.“It’s possible that other behaviors linked with marijuana use could be the real culprit, and our results will need to be confirmed,” she said. Chemicals in marijuana called cannabinoids could affect the immune system’s ability to fight a virus.
We’ll cover this study with Dr. Earleywine, but it seems to me that this is a warning to those people who have genital warts and perform a lot of oral sex while smoking a bong… and what exactly is the goal here, to get people to give up oral sex and marijuana? Good luck with that one…
Lithium may help kick marijuana habit - UPI.com
SYDNEY, AUSTALIA (UPI) — Australian researchers said lithium, commonly used for bipolar disorder, can help pot smokers kick the habit without withdrawal symptoms.
A research team from Corella Drug Treatment Services and the University of New South Wales prescribed 500 milligrams of lithium twice a day for seven days to 20 people who were longtime, habitual cannabis users, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Thursday. After three months, most of the users were smoking cannabis less often. Many had given up completely, the newspaper said.
Chief investigator Adam Winstock said withdrawal symptoms for heavy pot smokers often include disturbances in mood and sleep, and hostility that can cause them to relapse. The National Drug and Alcohol Research Center estimates that one in 10 people who try marijuana will become dependent on the drug.
That’s funny, every time I listen to Lithium, I want to smoke more marijuana. Now, as to the drug lithium, I’d bet after three months of that you’d be doing a whole host of things less often.
And who’s use of cannabis is causing so much problem that they would risk the known side effects of lithium, which include increased frequency of urination or loss of bladder control; increased thirst; nausea; trembling of hands; acne or skin rash; bloated feeling or pressure in the stomach; muscle twitching; diarrhea; drowsiness; loss of appetite; muscle weakness; vomiting; slurred speech; blurred vision; clumsiness or unsteadiness; confusion; convulsions (seizures); dizziness; fainting; fast or slow heartbeat; irregular pulse; troubled breathing; unusual tiredness or weakness; weight gain; blue color and pain in fingers and toes; coldness of arms and legs; dizziness; eye pain; headache; or noises in the ears.
The good news is that if you experienced the nausea, trembling, twitching, loss of appetite, or headache from the lithium, you could alleviate it with some medical marijuana.
From the influential Washington DC political blog, Wonkette:
Senator Tom Harkin: Marijuana Makes People Sell Their Children
It’s 2008, and that teenager drug marijuana is still raping our children. But why does that have to be illegal? According to The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), some person wrote to Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin “asking him to justify why medicinal cannabis is still illegal” after the American College of Physicians recommended it shouldn’t be. It merited a hilarious reply from Harkin, which noted many of pot’s notorious doom scenarios: “the small child whose parents are so addicted to illegal drugs that they sell everything including perhaps their own children to obtain a fix.” Harkin knows the routine: smoke up, eat gyro, play Legend of Zelda, sell children to pirates for more pot, repeat. The full, horrifying letter, after the jump.
Fire up the reefer madness machine - it’s 2008, but for Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, it might as well be 1938. Ron over at the NORML Blog tears this one apart:
A man who has admitted killing his stripper girlfriend was suffering from a “major mental illness” at the time of the deadly beating, a forensic psychiatrist has told the jury at a murder trial in Brampton.
Dr. Stephen Hucker said it was “highly likely” Ryan Bucknor was in a “psychotic state” when be brutally beat Audrey Cote to death, and then ran down the street stark naked, throwing money to people, and later telling police he was “God.”
Although Hucker believed Bucknor was “completely normal” when he interviewed him two years later, he was convinced the accused man was suffering from a mental illness when he killed his girlfriend on July 31, 2005.
Huckner, the first witness called by defence attorney Aston Hall, also believed Bucknor’s mental illness had been induced by chronic marijuana use.
Hucker also told the court he didn’t think Bucknor’s mental illness was “an act” because he wasn’t sophisticated enough to pretend to be delusional or schizophrenic.
Bucknor was a daily user of marijuana. Hucker said studies have determined that frequent users of cannabis have double the risk of developing mental illness or schizophrenia.
Apparently Dr. Hucker doesn’t keep up on his marijuana studies. According to Schizophrenia Research, in a study published last May:
London, United Kingdom: Marijuana use is not associated with heightened symptoms of schizophrenia, according to data to be published in the journal Schizophrenia Research.
Investigators at London’s Institute of Psychiatry assessed whether the prior use of cannabis in patients with schizophrenia was associated with appreciable changes in schizophrenic symptoms compared with patients who had no history of marijuana use.
Investigators reported no statistically significant “differences in syptomatology between schizophrenic patients who were or were not cannabis users” after controlling for patients’ age, sex, and ethnicity.
Researchers also failed to find “any evidence that cannabis users with schizophrenia were more likely to have a family member with the disorder.”
These findings “argue against a distinct schizophrenic-like psychosis caused by cannabis,” authors concluded.
Bucknor may indeed be mentally ill — seems pretty obvious he was — but his marijuana use was probably in response to his illness, not the cause of his illness. If you had voices in your head screaming at you that your girlfriend is a demon and you need to brutally kill her and run down the street naked, you might just try to quiet that voice with a little weed.
Oh, yeah, studies show that short-term memory loss is shown in marijuana smokers, but only while they are high. Once the marijuana wears off, 
