Narconon Drug Rehab: “Marijuana addiction on the rise!”
Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 at 3:15 pm | By: Radical Russ
Is America Blind To Marijuana? A report by the Office Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) gave its largest-ever compilation of data relating to marijuana. “Though overall use is down, marijuana addiction is on the rise,” comments Mary Rieser, Executive Director for Narconon Drug Rehab GA.
Translation: Lots of people use marijuana and defining them all as “addicts” brings us more customers.
“More and more people are getting help for marijuana addiction because the concentrations of THC in marijuana samples are at an all-time high.”
Translation: More and more people are sentenced by a judge to become one of our customers.
“Marijuana came to represent love and peace in the 60s and has never quite lost that image but this is far from the truth. Anyone who uses marijuana regularly is more likely to engage in aggressive and violent behavior, cause trouble at school and destroy property.”
Yes, as anyone who has ever attended the Boston Freedom Rally, the Great Midwest Marijuana Harvest Festival in Madison, Wisconsin, the Boulder, Colorado, Smoke-Out, or the Seattle Hempfest can tell you, it’s just an orgy of aggressive and violent behavior and property destruction from coast to coast with those dangerous marijuana hooligans! If you believe that, I have a bridge in Alaska to sell you. I think what she is referring to is this:
The great majority of males arrested for any violation in America have drugs in their system at the time of arrest, with marijuana being the most often detected. The rate testing positive for marijuana ranged from a third to more than a half of all male arrestees at the time of arrest. Further, marijuana is the drug most likely to be reported by arrestees when asked about lifetime, prior year, and recent (prior 30 days) drug use. (Source: An analysis of 10 major U.S. cities, Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring System (ADAM), 2003).
Translation: Lots of Americans smoke marijuana. A few Americans commit crimes. Therefore, when you catch a criminal, there’s a good chance he will test positive for weed, especially since that’s detectable for a couple of weeks to a month.
“Violence at a global level is connected with marijuana trafficking. In California, Mexican drug trafficking organizations, with high-powered assault weapons, control the marijuana fields, not peace-loving flower children with their beads. Criminal groups operating from Mexico promote their version of love and peace through torture, executions and other acts of violence.”
Translation: Violence at a global level is connected with marijuana prohibition. If peace-loving flower children in California were legally allowed to grow their own domestic marijuana, there would be no business for Mexican traffickers.
“Marijuana is not harmless, contrary to common misconception. The use of marijuana can lead to health, safety, learning and social problems and abuse of other harmful drugs. Marijuana is more potent than it used to be, increasing the problems.”
Marijuana’s been used by humanity for 5,000 years, was used in this country’s medicines for 200 years, has been used socially for the last 100 years, and been prevalent in our culture for the last 40 years. You’d think if marijuana were as harmful as you propagandize, this misconception would’ve been cleared up by now by a mounting toll of social catastrophe. And c’mon, Mary, the gateway theory? Really? Even the government doesn’t buy that one anymore.
“Marijuana is the blindspot of drug policy,” said John Walters, Director of National Drug Control Policy. “Baby Boomers have this perception that marijuana is about fun and freedom. It isn’t. It’s about dependency, disease, and dysfunction. As the data released today reveal, marijuana is a much bigger part of our Nation’s addiction problem than most people realize. While teen marijuana use is down sharply, adult use, with all the social, economic, and health consequences that go along with it, will not improve until we start being more honest with ourselves about the seriousness of this drug. Too many of us are in denial, and it is time for an intervention.”
Translation: Teen use is down because kids are finding it easier to Google “prescription drugs” and get pills from an online “pharmacy” or from their parents’ medicine cabinet than it is to find a marijuana dealer, those pills won’t stay in their system as long as THC to be caught on a school urine test, pills don’t smell or make your eyes bloodshot and are easy to get rid of in a hurry if caught, and they won’t face the same legal, social, and educational consequences when caught with pills as when they’re caught with a baggie of pot.
High potency of marijuana may be contributing to a substantial increase in the number of American teenagers in treatment for marijuana dependence. According to the 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), one in four 12-17-year-olds who report using marijuana in the past year display the characteristics of abuse or dependency. For younger users, the risk of marijuana abuse or dependency exceeds that for alcohol or tobacco.
So this “Pot 2.0 / Not Your Father’s Woodstock Weed” hyper-potent skunk marijuana is so dangerously addictive that 25% of the kids who try it get hooked, but…
Rates of marijuana use among young people have declined substantially since 2001. Since that time there has been a 25 percent drop in the number of teens using the drug. (Monitoring the Future, 2007)
…25% of the kids just stopped using it.
Emergency department episodes involving marijuana almost tripled from 1994 to 2002. Marijuana steadily increased over that decade, surpassing heroin – which remained relatively flat – in 1998. (SAMHSA Drug Abuse Warning Network)
You know what else tripled in the ’90s? The number of people we arrest for pot.
As for the ER, what they are referring to as “involving” is really “mentioning”. Like, if you were mugged and beaten and went to the hospital and they ran a test and found marijuana in your system, that’s an “emergency department episode involving marijuana”. If you’re a glaucoma sufferer and you fell at home and had to get stitches in the ER and they ask if you’ve ever used marijuana and you say, “yes, it helps my glaucoma”, that’s an “emergency department episode involving marijuana”.
We are talking about addiction here, and it’s an addiction to a drug war that provides places like Narconon Drug Rehab GA a steady stream of easy-to-manage clients whose “addiction” doesn’t stop them from being productive members of society with insurance and income and means to pay a Narconon Drug Rehab GA medical bill. Those meth and heroin addicts are often deadbeats and those coke addicts already spent all their money.
It’s an addiction that so distorts common-sense thinking you can write in one sentence how marijuana use steadily increased and then, with no hint of irony, in the same paragraph point out how more people in emergency rooms had pot in their systems or admitted to smoking it in the past.
It’s an addiction that cannot be sustained without marijuana users, so the addictionologists must scare people about “marijuana addicts” to justify forcing them into rehab through the criminal justice system, which admits that one-third of the people sentenced to marijuana rehab haven’t even used pot in the past thirty days (again, the super-potent pot that’s so addictive you can quit cold turkey for a month.)
