The not famous Dr. Drew, Drew Edwards, the executive director of the Ennoble Foundation, has an opinion piece up at Jacksonville.com. Unsurprisingly, the man who makes a living off of the court-enforced mandatory rehab of minor marijuana offenders believes marijuana smoking makes you a loser.
A study published in 2007 by the medical journal Addiction confirms what many of us have observed for years. People who regularly smoke marijuana grossly underachieve in life.
No link for the study of course. I looked on the Addiction Journal website through all their 2007 press releases and didn’t find the study. However, let’s assume the study is legit. What’s the conclusion, that people smoking marijuana in their early teens have lower employment and educational achievement? OK, doc, then why do you support a prohibition that allows 84% of high school seniors to say it is “easy” or “fairly easy” to get marijuana? I think if you were concerned about teens smoking pot, you’d make it as hard to get as cigarettes and liquor, wouldn’t you?
This breakthrough research studied the progress of approximately 1,900 teens for 10 years, and found that regular marijuana users were three times more likely to be unemployed or drop out of school than nonusers.
You wouldn’t suppose that marijuana tests keeping pot-smoking teens out of extra-curricular activities, suspensions and expulsions for marijuana use, and marijuana tests for entry-level jobs lead to underachievement, too, would you? Or that teens living in circumstances that would lead one to try to self-medicate with pot, like divorces, poverty, poor schools, urban violence, and lack of health care coverage might lead to underachievement whether they smoked pot or not?
According to the government’s own figures at the Substance Abuse Mental Health Data Archive, 54% of adults who didn’t smoke pot this year are employed full-time. By comparison, 58% of adults who smoked pot more than 100 times this year are employed full-time.
The evidence of marijuana’s negative effect on young people is so overwhelming that the scientist who conducted the research pronounced that marijuana is “the drug for life’s future losers.”
You know, like Michael Phelps, Carl Sagan, George Washington, Sir Richard Branson, Sir Paul McCartney, Barack Obama, Willie Nelson, Sarah Silverman, Bill Maher, and the rest of those “losers”.
Young people who have the intelligence and motivation to go to college or technical school and begin smoking marijuana almost always abandon these aspirations for something less rigorous.
Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, quite famously admits to his pot and LSD use and tells of other Silicon Valley pioneers who basically invented personal computing and the internet based on insights from the herb.
The research is clear regarding marijuana’s effect on the brain and behavior. Cannabis impairs memory, motivation and something called executive functioning, which involves the ability to organize tasks, control impulses and set priorities.
In other words, most marijuana users adjust their life’s goals and priorities downward to accommodate their impaired condition.
It’s hard to smoke weed three to four times per week and remain disciplined enough to get up early, think clearly enough and work hard enough to attain the grades and skill necessary to succeed in something difficult.
I smoke weed every day, usually multiple times per day. I produce 55 minutes of recorded podcast content every weekday, requiring the skills of reading, concentration, analysis, memory, writing, editing, HTML coding, PHP coding, web management, sound engineering, sound editing, technical engineering, graphic design, and video production. In addition to that, I am the outreach coordinator for a national non-profit, requiring the skills of organizing, data entry, political lobbying, legal analysis, SQL database management, document production, and interpersonal communications. In my spare time, I appear at rallies and festivals, requiring the skills of speech writing, public speaking, travel arrangement, organizing tasks, and public relations. I’ll admit that I dropped out of college (way before I ever tried pot; alcohol is what killed my college degree), so I am completely self-taught at all these skills, which I learned while I was smoking pot. I do all these things simultaneously, requiring setting priorities, multi-tasking, and perseverance. I am at my desk working by 7am every day and I rarely leave the desk (aside from meal breaks and dog walks) until 9pm at night.
Thank god I adjusted my goals and priorities downward! I surely wouldn’t have the discipline necessary to succeed at something difficult.
Marijuana users are frequently unemployed or underemployed in vocations that are less challenging.
You mean like making a living sitting on a couch from 9 to 5 telling court-ordered marijuana rehabbers they are losers?
Additionally, because the genetically engineered cannabis is so potent, its use is now associated with early-onset psychosis, and is now a risk factor for schizophrenia, depression and anxiety disorders.
You know what else is a risk factor for schizophrenia? Being left-handed.
This is irrefutable in the current medical literature. The cost to an individual and our collective economic productivity as a result of marijuana’s debilitating physical and mental effects are devastating.
The bottom line is that decriminalizing marijuana will result in more mental illness, more addiction and more uneducated and unemployable persons. We simply cannot afford this.
Actually, all this reefer madness is quite refutable. For example, the recent British meta-analysis of cannabis use and schizophrenia over the period 1996-2005, the time when the new alleged super pot showed up, showed no increase in schizophrenia even as frequency of use increased and potency increased.
The bottom line is that the states that have decriminalized marijuana in the US have shown no increases in mental illness, addiction, and uneducated and unemployable persons, and that decriminalization in the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal have failed to show any of these predictions coming true.
i think it’s safe to say that MSG causes more damages, to all age groups, and LEGALLY, than cannabis sativa. to locate perpetrators of brain damage, go to the grocery store.
Aside from everything this person said being either statistically wrong or a logical fallacy, it just goes to show you how far ingrained ignorance and greed can carry. This person chose a career that centers around perpetuating unjust policies, policies which symbolize why this country is so screwed up. He takes a crap on huge groups of people, generalizes problems to a horrible extent, and is so blatant in his shallow and pedantic statements that he goes on to directly say marijuana makes you a loser.
It’s quite evident that people actually still think these sorts of arguments are valid. If they’re pushing THIS hard to try and prove it to be true, they most likely use the same line of horribly ignorant and self-righteous reasoning in other facets of life.
People are finally realizing that their opinions don’t equate to logical fact, which is beautiful, and it’s what’s tipping the pro-marijuana scales. Hopefully morons like this “rehab counselor” and their propaganda are washed away sooner than later.
So he feels that we don’t reach our full potential?
What exactly is that?
Am I supposed to chase fame or notoriety? Win the Nobel prize? Be the one with the most money when I die? Write the next great American novel?
What exactly is my full potential and why is it necessary that I reach it in the first place?
Perhaps I am a simple man leading a simple life but I don’t have interest in any of that. My interest is my family and my friends and spending as much quality time with them as my life allows. I work hard to make sure my family is taken care of and my kids educations paid for.
I could have, potentially, stuck with music and, potentially, been a huge success. I chose to get a degree, a job, and a house full of happiness, instead. Which path would have ensured I not “underachieve”, I wonder? I suppose it depends on your point of view, doesn’t it?
I’m reminded of the end of the movie “Field of Dreams” when Doc, a talented baseball player, examines the choice of quitting baseball to pursue a woman and the life of a small town doctor. …Hmm?
For the most part, I love my life. I can look back and say I enjoyed my life and have few regrets. I can look forward and say I plan to enjoy my retirement and grandkids. Shouldn’t I be the best judge and decider of how I live my own life? What goals I choose to achieve? Who is the judge of a “well lived life”? Dr. Dru? The government? My Mom? The invisible man in the sky?
I think I’ll reserve the right to hold that judgment on myself.
Interestingly enough, my life resembles pretty much everyone else’s in my middle class tax bracket. I’m ordinary. I own a home in the suburbs and perform all the activities that go along with that. I have a wife and 2 kids. Marijuana users, or not, were all running the same rat race. I’m just running it with a little bit more of a grin.
Interesting. I guess I am one of those “future losers.” That is interesting considering that I just got promoted at my job, a $4/hour raise, and work an average work week of between 50-60 hours. Yes, I guess I had better give up marijuana before my life gets any worse and I become even more of a drag on society!
Just something I found on: http://www.sacbee.com/forums/?plckForumPage=ForumDiscussion&plckDiscussionId=Cat%3afd8ca5b2-9afb-4999-a123-2c182528533cForum%3a923a8042-7f32-4959-80f6-b2fdb14410f5Discussion%3a4391d740-c840-4410-9022-9f0b5a62d598&plckCurrentPage=23 Re: Tell the governor: Should we legalize pot?
posted at 8/3/2009 11:57 AM PDT on The Sacramento Bee: In Response to Re: Tell the governor: Should we legalize pot? :
With people like Dr. Drew and this guy it’s no wonder…
Before we make any hasty decisions, lets all go out and get a copy of “Reefer Madness” and study “marihuana”. Only then can we make an intelligent and unbiased vote. Maybe we can charge the state for the copy of “Reefer Madness”
Posted by mmmriann
This is my response:
Are you kidding me? You can’t be serious! “Reefer Madness”. Really? Are you a Gov. STOOGE? It’s well known that “Reefer Madness” was created as social propaganda to scare Americans. Like I said in “my” post. “What is really sad is the majority of the public believes ALL of this ‘spoon fed’ garbage the Gov. WANTS you to believe.” How sad when the people lose the ability to THINK for THEMSELVES. With THESE type of idiots not looking at the long term results of this “drug War” are doing NOTHING but exacerbating the situation!!! After all. WAR is right in the title!
Hey Russ, do you already have a topic that you want to talk with Earlywine about?
Otherwise, could you talk to him about the studie that Drew Edwards is claiming exist?
Isn´t that exactely the opposite of what e.g. Mitch Earlywine says that the data shows?
That there are no real diffrence between users and non-users.
Thanks!
Dr. Drew sets up these rich parents speeking about all the harms of pot, they find a joint in their kids back pack and send them off to Dr. Drew. He charges $xxxxxx amount and three weeks later the kid comes back and lights up a big fatty! After all the lies and false facts they pund into him who can blame him.
Now if he would justy speek the truth to begin with, these parents may have less to worry about. Then they can sit down with their kids speeking with thruth and the facts, you never know that kid may just realize that school is more important than pot right now. Whatever happened to talking with your kids anyhow. I have four kids, three in their teens and I know for a fact they dont want to be lied too and told fairy tales about drugs or anything!
ok..if the study is true then ill tell you why it is the way it is. When you have a system that arrests and imprisions people then you breed criminal mentality which leaves that jail and breeds more crime. Then you have the majority of people who get a weed charge approx. 800,000 or so who dont do time but lose there jobs or with most places drug-testing its a lil hard to get a job meaning no money, any chance of fed. funding for school therefore no further education which equalls dead-end job(as long as there not drug-testing) and most banks wont give them a loan to get a house then you have homelessness. All of that equalls a loser but none of which is brought on by smoking itself! Russ says it all the time..prohibition causes way more harm than pot itself. I think all of us will admit weed can make you a lil lazy, tired and occasionally so high you dont know where the fridge is
but come on its nothing like prohibitionist make it out to be..anyway thanks for reading my rant im 
so im very expressive lol
Well, if that’s the case, I’d like to nominate myself for the Nation of Losers.
Light ‘em UP!
I love it when they say they can cure/fix the gays. It just reaffirms how stupid they sound. Like the churches that said they won’t turn anybody away but you cannot live that life in the house of God and must be saved. lol What a load of crap. I guess fixing the gay DOES work in those gay rehab camps that so many younger people kill themselves in. So yeah I guess technically in their eyes, they are “fixing” it. You know all the people that are complaining about a government healthcare option have the audacity to say we don’t have the money for it (which we don’t at the current pricetag) and they want to stop government from encroaching on our lives and liberties but they don’t mind wasting billions to subdue the rights of simple pot smokers.
oh OK I just looked at the “Ennoble Foundation” funny stuff there, Porn makes boys into deviants, Sex in the City makes girls into whores, drugs are bad, and they can cure the gay, praise jebus and pass to collection plate.
Who did all that genetic engineering on the super potent cannabis, that must have been one unmotivated pothead to go get the knowledge of genetics, botany, organic chemistry, calculus, and then to set up a breeding program to make a strain of super insanity pot.
If I had known that it was that easy I would have gotten my degree in applied genetics instead of vertebrate biology it sure would have made more money, but maybe I wasn’t smoking enough pot.