Stasher MoldyCutter forwarded me a comment he found on a post at the New York Times that answers beautifully the prohibitionist’s claim that “emergency room admissions for marijuana are skyrocketing!”:

15 years of full time emergency medicine and I’ve maybe seen 10 visits to the ER for cannabis – these fall into 2 categories: 1. pot brownies – an unfortunate way to ingest way too much cannabis – unpleasant, but completely non-life threatening. 2. And (the vast majority of those 10 visits) parent who brings in normal appearing teen asking for a drug test for pot (available over the counter, by the way for you parents out there).

I see that “ER visits going up” canard regularly and the writer might as well say “I’m an idiot” – what is a “marijuana related ER visit”? Are they counting every positive urine drug screen? Or just people who come complaining that their pot is too potent? What?

Of all the drug / medicine related misery I’ve seen, the dearth of ER visits I’ve seen due to cannabis suggest that when it comes to drugs, cannabis may be the most benign substance on earth (if you want to measure that by ER visits). Clearly the worst thing about it is that it can get you into serious legal problems (since it’s not legal).

People have always and will always use plants and synthetic compounds to alter their senses – period. When it comes to the drug war, the diagnosis is clear: the treatment is worse than the disease.

Related posts

• [Updated] CASA: Marijuana Potency up 175 Percent, Medical Diagnoses, Treatment Admissions, ER Findings for Teen Marijuana Use up Sharply (4)
• UN agency recommends world stop ‘trivializing’ marijuana dangers (1)
• Marijuana potency surpasses 10 percent, U.S. says (9)

Oh, goodie, here comes a week of news stories on this old trope about Pot 2.0.  Hold on, readers…

OXFORD, Mississippi (CNN) — The average potency of marijuana, which has risen steadily for three decades, has exceeded 10 percent for the first time, the U.S. government will report on Thursday.

At the University of Mississippi’s Potency Monitoring Project, where thousands of samples of seized marijuana are tested every year, project director Mahmoud ElSohly said some samples have THC levels exceeding 30 percent.

Average THC concentrations will continue to climb before leveling off at 15 percent or 16 percent in five to 10 years, ElSohly predicted.

The stronger marijuana is of particular concern because high concentrations of THC have the opposite effect of low concentrations, officials say.

Uh… what?  The “opposite” effect?  You mean if you smoked the old pot you got “high” and if you smoke the new pot you get… what, “low”?  If you smoke pot that’s somewhere in-between does anything happen at all?  Do you just stay “middle”?

The only “opposite” effect between low-quality and high-quality weed is the reaction you gave your dealer when you’ve spent $300 on an ounce of it.

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

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• [Updated] CASA: Marijuana Potency up 175 Percent, Medical Diagnoses, Treatment Admissions, ER Findings for Teen Marijuana Use up Sharply (4)
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VIENNA (AFP) – A UN drugs agency warned Thursday against underestimating the dangers of cannabis.

“The international community may wish to review the issue of cannabis,” the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) wrote in its annual report.

“Over the years, cannabis has become more potent and is associated with an increasing number of emergency room admissions,” the report stated.

Ooh, a swing and a miss!  Cannabis has become more potent, but increasing potency does not mean increase in danger, as marijuana smoking is a self-titrating action.  If you have schwag, you smoke a lot and get high.  If you have kind, you smoke a little and get high.  As for emergency room admissions, this myth is taken from the DAWN statistics where they determine if someone has used cannabis prior to admittance, not whether cannabis caused the admittance.  Since cannabis is the most popular illicit drug, it is naturally going to be mentioned more often in the ER.

Cannabis was often the first illicit drug taken by young people and was frequently called a “gateway drug,” in that it could lead to later use of hard drugs.

Steeerike two!  In 1999, US Institute of Medicine shot down the “gateway theory” and many studies that followed found the same thing.  Nowadays no serious scientist even brings it up anymore… but that doesn’t stop cannabiphobic bureaucrats from saying it anyway.

Indeed, many countries allowed the “recreational” use of cannabis, and public perceptions of the so-called “medical” uses of the drug and its recreational use “are overlapping and confusing,” it said.

Hmm, I think that’s a foul tip.  There’s nothing “so-called” about the medical uses of cannabis and if its medical use is “overlapping and confusing” then why did teen marijuana use rates decline in the states that implemented medical marijuana?

It also urged governments to “stimulate” the controlled use of opiate-based painkillers to help “alleviate unnecessary suffering of millions of patients.”

“Although the access to controlled medicines, including morphine and codeine, is considered by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to be a human right, it is virtually non existent in over 150 countries,” the report said.

“The WHO estimates that at least 30 million patients and possibly as many as 86 million annually suffer from untreated moderate to severe pain.”

via The Raw Story | UN agency recommends world stop ‘trivializing’ marijuana dangers.

Yerrrr OUT!  In fact, not only are you out, but your whole team is out, disqualified, and banished from the league!  In the same set of recommendations where you demonize cannabis and its “so-called medical” uses you then remind us access to painkillers is a human right, millions are suffering with under-treated pain, and you recommend we “stimulate” more use of opiates?  Who writes your recommendations, the Opium Poppy Growers Union?

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New CASA* Report Finds: Marijuana Potency up 175 Percent, Medical Diagnoses, Treatment Admissions, ER Findings for Teen Marijuana Use up Sharply
NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire – June 18, 2008) – Despite reported declines in teen marijuana use, in 2007 almost 11 million teens report having used marijuana. For those using the drug, four alarming trends are of grave concern for parents and teens, according to “Non-Medical Marijuana III: Rite of Passage or Russian Roulette?,” a new report by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University.

From 1992 – 2006:

– There was a 175 percent jump in the potency of marijuana (3.2 to 8.8 percent THC concentration in seized samples).

The potency zombie just will not die! Here it is, you can go read the report yourself. On page 14, it is interesting to note that the percentage of “domestic” seizures compared to “non-domestic” varies from 20.9% to 45.5% of the overall sample when considering the “average”. And as we learned from the Drug Czar’s blog, “domestic” means unharvested marijuana not ready for consumption. Why would you average in the “domestic” marijuana when the point is to claim that the marijuana being consumed by teens today is so much more potent?

And are the kids these days really getting a hold of the more potent ganja? A look at page 6 shows us that between 12/16/07 – 3/15/08 they analyzed 1,290 samples, of that, 3.25% of it was hash or hash oil, the really potent stuff. So 96.75% of what’s seized lately is cannabis.

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

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