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.

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.

Now a look at page 7 shows that of the cannabis that was seized, 48% was sinsemilla buds and 21% was marijuana buds, which clock in at an average THC of 10.7% and 7.16%, respectively. So, 31% of what is out there is the low-grade shake and ditchweed and brickweed, which is the low-cost stuff most cash-strapped youngsters would be economically drawn toward.

However, the variance in potency is immense, from lows of 0.6% and 1.4% to highs of 28.19% and 37.2%. And how much of the high-potency buds are based on seizures the DEA recorded from busting California medical dispensaries or the medicine grown for those dispensaries?

People’s eyes glass over when numbers start flying around, so it can be difficult to understand why the variance and the average matter. Here’s an example to illustrate: Suppose you line up five marijuana buds from a street dealer, and all five register at 2.5% THC. Then you throw in five medical buds from a dispensary registering at 17.5% THC. The kids will be unlikely to get any of the medical buds, but it sure is scary to mention that of those ten buds, the average THC is 10%.

– There was a 492 percent increase in the proportion of teen treatment admissions with a medical diagnosis for marijuana abuse or dependence, compared with a 54 percent decline for all other substances of abuse.
– There was a 188 percent increase in the proportion of teen treatment admissions for marijuana as the primary drug of abuse, compared with a 54 percent decline for all other substances of abuse.

Here’s another interesting statistic from 1992 – 2006: There was a 142 percent increase in the number of people arrested for marijuana, from 342,314 in 1992 to 829,625 in 2006. While I can find no hard numbers on how many drug courts existed in 1992, the first drug court began in 1989, so I can’t believe there were too many of them (let’s guess 500, does that seem fair? It’s probably quite a bit less than that). [Update: There were 10 drug courts in 1992.] Now there are 1,699 drug courts and 539 juvenile drug courts in existence, so that’s a 448 [Update: 22,380] percent increase in drug courts from my wild-ass guess from 1992.

So, more people are smoking and there are more courts that primarily sentence marijuana smokers to drug treatment and – whaddaya know? – teen treatment admissions for marijuana have gone up. It’s quite obvious that the admissions rise because of sentencing, not because of need for treatment, especially when the government admits that 1/3rd of all treatment admissions for marijuana haven’t smoked pot in over a month and that 58% of the people in drug treatment for marijuana were referred there by the criminal justice system!

From 1995 – 2002:

– There was a 136 percent increase in the proportion of emergency department findings of marijuana as a major substance of abuse among teens, more than five times the increase in such findings for all other substances of abuse.

Again, more people smoking pot means more mentions of it in the emergency room. These DAWN statistics don’t indicate causality – that the pot caused the emergency – merely that the person in the E.R. is an admitted or discovered pot user.

“The message for teens is clear — today’s pernicious pot is not your parent’s pot,” said Joseph A. Califano, Jr., CASA’s Chairman and President and former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. “The THC potency in marijuana seized in the 1970s, when marijuana use was most prevalent, was less than one percent; today such potency levels have climbed to 8.8 percent.”

Please, dear Stashers. I am but 40 years old. I first smoked marijuana on July 4, 1990. Will somebody from the baby boom generation please contact me and tell me all about this <1% THC pot you guys were smoking back in the day? From what I’ve read, <1% THC is impossible to get high from, gives you a massive headache, and in most countries is considered industrial hemp.

“This increased potency parallels the increases we see in teen medical diagnoses, treatment admissions and emergencies. Parents and teachers, coaches and clergy, all who work with teens, must understand that marijuana is a risky and addictive drug with serious health and social consequences.”

“The good news is that in recent years teen marijuana use has declined. The bad news is that 10.7 million teens still report that they have used marijuana. The worst news is that teens who use the drug are playing a dangerous game of Russian roulette with the bullets of addiction, accidents, crime and mental illness in the chamber,” noted Califano. “With all the evidence now available, simple prudence requires parents to prevent their children from using marijuana. Those parents who fail to do so are uninformed or irresponsible, or both.”

We’re glad that teenage marijuana use has declined, too. Like alcohol, kids should wait until adulthood to use it, because the developing adolescent brain is coping with fluctuating hormones, new social experiences, difficult life choices, emerging personality, a flood of education, and the rigors of adjusting to the adult world with adult consequences. They don’t need the added, debilitating pressure of dealing with an intoxicant on top of all that. You’ve got to be living firmly in reality to safely alter it.

But scaring kids with pseudo-science and outright lies about cannabis gives them no better reason not to try it and enticement to try it when they eventually see through the lies.