EVERY demographic has increased its support for marijuana legalization since 2005

Yesterday we revealed The Top Ten “Reefer Madness” Stories of 2011.  Today we continue our Year-End Retrospective with a look at the biggest news stories of scientific research into cannabis, public opinion polls on legalization, and statistical research on cannabis consumers.  We call it The Top Ten Cannabis Science Stories of 2011.  Tomorrow we’ll continue with The Top Ten “Stupid Stoner Stories” of 2011 and Friday we conclude with the The Top Ten People in Cannabis of 2011.

The Top Ten Cannabis Science Stories of 2011 (audio mp3)

10. The Carbon Footprint of Cannabis

Cannabis Karri reported on a study that measured just how much electricity we’re using to grow cannabis indoors.

A new report conducted and published by Even Mills, PhD, a respected and long time energy analyst along with Staff Scientists at the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory has concluded that Americans spend an amazing 1% of the entire national electricity consumption, or the equivalent of the output of seven large power plants on growing cannabis.

Since medical marijuana use has become so much more popular, and most of those states do not have a dispensary program, many more people are learning to grow marijuana indoors. The 20 terawatt-hours per year that marijuana growers use is due to the bright, often 24 hours a day lighting and an air change rate 60 times higher than a norml home. Even a modest indoor garden can have the same energy consumption rate of an entire data center. Since indoor cultivation of cannabis is a necessity to hide operations from authorities and others the energy bill to growers is about $5 billion each year. That extra energy to produce American cannabis is equal to the energy consumption of an extra 2 million average US homes. It also, unfortunately, produces greenhouse gas pollution equal to 3 million cars according to the new research.

9. Pot smokers are thinner and smarter than average

We have all suffered through jokes about cannabis consumers being fat, stupid couch potatoes.  So it was a joy in 2011 when two international studies found us to be thinner than our non-toking counterparts…

“We found that cannabis users are less likely to be obese than non-users,” [researchers said]. “We were so surprised, we thought we had [made] a mistake. Or that our results were due to the sample we studied. So we turned to another completely independent sample and found exactly the same association.”

…and smarter, too!

A new British study finds … men with high childhood IQs were up to two times more likely to use illegal drugs than their lower-scoring counterparts. Girls with high IQs were up to three times more likely to use drugs as adults. A high IQ is defined as a score between 107 and 158. An average IQ is 100. The study appears in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

None of this means taking up pot smoking is going to shed points and boost IQ.  It does mean that some popular stereotypes about us are completely unfounded.

8. Two-thirds of patients surveyed substitute marijuana for prescription medications

Many a medical marijuana activist can tell anecdotes of patients who’ve reduced or eliminated their need for opiate pain killers by substituting cannabis.  This year, Berkeley Patients Group surveyed their patients and found two-out-of-three had done just that.

In an anonymous survey, 66% of 350 clients at the Berkeley (Calif.) Patients Group, a medical marijuana dispensary, said that they use marijuana as a prescription drug substitute. Their reasons: Cannabis offered better symptom control with fewer side effects than did prescription drugs.

Those with pain symptoms said that marijuana has less addiction potential than do opioids. Others said marijuana helped to reduce the dose of other medications.

Speaking of the addiction potential of opioids…

7. Oxycontin is five times the “gateway drug” as marijuana

Prohibitionists have been using the “Gateway Drug” scare for years to frighten the public about legalization.  Despite every study blowing the concept out of the water, it still resonates with a large segment of the voters.  So I decided to take a look at the data to find out which drug is really the one with the greatest correlation to hard drug use, and it definitely wasn’t cannabis!

We cross-referenced the NSDUH numbers based on whether someone had ever tried marijuana. We found that only 1.5% of people who have toked became monthly cocaine users. For ecstasy, crack, meth, heroin, LSD, and PCP, less than 1% of the people who’ve tried pot are using those drugs regularly. Meanwhile, 2.9% of the people who’ve ever tried an legal analgesic (pain reliever) are regular cocaine users. For ecstasy, crack, and meth, more than 1% of who tried analgesics are regular users. People who tried analgesics are more than twice as likely as people who tried pot to use heroin regularly and three times more likely to use LSD regularly.

But if opponents want to cling to the idea that we should do everything in our power to stop someone from smoking that first marijuana joint, lest they become illegal drug addicts, then it is time to prohibit Vicodin, Lortab, Lorcet, and Oxycontin, those powerful legal opioid pain killers. The first Vicodin/Lortab/Lorcet leads to almost three times the risk of becoming a non-pot illegal drug user than the first joint and almost the same risk as smoking a joint every month. That first Oxycontin is more than five times the risk for drug abuse than the first joint.

6. Drug testing is still unreliable, inaccurate, unnecessary, invasive, and counter-productive

We drug test our citizens when we suspect they’re committing a crime, when they’re applying for a job, when they’re going to school, and when they’re in an accident.  Yet drug detection for marijuana is so unreliable and unscientific that its use is an affront to all free people.

First it is the “drug dog” that police and courts believe are akin to infallible scientific instruments instead of animals with instincts to please their human masters.

The accuracy of drug- and explosives-sniffing dogs is affected by human handlers’ beliefs, possibly in response to subtle, unintentional cues, UC Davis researchers have found.

The study, published in the January issue of the journal Animal Cognition, found that detection-dog teams erroneously “alerted,” or identified a scent, when there was no scent present more than 200 times — particularly when the handler believed that there was scent present.

Next it is the “drug lab” that may mishandle as many as one in ten tests.

An Indiana state lab wrongly reported 1 in 10 marijuana cases as positive, including some that were deliberately manipulated, an audit report indicated.

The audit’s findings showed errors in about 200 of 2,000 marijuana tests reported to law enforcement as having positive results, the Star said. This includes about 50 results the report said were consciously manipulated by lab workers.

Part of the justification for testing us for employment is workplace safety.  Yet, in medical marijuana states where tens or hundreds of thousands of citizens are legally using cannabis, we’ve seen drastic declines in workplace danger.

Prior to the beginning of the medical marijuana program [in Oregon], workplace injuries and illnesses that contributed to a lost workday stood at 3.4 per 100 full-time workers; in 2009 that rate is 2.3 per 100, a decline of 32%.  No-time-lost injuries and illnesses declined 40%, from 3.5 to 2.1 per 100.  Fatalities are down from 3.3 to 1.9 per 100, a drop of 42%.

These declines occurred while the medical marijuana patient registry grew by an average of a little more than 50% per year.

Another egregious use of drug testing is to make it a requirement of citizens seeking welfare assistance.  Florida’s law to do just that has been blocked while its (un-)constitutionality is determined, but in the time it was in effect, it cost Florida more than it saved.  It also found that welfare recipients were less likely to turn up positive than the general public.

The Department of Central Florida’s (DCF) region tested 40 applicants and only two tested positive for drugs, officials said. One of the tests is being appealed.

DCF said it has been referring applicants to clinics where drug screenings cost between $30 and $35. The applicant pays for the test out of his or her own pocket and then the state reimburses him if they test comes back negative.

Therefore, the 38 applicants in the Central Florida area, who tested negative, were reimbursed at least $30 each and cost taxpayers $1,140.

Meanwhile, the state is saving less than $240 a month by refusing benefits to those two applicants who tested positive.

Finally, the unintended consequences of drug testing became more apparent.  When marijuana is the drug that is the hardest to conceal on a drug test, people will turn to drugs that are easier to conceal.

As I looked at the data, I noticed that in the span from 2005 to 2011, the positive test rate for marijuana for all workplace drug tests (pre-employment, random, and post-accident) declined 20%, from 2.5% of approximately 2.4 million tests to 2.0%.  That’s about 12,000 fewer cannabis consumers who were caught by a pee test.

Meanwhile, oxycodone positives have increased 96% for all urine testing, although these tests are administered about one tenth as often (280,000) for oxycodone as for cannabis (2,400,000).  This despite the facts that while marijuana metabolites may be detected in urine for weeks, oxycodone metabolites are flushed from one’s system in two or three days.  Furthermore, random positives for oxycodone (1.20%) are almost twice as great and post-accident positives for oxycodone (1.80%) are nearly three-times greater than pre-employment positives for oxycodone (0.65%), which suggests to me that the pre-employment screens don’t work very well at keeping oxycodone users out of the workplace.

5. For past two years, more Americans arrested for marijuana than all other drugs combined despite arrest protection for America’s One Million Legal Marijuana Users

When somebody mentions “The War on Drugs”, remind them what we’re really talking about is a “War on Marijuana”.

Nationally, there were 1,638,846 drug arrests reported to the FBI, with 52.1% of those arrests for marijuana charges.  Last year, 51.6% of all drug arrests were for marijuana, showing a slight increase in marijuana as the majority of all drug arrests.  The last time marijuana made up a majority of the “War on Drugs” was 1985, when 55.6% of all drug arrests were for marijuana.

Keep in mind that these annual marijuana arrests continue to climb even as we reduce the number of marijuana users eligible for arrest in the medical marijuana state, users who grow and use the most marijuana.

Between one to one-and-a-half million people are legally authorized by their state to use marijuana in the United States, according to data compiled by NORML from state medical marijuana registries and patient estimates.  Assuming usage of one-half to one gram of cannabis medicine per day per patient and an average retail price of $320 per ounce, these legal consumers represent a $2.3 to $6.2 billion dollar market annually.

4. Drug Czar claims medical marijuana makes more young people smoke pot, despite fewer teens smoking pot

A popular refrain of the Drug Czar is that by calling marijuana “medicine”, we lead young people to think it is less dangerous, and therefore, use goes up.

“Emerging research reveals potential links between state laws permitting access to smoked medical marijuana and higher rates of marijuana use,” said Gil Kerlikowske, Director of National Drug Control Policy. “In light of what we know regarding the serious harm of illegal drug use, I urge every family – but particularly those in states targeted by pro-drug political campaigns – to redouble their efforts to shield young people from serious harm by educating them about the real health and safety consequences caused by illegal drug use.”

Except that medical marijuana’s been around on the West Coast for over a dozen years.  Between 2003 and 2009, as more states have adopted medical marijuana, nationally the rate of monthly teen use is on the decline.

In fact, eleven of the thirteen states that had medical marijuana as of 2009 saw declines in teen marijuana use, and the five that added it after 2003 saw double-digit declines.

From 2003 to 2009 in California, monthly teen use is up only 0.26%.  In Colorado, teen use is up 3.77% in that time frame.  Yet Wyoming, a state without medical marijuana, saw the greatest increase of 5.18%.  Furthermore, looking back before 2003, to 1996 and 1998 when the West Coast legalized medical marijuana, teen use is lower now than then.

3. The people really, really want to ask the President about the legalization of marijuana that half of them support

This year, the esteemed Gallup Poll finally recorded half of the US population in support of legalizing marijuana.

Gallup reports that the 50% nationwide support for legalization also represents the first time support has outweighed opposition.  Only 46% of Americans believe marijuana should remain criminalized, with 4% undecided.

Support for marijuana legalization remains greatest in the Western states (55%) and majorities support legalization in the Midwest (54%) and East (51%).  Only voters in the South still oppose marijuana legalization (44%).  Men still support legalization at a much greater rate than women (55% vs. 46%).

Support is also greatest among younger Americans (62%), Democrats (57%), and liberals (69%).  However, support for legalization has increased even in demographics generally opposed to legalization.  Compared to Gallup’s poll last year, support increased 4% points in the South, 12% points in the Midwest, and 6% points among 50-64, but fell 1% among 65+.  Support rose 6% points among Republicans, and 4% points among conservatives. Marijuana legalization is becoming more popular with just about everyone.

President Obama, seeking input from the people on policy questions, was stunned once again to find…

On the “We the People” petitions site of Whitehouse.gov, as of this writing, NORML’s “Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol” petition is #1 by a long shot.  It has garnered over 42,000 signatures.  It needed 5,000 signatures in 30 days to generate an official response from the administration, a figure it had topped in just over three hours.

And when he asked for videos from citizens on policy issues, another stunning result…

The top question, submitted by Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, garnered 13,842 votes – over 1% of all votes cast (people could vote for more than one question).

As a police officer, I saw how waging the war on drugs has cost a trillion dollars and thousands of lives but does nothing to reduce drug use. Should we discuss legalizing marijuana and other drugs, which would eliminate the violent criminal market?

Of the 193,060 people who voted more than 7% voted for the LEAP question.  That’s about one in fourteen people who took the time to Ask Obama.

2. National Cancer Institute drama over anti-tumoral effects of cannabis

A very high-profile battle over scientific integrity played itself out on the webpage of Cancer.gov, the government’s site for the National Cancer Institute.  It began when the site surprisingly updated its summary page on cannabis and cannabinoids.

The potential benefits of medicinal Cannabis for people living with cancer include antiemetic effects, appetite stimulation, pain relief, and improved sleep. In the practice of integrative oncology, the health care provider may recommend medicinal Cannabis not only for symptom management but also for its possible direct antitumor effect.

Cannabinoids may cause antitumor effects by various mechanisms, including induction of cell death, inhibition of cell growth, and inhibition of tumor angiogenesis and metastasis. [9-11] Cannabinoids appear to kill tumor cells but do not affect their nontransformed counterparts and may even protect them from cell death. These compounds have been shown to induce apoptosis in glioma cells in culture and induce regression of glioma tumors in mice and rats.

Then it appeared that somebody pressured NCI to revise its update to better align with the government’s prohibition of cannabis.  The paragraphs above were removed and replaced with:

The potential benefits of medicinal Cannabis for people living with cancer include antiemetic effects, appetite stimulation, pain relief, and improved sleep. Though no relevant surveys of practice patterns exist, it appears that physicians caring for cancer patients who prescribe medicinal Cannabis predominantly do so for symptom management.

Then NCI updated the “clinical studies” portion of the website to again highlight the anti-tumoral effects:

One study in mice and rats suggested that cannabinoids may have a protective effect against the development of certain types of tumors.

Decreased incidences of benign tumors(polyps and adenomas) in other organs(mammary gland, uterus, pituitary, testis, and pancreas)were also noted in the rats.

Cannabinoids may cause antitumor effects by various mechanisms, including induction of cell death, inhibition of cell growth, and inhibition of tumorangiogenesis and metastasis.

Cannabinoids appear to kill tumor cells but do not affect their nontransformed counterparts and may even protect them from cell death.

1. Colorado’s 5ng/mL per se DUID bill dies again as new research backs higher thresholds for regular users

We tackled drug testing above in #6, but this story takes #1 for showing how science and the scientific method can actually beat back prohibition.  Colorado had proposed a 5ng of THC per milliliter of blood (5ng/mL) per se DUID, meaning: if you test positive on a drug test above 5ng/mL, you’re automatically guilty of DUI, whether you were impaired or not.

Naturally, many medical marijuana patients in Colorado complained that they are such frequent and heavy users of cannabis that they would never be under such a threshold.  Furthermore, most of them have developed a tolerance to cannabis’ effects that allows them to drive under its influence without impairment, much as we understand an “until you know how [Pill X] affects you, do not drive or operate heavy machinery” warning on a pharmaceutical.

The “pot critic” of Denver’s WestWord, William Breathes, decided to become the experiment by abstaining from cannabis use under controlled conditions.  After sixteen hours and a night’s sleep, upon awakening, presumably clean and sober, Breathes was tested at 13ng/mL.  This anecdotal report, splashed all over the Denver media, was also backed up by the latest scientific research:

It concludes: “A threshold of 2-3ng/ml THC as an indicator of recent drug use (i.e, smoking within the previous 6 hours) as recommended by Huestis et al appears to be valid only for occasional users. Heavy users might exhibit measurable cannabinoid concentrations in blood, even if the last cannabis use was more than 24 hours ago.… Therefore, cannabinoid concentrations in heavy users’ blood from a later elimination phase might not be distinguished from an acute use of an occasional user.”

There is a great editorial in a Southern Oregon newspaper today called “Legalize pot: It’ll dry up drug cartels’ market, save forests“.  It’s well done and deserves a read, but today my muse comes in the form of a comment on the piece.  My reply was far too long for comments, so I’m putting it up here.  The first paragraph references a jibe the editorialist makes at the conservative sheriff’s alarm at the waste and pollution from a clandestine marijuana grow on forest lands (“It was the first time in memory a Republican has fretted so about the environment.”)

This article will no doubt spawn endless atta-boys from the medicinal (i.e. recreational) marijuana crowd. However, a few comments are due. First, Varble, your characterization of conservatives a not caring about the environment is so cliche, and wrong. It is easy to care about the environment, and seek balance with human use, unlike the screaming greenies who want man extinguished from the earth. Most all of my conservative friends support reasonable protections of the environment.

Second, there is obviously a conflict between our treatment of alcohol and marijuana. Both are harmful drugs, which do not benefit the user (I will allow a small argument for medicinal use but only for about 10% of the alleged medicinal users). Both drugs cause a great cost to our society. Both drugs are outlawed in some places in our country (i.e. dry counties, native restrictions in Alaska, etc for alcohol, and most everywhere for pot). Legalizing alcohol stopped the unlawful production and distribution, but only enhanced (through availability) the social damage, i.e. highway deaths, alcoholism, family abuse, and the list goes on. Same effects from abuse of marijuana, but it too often leads to harder drug use and the search for the illusive high for those people who can’t find it in their lives to make their own happiness without chemical assistance.

An excuse to legalize marijuana-tough question. We already see in the generations since the proliferation of pot an attitude of lassitude toward education, achievement, and aggressive pursuit of the American dream. Do we really want to keep creating these legal fictions of acceptability? What next when these are both legal and common, then the argument goes to the next step, how about Vicodin or Oxycontin without prescriptions, they don’t hurt anyone.

Saying “alcohol and marijuana…. both are harmful drugs” is akin to saying “.357 Magnums and pea-shooters…. both are harmful weapons”. So many times I read conservatives call out about this “great cost to our society” borne from the hippie hordes puffing doobies, yet never a dollar figure or a study to back it up. And nary a realization that whatever that cost is, we’re offsetting it by ZERO dollars in tax revenues and compounding it by spending billions in a failed effort to eradicate it.

Regardless what that cost may be (sure, it is a non-zero number; nothing recreational is “harmless” to society – how much arable land and precious water does a golf course consume?) the cost is tiny compared to the cost of alcohol and tobacco on society, which, unsurprisingly, conservatives are never calling out to prohibit and interdict and incarcerate like they do pot. Sure, legal access to alcohol leads to “highway deaths, alcoholism, family abuse…” because *IT IS ALCOHOL*, not cannabis, and yet you know (if you read history) that its prohibition led to far worse societal outcomes.

Meanwhile, the drug that leads people to being peaceful, compassionate, cooperative, loving, artistic, sharing, and hungry (in both the physiological and the abstract sense), the one that is literally incapable of causing toxic overdose, the one that even you admit is medicinal for some of its users, the one that coincidentally produces the most digestible protein in the plant kingdom and a superior carbon-*NEGATIVE* building material / clothing material / plastic / fuel oil… that’s the one we need to put people in a cage for using. The tobacco addicts, we’ll build them little shelters outside of work to get their fix. The alcohol addicts, we’ll celebrate them in advertisements, sitcoms, and movies. We’re actually pretty accommodating of people “who can’t find it in their lives to make their own happiness without chemical assistance.” But the potheads – people about whom your worst unfounded stereotypes are “attitude of lassitude toward education”, “the search for the illusive high”, and people who might eventually do some other drug that really is dangerous and harmful – they need to be arrested and imprisoned.

The fact is that there are 100 million adults age 18+ who’ve tried cannabis, 26 million using it annually, and 15.8 million using cannabis monthly. There are only 350,000 adults age 18+ using heroin monthly. Not only has the so-called “gateway theory” been debunked by every study to review it (including the US gov’t Institute of Medicine), but it is based on the fallacy of correlation = causation. “Ask any heroin addict, and they’ll tell you the first illegal drug they did was marijuana!” OK, what’s similar between marijuana and heroin? “Illegal”. Ask them what *drug* they took first and it was usually alcohol. But nobody calls Coors Light a “gateway drug” because you don’t buy it in the same market as the heroin, cocaine, and meth – the illegal market. (BTW, I will correct the author of the piece on one error: meth is a Schedule II drug, not Schedule I like cannabis and heroin. Meth – and cocaine – are recognized by our government as having medical value.)

Finally, this silly slippery slope “the next step, how about Vicodin or Oxycontin without prescriptions, they don’t hurt anyone” fails on three levels. One, Vicodin and Oxycontin are already more legal than medical marijuana and, based on gov’t figures, a bigger drug abuse problem (Google: Florida pill mills). Two, the opiate pharmaceuticals are toxic and addictive, unlike cannabis, which has been shown to work synergistically with opiate pain relievers to produce greater pain relief with less Oxycontin and Vicodin needed by the pain patient. And three, the idea that “well, if we legalize pot, then why not coke, why not heroin, etc.” is stupid because you’d have to have public support to do that. 50% of the public supports legalizing pot. Legalization of other drugs stands at only 10% support for ecstasy, 9% for cocaine, 8% for heroin, and 7% each for crack and meth. So unless legalizing pot means at least 50%+1 of all registered voters go out and smoke it and it’s such a Super-Potent Not Your Father’s Woodstock Weed Bubonic Skunk Chronic that one puff makes all of them suddenly want to see legalized heroin, it’s just a stupid argument.

The simple truth is this: Some people don’t like the kind of people they think smoke weed. Call ‘em “hippies”, “liberals”, “libertarians”, “thugs”, “gangstas”, “dopers”, “losers”, “druggies”, “hedonists”, whatever way your prejudice copes with the fear of the mostly young, mostly minority, mostly working class people we surveil, harass, intimidate, screen, terminate, evict, terrorize, arrest, and imprison… all under the justification of making sure Phillip-Morris, MillerCoors, Pfizer, Starbucks, Sarah Lee, and Frito-Lay all have a “drug-free” workforce. Marijuana’s illegality ensures that only the fringiest pot smokers remain visible, thus making continued demonization of them easier, since the moms and dads and teachers and firemen and rocket scientists and gold medal athletes can’t speak up for it without losing their kids, their jobs, and their Kellogg’s cereal endorsement deals.

The facts are these: Cannabis consumers are every bit as liberal or conservative, religious or atheist, rich or poor, minority or white, industrious or lazy, intelligent or stupid, dirty or clean, fat or fit, crazed or rational as beer drinkers, wine drinkers, cigarette smokers, cigar smokers, teetotalers, and full-blown drug addicts. But prohibition of cannabis colors the perception of its users toward the more negative (to the perceiver, in this case, the commenter above). (And, actually, cannabis consumers are more white, more fit, more intelligent, and richer than beer drinkers…) The most profound affect legalizing marijuana would have is the shock its opponents would have at finding out how many of their friends, family, and colleagues smoke pot, and have been for a while.

Trying pain pills is three times more likely to lead to regular hard drug use than trying marijuana.

One of the most frustrating arguments presented by supporters of prohibition is the “Marijuana is a Gateway Drug” trope. The idea here is when you ask a heroin, cocaine, or meth addict “what was the first drug you ever tried?”, they inevitably answer “marijuana”. Therefore, the gateway theory goes, sparking up that first joint will begin the long slippery slide into crippling drug addiction.

It does not matter that government researchers have already declared in 1999 that “There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs“. The “gateway” theory is one of those urban legends that is proving very difficult to kill.

However, an analysis of the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) shows that your first aspirin is more likely to be your gateway to hard drugs than your first joint.

We cross-referenced the NSDUH numbers based on whether someone had ever tried marijuana. We found that only 1.5% of people who have toked became monthly cocaine users. For ecstasy, crack, meth, heroin, LSD, and PCP, less than 1% of the people who’ve tried pot are using those drugs regularly. Meanwhile, 2.9% of the people who’ve ever tried an legal analgesic (pain reliever) are regular cocaine users. For ecstasy, crack, and meth, more than 1% of who tried analgesics are regular users. People who tried analgesics are more than twice as likely as people who tried pot to use heroin regularly and three times more likely to use LSD regularly.

We also find that binge drinkers – defined as 5 or more drinks at a sitting at least once a month – are more likely to be regular hard drug users than people who have tried marijuana. To be fair, alcohol supporters might point out that comparing regular beer use to one-time pot use is unfair, and when compared to regular marijuana users, beer users have 1/2 to 1/3 the hard drug regular use rates. In response, we’d say that regular beer drinkers don’t have to pick up a six pack from an illegal dealer who also sells other drugs.

But if opponents want to cling to the idea that we should do everything in our power to stop someone from smoking that first marijuana joint, lest they become illegal drug addicts, then it is time to prohibit Vicodin, Lortab, Lorcet, and Oxycontin, those powerful legal opioid pain killers. The first Vicodin/Lortab/Lorcet leads to almost three times the risk of becoming a non-pot illegal drug user than the first joint amd almost the same risk as smoking a joint every month. That first Oxycontin is more than five times the risk for drug abuse than the first joint.

One of our loyal readers turned us on to this desperate scaremongering video from opponents of California’s Prop 19:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The top video response is the perfect rejoinder:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Line by line debunking follows after the break…

The #1 ADDICTION for 60% of TEENS in Drug rehab.

This is a little like saying orange jumpsuits are the #1 fashion choice of 60% of inmates in prison.  Cannabis is the third most popular substance.  When teens are caught with it, they are sentenced to drug rehab.  This says nothing about whether teens are addicted or whether they need rehab, but it says a lot about prohibition’s failure to keep teens off pot.

A GATEWAY drug to Cocaine and Meth.

Despite every scientific look at the gateway theory proving it to be nonsense, prohibitionists still cling to it.  The only gateway connecting marijuana to meth is the one you walk through to get to the illegal drug market.  Nobody considers alcohol a gateway drug to meth, despite more meth addicts having tried alcohol before they ever touched pot, because you can’t get meth in the liquor store.

4 times more MIND-ALTERING than in the 1970′s

Well, at least this time they’re not saying today’s pot is 14x, 30x, or 400x stronger than the Woodstock Weed.  Look at the clothes and listen to the music; you don’t think 1970′s weed was mind-altering?  The facts are that the average potency of marijuana seizures has doubled.  However, that says nothing about what’s available on the streets.

Law enforcement since the 1970s has increasingly focused on indoor grows that produce stronger weed, so their averages went up.  That doesn’t mean the indoor grows and potent weed weren’t there before.  It would be like picking a baseball team of eight Little Leaguers and Roberto Clemente in 1972 and comparing that team to five Little Leaguers and four Pittsburgh Pirates today and claiming baseball teams are 4x more talented than the 1970s.

50%-70% MORE CANCER-CAUSING than Cigarettes

50% to 70%?  Why the wiggle room?  It should be an easy calculation: count the people who got cancer from cigarettes, count the people who got cancer from cannabis, divide the difference by the former and you’ve got an exact percentage.  Now let’s see, Cancer.gov tells us:

Cigarette smoking and exposure to tobacco smoke cause an estimated average of 438,000 premature deaths each year in the United States. Of these premature deaths, about 40 percent are from cancer, 35 percent are from heart disease and stroke, and 25 percent are from lung disease…

So, 40% of 438,000 is 175,200 cancer cases caused by cigarettes.  For cannabis to be 50%-70% more cancer causing than cigarettes, it must have caused 262,800 to 297,840 cancer cases.  Do you know a single person who smoked cannabis only who ever got cancer?  Where is the cannabis cancer ward, anyway?

What they’re doing here is conflating carcinogens with carcinogenic.  Yes, cannabis smoke has carcinogens, as does every burning vegetable matter from campfires to Camels.  But it also contains THC, which has been shown to have anti-tumoral properties.  Dr. Donald Tashkin at UCLA Medical Center found in 2006 that not only did cannabis-only smokers not have any greater risk for head, neck, and lung cancer, but they had lesser risk of those cancers than did non-smokers.  That cannabis smoke contains carcinogenic molecules is no more frightening than water containing explosive molecules (hydrogen and oxygen) – the question isn’t “does it have carcinogens?”, the question is “does it cause cancer?”

MARIJUANA – What’s Good About Legalizing It?

I know it’s rhetorical, but how about checking kids’ ID, reallocating scarce police and court resources, realizing tax revenues, separating hard and soft drug markets, crippling Mexican drug trafficking organizations, ending discriminatory employment practices, reducing prescription drug and alcohol and hard drug use, reviving our American hemp heritage, living up to our Constitution, and treating adults like adults?

NOTHING

Oh.  So I guess you’re also for criminalizing alcohol and tobacco, right?  They’re addictive, potent, cancer-causing, and popular with kids, too.

Passage of Prop. 19 would mean: Marijuana could be SOLD IN GROCERY STORES.

You mean like alcohol and tobacco, where we check kids for ID, unlike marijuana, which is sold in parks and high school hallways?

Prop 19 does mean pot could be sold in grocery stores… if the government of your city approves that.  I seriously doubt any city is going to go that direction.  The handful of cities that may allow cannabis sales (remember, they aren’t required to) will probably keep it in marijuana-only dispensaries that are adults-only establishments.

Skyrocketing usage among Teens and Young people.

28% of young people aged 18-25 smoke pot once a year.  11% smoke pot twice a week.  85% of high school seniors say pot is “easy” to get.  25% can get a hold of a bag of weed in an hour or less.  It doesn’t seem as if prohibition is really stopping them from using cannabis now.  I find it hard to imagine it will be easier to access for kids when we’re checking people’s ID’s for it.

But let’s suppose that cannabis usage does go up among young people.  If that usage replaces binge drinking or pharmaceutical use among young people, we will have done them and society a great service.

“DRUGGED DRIVING” on Streets and Freeways.

This would be terrifying if you didn’t realize that Californians are smoking pot now and some already irresponsibly use cannabis and drive.  Those people are being arrested now for driving under the influence and Prop 19 specifically does not alter any laws against so-called “drugged driving”.  The people not smoking pot now because it is illegal are the type who like to obey laws, so why would these new pot smokers suddenly want to violate DUID laws?

The fact is that study after study has failed to show any causation between automobile accident and one’s cannabis use.  One study showed even the most stoned driver was no worse than an alcohol-using driver at a 0.05 blood-alcohol level (i.e. below “legally drunk”) and another study showed marijuana-using drivers performed no worse on simulators than when they were sober.  Nobody here is suggesting that you should chief bong hits and see how well you do on the road; what we are saying is that the risk public harm from stoned drivers is less than what we tolerate for alcohol and prescription drugs (or eating fast food while driving, for that matter.)

Higher COSTS for Everyone as Addictions SOAR.

First you have to believe marijuana is a gateway drug and I addressed that above.  Then you’d have to ignore the fact that 3 million Californians are smoking pot now and whatever negligible cost that entails is being paid by society now, while we take in nothing in tax revenue and spend a billion dollars failing to stop pot smoking.  Assuming we make nothing in taxes, we’d still have to see a billion dollars worth of new addiction costs to just break even on the money we’d save not prosecuting marijuana use after Prop 19.

Marijuana Operatives could buy THOUSANDS of Acres of farmland.

“Operatives?”  What are we, a spy agency now?  Aren’t these the people that complain about illegal immigrants setting up illegal marijuana farms in public forests?  Now you’re complaining that California citizens could set up legal marijuana farms on proper farmland?

Considering the plight of the average California farmer these days, I think most would applaud finding a new profitable use for their farmland.

Prop. 19 Means:
Messed up minds.
Messed up lives.
Messed up families.
California out of Control.

Prohibition is the abdication of control of marijuana to criminals.  Nobody is controlling where it will be grown, where it will be sold, or who is allowed to buys and sell it.  Lives and families are messed up when someone is caught using or growing it.  Minds are messed up when forced to assent to lies about marijuana in coerced rehab.

We don’t regulate alcohol because it doesn’t mess up minds, lives, and families.  We regulate it because we want government, not criminals like Al Capone, to have control over it and we’ve found it is the best way to mitigate the harms associated with alcohol by the few who abuse it.  Only prohibition makes marijuana more harmful to the user and society than alcohol.

New Jersey has become the 14th medical marijuana state

Since fourteen states have legalized the use of cannabis for sick and disabled people we here at NORML have reported on numerous stories of medical users harassed, arrested, and jailed by police.  We have also reported on healthy adults in all fifty states whose lives are turned upside down by an arrest, sometimes losing student loans, jobs, children, pets, dignity, property, and freedom over a single joint, seed, or even a cannabis stem.  When we and others bring up these insane injustices to the police who are making these arrests, we often hear the platitude that “cops don’t make the laws, we just enforce the laws.”

So why do we consistently see representatives of law enforcement opposing medical marijuana, marijuana decriminalization, and marijuana legalization efforts in state legislatures?

In California, the California Narcotics Officers Association schools police officers to believe the public “have been misled… into believing there is merit to their argument that smoking marijuana is a safe and effective medicine.” This is in direct contradiction of the stated position of the American Medical Association otherwise that “short term controlled trials indicate that smoked cannabis reduces neuropathic pain, improves appetite and caloric intake especially in patients with reduced muscle mass, and may relieve spasticity and pain in patients with multiple sclerosis.”

In New Jersey, the medical marijuana law was severely curtailed when the Assembly heard the unfounded assertion by a representative of New Jersey’s Fraternal Order of Police that “I’ve heard in California there’s a lot peripheral crime around these centers [medical marijuana dispensaries], I get that from the different law enforcement agencies around the country who I have regular contact with.”  This is in direct contradiction of the findings of the Chief of the LAPD who stated: “Banks are more likely to get robbed than medical marijuana dispensaries.”  The Chief was responding to the notion that there is greater crime around dispensaries and said “I have tried to verify that because that, of course, is the mantra.  It doesn’t really bear out.”

And in Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics & Dangerous Drugs Control publishes a “fact sheet” on marijuana that states: “Today’s new cultivation methods are producing a drug with up to 30 percent THC, or 3,000 percent higher than the old 1960’s-1980’s available marijuana.” This is in direct contradiction to the DEA’s own figures on marijuana potency which find that today’s average cannabis seizure may have doubled in THC potency (a 100% increase, not a 3,000% increase.)  Oklahoma’s bureau doesn’t address why 30% THC marijuana is to be feared, but 100% THC Marinol pills are FDA-approved.

ABC News / Washington Post Poll on public medical marijuana support

The attitudes of most in law enforcement are also contrary to the attitudes of the public.  A recent ABC News / Washington Post poll found that support for medical marijuana is now at 81% nationwide, with a majority overall (62% nationwide) who support a system at least as open as Oregon’s OMMA where not-necessarily terminal patients can only qualify if they suffer a specific condition from a list and a majority of those who support medical marijuana (56% of the 81% who support it) supporting an open system like California’s Prop-215 where “doctors should be able to prescribe medical marijuana to anyone they think it can help”.

POLICE Magazine survey on police medical marijuana support

But according to a June 2009 survey in POLICE Magazine, even though a majority (54.6%) of police say they support medical marijuana, almost all of those who support it (88%) say it must be only under stricter regulation than we have currently in the medical marijuana states.

Support in 2009 for marijuana legalization ranged from 38%-53%, depending on the poll.

When asked about marijuana legalization overall, even for healthy adults, the American Public are also contrary to the opinions of law enforcement.  The latest Angus Reid poll is the first to show majority American support for legalization (53%), while the latest Gallup poll puts support at 44%, its best mark in forty years of polling.

POLICE Magazine survey of police opinions on legalization

But according to the same POLICE survey, marijuana legalization has less than half the support among cops than among the public they protect and serve.  Only 23% of police supported re-legalization of cannabis.

When asked why, specifically, those police who opposed re-legalization felt that way, eight in ten said that marijuana is a “gateway drug”, there was the danger of “people driving high”, and seven in ten cited the “harm to user and society”.  Longtime NORML readers know that the gateway drug theory has been debunked by the Institutes of Medicine in 1999 and every reputable study over the past ten years.  While everybody, especially NORML, discourages driving under the influence of cannabis, we understand that there are people behaving irresponsibly now and re-legalization would not encourage less responsibility, but more.  Under re-legalization, money raised from taxes could sponsor anti-stoned-driving campaigns like the ones that have successfully reduced drunk driving.

Majority of Americans believe Marijuana is Safer

As for the “harm to user and society”, POLICE readers still felt by a margin of 3-2 that alcohol was “more of a threat to the community” than marijuana.  (The survey does not record the support among police for reinstating alcohol prohibition to prevent alcohol’s “harm to user and society”, however.)  This 39% of police who believe marijuana is safer than alcohol comes closest to matching public opinion, which shows now a slim majority (51%) believe marijuana is safer than alcohol.

If marijuana users are to be punished, 3 in 4 support no more than a civil fine

While the general public is barely approaching majority support for outright marijuana legalization, the public has long held the belief that any punishment for adult marijuana possession should be a fine only.  Three out of four Americans (76%) believe that if marijuana users are to be punished, they should only be fined and not arrested and sent to jail.  Yet the POLICE Magazine survey finds that two out of three cops (65%) think it is “worth law enforcement’s time to bust marijuana users”.

Another area where police opinions differ from the public is on the issue of the murderous Mexican drug gangs that have assassinated, kidnapped, murdered, tortured, and beheaded over 15,000 Mexicans in just two years.  The Arizona Attorney General has cited that “marijuana sales make up 75 percent of the money that Mexican cartels use for other operations, including smuggling other drugs and fighting the Mexican army and police.” But in the POLICE Magazine survey, two-thirds of cops (68%) believe marijuana legalization would have no “favorable impact on problems associated with gangs and cartels.”

So do the police know something about the dangers of cannabis use that the American Medical Association, the American people, and the Arizona Attorney General do not?  A cynic might think that police are merely acting in their own best interest, protecting their source of easy statistic-padding arrests and asset forfeiture bounty, but I’m more inclined to believe many of these front-line soldiers in the War on Marijuana are acting in good faith based on terrible misinformation about cannabis.

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When you make pot users walk through the "illegal drugs" gateway, are you surprised they come into contact with illegal drugs?

All together now, and with gusto: “The gateway drug theory is a myth!”

(PubMed, US Nat’l Institutes of Health) BACKGROUND: It is unclear whether the normative sequence of drug use initiation, beginning with tobacco and alcohol, progressing to cannabis and then other illicit drugs, is due to causal effects of specific earlier drug use promoting progression, or to influences of other variables such as drug availability and attitudes. One way to investigate this is to see whether risk of later drug use in the sequence, conditional on use of drugs earlier in the sequence, changes according to time-space variation in use prevalence. We compared patterns and order of initiation of alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and other illicit drug use across 17 countries with a wide range of drug use prevalence.

METHOD: Analyses used data from World Health Organization (WHO) World Mental Health (WMH) Surveys, a series of parallel community epidemiological surveys using the same instruments and field procedures carried out in 17 countries throughout the world.

RESULTS: Initiation of “gateway” substances (i.e. alcohol, tobacco and cannabis) was differentially associated with subsequent onset of other illicit drug use based on background prevalence of gateway substance use. Cross-country differences in substance use prevalence also corresponded to differences in the likelihood of individuals reporting a non-normative sequence of substance initiation.

CONCLUSION: These results suggest the “gateway” pattern at least partially reflects unmeasured common causes rather than causal effects of specific drugs on subsequent use of others. This implies that successful efforts to prevent use of specific “gateway” drugs may not in themselves lead to major reductions in the use of later drugs.

The only gateway between marijuana and the use of harder drugs is that gateway labeled “illegal drug users go this way” that the government pushes you through if you’re using cannabis.  You know why they don’t call tequila a gateway drug?  Because people who use tequila can’t buy heroin on the same shelf as tequila!  Because people who use tequila aren’t considered “druggies”.  Because when someone tries tequila for the first time, most of what they have been told about it turns out to be true, and they don’t think “well, they lied about tequila, they must have been lying about cocaine, too!”  Because people who use tequila don’t figure “well, I guess I’ve already tried ‘drugs’, I may as well try some others.”

If sugar and caffeine were considered illegal drugs (and I can make a better argument for banning them than cannabis, not that I would), you can damn sure bet that Mountain Dew would be considered a gateway drug.  After all, that’s the first addictive substance I ever got hooked on (and it’s done more health damage to me than cannabis ever will!)

Monday we brought you the latest figures from the Monitoring the Future survey which showed that for the first time in the 8th, 10th, & 12th grade, more kids are smoking marijuana than cigarettes.  This is due to a dramatic drop in teen use of tobacco, coupled with a slight increase in teen use of marijuana.  Teen use of other drugs has fallen for every illegal substance surveyed but marijuana, so naturally the reefer mad prohibitionists are spinning the data as evidence that the marijuana law reform debate is seducing our children!

(WHSV Virginia) A recently released survey suggests teenagers are smoking more marijuana. Some experts believe that could be because of the increased use of medical marijuana or the fact that it’s readily available.

Like cigarettes, marijuana, commonly referred to as weed or pot, is a gateway drug.

Now I can point you to the surveys showing that teen use of marijuana declined following passage of medical marijuana in each state that did so, at a rate greater than the national average.  The slight uptick over the past two years still doesn’t counter the fact the teen use is far lower now than before California passed Prop 215 in 1996.

But it may be easier to just use their own reefer madness against them.  You say marijuana is a “gateway drug”, yet teen use of all drugs except marijuana has gone down.  So how, exactly, is that gateway working?  Seems to me that some may be switching to marijuana instead of other harmful drugs.

(Injury Board Blog, Lansing, MI) In the survey of 47,097 students, the researchers found that cigarette smoking, binge drinking, and methamphetamine use are down. However, the news on increased marijuana use is discouraging. Furthermore, despite the fact that marijuana is the most popular drug amongst teenagers, the researchers still found an increase in prescription drug abuse in the students, particularly Vicodin and Oxycontin.

So, then, is marijuana use the gateway to legal drugs like Vicodin and Oxycontin?  I doubt it, since teens are informed enough to know that those drugs flush through your system quickly and won’t endanger their spot on the football team, chess club, or student loan application from a random drug test, unlike marijuana.  I think the gateway to prescription drug abuse is parents that don’t strictly control the access to their prescriptions.  Parents that will lock the liquor cabinet in the kitchen to protect their kids often don’t consider locking the medicine cabinet in the bathroom.

White House drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, attributes the increase in marijuana use to a lack of education about the dangers of smoking pot. He believes that the alarming trend emphasizes the greater need for parents and authorities to increase anti-marijuana campaigns.

Well, of course he does.  Here’s the problem: the last anti-marijuana campaigns you guys tried backfired and caused more teens to want to try marijuana!  Here’s another problem: smoking pot just isn’t all that dangerous.  It’s not harmless – no mind-altering substance is – but you’re not going to overdose, you’re not going to have major withdrawal, you’re not going to get sick and puke, you’re not going to steal to feed your habit, you’re not going to become belligerent and harm others, you’re not going to fry your brain, you’re not going to be poisoning your liver, and you’re not going to get cancer.

If you want to reduce teen marijuana use, as we do, you can’t rely on lies and scaremongering in the age of “the Google”.  Tell a kid that the joint you found in his pocket means a one-way ticket to being an unemployed cancer-ridden heroin junkie and three clicks on a computer will make you a liar.  Then when you need to tell him or her about the real dangers of other drugs you have no credibility.

(Marietta Times) Warren High School sophomore Tylar Kinkade, 16, said she has encountered teen drug and alcohol use since she started high school. The national study indicates about a third of all high school students have used marijuana within the past year.

Kinkade said on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the most dangerous, alcohol would be about a three, marijuana a five and prescription drugs would score a nine.

“We’re taught that all drugs are bad, but when it comes to danger, I think most of us think some are more dangerous than others,” she said.

And based on what you’ve been taught, Tylar, it seems you’d feel safer drinking at a house party than smoking a joint.  Teens just like you die every year from binge drinking at parties, but never from smoking a joint, and the “all drugs are bad” education you’ve received is going to lead you to more dangerous choices.  (By the way, I’d give marijuana a 2, prescription drugs a 7, and alcohol an 8.)

(DEA) Exposing the Myth of Smoked Medical Marijuana

Q. Does marijuana have any medical value?

…The American Medical Association recommends that marijuana remain a Schedule I controlled substance.

And now today when you go to that same link…

Q. Does marijuana have any medical value?

And the AMA reference is gone.  Congrats to the folks at LEAP who spearheaded the campaign to harass the DEA about it.  (Though if you want to believe it was the fast response of the loyal frontline battle grunts in the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs™ known as “Stashers” that provided the “bump” that put the DEA over the edge, well, I’m not going to disabuse you of that notion.  Whatever keeps you writing to your government is fine with me.)

But the rest of the document needs some serious fixing, too…

…The Institute of Medicine conducted a comprehensive study in 1999 to assess the potential health benefits of marijuana and its constituent cannabinoids. The study concluded that smoking marijuana is not recommended for the treatment of any disease condition. In addition, there are more effective medications currently available. For those reasons, the Institute of Medicine concluded that there is little future in smoked marijuana as a medically approved medication.

See?  The AMA in 2009 recognizes “smoked cannabis reduces neuropathic pain, improves appetite and caloric intake especially in patients with reduced muscle mass, and may relieve spasticity and pain in patients with multiple sclerosis.” So the DEA removes that current reference and replaces it with a contrary reference from a decade ago.  (I often win arguments this way, like my trivia contest where I guessed there were nine planets, the 49′ers had the most Super Bowl trophies, and Bill Clinton was the president.)

But it is nice to know that the DEA recognizes that decade-old reference from the Institute of Medicine’s 1999 Study: Marijuana and Medicine, Assessing the Science Base.  For it, too, recognizes the “Scientific data indicate the potential therapeutic value of cannabinoid drugs, primarily THC, for pain relief, control of nausea and vomiting, and appetite stimulation”.  It also rebukes the DEA’s statement that “smoking marijuana is not recommended for the treatment of any disease condition” when the study concludes, “for certain patients, such as the terminally ill or those with debilitating symptoms, the long-term risks [of smoked marijuana] are not of great concern.”

It’s nice that the DEA cites the 1999 IOM study, especially when they claim:

Q. Is marijuana a gateway drug?

* Yes. Among marijuana’s most harmful consequences is its role in leading to the use of other illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine.

…while the IOM study says, “There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs.”

…In other studies, smoked marijuana has been shown to cause a variety of health problems, including cancer, respiratory problems, increased heart rate, loss of motor skills, and increased heart rate.

And not only that, I also hear it can cause increased heart rate.  But not cancer; in fact, cannabis users show a reduced risk of head, neck, and lung cancers compared to non-using controls.  And not respiratory problems, at least not seriously debilitating problems like emphysema and COPD.  And not a loss of motor skills in any permanent or even long-lasting way.  Sure, you don’t smoke a blunt and then go see how well you’ll do on the driver’s test, but a couple of hours later and you’re no worse to drive than anybody else.  But I do hear that it can cause an increased heart rate… an increase about the same as walking up a flight of stairs.

…It’s also important to realize that the campaign to allow marijuana to be used as medicine is a tactical maneuver in an overall strategy to completely legalize all drugs. …. The New York Times interviewed Ethan Nadelman, [when asked] “Will it help lead toward marijuana legaization?” Mr. Nadelman said: “I hope so.”

I’m not sure what “legaization” is, but maybe there is a shortage of “L’s” at the DEA.  Anyway, let’s look at this tactical maneuver.  According to the DEA, Ethan Nadelmann and the rest of us “legaizers” are following this strategy:

1. Scenario: All (currently illicit) drugs are illegal.
2. Goal: Legalize all (currently illicit) drugs.
3. Tactic: Convince voters that they should make one (currently illicit) drug available to very sick or disabled people under very strict conditions.
4. Premise: Once voters are accustomed to sick people using one drug, they’ll decide that all people should be able to use all drugs.

How exactly does that work?  How is it that Joe Q. Public sees a cancer patient smoking a joint and decides, “You know, if they put up an initiative to put meth-flavored lollipops in the 7-Eleven, I’ll vote for it!”

The very notion that medical marijuana is a “Trojan horse” is both an insult to the public’s intelligence and an endorsement of the legalization we seek!  Are they really suggesting that the only way they can keep the public from rejecting prohibition as a policy is to make sure people in pain don’t smoke pot?  The fact that they think a public exposed to a non-punitive, regulatory solution to drug control will be inexorably drawn to more of those non-punitive regulatory solutions for more people and other drugs just shows you how bankrupt prohibitionist ideology is!  They can’t support it with reason, they can only support it through the barrel of a cop’s gun.

Overall, “the public health burden of cannabis use is probably modest compared with that of alcohol, tobacco, and other illicit drugs,” Australian researchers reported in the Oct. 17 issue of The Lancet.

Wayne Hall, PhD, of the University of Queensland in Herston, Australia, and Louisa Degenhardt, PhD, of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, reviewed nearly 100 studies covering acute as well as chronic effects of marijuana, including reports of the prevalence of marijuana use around the world.

Globally, they wrote, about 3.9% of the world’s population used marijuana in 2006, according to United Nations statistics.

Well it opens nicely by noting that cannabis is safer and that almost 1 out of 25 people worldwide use cannabis. It gets a bit dicey from there:

They spent more time detailing the psychomotor impairments associated with the marijuana high. “Some experimental studies have shown diminished driving performance in response to emergency situations,” Hall and Degenhardt said, findings also corroborated in epidemiological studies.

For example, one study of car crash victims found that they were more likely to have tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive component of marijuana, in their blood compared with age- and sex-matched controls.

Another study determined that motorists killed in wrecks were 2.5 times as likely to have been responsible for the accident when they had THC in their blood.

These are meaningless points when you recognize that:

1. Marijuana is the third-most used drug after alcohol and tobacco, so it is not surprising you’d find it in car crash victims;
2. Marijuana is detectable in the blood long after most other drugs, including alcohol, are not; and
3. Recent studies show that people can test positive for THC in the blood up to a week after ceasing their use of cannabis.

Few somatic effects of chronic use have been documented, Hall and Degenhardt found, except for several case-control studies suggesting promotion of lung cancer. Also, THC increases heart rate in a dose-dependent way, perhaps increasing risks for people with preexisting cardiovascular disease.

Yet when we look at populations of chronic cannabis users, we don’t find any link to lung cancer or heart attacks. In fact, we’re finding that cannabis may be a key to preventing and curing cancer!

Cognitive effects while high are, of course, well recognized, but their persistence is less clear, Hall and Degenhardt said. Some studies say cognitive impairment remains in chronic heavy users even after they quit, but others indicate that recovery of function is the rule.

I’d say we just find some old dudes who’ve smoked pot for fifty or more years and put them in a Jeopardy tournament with old dudes who’ve been drinking for fifty or more years and let’s settle this once and for all!

Similar uncertainty clouds the research on whether marijuana fosters use of other, arguably more dangerous, drugs such as cocaine and heroin, the researchers said. People who use marijuana are more likely to use other illicit drugs as well, but causality has been difficult to prove.

How about “impossible to prove”? The Institute of Medicine in 1999 and every other study since has concluded that there is no “gateway effect”. The only gateway in marijuana is to the dealer of illegal drugs. You know why they don’t call tequila a gateway drug? Because you can’t buy cocaine, heroin, or meth on the shelf next to it.

Marijuana use has also been linked to increased risk of psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia and, less consistently, depression.

Except that, worldwide and nationally, the rates of schizophrenia and psychosis remain virtually static even as cannabis use and potency rises and falls. A recent ten-year analysis of data from the UK found no increase in schizophrenia and psychosis even as rates of cannabis use exploded.

Overall, they concluded that marijuana is clearly associated with negative health and psychosocial consequences, but these are not as major as for some other drugs, and the causal relations remain unproven.

“The focus of epidemiological and clinical research should be on clarifying the causative role of cannabis for these adverse health effects,” the authors said.

Really? You looked and looked and found that lots of people use cannabis and you couldn’t prove that it did much harm to them, so the the focus going forward should be to prove that cannabis did harm them? How about accepting that as drugs go, cannabis is probably the safest one out there, the most beneficial to the most people and the least harmful to society?

They also cited a recent study estimating that marijuana accounted for about 0.2% of the total disease burden in Australia, a nation with one of the world’s highest rates of cannabis use. Its health impact was one-tenth that of alcohol and one-fortieth that of tobacco, the study found.

That makes for a nice sound bite: Cannabis – ten times less damaging to society than alcohol, forty times less damaging to society than tobacco, and yet still illegal.