This 2011 Reefer Madness propaganda is Anslinger Approved!

It’s end-of-year retrospective time!  While my colleagues on the NORML Blog (go check out the new look that matches the new site) are going to bring you the biggest marijuana news stories of 2011, here at The Daily Stash Blog we’re going to bring you stories that may have fallen through the cracks of other drug policy 2011 remembrances.

Today we bring you the Top Ten “Reefer Madness” Stories of 2011.  ”Reefer Madness”, of course, is the 1936 anti-pot propaganda film showing young people becoming crazed and violent on the effects of “reefer”.  Today, we use “Reefer Madness” as shorthand to describe the hysterical warnings by the anti-drug zealots as reported unchallenged by a complacent media.

Tomorrow we’ll look at the Top Ten Cannabis Science Stories of 2011.  Thursday we’ll cover the Top Ten “Stupid Stoner Stories” of 2011.  Friday we’ll cover the Top Ten People in Marijuana of 2011.

Top Ten “Reefer Madness” Stories of 2011 (audio mp3)

10. Oregonian editorial board hypes fears of medical marijuana and teen pot smoking

(The Oregonian – “Seeing through the smoke” editorial) It’s about time someone took action on the increasing number of medical marijuana dispensaries. … Right now, anyone, including teenagers, can apply [for a medical marijuana card]. A study done by Oregon Partnership found, for example, that 35 percent of students at Wilson High School and 46 percent at Marshall High School knew someone with a card.

Unlike the Oregonian editorial board, I check sources (I work for NORML: I have to.) The survey they refer to was addressed at a Marshall High community town hall meeting. The poll was conducted by students as part of a project called “SMASH” in a “confidential, random, peer-to-peer” survey – meaning one high school kid asking another high school kid. We have no control group, no control for confounding variables, not even a mention of the survey size or the randomness of those polled (maybe the SMASH kids are more likely to “randomly” speak to their friend, for instance, or stood in the hall and talked to anyone passing by who would answer.)

But besides all the methodological issues arising from trusting the polling data of high school kids talking to their friends, it’s important to note what their survey actually said:

PERCEPTION: Students surveyed believed that 8 out of 10 students smoke marijuana

REALITY: 7 out of 10 students DO NOT smoke marijuana

Kids surveyed thought 77.3% of others were smoking marijuana.  76.07% of kids never smoked marijuana, another 12.27% smoked it once or twice a month.  So, kids think 3 out of 4 other kids smoke pot when 3 out of 4 kids actually don’t.  Where, oh, where could the kids be getting the message that youth cannabis smoking is out of control, when, in fact, Oregon’s 12th grade monthly cannabis use rates have declined 14% (before | after) since 1999, when medical marijuana got underway in Oregon?

9. Papa John’s Pizza supports driver who reported medical marijuana patient to police

You would think that pizza delivery companies would understand who their customers are and that a great number of them smoke marijuana.  If you’re a pizza delivery company in Colorado, you’d understand that many of the marijuana smokers in your delivery area may be legally using cannabis for medicinal purposes.  But apparently Papa John’s pizza in Colorado doesn’t care too much about its drivers violating the privacy of its customers who are medical marijuana patients.

(9News) The man was smoking medical marijuana just before the pizza arrived on Friday evening. The delivery driver smelled the marijuana and called the cops. The Papa John’s employee, who was not identified, was concerned because the customer’s 9-year-old daughter was in the house.

8. The annual scaremongering about marijuana-laced Halloween treats begins now

L.A. County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Glen Walsh said parents should definitely inspect the candy their children bring home after trick-or-treating.

Walsh said a pungent smell or an odd taste can serve as indicators on whether the food contains marijuana. As for the potency of the marijuana-laced prodcuts, Walsh said the level of THC, the chemical found in marijuana, can vary from zero to over 90 percent.

OK, so watch closely, parents.  You don’t want your kid getting a candy with 0% THC in it.  But if you find any of that 90% THC stuff, you can send it my way for proper disposal.

How stupid is this?  First off, if there is a person out there who would intentionally hand THC-laden treats to children, they are a criminal.  They’d be just as likely to poison Halloween treats or put pins or razor blades in them.. which is an urban legend with no truth to it whatsoever.

Second, if you are a person who uses THC-laden treats for medical or recreational purposes, why are you handing out a $20 “Buddafinger” when you could pass out a 20-cent “Butterfinger”?  You want to be so sure some kid you don’t know and won’t see gets high that you’ll spend 10 times more on Halloween candy?

7. Portland Reporter Anna Canzano: A medical marijuana-hating sheriff’s best friend

[Oregon Sheriff's Association President] Tom Bergin said at the rate Oregon is going, he believes Oregon is three times sicker than California. Why? Well, more than 90 percent of cardholders say they’re using pot to treat pain — not glaucoma or cancer — as the bill was initially marketed.

Here are the facts from the state’s medical marijuana program registry:

• There are 49,220 medical marijuana patients
• There are 44,756 patients who indicate chronic pain as a qualifying condition

So Canzano, Bergin, and every prohibitionist who scoffs at people in serious pain treating it with a non-toxic herb pull out their calculators and exclaim “90% of cardholders are using it for pain, not glaucoma or cancer!”  (The number is actually 90.9%.)

What Canzano distorts lies in the word “not”.  Under Oregon law, a registry cardholder can qualify under more than one condition.  The state even puts “A patient may have more than one diagnosed qualifying medical condition” right there on the website where you got the numbers to crunch.  Are we to believe people with cancer and glaucoma don’t suffer chronic pain as well?

6. Florida Woman Sues Over Being Arrested for Sage

A woman in Florida who was arrested for felony marijuana possession is suing for wrongful arrest. She might just have a case, she was charged with marijuana possession even though the bag they caught her with turned out to be Sage. 49 year old, Robin Brown says a Broward County Sheriff’s deputy caught her while she was bird watching back in March of 2009. He used his field kit on the herb she had in a bag, and said that in the field it tested positive for marijuana. The deputy sent the 50 grams of substance to a state crime lab.

Her lawsuit says that she was arrested before the test was performed. Her arrest was ordered by the Assistant State Attorney, Mark Horn, in June of 2009. She was arrested at her place of business, Massage Envy in Weston. She said that she was arrested in front of co-workers and her customers and subjected to a full body cavity search during her overnight stay in jail. When her lawyer discovered the herbs had not been tested a second time, he used the courts to force the tests which determined what Ms. Brown was contending all along, her sage was completely marijuana free.

5. Teen dies after plastic fumes scar lungs, media blames synthetic pot

The boy smoked the fake marijuana out of a plastic PEZ candy dispenser. The chemicals in the drugs caused extensive damage to his lungs. Brandon was put on a respirator in June and had a double lung transplant in September.

So, we’re to assume here it was the K2 that scarred the boys lungs and not the freakin’ fumes from the melting plastic of a PEZ dispenser?!?

Tonya Rice told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper Brandon was put on a respirator in June after smoking Spice fake cannabis, which is said to be ten times more dangerous than cocaine.

Not to be cruel or insensitive about the boy’s death, but he didn’t suddenly die from the acute effects of K2 use.  He used it in June, fell very ill, was given a double lung transplant, and died from an infection because of his lowered immune system in October.  So, to compare, we have cocaine, which can give you a heart attack by overdose and kill you the minute you snort / smoke / inject it, versus a synthetic cannabinoid smoked through plastic, requiring a double lung transplant, leading to a fatal infection four months later in the hospital that kills one boy.  We’re not trying to say K2 is safe – it isn’t – but it’s not “ten times more dangerous than cocaine”.

4. CASA’s Joe Califano blames marijuana for Arizona shooter

I haven’t seen press reports or talking heads discuss their concern about how easy it has been for this mentally ill young man to get marijuana. And there has been no mention of the potential of marijuana to spark latent psychosis and exacerbate schizophrenia and other mental illnesses.

So as we continue to think about this killer and his deranged mind, we should be asking this question: Is Jared Loughner an individual whose psychosis was prompted or exacerbated by the use of marijuana?

Gee, Joe, what do you think we ought to do?  Make marijuana illegal?  Lock up people who use it?  Break down their doors at night and shoot their dogs?  Use helicopters and infrared to eradicate the plant wherever it’s grown?  Throw billions at American and Mexican law enforcement for armor and weapons to fight its traffickers?  Train dogs to sniff it out?  Drug test employees, high schoolers, even middle schoolers to detect its use?

The facts are that 1% of the population exhibits schizophrenia, whether it is 1979 and 60% of high school seniors have tried marijuana or it is 1992 and 33% have tried it.  A study of 186 UK mental hospitals found no increase in schizophrenia or psychosis admissions, despite use rates of cannabis increasing greatly during that decade.

3. UK Daily Mail: Cannabis ‘kills 30,000 a year’

Cannabis ‘kills 30,000 a year’

Oh, dear.  From zero deaths* in 5,000 years of human use to ’30,000 a year’.  That sounds serious.  Let’s read on…

More than 30,000 cannabis smokers could die every year, doctors warn today.

Wait, “could die”?  We’ve gone from the active headline verb “kills” to the lede adverb “could”?  Usually you bury that wiggle room somewhere in paragraph umpteen.  Continue…

Professor John Henry, a leading authority on the drug, said the change – due to take place this summer – had undermined doctors’ efforts to highlight the risks.

He said: “Cannabis is as dangerous as cigarette smoking – in fact, it may be even worse – and downgrading its legal status has simply confused people.”

“May be” worse?  Where are the wards full of cannabis smokers?  Britain actually has some level of health care worthy of a civilized (civilised) people.  You’d think the National Health Service would bring these figures up.  It sounds like quite a cost to the government.

2. American Cancer Society says marijuana use can lead to amputation

Although it is rare, severe shutdown of blood circulation to the arms or legs has been reported in young people who smoked marijuana. In some cases, it was so severe that amputation was required.

In all my years beating back reefer madness, this is a first.  I have never heard a story of someone’s marijuana use leading to amputation.  I have covered stories of people who use marijuana for their already-existing amputation, since it is a superior medication for “phantom” pain, and I’ve covered one double-amputee diabetic’s eviction for her medical marijuana use, though.

1. Butt-chugging, vodka tampons, drinking bleach, and other parent-frightening urban legends

(KPHO) [School Resource Officer Chris] Thomas spends his days patrolling the halls of a Valley high school. He’s heard first hand how kids are getting tipsy.

“What we’re hearing about is teenagers utilizing tampons, soak them in vodka first before using them,” Thomas said.

“This is definitely not just girls,” Thomas said. “Guys will also use it and they’ll insert it into their rectums.”

Rather than the traditional beer bong you’d find at a college party, kids are sticking the tube elsewhere to get wasted.

They’re calling it “butt chugging.”

Rrrighttt… young teenage males, typically the most homophobic and self-conscious creatures on the planet, are dropping trou in front of their peers and inserting plastic tubes up their ass to chug beer.  And the vodka tampons?  Huffington Post reports that “the practice remains unverified despite multiple reports of incidents in the U.S. and elsewhere” and that a blogger “conducted her own informal trial to see whether the purported method worked“, where she notes the alcohol dissolves the glue and consistency of the tampon so much it couldn’t be inserted and that even if it were inserted, the burn you’d feel on your sensitive lady parts would not make this an enjoyable drunk.  Plus, the idea that it would help teens avoid detection with no alcohol on their breath is false, as alcohol metabolizes in your breath no matter how you ingest it.

Someday we will look at the American Cancer Society's stance on cannabis like we look at medieval barbers' thoughts on bloodletting.

Seriously, American Cancer Society, you’re publishing this Reefer Madness on your “Complementary and Alternative Medicine” data sheet in medical marijuana?

Many researchers agree that marijuana contains known carcinogens, or chemicals that can cause cancer.

All researchers agree that water contains a known explosive, hydrogen, a volatile element that can ignite with as little as a static electricity spark.  That doesn’t mean water can cause explosions.  Chemistry matters.  Yes, cannabis smoke — all smoke — contains carcinogens.  But cannabis smoke also contains THC, which has been shown to have anti-tumoral effects and inhibits cancer cell growth through apoptosis (cell “suicide”).

Results of epidemiologic studies of marijuana and cancer risk have been inconsistent, and most recent epidemiologic studies have not found a substantial effect on cancer risk. However, some researchers caution that these studies are difficult to conduct, as some people may not be truthful about illegal habits such as smoking marijuana, and that these negative results should not be interpreted as convincing evidence of safety.

Uh… what?  We do studies that can’t distinguish an increased risk of cancer from pot smoking, but folks lie about pot, so we can’t trust the studies?  Well, that would mean the either the people who don’t get cancer are lying about smoking pot, or people who do get cancer are lying about not smoking pot.  The former doesn’t make much sense, so the author must assume there are a whole bunch of pot smokers in cancer wards who are lying about it and blaming it on something else.

Seems quite a stretch to me, especially when Dr. Tashkin studied thousands of pot smokers for 30 years, concluding “We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use.  What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect.”

They caution that smoking marijuana may decrease reproductive function,…

Willie Nelson has seven kids.  Snoop Dogg has three kids.  Tommy Chong has five kids.  Bob Marley has eleven kids.  Just sayin’ those reproductive scares have been studied, too, and they’re bunk.

…cause lung disease, and increase the risk of cancer of the lungs, mouth, and tongue. It may also suppress the body’s immune system…

Sure, right, that’s why doctors recommend it for AIDS patients who have the most compromised immune systems of any patient.  That’s why I rarely get colds and never get the flu, despite passing joints and pipes from the lips of many other pot smokers to mine own.  This immune system scare is bunk, too.

…and increase the risk of leukemia in children whose mothers smoke marijuana during pregnancy. Women who are pregnant or breastfeeding should not use marijuana.

Pregnancy is always a critical time for wise healthcare and women should be cautious about their use of any substances while pregnant.  However, cannabis can be much safer for pregnancy-related health issues than many prescriptions commonly given to expectant mothers.

The symptoms of a marijuana overdose include nausea, vomiting, hacking cough, disturbances to heart rhythms, and numbness in the limbs.

“Marijuana overdose”?  Then you admit that there is a “dose” of marijuana that would be medically acceptable?  What they are describing here are the immediate effects of taking a huge bong hit, effects that diminish very rapidly.

Chronic use can also lead to laryngitis, bronchitis, and general apathy.

Yes, chronic inhalation of hot smoke of any kind can lead to laryngitis and bronchitis.  But the “amotivational syndrome” – the apathy – has been long since debunked (see above Nelson, Dogg, Chong, & Marley as examples, then add in Michael Phelps, Carl Sagan, Sir Richard Branson…)

With chronic use, the ability to learn and remember new information may become impaired.

Really?  I just learned and memorized bass lines and lyrics to ten new songs for my band.  This month I’ve been learning the new Joomla back-end of the NORML website.  Every year I am analyzing changing data and from memory can tell you last year there were 853,000 arrests for marijuana comprising 52% of all drug arrests, 15.8 million adults using marijuana monthly, and the highest recorded potency of seized marijuana came in at 37.2% in a sample taken by cops in San Jose in 2007.  If I couldn’t learn and remember new information on a daily basis, I would have been unable to produce 810 daily talk radio shows.

Although it is rare, severe shutdown of blood circulation to the arms or legs has been reported in young people who smoked marijuana. In some cases, it was so severe that amputation was required.

In all my years beating back reefer madness, this is a first.  I have never heard a story of someone’s marijuana use leading to amputation.  I have covered stories of people who use marijuana for their already-existing amputation, since it is a superior medication for “phantom” pain, and I’ve covered one double-amputee diabetic’s eviction for her medical marijuana use, though.

Marijuana may also serve as a trigger for a heart attack on rare occasions, usually within an hour after smoking.

If you are a person with a weak heart, your risk of heart attack due to the increase of heart rate associated with marijuana smoking does increase.  It increases by about the same factor as if you and your weak heart climb a flight of stairs or engage in sex.  It’s like noting that your risk of being eaten by a shark greatly increases if you live in California rather than Iowa.  It’s true, but it’s misleading.

Allergic reactions, some severe, have been reported.

Like peanuts or latex or bee stings?  Sure, so if you find you’re allergic to those or cannabis, don’t subject yourself to them.

It is so frustrating to see the American Cancer Society in such opposition to the plant that shows the greatest promise in treating and curing cancer.

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1. Herman Cain endorses states rights for medical marijuana
2. Heavy alcohol use linked to higher chance of lung cancer, not pot smoking
3. Teens allegedly using vodka tampons and “butt-chugging”

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• Kids with higher IQs use more drugs as adults
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• Live caller asks about heart attack risk from marijuana smoking

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• Washington’s I-502 forces reformers to make tough moral decisions

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1. Study: whites and Native Americans whose youth have the greatest drug use rates
2. San Diego landlords are given the go-ahead to evict dispensary tenants
3. K2 linked to heart attacks in young people
4. Missouri Show-Me Cannabis Regulation gets approval for signature gathering
5. Russian pilot likes getting high

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1. American Society of Addiction Medicine rebukes California chapter’s support of marijuana legalization
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4. Chicago Alderman file ordinance to treat minor marijuana possession as a $200 ticket

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• Idaho NewsChannel 7 KTVB should be ashamed of their slanted hit piece on the medical marijuana campaign of Compassionate Idaho

(Guardian UK) “I first took coke when I was 18 and at university. I remember two friends who did chemistry told me I should get really drunk first because it would mix into this new chemical in my blood and make me even higher,” a 30-year-old woman who works in publishing told the Observer yesterday.

What her friends did not tell her is that the combination of cocaine and alcohol in her then teenage body will have left a highly toxic chemical in her liver called cocaethylene.

For not only is cocaethylene toxic in the liver, it is also blamed for heart attacks in the under-40s and a surge in social problems. But because so little is known about the drug, few experts can agree on the nature of the threat to users, and indeed society as a whole.

Cocaine-related deaths are also increasing in the US. The US National Household Drug Survey estimated that around five million people used alcohol and cocaine each month.

Yes, but five million people also realize that they can have a great Friday or Saturday night out on the town, dancing and drinking til the wee morning hours, with a bump of coke every now and then, sleep it off Sunday, and unless their workplace random drug testing pops them early on Monday morning, they can probably pass a urine screen.

But if 14 million people wanted to have a fun weekend with a toke of a natural, herbal social relaxant shared communally among friends, knowing it is non-toxic to their liver and far safer to themselves and society than alcohol or cocaine or mixing the two, a workplace random drug test anytime in the next week to a month means chugging nasty-tasting body flushes and water or mixing up freeze-dried urine, strapping it to their thighs along with a chemical hand warmer and maybe even wearing a prosthetic penis to be certain they can beat the pee test and continue to pay their mortgages and feed their families.

A new article on MedPage today claims that we still don’t fully understand the health risks of cannabis use:

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.

Will do.

What Parents Need to Know About Pot

Marijuana packs a bigger wallop now than it did in the ’70s.

Parents may just want to listen up: The most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that among marijuana users over age 12, almost 35 percent used marijuana 20 or more days in the past month.

Ah, statistics.  What stood out to you in that sentence?  Did you get “age 12″, “35%”, and “20 days a month”?  Preceded by a call to parents, right?  Oh my god, one third of our kids are getting stoned two-thirds of the time!

But here’s the thing – that’s all marijuana users over age 12, even the ones age 18 to 100 who are long past needing their parents’ guidance on adult decisions.

Now, indeed, the statistic is true.  Nice thing about the intertubes is you can check their math.  Visit the Substance Abuse Mental Health Data Archive (SAMHDA) and you can run something called Quick Tables.  You can choose four different “Measures of Marijuana Use”, like “Number of Days Used Marijuana in the Past Twelve Months”.  You can choose eight different “Respondent Characteristics”, like “Age Group”.  Then it will build you the table and even a bar graph if you like.

There are about 248 million Americans aged 12 and older.  For the 25 million people age 12 and older who will smoke marijuana this year, it is true that 35.6% will smoke 100 days or more in the past year (so, not exactly “20 or more days a month”, more like “8 or more days a month”).  But for the 12-17 age group, the number is actually 28%.

Now, that still sounds scary, huh?  But this is just the numbers of the kids who do smoke pot.  There are 25 million kids aged 12-17 and 880,000 of them are smoking pot “8 or more times a month”.  That’s 3.5% of all kids.  Think of it as 7 out of 200 getting stoned one-fourth of the time; not 1 out of three getting stoned two-thirds of the time.

I still think that’s not a great number, but then I’d point out that these are the results that have been achieved through forty years of “drug war”.  These are the results achieved when the government spends $1 billion on teen anti-drug ads that actually encouraged marijuana use.  In the same period of time, we have reduced cigarette smoking among 12th graders from three out of four having tried a cigarette in 1977 to  now where less than half have done so.

One thing has changed: Pot packs a bigger wallop now than it did in the ’70s. Today’s leaves are up to five times as potent. So, says Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, still-developing brains, which are “more plastic, more sensitive to being modified,” are exposed to higher doses of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis.

Uh, who out there is smoking pot leaves anymore?

This old “Pot 2.0 – Not Your Father’s Woodstock Weed!™” just won’t die, will it?  At least Nora only claims it’s 5x more potent, and not the 25x or even 400x I’ve reported on in the past.

But the data just don’t back it up.  Last year I collected data from numerous studies that showed, at best, you could say marijuana’s average potency has doubled.  Other researchers have shown that cannabis potency varies widely from region to region and season to season; the average doesn’t mean much if it’s a dry season in Dubuque and you can’t even get low-grade Mexican schwag.  Plus those potency numbers often include hash and hash oil, which few people ever experience, and much fewer teens.

The lungs can suffer, too, from both pesticides used in the growing process and carcinogens, which some research suggests may be more concentrated in marijuana than in cigarettes. [Igor Grant, director of the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at the University of California] points out that “tobacco smoke is used in much higher doses–you couldn’t smoke 20 marijuana cigarettes a day and stay vertical.” While smoking pot isn’t perfectly safe, he maintains, it isn’t as toxic as many other drugs. Still, some research suggests that regular use is associated with chronic cough, bronchitis, and emphysema, and a greater risk of cancer of the head and neck.

If nasty pesticides are being used to grow marijuana, that’s only because there is no agency that regulates the safety and purity of marijuana production in America.  Prohibition creates the need for dealers to produce a profit regardless of the means necessary to do it.  They will add lead shavings or miniscule glass beads to weed, too, in order to make a profit.  When is the last time you heard of lead, glass, or toxic pesticides in cigarettes?

As for the cancer research, must we once again point to the Washington Post headline on Dr. Donald Tashkin’s 30 years of research?  The one where the lede reads “The largest study of its kind has unexpectedly concluded that smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer.”  Or the recent study showing no difference between chronic cannabis smokers’ lungs and non-smokers?  Or the study that pot smokers actually have a reduced risk of head and neck cancer?  Or the one that showed no link between pot smoking and emphysema?  Don’t these count as “some research”, too?

Heart risks may increase with pot, too. A recent study showed higher levels of a protein that raises triglyceride levels, which are linked to cardiovascular disease, in the blood of chronic smokers. Pot also increases blood pressure and heart rate and causes a reduction in the blood’s ability to carry oxygen. One study found that risk of heart attack increased fourfold in the hour after toking up.

Yes, this would be the study that never bothered to look at whether cannabis smokers actually did have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, and based its findings on people who smoke between a half pound to two-and-a-half pounds per month.  Marijuana smoking will increase your blood pressure and heart rate and risk of heart attack… about the same as walking up a flight of stairs will do to you.

Marijuana use associated with increased risk of mortality among acute MI patients
Boston, MA – For acute myocardial infarction patients wondering if the next heart attack is the big one, maybe smoking marijuana relieves some of that stress and anxiety, but it isn’t helping their chances of living any longer. New preliminary research suggests that marijuana use in acute MI survivors is associated with a three-fold higher risk of mortality after infarction.

“For all the thousands and thousands of studies we’ve done on people who have had heart attacks, virtually nobody asks them about their marijuana use,” said lead investigator Dr Kenneth Mukamal (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA). “There is an extraordinary lack of data for exposure to something as common as marijuana. Every single study asks people if they smoke, if they drink alcohol, but we never ask about marijuana.”

Speaking… about the study, which is published in the March 2008 issue of the American Heart Journal, Mukamal said that previous research has shown marijuana to have cardiovascular effects that might pose a risk, particularly to older adults and those with coronary disease, such as an increase in resting heart rate. Other studies have shown transient increases in MI risk, possibly due to carbon monoxide exposure and an increase in heart rate, said Mukamal.

Oral cannabinoid therapy, however, has also been shown to stop atherosclerosis in a mouse model and to play other immunologic roles. With these differing effects of marijuana in mind, the group set out to study the relation between marijuana use and coronary heart disease in 1,913 adults hospitalized with MI between 1989 and 1994. Of these, 52 patients reported marijuana use during the previous year, and 317 died during a mean follow-up of 3.8 years.

In an adjusted analysis, marijuana use was associated with a three times greater risk of all-cause, cardiovascular, and noncardiovascular death following acute MI, and there was a greater risk among those who smoked more frequently.

This study sounds a little fishy to me, but I’ll let Dr. Earleywine take a look at this one before I comment on the analysis and conclusions.

However, if I take these headlines at their word, and believe that people who’ve had a major heart attack ought not smoke marijuana, well, then, okay. I imagine there are all sorts of usually harmless activities heart attack victims should avoid.

But this study doesn’t separate the marijuana use from the smoking of marijuana. What about vaporization? Or eating medicated edibles? All questions I’ll present to Dr. Earleywine in next week’s Stash, so stay tuned for his analysis next Wednesday.