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.”

I exaggerate… but not by much…

(Ha’aretz) Patients who use marijuana for medical purposes must wait six hours after smoking the drug to drive a car, the Health Ministry is set to announce soon.

The effects of THC in the bloodstream have been studied extensively and it’s generally accepted that levels of 5ng/ml of THC in blood roughly corresponds to the impairment one might feel at a 0.05 blood-alcohol level.  Israel considers drivers to be per se impaired at that 0.05 blood-alcohol content.

That 5ng/ml threshold is generally achieved within one, maybe two hours of smoking or vaporizing cannabis.  After that, THC levels drop quickly, as does one’s impairment.  So to ban any medical marijuana patients from driving for six hours after medicating does not match the science and stands only to effectively ban patients from driving at all.

The new regulation will completely prohibit drivers of public or commercial vehicles from smoking the drug for medicinal purposes.

Because if you’re a bus driver, train operator, or trucker, even six hours isn’t long enough to wait before driving.  Your doctor-recommended choice of herbal medicine alone is enough to consider you too much of a risk to the public.  No sir, it’s Vicodin, Percocet, Darvocet, and OxyContin if you’re battling chronic pain.  It’s constipation-inducing drugs for your seizures or spasms and pills you have to swallow for your extreme nausea if you want to keep your driving job.

In recent months, the use of medical marijuana has risen in Israel, according to Health Ministry figures.

Up to now, some 4,000 permits have been given for marijuana use for medical purposes. The mini1stry believes that after final regulations are ironed out for the use of medicinal marijuana, some 40,000 patients in Israel will use the narcotic.

It’s not a narcotic, sorry, it is a cannabinoid.  And only with medical marijuana would the act of increasing tenfold the numbers of patients finding safe, effective, non-toxic relief be considered something to be alarmed about.

The big guns are starting to come out regarding California’s Prop 19.  The California Chamber of Commerce (motto: “Pot Smokers Should Collect Welfare and Be Homeless”) has released its legal interpretation of the Act and literally warns:

Imagine a workplace where employees show up to work high on marijuana and there is nothing you can do about it. That’s what employers can look forward to if Proposition 19 passes.

Gee, that sounds almost as terrifying as people showing up to work using their Oxycontin, Vicodin, Percocet, or Darvocet prescriptions, doesn’t it?  Never mind the fact that right there in Prop 19 it says:

The existing right of an employer to address consumption that actually impairs job performance by an employee shall not be affected.

So how is it that someone shows up to work high and the boss says, “OK, go right ahead and drive the forklift!”  Let’s put aside for a moment that California is an “at will” employment state, meaning the employer can fire the employee at will for any reason.  The answer, of course, is to test the worker for actual impairment.

The whole basis for workplace drug testing is the idea that someone would be high on the job and that would impair their performance to the point of causing a workplace safety issue.  The problem is that all sorts of things impair an employee, like drowsiness from prescription drugs, fatigue from overwork, distraction due to injury pain, and lack of sleep.  Drug testing doesn’t catch those impairments and most often catch employees who have used cannabis away from work days or weeks before when it couldn’t possibly impair workplace performance.

CalChamber continues the scaremongering:

Effect of Proposition 19: Because the current anti-smoking law only applies to tobacco products, the proposition would not prohibit employees from smoking marijuana in the workplace. In fact, employers would be required to allow marijuana smoking at work because Proposition 19 would prohibit denial of “any right or privilege” granted by the Act, without defining what that means.

Except for the fact that smoking tobacco in the workplace is not “consumption that actually impairs job performance”.

Effect of Proposition 19: Employers could not meet the requirements of the [Drug Free Workplace Act] because the proposition prohibits them from denying “any right or privilege” or discriminating against anyone for marijuana use. Statewide, affected employers could lose millions of dollars in federal funding.

Remember how the federal government pulled all those million of dollars of federal funding when California passed Proposition 215?  You must remember, right, because CalChamber and other opponents in 1996 had the same dire prediction: California voting for medical marijuana will cause the state to lose federal contracts!

Oh, right, that never happened.  Fourteen years of medical marijuana, billions in bought and sold medicine in dispensaries, dozens of DEA raids later, and yet not one contract, grant, or bit of funding has been pulled by the federal government to California.

Effect of Proposition 19: Employers would be prohibited from discriminating against marijuana users by taking marijuana use into account when deciding whether to hire an applicant.

They’re not even coy about their intent: They want to specifically discriminate against you.  It has nothing to do with fears of impaired workers or lost federal contracts – it’s that they believe your marijuana use makes you a bad person deserving of unemployment and homelessness.

Effect of Proposition 19: Proposition 19 would allow marijuana users to claim that an employer’s actions are motivated by marijuana use. Just as with the FEHA, employers would be required to prove the employee’s poor performance, and not marijuana use, justified the personnel action.

So you have a bad employee.  You fire said employee.  Employee claims you’re discriminating against him because he smokes pot.  You show proof of that employee’s performance.  And the problem is?… you can’t just fire people for being pot smokers!

There is a whole lot in CalChamber’s screed about “actual impairment” that defies logic…

…an employer could not take any disciplinary action against an employee even if allowed to test, until the marijuana use “actually impaired” the employee’s performance—for example, by causing a workplace accident.

…or at least defies understanding of verb tense.  Prop 19 doesn’t say the employer can only discipline “users who are actually impaired“, it says it can discipline “consumption that actually impairs“.  If wrecking the forklift is the only way you can determine whether someone is impaired, your workplace has bigger safety problems than people who might have smoked pot the night before.

Effect of Proposition 19: Because an employer would only be permitted to act if an employee’s marijuana use “actually impairs” job performance, an employer’s hands would be tied to take any action based on the perception that an employee’s marijuana use is a potential threat in the workplace.

Right!  You can’t just discriminate against people based on your “perceptions”, whether you falsely perceive that blacks can’t be trusted, Jews are going to hell, disabled people are a pain to accommodate, or cannabis consumers are a constant workplace threat.

If your employee shows up reeking of pot, eyes bloodshot, and you suspect his pot use is actually impairing, you just have to prove it, that’s all.  There are loads of peer-reviewed, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies that opponents of cannabis (like you) constantly cite to back up the need for workplace urinalysis.  You tell us we have to pee test because these studies show recent cannabis use impairs people.

So how do these studies fail to demonstrate that recent use of marijuana is “a potential threat” and that it “actually impairs”?  You can’t have it both ways!  You can’t use these studies to support pee testing, then conveniently ignore them to say there’s no way to show marijuana use impairs people.

Effect of Proposition 19: Although Proposition 19 specifically “shall not be construed to affect, limit or amend any statute that forbids impairment while engaging in dangerous activities such as driving,” the proposition does not address conduct before driving. According to Proposition 19, unless an employee is “actually impaired,” the employer can not do anything to prevent marijuana use before an employee drives.

See the impairment paragraphs above, but also consider that first part, where Prop 19 doesn’t get rid of any DUID laws.  If your blazed employee is about to take out the company car, test him for impairment!  There are tests for this that will catch not only the stoned driver, but the guy who had a beer at lunch, the guy who’s on anti-histamines that make him drowsy, the guy distracted by his wife’s affair and pending divorce, the guy who stayed up all night last night playing World of Warcraft, and so forth.

But see, that’s the problem: testing for actual impairment would catch many of the people businesses are currently allowing to operate forklifts and drive company cars and trucks.  It would show people once and for all that pee testing hasn’t done anything to make us safer.  It would embarrass the companies that use drug testing when their most impaired employees are never caught.

It might also catch the boss after a two-martini lunch.

Don’t believe the lies from the California Chamber of Commerce.  They represent businesses that are significantly invested, in time and reputation, in using drug testing to discriminate against cannabis consumers, to break union protections, and to fire good people for no good reason.  They are terrified that their urinary tool of oppression is about to go the way of the “NO IRISH NEED APPLY” sign into the dustbin of history.

Few things about the marijuana issue inflame me more than workplace and student drug testing.  I’m still trying to imagine how, if you had a time machine, we could visit Thomas Jefferson and the other hemp farmers discussing our Bill of Rights and explain to them in America of the future, employers routinely seize citizens’ urine to determine their fitness for employment and discriminate against them if hemp shows up in their system.  I think Ben Franklin would actually LOL.

Of course we all know that cannabis metabolites show nothing about one’s current impairment and will remain in one’s system for weeks or months following cessation of use.  We’ve talked about the perverse incentive this creates to use alcohol and other toxic addictive drugs that clear from one’s system in two to three days.  And now, this information from the American Psychiatric Association leads me to better understand why we’re seeing such an uptick in prescription drug abuse.

Medical News: APA: Drug Test Results Often Flawed – in Meeting Coverage, APA from MedPage Today.

NEW ORLEANS — That poppy seeds can lead to false-positive results on tests for opioid abuse is not just an urban legend, researchers said [at the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting last May].

Another example is that most standard drug tests don’t screen for the opioid drug oxycodone, as well as a handful of other opioids including methadone and fentanyl, noted Smith, who conducted the research while he was at Boston Medical Center.

Opioid tests screen for morphine and codeine, which are two of the most common metabolites of many — but not all — opioids. They’re not metabolites of oxycodone, methadone, fentanyl, tramadol (Ultram), and buprenorphine (Subutex, Suboxone), Smith said.

Similarly, only certain metabolites of benzodiazepines are detected on most assays. That means diazepam, nordiazepam, and oxazepam (Serax) will be detected, but alprazolam (Xanax), lorazepam (Ativan), and clonazepam (Klonopin) aren’t frequently screened.

In their review, the researchers found that drug tests generally have a sensitivity of 90% to 95%, and a specificity of 85% to 90%. These numbers are a “pretty good basis” for making clinical decisions, Smith said, but that means “one in 20 [tested patients] are going to have inaccurate results, and those are more likely to be false positive than false negative.”

Many substances aside from poppy seeds cause these false-positives. Cold medications can give a positive read on amphetamines, as can bupropion (Wellbutrin) and tricyclic antidepressants.

Sertraline (Zoloft) and oxaprozin (Daypro) can alert physicians to a benzodiazepine problem when there is none.

The HIV medication efavirenz (Sustiva) can come up as a positive for marijuana use, and dextromethorphan, rifampin, and quinolones could show as an opioid problem.

There is a Jackson’s Food Store – a gas station / convenience store chain out West – that is two blocks from my home.  I walk my dog there every day as I pick up my fountain Diet Coke refill for lunch.  I’ve gotten to speak with most of the employees about marijuana – my pot leaf hat leads to lots of these conversations.  One of the kids pumping gas there is a sweet young man who is a migraine sufferer whom I’ve told would be a shoo-in for a medical marijuana card.

Then one day recently I notice that there are a whole bunch of new workers.  I find out that the store had come up $1,800 short in an audit, so in response, Jackson’s was drug testing all their employees.  Three employees admitted to occasional marijuana use and now they are unemployed.  There is no evidence that any of them were filching cash from register and since the firings the shortages from the till haven’t ceased.  But Jackson’s feels better, I guess, for having some scapegoats to blame.

Ironically, the one young man who could really use medical marijuana still has his job.  ”I only toke a tiny bit and only if the pain is just unbearable,” he told me, “because I just can’t lose this job – I have to take care of my wife and kid.  Luckily I hadn’t had a bad migraine for a few weeks, so I was able to pass the test.”  Even if he had a medical marijuana card, his job wouldn’t be protected.  My wife, a migraine patient herself, volunteered that her regular use of cannabis has turned what used to be weekly migraines to seasonal migraines – maybe four a year – and when they do come, they are moderate and not “drill a hole in my head” painful like before.

Now some would say, “Well, they knew the rules on drug testing; they don’t have to work there.”  Keep in mind that Portland, Oregon is suffering some >10% unemployment.  And then try to imagine your life if finding aspirin or ibuprofen or acetaminophen or naproxen in your system meant the end of your job and you have a splitting headache.

If you smoked a joint last week, in eleven states you're as bad as a drunk driver.

From the Obama Administration’s recently released National Drug Control Strategy (hat tip to NORML reader Glen):

Encourage States To Adopt Per Se Drug Impairment Laws [ONDCP]
State laws regarding impaired driving are varied, but most State codes do not contain a separate offense for driving under the influence of drugs (DUID). Therefore, few drivers are identified, prosecuted, or convicted for DUID. Law enforcement personnel usually cite individuals with the easier to prove driving while intoxicated (DWI) alcohol charges. Unclear laws provide vague signals both to drivers and to law enforcement, thereby minimizing the possible preventive benefit of DUID statutes. Fifteen states have passed laws clarifying that the presence of any illegal drug in a driver’s body is per se evidence of impaired driving. ONDCP will work to expand the use of this standard to other states and explore other ways to increase the enforcement of existing DUID laws.

Here are the states President Obama would like to emulate:

1. Arizona: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites, mandatory 24 hours jail, up to 6 months upon conviction.
2. Delaware: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites.
3. Georgia: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites, mandatory 24 hours jail, up to 12 months upon conviction.
4. Illinois: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites, up to 12 months upon conviction.
5. Indiana: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites, up to 60 days upon conviction.
6. Michigan: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites, up to 93 days upon conviction, vehicle immobilization for up to 180 days.
7. Nevada: 15 ng/ml for cannabis metabolites.
8. Ohio: 15 ng/ml for cannabis metabolites, mandatory 72 hours in jail, up to 6 months upon conviction, 6 month to 3 year license suspension.
9. Pennsylvania: DUID for cannabis metabolites, amount unclear.
10. South Dakota: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites for persons under the age of 21.
11. Utah: Zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites, mandatory 48 hours jail, up to 6 months upon conviction.

Nine of the fifteen states cited have “zero tolerance for cannabis metabolites”.  What this means is that if the inactive (read: non-impairing) THC metabolite (THC-COOH) is detected in the urine of a driver, that driver is impaired in the eyes of the law.  (There are actually 17 states that have per se DUID laws, but Iowa, Minnesota, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Wisconsin exclude metabolites of cannabis.)  Nevada and Ohio have 15 ng/ml levels which are very low; most workplace pre-employment screenings set the initial screening limit at 50 ng/ml.  At the confirmation level of 15 ng/ml, the frequent cannabis user will be positive for perhaps as long as 15 weeks.

Of course, faithful NORML readers and most of the public know that cannabis metabolites can remain detectable in the urine for up to 100 days or longer for a regular cannabis consumer and up to fifteen days for the casual consumer, even after quitting cold turkey.  Metabolites in urine don’t tell you a driver is actually impaired, they tell you someone used cannabis, but not when.  Even the US Department of Transportation admits that a positive test for drug metabolites is “solid proof of drug use within the last few days, it cannot be used by itself to prove behavioral impairment during a focal event.”

Cannabis metabolites are funny things; they don’t eliminate from the body in any predictable fashion. In fact, when you think about it, a metabolite is produced when the body metabolizes, or breaks down, a substance.  The presence of metabolites for THC tells you the body has already broken down the THC!  You could actually call a urine screening for metabolites a non-impairment test!

Now some of these laws do have per se standards for actual THC in the blood and you could argue that is a more realistic determinant of current impairment, but do you think most cash-strapped city, county, and state police are going to use an expensive, invasive blood test when a cheap urine screen is available and more likely to get them a conviction for DUID?

These per se DUID “zero tolerance” laws are nothing but discrimination against cannabis users, plain and simple.  Metabolites for every other drug, legal and illegal, are eliminated from the body much quicker:

• PCP (“angel dust”) = up to 2 days detection.
• Cocaine (and “crack”) = up to 2-3 days detection.
• Opiates (heroin, oxycontin, etc.) = up to 1-2 days detection.
• Amphetamines (meth, speed) = up to 1-3 days detection.
• Barbiturates (Seconol, etc.) = up to 3 days detection.
• Benzodiazepenes (Xanax, Valium, Clonopin, etc.) = up to 2-3 days detection.
• Alcohol (Budweiser, Jim Beam, Reisling, etc.) = you can actually be considered unimpaired with current blood alcohol levels up to 0.08%, so long as you pass the roadside sobriety test!
• Cannabis (marijuana, hash, pot) = up to 7-100 days detection.

So you could smoke some dust, snort some coke, shoot some smack, and pop some pills at the party Friday night, and possibly be considered an unimpaired driver by Monday (you could even have a couple of drinks before you got pulled over), but if you smoked a joint last month, in eleven states you could be going to jail and losing your license for endangering the public on the roadways.

These “zero tolerance” laws are criminalizing an entire population – cannabis users – for molecules in their bodies that have nothing to do with impairment or driving ability.  Can you imagine the uproar if police harassed drivers based on the melanin content of their skin… whoops, never mind.

(Technology Review) Later this year, Philips will introduce a handheld electronic device that uses magnetic nanoparticles to screen for five major recreational drugs.

Philips’ drug tester uses a cartridge containing magnetic nanoparticles and a handheld analyzer. Frustrated total internal reflection (FTIR) is used to detect five major recreational drugs in 90 seconds.

The device is intended for roadside use by law enforcement agencies and includes a disposable plastic cartridge and a handheld analyzer. The cartridge has two components: a sample collector for gathering saliva and a measurement chamber containing magnetic nanoparticles. The particles are coated with ligands that bind to one of five different drug groups: cocaine, heroin, cannabis, amphetamine, and methamphetamine.

The test takes less than 90 seconds and can detect drugs at concentrations measured in parts-per-billion using a single microliter of saliva.

The combination of high sensitivity, low sample volumes, miniaturization, speed, and ease of use has raised hopes for a handheld biosensor that could perform sophisticated tests with high accuracy.

I will get Paul Armentano on the program to discuss this further.  Back in January, he wrote on the subject:

Because saliva tests detect the presence of THC, not marijuana’s inactive metabolites, and have a much more narrow window of detection compared to urinalysis, advocates of the technology believe that it is far more likely than urine testing to provide evidence regarding whether someone may be under the influence of cannabis.

The article examined findings in France that saliva testing “fails to detect the recent use of cannabis over 50 percent of the time” and that “saliva testing is rarely sensitive to THC beyond one or two hours after past use, and that false positive results are not uncommon.”  However, if this is new technology, these studies may not apply.

I’m conflicted about this one.  On one hand, one of the biggest obstacles we face in legalization is the fear of stoned drivers.  If a technology exists that will accurately detect recent and possibly impairing marijuana use in drivers, that could go a long way in removing that obstacle in the minds of many.  However, on the other hand, we’re once again confusing the body’s chemical composition with a driver’s actual impairment.  No matter where you set the line – anywhere from 2ng/ml to 5mg/ml – you will have people who pass the legal threshhold but are actually quite fine to drive.  (I suppose you could make the same argument about .08 BAC in a drinking driver, too.)

My favorite Local Portland Lock-Picking Logic-Impaired Prohibitionist is at it again.  This time, the peril of stoned drivers!  John’s in full-blown reefer madness mode from the opening graf:

Ask yourself, do marijuana users, who can be found in the wee hours of the morning, staring at the “white noise” of a blank TV screen – off the air for hours, be competent drivers? Every druggie has laughed about having found themselves in that position.

What is this television channel in the 21st century that goes “off the air”?  John, it’s called the digital transition – your old Magnavox console with the built in 8-track and turntable won’t pick up our fancy-schmancy hi-def 24-hour digital channels, dagnabbit!

John provides a cut-n-paste of a study that says pot smokers are 3 to 7 times more likely to cause an accident.  He’s kind enough to provide footnotes to these esteemed scientist’s work.  But John’s been hammered in his comments section, by me and quite a few well-educated people, pointing out every flaw in his argument and every deficit in his scientific claims.  There is a simple explanation: John’s scientists are pure as the driven snow and our scientists are “druggies” with a self-serving agenda bankrolled by evil world dominating billionaires.

[I]n fact, those who leave comments, claim it’s just the opposite.Of course they’re users, trying to tell you that they’re fine to drive, … and they’ll refer to “studies”, proving just the opposite of what is only common sense, that using marijuana doesn’t impair drivers … so where’s the truth?  [T]here are seemingly competent scientists who are also users, and will evidently produce ‘studies’ to further their agendas, and/or those who pay them, and don’t forget; behind the scenes, there are also wealthy men and organizations willing to bankroll anything to further their goal of legalization.

And the next claim will make Dr. Earleywine and every other scientist who’s ever tried to get a grant to study the medicinal properties of cannabis fall out of their chair:

These scientists, … they’re also a concern, for those attempting to find the truth. Truth is, they’re under pressure: 1) if academics - they need to be a published author, (being published in the scientific and research field means more respect and impacts tenure issues) … 2) how better to get more grant money than to produce something controversial?

Oh, yeah, the money is just flowing for controversial marijuana studies.  Can’t you just stick to the standard reefer madness lines like “This ain’t your father’s Woodstock Weed”?

Understand also that the marijuana of this generation is not the same as their parents smoked!

Pot then, had a THC content of 1 – 3%. Now, the THC content is surging up to 25%. (That too will be covered in future articles.) One can expect an increase of physiological and psychological problems  with higher dosages.

Sure, the flower children were all smoking barely-above industrial hemp ditchweed.  That explains Laugh In, “be-ins”, massive afros, bellbottoms, and the Grateful Dead. all that lousy weak pot our parents were smoking.

I could cite the studies that show heavily-stoned drivers drive no worse than a .05 BAC driver, or that we tend to drive slower and leave more room, but also tend to wander a bit in the lane.  John would just say those are druggie scientists.  It doesn’t matter because nobody’s advocating for people to be allowed to drive stoned.  Making marijuana legal is not going to increase any smoking and driving, because the idiots who would do that are doing that now.  When marijuana is legal, police will still be able to bust drivers who demonstate impairment or poor driving.

So many of these prohibitionist fears are based on the notion that making marijuana legal will mean suddenly people will start smoking it. Out of nowhere we’ll have increased healthcare costs, lost productivity, impaired drivers, psychotic teenagers, and rampant crime.  You can only buy into that if you don’t know that 22 million people are smoking pot this year, 14 million monthly, 3 million weekly.  If the projected harms of legalized marijuana exist, we would have seen them by now because so many people have been smoking marijuana for so long!

Don’t smoke and drive, don’t drive impaired.  It’s all we ask of beer drinkers and they are far more dangerous drivers.

(AP) In Idaho, you can drive high as long as you can drive straight.

Marijuana users can drive legally in the state as long as their driving isn’t erratic and they can pass a field sobriety test, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. The three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that while it is illegal to drive under the influence of alcohol or narcotics, Idaho law doesn’t list marijuana as a narcotic.

The ruling overturned an impaired driving conviction against Matthew Patzer, 21, who was stopped for a broken tailgate light in 1998 and admitted to police he’d smoked marijuana at a party. The appeals court said Patzer could not automatically be presumed impaired; he wasn’t driving erratically and passed two field sobriety tests.

“Given the distinction drawn by the statute, there is no basis to conclude that impairment may be presumed upon admission of use of a non-narcotic drug,” the appeals court wrote.

*Note: This is a joke.  NORML reminds you to never smoke and drive impaired.

(Daily Journal of Commerce) The sponsor of a bill to allow Oregon employers to ban medical marijuana from the workplace said on Monday he’ll keep pressing the issue, after the bill died in committee, failing by one vote. “Every session I come back, as an employer, I’ll be bringing it back,” said Rep. Bruce Hanna, R-Roseburg, owner of Automatic Vending Service.

The full House of Representatives voted last week on a motion to pull House Bill 3052 from the Committee on Business and Labor, where it had languished since a public hearing in March. The committee’s chair, Rep. Mike Schaufler, D-Happy Valley, cosponsored the bill with Hanna but could not secure the votes to get it out of committee.

The House voted 29-29 on the motion, which would have brought the bill to the House floor for a vote, bypassing the committee process. All 29 “no” votes were cast by Democrats.

In 2007, the same bill was introduced but died in committee. The bill would allow employers to prohibit workers from using marijuana during working hours or arriving at work under the influence.

“I just want an opportunity to say we can prohibit our employees from consuming or possessing (marijuana) during the work hours,” Hanna said.

Oregon business leaders want to discriminate against medical marijuana patients on the job

No, you want to prohibit people who consume or possess marijuana from becoming or being your employee.  Oregon’s Medical Marijuana Act already states:

475.340 Limitations on reimbursement of costs and employer accommodation. Nothing in ORS 475.300 to 475.346 shall be construed to require:

(1) A government medical assistance program or private health insurer to reimburse a person for costs associated with the medical use of marijuana; or

(2) An employer to accommodate the medical use of marijuana in any workplace.

What Rep. Hanna and Rep. Schauffler don’t like about the law is that medical marijuana causes failures on pre-employment and random pee tests, and they want to be able to fire anyone they detect as having non-impairing THC-COOH marijuana metabolites in their system.  What they don’t like is that medical marijuana patients are not medicating in the workplace, nor are they impaired at the workplace, but if businesses can’t fire patients for failing a test for non-impairing metabolites, they feel like they are “accommodating” the medical use of marijuana.

Currently there is no protection for patients’ right to work in Oregon statute or case law, but these business leaders fear that when one of them does fire an unimpaired medical marijuana patient, the patient will sue and the courts will determine they weren’t impaired and the firing was unlawful and the business will be on the hook for damages.  They also fear if they can’t discriminate against medical marijuana patients, someday one will be impaired on the job and hurt someone, and the business will be on the hook for damages, even though such an occurrence has not happened in ten years of medical marijuana with over 25,000 patients.  Basically, business wants to enshrine job discrimination against 25,000 citizens into Oregon law because they are afraid of lawsuits.

The simple thing to do would be to grant patients a waiver from workplace pee tests that turn up positive for non-impairing THC-COOH.  But that’s problematic because businesses still want to fire /not hire the 19 out of 20 Oregonian pot smokers who use marijuana for non-medical purposes.  How do you convince Peter Potsmoker that the joint he smoked at a concert on the weekend makes him an unacceptable danger to the workplace when you’ve just given a waiver to Granny Glaucoma or Emily Epilepsy who smoke a joint every night before going to bed?  Allowing medical marijuana patients a pass on pee tests makes the pee tests even more indefensible and illogical than they already are.

Here is the language that was just defeated (additions in italic):

(2) Require an employer to:
(a) Accommodate the medical use of marijuana in any workplace regardless of where the use occurs;
(b) Allow an employee or independent contractor to possess, to consume or to be impaired by the use of marijuana during working hours; or
(c) Allow any person who is impaired by the use of marijuana to remain in the workplace.
(3) Preclude or restrict an employer from establishing or enforcing a policy to achieve or maintain a drug-free workforce.

Since Oregon law is pretty murky on what constitutes “impairment”, you can bet that “impaired by the use of marijuana” means “tests positive for non-impairing THC-COOH metabolites”, and had this bill passed, employers would legally be able to deny employment to all 25,000 of Oregon’s medical marijuana patients.

SB 5, the drugged driver bill, has been filed as Senate Floor Amendment 1 to House Bill 369. It is believed that HB 369 will be brought to a vote during the next three days, and that SFA1 will be called. The essence of the floor amendment is that it would allow for a conviction for DUI when a blood test taken within 2 hours of operation shows the presence of a controlled substance other than those few listed in KRS 218A.090(5). No impairment would have to be shown. This WOULD INCLUDE MARIJUANA and many many other substances such as adderol, ritalin, ambien, and numerous anti-depressants. By not requiring impairment, the bill would ensnare many innocent drivers. While the amendment would create a defense allowing for the showing of a prescription and compliance with restrictions, it would cause persons to be arrested, to have to post bond, to have to hire a lawyer, and go to trial in order to prove the defense.

Several other amendments to HB 369 have worsened the bill, such as increasing penalties for boating while intoxicating, and creating a gang theft section of the criminal syndicate statute which would reduce from 5 to 2 the number of persons constituting a “criminal syndicate” for theft of retail merchandise. The end result is that if 2 people conspire to shoplift, they commit a Class C felony even if the theft would otherwise be a misdemeanor.

The House passed HB 369 (before amendment) 98-0 and the Senate passed SB 5 34-1, so I am guessing that the chances of this bill making it through as amended are pretty good.

Please contact your Kentucky legislators and tell them misusing DUI laws to convict people who may not be impaired is wrong.