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Groovin’ Thursday: Brought to you by John Doe Radio.com

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• Thoughtful-LivinG.org’s Reefer Madness

Recorded Specials for Year-End 2011

The Top Ten “Reefer Madness” Stories of 2011

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The Top Ten Cannabis Science Stories of 2011

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The Top Ten “Stupid Stoner Stories” of 2011

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The Top Ten People in Marijuana in 2011

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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. Prohibitionists respond to medical marijuana and driving study
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3. UCSF study shows cannabinoids help opioids kill pain

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Electric Tuesday: Brought to you by Cannabis Cure UK – the reform podcast for the United Kingdom

• mc chris – “Evergreen”

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• Judgement (with Boomer)

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• DeAngelo Brothers “do not support legalization of cannabis for recreational purposes”

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5. Russian pilot likes getting high

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Electric Tuesday: Brought to you by Cannabis Cure UK – the reform podcast for the United Kingdom

• Human Revolution – “Stolen Lives”

Cannabis Conversations

• Drug Policy Alliance Executive Director Ethan Nadelmann on Obama’s Reefer Madness

Todd’s Toker Topics

• The End of Prohibition

On today’s NORML SHOW LIVE we were thrilled to interview Dr. Ethan Nadelmann, the Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, for a wide-ranging discussion of drug law reform, beginning with his recent New York Times op-ed on President Obama’s recent “Reefer Madness“.

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1. The carbon footprint of indoor marijuana cultivation: 20 TWhrs/year; 1 joint = 2 lbs. of CO2
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4. Michigan judge decides that the entire medical marijuana law is unconstitutional

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• Rockin’ Friday: Sinister Grin – “Medicine”

High Times Magazine preview with Senior Editor Dave Bienenstock, author of The Official Pot Smoker’s Handbook

Reefer Madness Debunked

• UK Daily Mail says 30,000/year killed by cannabis

Just when I get all riled up about our domestic reefer madness at the Partnership (to Protect Big Pharma) at DrugFree.org, our NORML Network UK host, Cannabis Cure UK, forwards me this ominous headline from the UK Daily Mail:

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.

Here in America 15 million adults are smoking pot monthly and 1.1 million are daily tokers.  56 million adults are smoking cigarettes at least once a month and 35 million are daily smokers.  There are 276,000 new cases of respiratory or oral cancers diagnosed annually.  Cigarettes are proven to cause 435,000 deaths a year.  Cannabis-only smoking has been shown to reduce the incidence of head, neck and lung cancer.  So again, where are the wards full of cannabis smokers?

Researchers calculate that if 120,000 deaths are caused among 13 million smokers, the corresponding figure among 3.2 million cannabis smokers would be 30,000.

I calculate that if my wife drops a dollar on the lottery and correctly picks six random unique integers between and including 1 and 59 we’ll be rich and the corresponding donation to NORML would be substantial.  I mean, if we’re going to be throwing in meaningless calculations, why not have some fun with it?  Where are these 120,000 deaths among 13 million smokers you begin with?  Is that an American estimate?  Because we don’t have 120,000 deaths over here and you don’t have 30,000 deaths over there.

The drug can cause cancer, lung disease and abnormalities associated with serious mental illness.

Users are up to six times more likely to develop schizophrenia.

The British Lung Foundation says smoking three joints a day can cause the same damage to the airways as a pack of 20 cigarettes.

Few people are smoking three joints a day and even those who do aren’t developing schizophrenia, psychoses, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.  Even if they were, is a prison cell the best way to help them?  You’d need 36 grams to roll three joints a day at the DEA’s skinny 0.4g joint standard, and that will get you jail time in most states.

As for the schizophrenia, a ten-year study of mental hospitals in the UK found psychoses and schizophrenia rates remained steady even as cannabis use increased.

Dr William Oldfield, from St Mary’s Hospital and one of the authors of the article, said: “Cannabis and nicotine cigarettes have a different mode of inhalation. The puff taken by cannabis smokers is two-thirds larger, they inhale a third more and hold down the smoke four times longer.

And when that joint is done (usually half-done), the toker doesn’t toke again for hours or days or weeks, unlike the tobacco smoker who’s lighting up another cigarette within the hour.

“All these factors could contribute to illnesses of the heart and respiratory system, particularly as the chemicals in cannabis smoke are retained in the body to a much higher degree.”

“Could” again?  If this is such a danger, show us the bodies!

And what are these “chemicals… retained in the body”?  The chemicals in marijuana smoke that he’s criticizing as being like cigarette smoke dissipate from the body at the same rates.  The only chemicals he could be referring to are the inert metabolites of cannabinoids that are fat-soluble and stored in the body for days or weeks, and those aren’t harmful to the body in any degree.

He said the cannabis used today – especially that bought in the Netherlands – was up to 40 times stronger than that used by Flower Power hippies in the 1960s.

The level of active ingredient in cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) has increased from around 0.5 per cent 20 years ago to almost five per cent today.

The United Nations declares that industrial hemp is cannabis with <1% THC.  So all those “Flower Power hippies” were smoking hemp, huh?  No, wait, twenty years ago is 1991!  All those Seattle grunge rockers were smoking hemp!  Who knew?

*Dr. Mitch Earleywine, on our 4/6/11 show said that now it has been reported there is one death from acute marijuana use; a man with a history of heart problems who succumbed to the tachycardia side effect of smoking pot, had a heart attack, and died.  Sorry, I’m not convinced; if that’s the way they want to play, we’re going to have to make fast food a Schedule I drug (or Class C, for the British readers) as its side effects are killing more Americans and Britons than cannabis ever will.  Legalize (legalise) it and go ahead and slap a “do not use if you have a history of heart problems or arrhythmia” label on it.

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• Rockin’ Friday: Scissorfight – “Helicopter Killing Cottonmouth”

CelebStoner.com Entertainment Report with Steve Bloom, co-author of Pot Culture: The A-Z Guide to Stoner Language and Life

• Weed keeps popping up on TV
• NFL drug busts for 2010
• High profile activists behind bars

Radical Rant

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• Drug Court Professionals anti-marijuana flyer chock full of reefer madness