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.

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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• Irie Wednesday: Weed-i – “Moonlight”

Cannabis Science with Dr. Mitch Earleywine

• Addressing the latest Australian study on adolescent marijuana use and schizophrenia

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Easily the coolest college professor you could ever hope to have.

Every Wednesday on NORML SHOW LIVE, Dr. Mitch Earleywine joins us to discuss the latest research in cannabis and to take live calls and chat questions from listeners on marijuana culture, history, medicine, and science.  He is a member of the NORML Advisory Board and his research has been published in over fifty scientific journals on drugs and addiction.  He is the author of Understanding Marijuana, Pot Politics, and Parents’ Guide to Marijuana, and a professor of psychology at SUNY Albany.  We asked Dr. Mitch his opinions of the latest meta-analysis on cannabis and schizophrenia.

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NORML SHOW LIVE: The headlines are out there – CNN, WebMD, NPR, every little bit of alphabet soup out there on the cable channels and the news – is trumpeting this headline, this study – Matthew Large, I believe, is the lead researcher on this – from Prince of Wales Hospital in New South Wales Australia says quote:

“It is increasingly clear that marijuana is a cause of schizophrenia and that schizophrenia caused by cannabis starts earlier than schizophrenia with other causes.”

DR. MITCH EARLEYWINE:  Alas, no.  There are no new data – I want to emphasize that – this is a meta-analysis, which means it takes the studies that were already out there and tries to combine them mathematically to make sense of it all.  What you’re not hearing in the media is that in fact, this is probably early-onset folks self-medicating.

You can imagine somebody who is experiencing some symptoms of psychosis, particularly folks with less access to medical care, or folks who are already a little bit paranoid because of the disorder and they’re unwilling to go to a physician.  They hear their friends are using cannabis and enjoying it.  They do it, too, they notice some mild improvements in their symptoms, they turn to it later when they have a psychotic break.   What a surprise, [the researchers] say, “they smoked cannabis first, that’s the big issue.”

What burns my ass is that this same journal a month before had another article failing to replicate this data where we find folks with a special genetic risk and if they’re heavily involved with cannabis early in life they’re more likely to develop schizophrenia.  So all this malarkey about, “oh, if you’re a genetic risk then you’re really gonna get it” isn’t showing up in other data sets.  The media isn’t covering that in the least.

The other finding in this big meta-analysis is that early onset of psychosis showed up for folks who were using drugs more generally – not just cannabis – and this makes much more sense pharmacologically.  When you think about cocaine, amphetamine, and other drugs that work directly in the dopamine system, that’s the system that schizophrenia is all about.  And what a surprise, these folks are more likely to have an early onset.

I’m concerned that the cannabis-related studies are really spurious and they’re compounded by  use of amphetamines, Ritalin, Adderall, all these other stimulant drugs that people were – particularly in Australia – unwilling to fess up to, but more than willing to say they used cannabis.  We’ve got a big problem here.

As we’ve seen time and again none of us want children to have access to cannabis. And the way to get that access limited is, of course, not an underground market that never cards anybody, but a taxed and regulated one, where folks that are too young to be experimenting with this and folks who have psychosis in the family can be markedly more advised and essentially educated before they even purchase the plant.

NSL: Matthew Large, this researcher here, even addressed what we just discussed about the self-medication; he said, quote:

“There is not so much evidence for the widely-held view those patients self-medicate with marijuana.  Marijuana smoking almost always comes before psychosis and few patients with psychosis start smoking marijuana for the first time.”

Is this a case then where they’re just defining psychosis as their starting point of looking at these people rather than the onset of symptoms that would pre-date or pre-sage the psychosis that’s about to come?

DR. MITCH: That’s it exactly, Russ, and as we’ve mentioned in the past what often happens is they find a big record of people who’ve had psychotic breaks and then go back and see if they’ve reported cannabis earlier.  But we have very poor assessments of these potential psychotic symptoms before these people used cannabis and the few studies that do do that, the measures are slightly biased against cannabis users.

I’ve pointed out in the past one of the big questionnaires for this – a schizotypal personality questionnaire – has an item that says “I use words in strange and unusual ways.” Well, sure, schizophrenics certainly do that.  They make words up; that’s part of the way that you manifest the diagnosis.  But we also have a whole subculture here where people are “kickin’ back with the chronic at 420.”  Well, what a surprise, people who do that may say “I use words in a strange and unusual ways.”  In my dataset when you drop that item out, suddenly the link between schizotypy and cannabis use disappears. I’m concerned there are comparable problems in these other datasets.

NSL: One of the things we’ve always said in these pieces with you and I talking about this is how worldwide the rates of schizophrenia and psychosis seemed to stay stable at about 1% of the population, even if that population starts smoking a whole lot of weed – if a lot of them start smoking or if they start smoking a lot of it – doesn’t matter is still stays the same.

But one of the hypotheses they have here is that, “Yeah, sure, there’s a certain 1% that are gonna get psychosis but these 1% are gonna get it earlier and then they’d have these extra two or three years of psychosis-free functioning that they would be losing out of because of their use of marijuana.”

My first thought on that is if this were the case, wouldn’t we see a lowering of the median age of psychosis onset when we have higher use of cannabis in a society?

DR. MITCH: In fact, Wayne Hall in Australia has made this same suggestion and they have yet to detect this change in the median age of first onset. But he’s suggesting that some new data are going to reveal that in the current younger cohort, this is the case.  I haven’t seen those data yet and I’m a little concerned.  In part we go to so much effort now to try to identify psychosis earlier that it seems like if that is the case, it may be simply that we are better at identifying psychotic disorders than we were 20 years ago, so we have this other potential confound.  And as Paul [Armentano] has emphasized time and again, we do have a subset of folks who really respond well to cannabis-based medicines in controlling psychotic episodes, and I think it may be a cannabidiol issue where Project CBD may be able to help us isolate who might be helped and who might not from this.

And then, of course, that fits that self-medication hypothesis better.  I feel like the critique of that self-medication that they offer in this meta-analysis is premature, in part because of how poorly we assess psychotic symptoms prior to anyone’s cannabis use.

NSL: What is the actual risk to people who have a history of mental illness or who feel they may have a certain mental illness and how they should entertain the notion of using cannabis to treat themselves?

DR. MITCH: In fact, cannabis is rarely my first choice for any of the more common mental illnesses. So we’ve talked before about depression, anxiety, and PTSD.  With depression, cannabis may help a subset of folks.  A number of my friends who’re in clinical practice say that the people who are using it are having more troubles in their practice.  But that may be a different subset.

But my first line of defense – it really sounds corny – but kind of a bibliotherapy.  Educate yourself about depression. If you have a mental health center that you appreciate, 12 weeks of good hard work, of taking a look at your own faults, how you behave during the day, the way you frame the events in your life; that can last a lifetime in the treatment of depression.  And then cannabis is just to enjoy, not something you have to lean on in order to make sure you have a happy day.

With anxiety, I’ve done this both on Facebook to some of our friends and repeatedly in emails and my published work.  Anxiety is one of the psychological disorders that psychology really has mastered. If folks again are willing to go see a therapist for a good couple of months and really put some effort in, you can literally tame this kind of thing and make it so anxiety is no longer debilitating, and then suddenly your cannabis again is just for fun.  The idea that cannabis is actually going to help anxiety is very dose-dependent, very strain-dependent, and not the most efficient way to get at this.

PTSD, I just got those new data on that.  A ton of people think that cannabis helps some of the symptoms of PTSD.  I completely believe them.  But compared to these exposure-based treatments – which I know are a drag – [cannabis] is not going to last a lifetime the way that that kind of treatment can, and then again cannabis is just for fun.  It doesn’t have to be for medication and you’re less likely to have these lingering symptoms of the emotional numbing, the distancing from your family, or these kind of freaking-out experiences when you’re in a big crowd.  And then, what a surprise, you basically worked hard for three months and kicked this disorder rather than felt like “I have to lean on cannabis for the rest of my life.”

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• Irie Wednesday: Prophet Benjamin – “Field of Weed”

Cannabis Science with Dr. Mitch Earleywine

• Addressing the latest meta-analysis of marijuana and schizophrenia making headlines
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• LA Cty deputies beat helpless marijuana consumer

The media have once again trumpeted the headlines of a link between marijuana use and schizophrenia and other psychoses.  As we’ve reported numerous times, the rates for schizophrenia and psychoses seem to stay constant at about 1% of the population, regardless of how many people consume cannabis and how much they consume.

This latest meta-analysis, however, claims cannabis use is causing those 1% who would become schizophrenic to fall victim to their mental illness sooner and to suffer the effects of psychosis to a greater extent:

We found that the use of cannabis and other illicit substances was associated with an earlier age at onset of psychotic disorders. In contrast, alcohol use alone did not appear to be significantly associated with a younger age at onset of psychosis.

The results of this systematic review and meta-analysis represent strong scientific evidence for an association between substance use, particularly the use of cannabis, and an earlier age at onset of psychotic illnesses.

The results of this study provide strong evidence that reducing cannabis use could delay or even prevent some cases of psychosis. Reducing the use of cannabis could be one of the few ways of altering the outcome of the illness because earlier onset of schizophrenia is associated with a worse prognosis and because other factors associated with age at onset, such as family history and sex, cannot be changed.

Building on several decades of research, this finding is an important breakthrough in our understanding of the relationship between cannabis use and psychosis. It raises the question of whether those substance users would still have gone on to develop psychosis a few years later. However, even if the onset of psychosis were inevitable, an extra 2 or 3 years of psychosis-free functioning could allow many patients to achieve the important developmental milestones of late adolescence and early adulthood that could lower the long-term disability arising from psychotic disorders. The results of this study confirm the need for a renewed public health warning about the potential for cannabis use to bring on psychotic illness.

The lead researcher says it bluntly – “marijuana is a cause of schizophrenia” – and makes a strong denunciation of the idea that schizophrenics are self-medicating with cannabis:

(WebMD) “It is increasingly clear that marijuana is a cause of schizophrenia, and that the schizophrenia caused by cannabis starts earlier than schizophrenia with other causes,” study researcher Matthew Large of Prince of Wales Hospital in New South Wales, Australia, says in an email. “Young people are at particular risk.”

“There is not so much evidence for the widely held view those patients self-medicate with marijuana,” he says. “Marijuana smoking almost always comes before psychosis and few patients with psychosis start smoking [marijuana] for the first time.”

More than 80% of the patients in the study had schizophrenia, but there were some other forms of psychosis identified among marijuana users. “The picture looked similar irrespective of the type of psychosis,” Large says.

We’ll talk to Dr. Mitch Earleywine about this on our Cannabis Science segment on the Wed. Feb. 9 NORML SHOW LIVE, but I can tell you this study confirms something NORML has always believed – children and people with a propensity to mental illness should not be smoking marijuana.

However, this study is by no means an argument for continued marijuana prohibition.  Cigarettes and alcohol are harmful to children as well as adults, but we understand that education has reduced the harm from those substances and prohibition of the latter was a dismal failure that created violence and corruption.    The system we have now guarantees that kids find it easy to get marijuana and that when they do they’re interacting with a criminal market.

I’m still skeptical.  If these are folks that were going to get schizophrenia anyway and we know that the rates of schizophrenia stay fairly constant, then this study’s hypothesis should mean that we’d see the median age of onset of schizophrenia declining in the populations with greater cannabis use among youth.  I don’t know how to test that theory… again, we’ll ask Dr. Mitch.

I knew it would only be a matter of time before Joe Califano and the Center for Substance National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University would get around to blaming the mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona, on Jared Loughner’s cannabis use:

There has been plenty of media and talking head attention to the weak gun laws that allow purchase of automatic weapons and super size ammunition clips. There has been story upon story, and comment upon comment, bemoaning how easy it was for this mentally deranged young man to buy such a gun and ammunition clip. And the reporting about the twisted mind of Jared Lee Loughner and his erratic behavior has been extensive.

But 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?

Because all that was in effect when Jared Loughner acquired his cannabis.  Arizona hadn’t yet passed medical marijuana.  Arizona already had felony statutes on the books for sales and possession.

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.  (Read up on all my coverage of studies showing cannabis-using schizophrenics have better cognitive functioning, how THC may help schizophrenics, how schizophrenia has not increased with cannabis use increasing, and more in our Stash Schizophrenia Archive.)

Scientists are undecided about cannabis and mental illness. THC is highly psychoactive, so that cannabinoid may exacerbate psychoses.  But CBD is shown to mitigate psychoactivity and reduce psychoses.  Many schizophrenics self-medicate with cannabis for the benefit of the CBD.  If so, it’s more argument for legalization, so users would have a labeled product and know the THC:CBD ratio, instead of buying underground and hoping for the right genetics.

Sorry, Joe, 100 million Americans know cannabis is relatively safe from direct experience.  They won’t believe your scaremongering anymore.

Sometimes, crazy is as crazy does.

Dr. Joe McSherry is a neurologist in Vermont with over thirty years of clinical experience and published research.  He’s also an expert in medical cannabis and recently examined the media reports of cannabis exacerbating the schizophrenia of Tucson shooter Jared Loughner:

(FireDogLake) The trajectory from imaginative middle school kid to frustrated, angry, dysfunctional young adult living in an alternate reality is consistent with the premorbid function, prodrome and onset of psychosis (Compton et al, in press).  What, if any, psychiatric diagnosis will ever be applied to the shooter is unknown to the public.  But putative explanations published have included “pot head.”  The usual “stoner” image of an amotivational syndrome does not fit as he was frustrated by repeated rejections from work, working out, and off drugs for two years, according to friends.  Indeed stopping nicotine and cannabis was associated with his “theories” going off the wall.

The prohibitionists identify cannabis as the cause of psychotic disorders, schizophrenia.  This has been hard, or impossible to prove.  This is in part because the onset of illegal drug use (underage nicotine, alcohol and cannabis) overlaps the onset of schizophrenia.  So the greater drug use by schizophrenic patients may be contributory, or self treatment – adult patients use drugs at a higher rate than their peers to mitigate the discomfort of their disease (Bottorff et al, 2009).  Or the association in youngsters may be coincidence, along with getting a driver’s license and going off the parent’s dole, explaining the impossibility of proving a connection.  In populations, at least, there is no increase in the incidence of schizophrenia when the use of cannabis among youth increases, and cultures that have low rates of cannabis use are not preserved from typical rates of schizophrenia (Frisher et al 2009). In medical school we are taught “to listen to the patient.”  Schizophrenic patients do not believe cannabis contributes to their disease (Buadze et al 2010).  The prohibitionists are wrong.  . . .

The shooter attributed his frustration to the inability to get a job because he had misdemeanor crimes in his history.  Apparently he was prosecuted as a teenager for drug and drug paraphernalia possession.  Pot and a bong?  Unusual for a white kid to be prosecuted.  The government that did that to him, threatening prison as well, fueled his anger.  What good for the shooter or society came from that arrest and prosecution?  He quit smoking cigarettes, and that is good.  It was a lost opportunity to recognize the disturbed thinking and initiate diagnosis and treatment.

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Hemp Headlines

1. Canada’s newly adopted civil asset forfeiture laws netting $15 million in British Columbia
2. Texas lawmakers introduce decriminalization bill for marijuana
3. Fresno man convicted of manslaughter for shooting medical marijuana thief
4. Washington lawmakers introduce bills to protect patients and provide dispensaries

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by Grateful Dread Public Radio at http://gdreadradio.net, a 24-hour community service Internet radio station proud to carry NORML SHOW LIVE

• Irie Wednesday: Pato Banton – “Sensimilla”

Cannabis Science with Dr. Mitch Earleywine

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• Addressing Jared Loughner, the Arizona shooter, and his use of cannabis and whether that contributed to his psychoses

Radical Rant

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• Cliff Kincaid’s Reefer Madness about Jared Loughner, marijuana and schizophrenia, and NORML


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• The Top Ten Drugs in 2010 That Were More Harmful Than Cannabis

Of course THAT marijuana is bad for you... in what Kansas ditch did that schwag grow?

LIVESTRONG, as most people know, is the foundation set up by cancer survivor and 7-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong. It boasts “Dare to Change Your Life”, but based on their article The Health Risks of Smoking Pot, it seems like they’re just recycling old material from D.A.R.E. (the program that brings cops into schools to introduce kids to drugs and encourage them to turn in their pot growing parents.)

The short-term health risks from smoking marijuana are well established. According to both the National Institute on DrugAbuse.com and DiscoveryHealth.com, short-term risks include memory loss, coordination problems, learning and problem solving difficulties, accelerated heart rate, anxiety, paranoia and panic attacks.

Memory “loss” is a bit much – it’s more that you have difficulty with short-term recall, learning, and problem-solving while high.  However, afterwards you suffer no ill-effects to memory and cognition, even with long-term, heavy use.  There are numerous studies backing this up.

When it comes to mood altering recreational substances, Lance endorses the one that CAUSES cancer.

You can become uncoordinated while high, which is why we don’t suggest driving or complicated physical tasks while high.  A minority of those who use cannabis experience anxiety, paranoia, and panic, which is why we suggest that marijuana may not be for everyone.  (Some people can die from exposure to peanut dust, but nobody advocates locking people up over a Snickers bar.  If marijuana makes you paranoid, don’t smoke it.)

An accelerated heart rate, which can last for up to three hours, may increase the risk of heart attack, although the evidence is inconclusive.

That accelerated heart rate is about equal to how much climbing a flight of stairs might cause your heart rate to increase.  The evidence that pot causes heart attacks is inconclusive because it isn’t there.

There is some evidence of a connection between pot and schizophrenia. The NIDA believes high doses of marijuana can produce acute psychotic reactions to trigger schizophrenia in vulnerable individuals.

The pot = schizophrenia claim is being debunked more and more every month.  A ten-year look at mental hospitals in the UK found no increase in schizophrenia and psychosis even as cannabis use skyrocketed.  Another study shows that schizophrenics who use cannabis have better cognitive functioning.  These supposed causal relationships between pot and schizophrenia are difficult to interpret, as you can’t tell whether pot caused the schizophrenia, or the schizophrenia caused someone to seek out pot to self-medicate.

Pot smoke contains carcinogens and irritates the lungs.

Stomach cancer +67%, rectal cancer +53%, lung cancer +46%... let's have another beer!

But does it cause cancer?  No, in fact, long-term pot smokers have lower incidence of head, neck, and lung cancers than non-smokers.  Previous preclinical studies assessing the anticancer properties of cannabinoids have shown that they inhibit the proliferation of a wide range of cancers, including brain cancer, prostate cancer, oral cancers, lung cancer, skin cancer,pancreatic cancer, biliary tract cancers, and lymphoma.

This is something a cancer survivor like Armstrong and his LIVESTRONG foundation should be promoting.  You know, instead of Michelob beer, use of which the Los Angeles Times reports causes cancer:

Compared with people who had less than one drink per week, those who drank daily were nearly three times as likely to get esophageal cancer. Moderate drinkers (who consumed between one and six drinks per week) were 67% more likely to get stomach cancer, according to results published in the new issue of Cancer Epidemiology.

Heavy beer drinkers had a 53% increased risk of developing rectal cancer and were 46% times more likely to get lung cancer. People who imbibed spirits daily had more than three times the risk of liver cancer, more than twice the risk of pancreatic cancer, and a 66% increased risk of rectal cancer. Despite mounting evidence of the benefits of drinking wine, moderate wine drinkers had elevated odds of rectal and bladder cancer.

Most tellingly, the researchers also found a dose-response relationship – that is, the heaviest drinkers were most at risk. Among people who consumed the most drinks for the most years, the risk of liver cancer was nearly eight times higher, and the risk of esophageal cancer was more than seven times as high. The biggest drinkers also had more than double the risk of pancreatic and rectal cancer and a more than 80% increased risk of prostate and colon cancer.

The LIVESTRONG website links to many other sets of mythology about marijuana.  Reasons to Stop Smoking Pot tells us that “Those who smoke pot daily operate at subpar levels at all times”.  (Wow, imagine how many more stories, podcasts, live shows, presentations, websites, and gigs I could produce if only I weren’t operating at a subpar level!  Imagine how much better the Cosmos series would have been if Carl Sagan hadn’t been operating at a subpar level at all times!)

What Are the Side Effects of Pot? warns us that “disruption in career, social and family functioning occurs because of a loss of interest in daily activities” and “reproductive problems may occur, including lower sperm count for men.”  (I’d tell that to Willie Nelson, but his career in country music, touring at age 77, and doting on his seven children and many grandchildren, makes contacting him difficult.)

What Are the Effects of Smoking Pot? tells us “it is possible to become physically dependent on marijuana.”  It’s so darn physically addicting that if you quit cold turkey, you “may experience cravings, insomnia and anxiety.”

Effects from Smoking Pot warns that “high doses of marijuana can lead to paranoia, image distortion or psychosis. Such effects may last several days or weeks….”  Where do I find me some of that pot?

Now it seems these articles are submitted to LIVESTRONG and perhaps not well-edited by their staff.  But Lance Armstrong endorsing alcohol is not an accident.  If he is going to endorse a recreational substance, shouldn’t he endorse one that doesn’t cause – and might even cure – cancer?