Marijuana is a Schedule I drug.  That means, according to the federal government:

• it has “a high potential for abuse” (some 16 million “abusers” every month);
• it has “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States” (despite fifteen United States that do accept it and despite United States Federal Patent #6630507 describing its medical use);
• and there is no “accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision” (despite sending federal medical marijuana to four patients every month who use it safely under medical supervision).

But while the drug warriors were busy sounding the alarm about the new super-potent, wildly-addictive “Pot 2.0: It’s Not Your Father’s Woodstock Weed!”, according to Martha Rosenberg at CounterPunch, drug manufacturers were making billions in 2010 selling to Americans the following ten drugs that mimic some of marijuana’s medical effects yet are far more dangerous:

1. According to research compiled by our own Paul Armentano in the new edition of NORML’s Emerging Clinical Applications For Cannabis & Cannabinoids: A Review of the Recent Scientific Literature, 2000 — 2011, “[T]he use of a standardized extract of Cannabis sativa … evoked a total relief … in an experimental model of neuropathic pain“.  Pfizer‘s Lyrica, Mylan Pharmaceuticals‘ Topamax and GlaxoSmithKline‘s Lamictal are drugs that are commonly prescribed for pain and migraine.  Their side effects?

All three drugs increase the risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors according to their mandated labels, in addition to the memory and hair loss patients report.

2. The use of cannabis as an anti-depressant has been anecdotally reported for decades and recent research shows that in low doses, it can have an anti-depressant effect, but it seems to reverse if one takes too high a dose.  Regardless, you’re better off with the cannabis than with the side effects of Eli Lilly‘s Prozac, GlaxoSmithKline‘s Paxil, Pfizer‘s Zoloft, or other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRIs):

In addition to 4,200 published reports of SSRI-related violence, including the Columbine, Red Lake and NIU shootings, SSRIs can cause serotonin syndrome and gastrointestinal bleeding when taken with certain drugs. Paxil is linked to birth defects.

3. Combine our first two conditions, pain and depression, which we’ve shown cannabis to be effective at treating, and now you have the conditions addressed by a class of drugs known as selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs).  Pfizer‘s Effexor, Eli Lilly‘s Cymbalta, and Pfizer‘s Pristiq are commonly marketed in a cross-over fashion to both depression and pain sufferers, who get all the same risks of side-effects as the SSRI’s listed above, plus…

SNRI’s are also harder to quit than SSRIs. 739,000 web sites address “Effexor” and “withdrawal.”

4. Dr. Donald Tashkin found that people who smoke marijuana have not only less head, neck, and lung cancer risk than those who smoke cigarettes, but actually also have lower risk than those who don’t smoke at all.  Some of my friends have told me smoking marijuana helped address cravings as they were trying to quit smoking tobacco, but whether it actually helps medically is not known.  What is known is that Pfizer‘s popular anti-smoking drug Chantix is much more likely to affect your mental health:

After 397 FDA cases of possible psychosis, 227 domestic reports of suicidal behaviors and 28 actual suicides, the government banned pilots, air-traffic controllers and interstate truck and bus drivers from taking the antismoking drug Chantix in 2008.

5. Many a toker can relate that they use marijuana at the end of a long busy stressful day to relax and unwind, especially if they are having a tough time getting to sleep.  The popular sleeping pill, sanofi-aventis‘s Ambien, you may remember from the story of US Rep. Patrick Kennedy crashing his car in a fit of “sleep-driving”:

Law enforcement officials say it has increased traffic accidents from people who drive in a black out and don’t even recognize arresting officers.

6. THC may have the most powerful tumor-inhibiting properties known to medicine, something our government has been aware of since 1974.  There are at least four different scientific studies showing cannabinoids to inhibit the growth of breast cancer cells.  But then legal cannabis would severely curtail the sales of Astra-Zeneca‘s Tamoxifen breast cancer prevention drug:

As a breast cancer prevention drug, an American Journal of Medicine study found the average life expectancy increase from Tamoxifen was nine days. Public Citizen says for every case of breast cancer prevented on Tamoxifen there is a life-threatening case of blood clots, stroke or endometrial cancer.

7. ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) affects millions of Americans.  Recently new research has shown that cannabis can have very positive results for those trying to control their disorder.  However, we’re much more likely to hear of someone with ADHD using Novartis‘s Ritalin, Johnson & Johnson‘s Concerta, Eli Lilly‘s Strattera, Shire‘s Adderall, especially on children with ADHD:

ADHD drugs rob “kids of their right to be kids, their right to grow, their right to experience their full range of emotions, and their right to experience the world in its full hue of colors,” says Anatomy of an Epidemic author Robert Whitaker.

8. As strange as it may seem, many patients with asthma report using cannabis to help open their restricted airways.  Cannabis is a bronchodialator and can be used in a vaporized form to avoid the respiratory distress from cannabis smoke.  But cannabis is incapable of killing you, unlike the long-acting beta agonists (LABA) Foradil Aerolizer, GlaxoSmithKline‘s Serevent Diskus and Advair, and Astra-Zeneca‘s Symbicort often used to treat asthma symptoms:

Studies link them to an increase in asthma deaths, especially in African-Americans and children. They may have contributed to 5,000 deaths said Dr. David Graham at FDA hearings about the controversial asthma drugs.

9. Another set asthma control drugs known as leukotrine receptor agonists are also far more dangerous to you than vaporizing cannabis, like Merck‘s Singulair and Astra-Zeneca‘s Accolate.

Original FDA reviewers said asthma control “deteriorates” on Singulair and it may not be safe in children. Last month, Fox TV reported Singulair, Merck’s top selling drug, is suspected of producing aggression, hostility, irritability, anxiety, hallucinations and night-terrors in kids, symptoms that are being diagnosed as ADHD.

10. Finally, while not technically a medical use, many people use cannabis as a way to relax, have fun, and socialize with others.  Stress can be very damaging to one’s body and mind and cannabis is one of the most popular drugs used to combat it.  The most popular drug for socialization and relaxation, of course, is alcohol, marketed as Anheuser-Busch InBev‘s Budweiser, MillerCoors‘ Coors Light, Pabst‘s Blue Ribbon, and Boston Beer Co.’s Sam Adams.  While moderate consumption of alcohol may have some minor health benefits, habitual over-consumption, according to HealthCheck Systems, can lead to:

Arthritis - Increases risk of gouty arthritis
Cancer - Increases the risk of cancer in the liver, pancreas, rectum, breast, mouth, pharynx, larynx and esophagus
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome – Causes physical and behavioral abnormalities in the fetus
Heart Disease – Raises blood pressure, blood lipids and the risk of stroke and heart disease in heavy drinkers. Heart disease is generally lower in light to moderate drinkers.
Hyperglycermia - Raises blood glucose
Hypoglycemia - Lowers blood glucose, especially for people with diabetes
Kidney Disease - Enlarges the kidneys, alters hormone functions, and increases the risk of kidney failure
Liver Disease – Causes fatty liver, alcoholic hepatitis and cirrhosis
Malnutrition - Increases the risk of protein-energy malnutrition,; low intakes of protein, calcium, iron, vitamin A, vitamin C, thiamine, vitamin B6 and riboflavin, and impaired absorption of calcium, phosphorus, vitamin D and zinc.
Nervous Disorders – Causes neuropathy and dementia; impairs balance and memory
Obesity – Increases energy intake, but not a primary cause of obesity
Psychological disturbances – Causes depression, anxiety and insomnia

So why in the world would we prevent people from using the safe, natural, effective, non-toxic herb cannabis with so many proven benefits and so little risk of side effects?  Why would we force people to take a plethora of pills with proven dangerous side effects?  Why would we celebrate the use of poisonous alcohol and demonize the smoking of a benign weed?

2010 Reported Corporate Revenues:

Johnson & Johnson = $61.90 billion
Pfizer= $50.01 billion
GlaxoSmithKline = $45.83 billion
Novartis = $44.27 billion
Sanofi-Aventis = $41.99 billion
AstraZeneca = $32.81 billion
Merck & Co. = $27.43 billion
Eli Lilly = $21.84 billion
Anheuser-Busch InBev (2007) = $16.70 billion
MillerCoors = $3.03 billion
Pabst = $0.50 billion
Boston Beer Company = $0.46 billion
Every legal cannabis producing company combined = $0

Oh, wait, I remember…

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

Click here to view the embedded video.

The top video response is the perfect rejoinder:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Line by line debunking follows after the break…

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

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

A GATEWAY drug to Cocaine and Meth.

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

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

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

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

50%-70% MORE CANCER-CAUSING than Cigarettes

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

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

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

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

MARIJUANA – What’s Good About Legalizing It?

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

NOTHING

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

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

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

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

Skyrocketing usage among Teens and Young people.

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

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

“DRUGGED DRIVING” on Streets and Freeways.

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

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

Higher COSTS for Everyone as Addictions SOAR.

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

Marijuana Operatives could buy THOUSANDS of Acres of farmland.

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

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

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

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

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

When it comes to well-meaning prohibitionists, you can’t find any better representative than Canada’s National Post columnist Barbara Kay.  In her latest piece, she investigates the latest studies about “marijuana-induced psychosis” and presents them as an argument for maintaining marijuana prohibition, as she did back in 2008.

Her colleagues razzed (as did I) and asked why marijuana should remain illegal while alcohol and tobacco, which she admits is more “noxious in its effects in the general public”, are legal.  Two reasons: history and economics, she argues:

The use of alcohol stretches back over the millennia as an integral part of human civilization and remains, when used properly, a prime ingredient of civilized conviviality and positive social bonding. Alcohol in moderation is not only a social lubricant, it is good for one’s health.

It’s the old Art Linkletter / Richard Nixon argument:

The transcripts show Linkletter telling Nixon, “There’s a great difference between alcohol and marijuana.”

Nixon replies: “What is it?” The president wants to know!

“When people smoke marijuana,” Linkletter explains, “they smoke it to get high. In every case, when most people drink, they drink to be sociable.”

“That’s right, that’s right,” Nixon says. “A person does not drink to get drunk. . . . A person drinks to have fun.”

A year later, however, Linkletter changed his tune.  According to the New York Times, “After much thought and study he had concluded that the drug was relatively harmless.”

Nixon and Kay are wrong, of course: plenty of people are drinking to get drunk, most particularly the young people she’s so concerned would suffer from “marijuana-induced psychosis”.  According to SAMSHA, 8% of youth aged 12-17 engaged in binge drinking (five or more drinks in a row, or as I used to call it, Friday night) in the past thirty days.  Twice as many (16%) teens report experiencing a blackout from alcohol use.

I’m not arguing that we prohibit responsible use of alcohol for adults in order to protect the children from irresponsible use, but that’s exactly what Kay is supporting for marijuana.  Yet everything she praises about alcohol – thousands of years of human use, integral to civilization, social bonding, good for health – are praises tenfold for cannabis use.

It is rather kooky to criminally prohibit marijuana and then claim its lack of social integration is reason to keep it prohibited.  It is ghoulish to support the legality of alcohol and tobacco with economic arguments, as Kay continues:

As for tobacco, if we knew hundreds of years ago what we know now about its effects – never good, only bad – I would have argued against legalizing it as well. But as with alcohol, it’s not so easy to disband an industry as huge and profitable as tobacco on the grounds that it is unhealthy. There is too much at stake economically. So we’re stuck with it.

So if a substance makes government a ton of money and creates a ton of jobs, it really doesn’t matter that it kills 400,000 North Americans a year, does it?  See, if marijuana wanted Barbara Kay’s support, all the money it generates and jobs it creates would need to be legal and taxed, then she wouldn’t mind being “stuck with it”.  But since marijuana’s effects are “usually good, rarely bad”, Kay sticks with her support of criminal prohibition of cannabis.

The latest studies confirm that the risk of marijuana-induced psychosis is real, and the most at-risk users are teenagers; regular teenage pot smokers seem to have double the risk of developing paranoia, hallucinations and psychotic breaks five years later.

These studies she links to are referenced in an article that features the story of Don Corbeil:

Corbeil had been smoking pot since he was 14, a habit that escalated to about 10 joints a day.

He started hearing voices and, at one point, Corbeil thought he was the Messiah. Police found him one day talking incoherently, and brought him to hospital, where he was eventually diagnosed with drug-induced psychosis.

Corbeil had dabbled in other drugs, such as acid and ecstasy. But marijuana was his mainstay.

Of course, the article does note that “who exactly is at risk remains hazy” and “the study, however, did not determine whether the drug prompted symptoms or was used to self-medicate.”  It also noted “the vast majority of pot smokers will not go psychotic.”  But the warnings that the small subset of young teenagers already susceptible to mental illness that smoke ten joints a day might have an increased risk of psychoses is enough for Kay to support locking adults in cages for smoking a joint at home.

According to CAMH, more than thirty percent of Onrtario’s Grade 10 students reported cannabis use in the past year. Add to that the worries about the vastly increased strength of today’s marijuana. Since the 1970s mainstream marijuana has seen a 25-fold increase in tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabis’s psychoactive ingredient.

“Pot 2.0!  It’s Not Your Father’s Woodstock Weed!”  Look, I’ve seen the clothes, hairstyles, and listened to the music of the 1970s… there is no way our parents’ weed was 25 times weaker than what we’re smoking now.  In fact, even the article from which Kay cribs the “Ontrario” high school sophomore data knows better:

And what they’re smoking is not their hippie dad’s doobie. Growers have bred more potent pot, more than doubling the amounts of Tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive ingredient, and decreasing the cannabidiol, a protective ingredient.

Eh, “doubling”, “25-fold increase”, it’s all the same to a prohibitionist.

Now if Kay were really worried about those kids and their access to pot, maybe she should explain how what we’re doing now is working when 3-in-10 Ontario sophomores have smoked it this year?  According to the Canadian Centre for Substance Abuse, the number of tobacco smokers aged 15-19 works out to aboot 3-in-20 (14%), eh?  They also find that only aboot 1-in-20 (5.6%) 15-19-year-olds have an unhealthy dependence on alcohol.

It’s not that marijuana is harmless and that’s why we should legalize it.  We’ve found that prohibition of a very harmful substance, alcohol, was a worse problem than the minority of people who use it irresponsibly or unhealthily.  We’ve found that strict regulation of an addictive substance, tobacco, has had remarkable success in reducing its use.  So why wouldn’t we try that solution with a substance that is far less harmful and addictive than those two?

Barbara Kay tries to straddle the fence, because even she knows the truth about cannabis, but is still reluctant to give up on prohibition:

Clearly the actual statistical negatives of pot are very small. But what seems to emerge is that for a very small subset of the population, the risk for psychosis is high. One of these days it may be possible to test for that susceptibility as we do for allergies. What we know is that the health facts on marijuana use are not all in, and until researchers are as familiar with the effects of marijuana as they are with those of alcohol and tobacco, there should be no rush to make pot available in local handy stores.

Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/09/barabara-kay-more-warnings-about-the-dangers-of-pot/#ixzz0vBvpu4L2

We are still learning plenty about alcohol and tobacco and their effects on health and behavior.  It wasn’t that long ago that “Doctors Smoke Chesterfield” ads were on our TV sets and nobody had ever heard of “fetal alcohol syndrome”.  Yet discovery of tobacco and alcohol’s previously unknown health dangers never prompted Barbara Kay to pull those products from local handy stores (is that Canadian for “convenience store”?)  And day after day here at NORML we report study after study that shows heretofore unknown benefits of cannabis use, like this one that shows schizophrenics who use cannabis demonstrate better cognitive functioning… the same people whose susceptibility to cannabis Kay is using to frighten us into caging adults over cannabis.

As for allergies – there are people on this continent who are deathly allergic to peanuts.  Some of them are even children.  For the rest of us, peanuts are nice plant product we consume for nourishment, enjoyment, and occasionally while socializing.  The fact that peanuts can kill a tiny subset of people with an allergy didn’t lead us to laws banning all peanut use for adults.  Instead we did the sensible thing and required confectioners, bakers, and snack food manufacturers to label their products not only if they contain peanuts, but even if their non-peanut snacks are made with equipment that has touched peanuts.

So legalize it already and slap on a warning label: “This product contains cannabinoids. Discuss cannabinoid use with your doctor.  Cannabinoids should not be used by pregnant women, children, and those susceptible to psychoses or with a family history of mental illness.”

Via Twitter I received the plea from a reader named “LindseyDiane” that pointed to this newly released article in the Chicago Tribune entitled “What Parents Need to Know About Pot”.  She wrote “This article is full of blatant lies. Please email to set them straight!”

Will do.

What Parents Need to Know About Pot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Uh, who out there is smoking pot leaves anymore?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NORML’s Paul Armentano has already done a stellar job taking on the latest reefer madess on ABC News.  This is another one of what seem to be an increasing number of stories (NY Times, Dr. Drew, The Tenneseean, CNN, TransWorldNews, Christian Science Monitor)  that bring up the idea of “marijuana addiction” by telling the personal stories of people whose lives became full of turmoil and regret when they just couldn’t give up the doobies.

Many years ago the former head of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Alan Leshner made this statement when forced to confront the fact that tens of thousands of patients were successfully using cannabis as a medicine:“The plural of anecdote is not evidence.”

Someone ought to pass on Lesnher’s cop out to ABC News, whose recent feature, “Reefer Madness Redux: Is Pot Addictive?“, is little more than a series of anecdotes from folks claiming that it’s becoming harder and harder for some individuals to quit weed.

Yes, if 10,000 people say that using marijuana helped them medicinally, that’s just anecdotes and no basis for medicine.  But if a dozen people say that they were daily tokers, it ruined their lives, and they had a hard time quitting the bong, that’s enough for the mainstream media to question “Is Pot Addictive?”.  Which, by the way, is one of those sneaky ways the media tries to push a narrative by just asking the question and not declaring the fact.  “Is President Obama a Kenyan-born Illegal President?” or “Has Former President Bush Returned to His Hard Drinking Ways?” would be similar examples of the technique.

It’s the old “some people say” trick where media presents an issue as if it has two sides when the facts are all on one side.  “Some people say pot is addictive,” they’ll intone, and bring on three anecdotes of wasted lives, “and some people say it isn’t,” they’ll continue by presenting three doctors who tell the truth and present the evidence that it isn’t addictive in the potential-death-from-withdrawal sense.  See?  Three pot smokers who blame marijuana for their life’s failures vs. three well-educated doctors with studies of thousands of pot smokers whose lives turned out just fine.  Fair and Balanced!

Let me pick this apart a little.  In the piece, we meet “Vicky”, a 53-year-old who started smoking pot at age 13.  Well, there’s a clue!  We know marijuana use before age 18 can have detrimental effects and we here at NORML have been very forthright about explaining that.

Since the 1970s, when marijuana was the symbol of political protest, the risks of marijuana dependency have been clouded by the legalization debate and long-held beliefs that the illicit drug is harmless.

You’re not finding those beliefs here.  I’ll be the first to tell you marijuana is not harmless.  Neither is water.  But it is far less harmful than other drugs we allow even our teenagers to consume, like a Starbucks Frappacino loaded with caffeine, for instance.

Today, there are no FDA-approved drugs to counteract withdrawal symptoms, although the synthetic cancer drug Marinol shows some promise.

So, the treatment for the new “Pot 2.0: Not Your Father’s Woodstock Weed™”, the deadly addictive skunkweed that can be up to (gasp!) 25% THC, is a synthetic THC pill that’s 100% THC?  Sheesh, next they’ll tell us that lithium is a good treatment for marijuana “addiction”!  Whoops, too late.

The reclassification of marijuana is important, according to the APA because its omission as an addictive substance then professionals might not see treatment regimens for dependence as necessary.

Ah, so the association representing psychiatrists is telling us that if we don’t classify marijuana as addictive, psychiatrists might not declare people marijuana addicts in need of expensive treatment from psychiatrists.  Got it.

As the most commonly used illicit drug in the United States, marijuana produces dependence and relapse rates comparable to other drugs some researchers believe.

About 9 percent of all those who used marijuana became dependent, compared to rates of 32 percent for tobacco, 23 percent for opiates and 15 percent for alcohol, according to the 1994 National Comorbidity Survey.

In what branch of math are values 255% greater, 155% greater, and 66% greater considered “comparable”?  This is like saying my one minute eight second time in a 200 meter dash is comparable to Usain Bolt’s 19.3 second world record time.

For daily smokers, that dependency rate soars to between 33 and 50 percent, say more recent studies.

And what is the dependency rate for daily tobacco smokers, 100%?  Or daily beer drinkers?  Doesn’t it seem a good thing to you that half to two-thirds of daily marijuana smokers can quit cold turkey without any negative withdrawal effects?

With stronger pot, emergency rooms have reported more associated accidents. Just this week, seven people were killed when the driver — drove the wrong way on a New York highway and collided head on with a pickup truck. Although the drivers family has disputed the results, toxicology tests showed high levels of alcohol and marijuana.

Yes, high levels of alcohol, as in a .19 BAC!  So naturally this is the perfect example to show how stronger pot is causing accidents.

All addictive drugs have a “common signature,” according to NIDA director Nora D. Volkow. “They increase dopamine levels in the brain’s pleasure center and produce repetitive behavior. Marijuana appears do both, though at intermediate levels compared to other drugs.

Absolutely untrue, according to a new study published this June in NeuroImage, which concluded, “In the largest study of its kind so far, we have shown that recreational cannabis users do not release significant amounts of dopamine from an oral THC dose equivalent to a standard cannabis cigarette.”

Roger A. Roffman, a professor of social work at University of Washington… argues that the reform movement makes a “tragic mistake” to convince the public that marijuana is relatively harmless.

We’ve never claimed marijuana is harmless!  We’ve always claimed it is less harmful than alcohol.  Quit putting your words in our mouths!

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.

Joyce, 52 and a writer in Manhattan, started smoking pot when she was 15, and for years it was a pleasant escape, a calming protective cloud. Then it became an obsession, something she needed to get through the day. She found herself hiding her addiction from her family, friends and co-workers.

“I would come home from work, close my door, have my bong, my food, my music and my dog, and I wouldn’t see another person until I went to work the next day,” said Joyce, who like most others in this article asked that her full name not be published, because she does not want people to know about her past drug use.

“What kind of life is that? I did that for 20 years.”

She tried to stop, but was anxious, irritable, sleepless and lost. At one point, to soothe her cravings, she took morphine that she found at her dying father’s bedside. She almost overdosed.

Two years ago, she checked into the Caron Foundation, a treatment center in Wernersville, Pa. Even there, she said, some other addicts — cocaine and heroin users or alcoholics — downplayed her dependence on marijuana.

“The reality is, I was as sick as them,” Joyce said. She now attends Alcoholics Anonymous, which is also open to drug addicts, and recently married.

Smoking pot, she said, “was a slow form of suicide.”

Uh, sure, in the sense that if you smoke pot for sixty to eighty years, you’ll die.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: a few people do have an identifiable dependence on marijuana, but calling it an “addiction” demeans the truly physically addicted.  Those alcoholics, cocaine and heroin users can die when they quit using their drug.  You got “anxious, irritable, sleepless and lost”.  You are experiencing the same kind of life and same kind of withdrawal as a problem gambler, the “shop-a-holic”, the sexually compulsive, and World of Warcraft players.

The article goes on to sound the alarm about the new “Super Pot 2.0: Not Your Father’s Woodstock Weed!” that allegedly makes people more “addicted”, as if somehow alcoholics who drink cocktails all night are somehow more addicted than the case-of-beer drinker because liquor is a higher proof alcohol.

“It’s like drinking beer versus drinking whiskey,” said Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a government agency and a strong opponent of legalizing marijuana. “If you only have access to whiskey, your risk is going to be higher for addiction. Now that people have access to very high potency marijuana, the game is different.”

No, it’s not.  My dad was a beer-drinking alcoholic; he had plenty of access to whiskey, but preferred beer, and became addicted anyway.  People who become dependent on pot smoke it to get high.  If it is low-potency, they smoke the whole joint, if it is high-potency, they take a puff or two.  The potency is irrelevant to the nature of the dependence.

I’m happy to see people who truly have an issue with marijuana finding support to help them recover.  It’s not for everyone.  Some people can drink a glass of wine every day, but for some that would be a problem.  If you really need help quitting pot, I wish you all the luck in the world… because then there is more for the rest of us.

Looks like some scientists in the United Kingdom decided to look for just such a correlation:

Assessing the impact of cannabis use on trends in diagnosed schizophrenia in the United Kingdom from 1996 to 2005

A recent systematic review concluded that cannabis use increases risk of psychotic outcomes independently of confounding and transient intoxication effects. Furthermore, a model of the association between cannabis use and schizophrenia indicated that the incidence and prevalence of schizophrenia would increase from 1990 onwards.

The model is based on three factors:

• a) increased relative risk of psychotic outcomes for frequent cannabis users compared to those who have never used cannabis between 1.8 and 3.1,
• b) a substantial rise in UK cannabis use from the mid-1970s and
• c) elevated risk of 20 years from first use of cannabis.

This paper investigates whether this has occurred in the UK by examining trends in the annual prevalence and incidence of schizophrenia and psychoses, as measured by diagnosed cases from 1996 to 2005. Retrospective analysis of the General Practice Research Database (GPRD) was conducted for 183 practices in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The study cohort comprised almost 600,000 patients each year, representing approximately 2.3% of the UK population aged 16 to 44.

Between 1996 and 2005 the incidence and prevalence of schizophrenia and psychoses were either stable or declining. Explanations other than a genuine stability or decline were considered, but appeared less plausible. In conclusion, this study did not find any evidence of increasing schizophrenia or psychoses in the general population from 1996 to 2005.

Ah, but the 1970s cannabis, which would cause the spike 20 years later in the 1990s, was just that 1% to 2% THC that the hippies smoked!  It’s not the 3000% stronger “skunk” of today, which will cause schizophrenia and psychoses to manifest sometime in 2025!  Just you wait!

It’s bull, of course.  1970s cannabis was every bit as strong as what you’ll find today.  Those who were consuming cannabis regularly – the ones you’d expect to “go schizo” – were always finding or growing the good stuff.  This “Woodstock Weed” idea of low-THC joints is what the casual smoker with no connections would smoke, and not very often.

Cannabis Sativa L. is a species of tall annual woody shrub with male or female flowers borne on separate plants. [Good so far...] Cannabis grows wild in most of the temperate and tropic regions of the world. [Still OK...] Hemp, as marijuana was earlier known, was grown in the News England colonies and used in making cloth and cordage. [Hear that, my News England friends?]

The cannabis sativa plant material, marijuana, has been used as a drug for centuries. [Uh, if the plant material is the drug "marijuana", what is all that hemp, an animal or a mineral?] It originally was used for the treatment of various mental and physical ailments. But after close examination, the Food and Drug Administration in 1937 declared it to be without medical utility and removed it from the market place. [Not even close; Congress prohibited marijuana in 1937 with the Marihuana Tax Act, over the objections of the AMA, who knew its medical utility.  The FDA had never regulated cannabis and had nothing to do with its prohibition.]

The new marijuana in the market place is not the 1 percent to 2 percent THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), which is the psychoactive ingredient that produces the “high”. [Right, because 1%-2% THC marijuana is called "hemp" and smoking it will only give you a headache.] Today’s new cultivation methods are producing a drug with up to 30 percent THC, or 3,000 percent higher than the old 1960′s-1980′s available marijuana. [Wow. That's my first "Super Pot is 30x stronger than Woodstock Weed" reference. But at least the math is correct: if you compare 1% industrial hemp that nobody smoked in the 1960s to the 30% THC hash oil that makes up a tiny sub-percentage of the cannabis seized, then 3000% is correct.  It's also as meaningful as noting that Pabst Blue Ribbon beer is 3000% more potent than O'Doul's "near-beer".]

Some people argue marijuana should be legalized for both medical and recreational use. But medical studies show how dangerous this idea would be. New data has shown that marijuana smoke has a higher concentration of carcinogenic substances than tobacco smoke. [This is somehwat true, but ignores that THC mitigates these carcinogens with an anti-tumoral effect.] It is linked as a cause of lung problems such as bronchitis [Yes, but not if you vaporize it] and emphysema [no, not true], and studies confirm damage to brain cells [not true, and may actually protect alcoholic's brains and may be a treatment for brain cancer], nerve cells [no, and may actually stimulate nerve cell growth in the brain] and reproductive organs which have lead to still births and birth defects [not at all true, and don't you think we'd see more hippie kids with birth defects if it were true?]. In addition, acute memory loss [no long term memory problems and only short term memory problems while high] and lowered immune systems [right, that's why doctors give medical marijuana to HIV/AIDS patients] also have been traced to marijuana smoking.

Plus, surveys indicate that about 33 percent of all patients in emergency rooms test positive for either alcohol or marijuana in their systems. [Which just means the ones who tested for marijuana had used some in the past few days, and not that marijuana caused the visit.]

Teenagers and marijuana | courier-journal | The Courier-Journal
If you’re a baby boomer, don’t lull yourself into thinking that marijuana is a fading fad that represents a modest threat to today’s youth.

You’d be wrong.

Nearly half of today’s teenagers try marijuana before graduating from high school, and by their senior year more than 20 percent are regular users, Science Daily reported in May.

But according to the same figures that describe 19.8% (not over 20%) of the Class of 2005 used marijuana last month, for the Class of 1975 (baby boomers), that figure was 27.1%.  In fact, in 1979, lifetime use peaked at 60.4% and in 1978, monthly use peaked at 37.1%

More teens use marijuana than all other illegal drugs combined, and they are at greater risk than teens who smoked pot a couple of decades ago.

“It’s much more potent than what they smoked at Woodstock,” echoed Jim Cowser, a chemical dependency therapist in the Center for Behavioral Health at Baptist Hospital East.

A more recent style of smoking marijuana also is intensifying its impact. “During the ’60s, there were mostly joints,” said Dr. Elizabeth Garcia-Gray, chief medical officer of child psychiatric services for Seven Counties Services Inc.

“Now we have blunts, which are like two or three joints packed in one,” she explained.

“When they pack it up in blunts, the potency is much more, and if they smoke four or five blunts a day, it’s like 10 to 12 joints,” she explained.

Well, of course.  It’s like when you take one shot of 70 proof whiskey and you add it to another shot of 70 proof whiskey, you get a double shot of 140 proof whiskey, right?  …  No, you dolt, blunts are no more potent than joints, marijuana is marijuana!

And the size of the blunt, well, duh, that’s like saying if you drink three 40-ounce beers that’s like drinking ten 12-ounce cans.  It doesn’t follow that if boomers smoked four or five joints in a day that today’s consumers are smoking four or five blunts in a day.  People smoke to get high.  If it took a whole joint of “Woodstock Weed” or takes ten people sharing one of today’s blunts, people smoke that much and stop.

Cowser said cannabis may lead alcohol as the No. 1 substance abused by teens because it “is easier to conceal and a lot more accessible” than alcohol.

And nobody hassles you for any ID!  And you can get it at high school behind the shop building from another student!  And if you’re caught with it, they’ll take you to drug court and sentence you to rehab so Mr. Cowser can keep his bed counts up.

He said the mental health consequences of marijuana use range from transient amnesia to intensifying depressive disorders. Marijuana also may trigger an early onset of schizophrenia in those at risk for the illness.

So you’d think, then, that you’d see rates of schizophrenia, depression, and “transient amnesia” (you mean “forgetting where you just left your keys”) rise and fall relative to the rates of marijuana use and potency.  You go right ahead and find that data.  Look hard.  I’ll give you a start – over the past forty years, nationwide rates for schizophrenia stayed relatively constant at about 1.1% of the population.  Even during the 60s Summer of Love, GIs returning from Viet Nam in the 70s with killer jungle weed, the 80s advent of connoisseur indoor marijuana production, the 90s birth of medical marijuana, and all the way to today – 1.1% of the people get schizophrenia.

That said, it’s not for adolescents.  There is credible research to suggest that cannabis may increase the risk of developing schizophrenia if used heavily by teens who are predisposed to schizophrenia.  But we need to avoid overreacting to the relative odds when the actual odds are still quite low.

What’s the difference?  Well, think of it this way.  Relative odds say that if you buy ten lottery tickets, you’re ten times as likely to win the jackpot as the person who bought one ticket.  Actual odds say that both of you have a greater chance of being hit by lightning.

Other dangers: lung damage and social and behavioral problems. Marijuana used when driving can make it difficult to judge distances and react to signals and sounds on the road. Marijuana affects judgment, perception and memory, so it can mean poor performance in school, in sports or at a job. It can lead to risky sexual behavior.

Your lung damage consists of at worst, a hacking cough or mild bronchitis, and that’s if you’re bonghitting morning noon and night for decades.  Marijuana smoking does not lead to head, neck, or lung cancers (Tashkin et al).  Don’t smoke pot at school, in sports, or at work!  Practice safe sex.  None of those harms are caused by marijuana, they’re caused by irresponsibility and would be twice as devastating if we were talking about irresponsible drinking.

Cowser reports that withdrawal from marijuana can take longer than withdrawing from alcohol or cocaine. He said the THC in marijuana accumulates in the fat tissues, which are slow to release the chemical.

Bald-faced liar.  THC-COOH metabolites accumulate in the fat tissues.  These are non-psychoactive compounds that cause no withdrawal symptoms whatsoever.  THC itself is clear of your system within 2-4 hours.