The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Marijuana --What DOES the research say?
King Boo Hoo
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I imagine trying to discuss marijuana on PA will be similar it trying to discuss religion:
-Most of PA will be arguing for one side
-People posting will have very deepset opinions already
-Raises the risk of the thread degenerating into repetitive, nonsensical, or rude discussion
However, I'd still like to give it a go, because I'm not interested in people's opinions, or personal habits, or life experiences. I want to know what the research says on this topic. Once more, please don't come into this thread talking about how marijuana ruined your friend's life; I really want to keep this thread productive.
What made me think about all this was when my friend sent me a link referencing an article published in American Academy of Pediatrics (reputable source) that found results showing children of mothers who smoked marijuana during pregnancy were performing significantly better than children of mothers who did not smoke, at the 1 month mark. Link here.
Well, I was naturally skeptical so I googled the title "Heavy Cannabis Use & Pregnancy". However, the first link wasn't about the article, but I clicked it anyway. It's an article by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (drugabuse.gov, doesn't .gov make it reputable?). The article, 2/3 of the way down, implied potential neurological problems, sustained attention and memory problems, and deficits in problem-solving skills. All of it was cited, and the article can be found here.
I was kind of shocked at the degree to which these research projects came up with such different results. This may not be the best example, but it's what made me think about how biased of a field the research on marijuana is. If you support it, you seem to find statistically significant results that it'll help with near-anything. If you work for the government, you seem to find statistically significant results that it'll cause psychosis.
I don't think researchers are changing numbers around, but I do believe that the way they choose to analyze the data, interpret the data, and the conclusions they make based on the data, are highly biased. For example, in regard to the psychosis article linked above, this article shows the many pitfalls of the study. The best point of all the author made was that if you performed the same analysis with cigarette use or alcohol use instead of marijuana use, you'd get the same results showing those substances causing psychosis. I can't help but wonder if the study authors knew about the cigarette/alcohol point and their errors in causation/correlation.
I'm not trying to pick a side in this post, I'm just pointing out that there appears to be a lot of research showing results in opposite directions, and it could very well be due to the bias of the researchers and their funders. Even performing a meta-study doesn't seem that effective, since it's precisely a meta-study that showed smoking marijuana leads to a 40% increased chance of psychosis, yet was shown to be providing highly misleading, if not incorrect, conclusions.
So what do you PA people think about marijuana, based on the research, and acknowledging the potential biases and such? Some study I can't find now showed increased brain cell growth when rats were given THC in their adolescent years. Other studies constantly show decreased school performance as a result of marijuana.
Is it good for me? Bad for me? Neutral?
What parts are true, what are just myths, and what are real problems that get washed away in the sea of myths?
Keep it civil guys
-Edit-
Results as of page 7:
I skimmed through the thread, reading most posts with a link in them indicative of a reply based on research, and here's what I came up with.
Does marijuana cause psychosis?
Research shows a correlation, but is unable to make a causation link. The 40% increase is from a .40% chance of getting schizophrenia to a .56% chance. The difference is most likely entirely due to the type of people who later develop schizophrenia are the type of people who take drugs even before onset. More to the point, if one were to conduct this study with alcohol or cigarette smoking, they would find the same results that alcohol and cigarettes create a 40% increase in schizophrenia, simply because schizophrenics self-medicate a lot with tobacco, alcohol, and drugs.
Is marijuana a good pain-reliever?
One Swiss study suggests cannabinoids are not good pain-relievers, because they’re not effective for acute pain, only chronic.
One PA'er replied with: “Well, yeah, no kidding. If you get hit by a truck, smoking a joint isn't going to make you feel much better, that’s why there are things like morphine. But if you have a sore back, well then weed can help you out there. Plus the study also used "Delta-tetrahydrocannabinol-standardized cannabis extract" instead of weed itself. The extracts and individual chemicals that make up weed have been shown to not have the same effects as them taken together.”
Does marijuana inhibit visual processing?
This study suggests THC might cause even non-excessive users problems while visually processing.
However, marijuana does not seem to impair driving skills unduly, at least not in an amount that can cause accidents.
Marijuana works as an anti-depressant?
Cannabinoids promote embryonic and adult hippocampus neurogenesis and produce anxiolytic- and antidepressant-like effects.
Marijuana makes your brain grow?
While opiates (e.g., herion), alcohol, cocaine, and nicotine have all been shown to supress the hippocampus' natural ability to grow new brain cells, a potent synthetic cannabinoid is shown to promote it and also is shown to correlate to fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety.
What’s marijuana do that’s bad?
Research shows negative effects of smoking marijuana (other than the obvious short term mental impairment) to chronic use include "apathy, lowered motivation, and impaired cognitive performance", addiction (although less severe than nicotine and alcohol), "lung damage, increased symptoms of chronic bronchitis, and possibly increased risk of lung cancer", possible immunosuppression and other relatively minor problems.
One PA’er: Note that a good portion of those negatives are due to the smoking of cannabis, and have nothing to do with THC. Oral ingestion or vaporization = no lung damage, no lung cancer, no bronchitis.
From an article: There are claims of an "amotivational syndrome" where users are said to withdraw from society and lose ambition. In reviewing evidence for and against the theory of this "syndrome," however, Marijuana and Health (Nat. Acad. Sciences, Inst. Medicine, 1982) concluded that:
"Such symptoms have been known to occur in the absence of marijuana. Even if there is an association between this syndrome and the use of marijuana, that does not prove that marijuana causes the syndrome.
So… what’s left is:
Research shows negative effects of smoking marijuana (other than the obvious short term mental impairment) to chronic use include "impaired cognitive performance", addiction (although less severe than nicotine and alcohol), possible immunosuppression and other relatively minor problems."
I don’t have an article offhand, but I’d be willing to bet if there is any impaired cognitive performance it’s totally due to correlation and not causation, as the other research, if anything, points to an increase in brain cell growth.
Something important to remember about most of this research:
Correlation = / = Causation
Remember that folks, just because an article shows an increase in X is correlated to an increase in Y does not imply X causes Y. X could cause Y, or Y could cause X, or Z could cause both X and Y, etc.
Not research related but an excellent post by Feral, so good that it needs posting to explain why we’re having so many arguments and controversy with this:
The real problem here is that psilocybin (and many other schedule I drugs) were made illegal without any evidence that they were harmful in the first place. The burden of proof should have been on those who wanted to ban them in the 1960s, but it wasn't, and now the burden of proof is being defined by a government agency with broad powers to define what substances are legal or illegal, and whose livelihood is dependent upon there being illegal drugs to chase down.
What about tar from marijuana?
When only the flowers are smoked, only “1/3 of the Tar [of] the same weight of tobacco” (Légaré) is released. This argument is also weakened by the fact that cannabis smokers use far less cannabis by weight than do tobacco smokers use tobacco.
Medical reasons to use marijuana?
Numerous, from fighting brain tumors to counteracting negative effects of HIV and chemotherapy to fighting depression and anxiety, but honestly this isn’t that interesting of a branch of debate since a lot of places already use marijuana for medical purposes. Simply pointing to their medical experts confirming the medical benefits of marijuana ends any debate on that end.
Does marijuana lower sperm count?
Wu et al. (1988) found a correlation between cannabis use and low sperm counts in human males. This is misleading because a decrease in sperm count has not been shown to have a negative effect on fertility and because the sperm count returns to normal after cannabis use has stopped. (Natl. Acad. Sciences, Inst. Medicine, 1982)
Does marijuana cause lung cancer?
Despite cannabis' known negative effects to lung function, it has never been reported to cause a single instance of lung cancer. Tobacco, though, is expected to kill 400,000 people this year (Glenn, 1992). If cannabis is so much more dangerous to a user's lungs than tobacco and is so much more carcinogenic, why aren't there stacks of reports of cannabis-induced lung cancer? One interesting theory is that it's because tobacco tars are significantly radioactive, while marijuana tars aren't at all. Winters et al. (1982) found that a pack-and-a-half-a-day smoker of tobacco is exposed to 8000 mrem of radiation a year, equal to the dose of 300 chest x-rays
One PA’er said: It kills off pre-cancerous cells in a way that mimics apoptosis.
*actually, it's kinda a mess. Seems all over the damn place from the summaries. Most of it seems to support positive correlation between some cannabinoids(including those present in weed) and apoptosis.
Another study: The new findings "were against our expectations," said Donald Tashkin of the University of California at Los Angeles, a pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years.
"We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use," he said. "What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect."
And numerous studies show marijuana is used to fight certain cancers, and protect against certain cancers, so that may be in play as well.
Won’t marijuana make me lazy and unambitious?
There are claims of an "amotivational syndrome" where users are said to withdraw from society and lose ambition. In reviewing evidence for and against the theory of this "syndrome," however, Marijuana and Health (Nat. Acad. Sciences, Inst. Medicine, 1982) concluded that:
"Such symptoms have been known to occur in the absence of marijuana. Even if there is an association between this syndrome and the use of marijuana, that does not prove that marijuana causes the syndrome.”
Isn’t drug experimentation a bad thing?
"Adolescents who engaged in some drug experimentation (primarily with marijuana) were the best adjusted in the sample. Adolescents who used drugs frequently were maladjusted, showing distinct personality syndrome marked by interpersonal alienation, poor impulse control, and manifest emotional distress. Adolescents who, by age 18, had never experimented with any drug were relatively anxious, emotionally constricted, and lacking in social skills."
Isn’t drug use after experimentation a bad thing?
Among other findings, Utah Power and Light spent $215.00 per year less on health insurance benefits for drug users than on the control group, and employees who tested positive for cannabis at Georgia Power Co. had a higher promotion rate than the company average, and were absent 30 percent less (Morris, 1991).
Sorry for not citing most of the results/quoting most of you guys, but all the information is in this thread.
-Most of PA will be arguing for one side
-People posting will have very deepset opinions already
-Raises the risk of the thread degenerating into repetitive, nonsensical, or rude discussion
However, I'd still like to give it a go, because I'm not interested in people's opinions, or personal habits, or life experiences. I want to know what the research says on this topic. Once more, please don't come into this thread talking about how marijuana ruined your friend's life; I really want to keep this thread productive.
What made me think about all this was when my friend sent me a link referencing an article published in American Academy of Pediatrics (reputable source) that found results showing children of mothers who smoked marijuana during pregnancy were performing significantly better than children of mothers who did not smoke, at the 1 month mark. Link here.
Well, I was naturally skeptical so I googled the title "Heavy Cannabis Use & Pregnancy". However, the first link wasn't about the article, but I clicked it anyway. It's an article by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (drugabuse.gov, doesn't .gov make it reputable?). The article, 2/3 of the way down, implied potential neurological problems, sustained attention and memory problems, and deficits in problem-solving skills. All of it was cited, and the article can be found here.
I was kind of shocked at the degree to which these research projects came up with such different results. This may not be the best example, but it's what made me think about how biased of a field the research on marijuana is. If you support it, you seem to find statistically significant results that it'll help with near-anything. If you work for the government, you seem to find statistically significant results that it'll cause psychosis.
I don't think researchers are changing numbers around, but I do believe that the way they choose to analyze the data, interpret the data, and the conclusions they make based on the data, are highly biased. For example, in regard to the psychosis article linked above, this article shows the many pitfalls of the study. The best point of all the author made was that if you performed the same analysis with cigarette use or alcohol use instead of marijuana use, you'd get the same results showing those substances causing psychosis. I can't help but wonder if the study authors knew about the cigarette/alcohol point and their errors in causation/correlation.
I'm not trying to pick a side in this post, I'm just pointing out that there appears to be a lot of research showing results in opposite directions, and it could very well be due to the bias of the researchers and their funders. Even performing a meta-study doesn't seem that effective, since it's precisely a meta-study that showed smoking marijuana leads to a 40% increased chance of psychosis, yet was shown to be providing highly misleading, if not incorrect, conclusions.
So what do you PA people think about marijuana, based on the research, and acknowledging the potential biases and such? Some study I can't find now showed increased brain cell growth when rats were given THC in their adolescent years. Other studies constantly show decreased school performance as a result of marijuana.
Is it good for me? Bad for me? Neutral?
What parts are true, what are just myths, and what are real problems that get washed away in the sea of myths?
Keep it civil guys
-Edit-
Results as of page 7:
I skimmed through the thread, reading most posts with a link in them indicative of a reply based on research, and here's what I came up with.
Does marijuana cause psychosis?
Research shows a correlation, but is unable to make a causation link. The 40% increase is from a .40% chance of getting schizophrenia to a .56% chance. The difference is most likely entirely due to the type of people who later develop schizophrenia are the type of people who take drugs even before onset. More to the point, if one were to conduct this study with alcohol or cigarette smoking, they would find the same results that alcohol and cigarettes create a 40% increase in schizophrenia, simply because schizophrenics self-medicate a lot with tobacco, alcohol, and drugs.
Is marijuana a good pain-reliever?
One Swiss study suggests cannabinoids are not good pain-relievers, because they’re not effective for acute pain, only chronic.
One PA'er replied with: “Well, yeah, no kidding. If you get hit by a truck, smoking a joint isn't going to make you feel much better, that’s why there are things like morphine. But if you have a sore back, well then weed can help you out there. Plus the study also used "Delta-tetrahydrocannabinol-standardized cannabis extract" instead of weed itself. The extracts and individual chemicals that make up weed have been shown to not have the same effects as them taken together.”
Does marijuana inhibit visual processing?
This study suggests THC might cause even non-excessive users problems while visually processing.
However, marijuana does not seem to impair driving skills unduly, at least not in an amount that can cause accidents.
Marijuana works as an anti-depressant?
Cannabinoids promote embryonic and adult hippocampus neurogenesis and produce anxiolytic- and antidepressant-like effects.
Marijuana makes your brain grow?
While opiates (e.g., herion), alcohol, cocaine, and nicotine have all been shown to supress the hippocampus' natural ability to grow new brain cells, a potent synthetic cannabinoid is shown to promote it and also is shown to correlate to fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety.
What’s marijuana do that’s bad?
Research shows negative effects of smoking marijuana (other than the obvious short term mental impairment) to chronic use include "apathy, lowered motivation, and impaired cognitive performance", addiction (although less severe than nicotine and alcohol), "lung damage, increased symptoms of chronic bronchitis, and possibly increased risk of lung cancer", possible immunosuppression and other relatively minor problems.
One PA’er: Note that a good portion of those negatives are due to the smoking of cannabis, and have nothing to do with THC. Oral ingestion or vaporization = no lung damage, no lung cancer, no bronchitis.
From an article: There are claims of an "amotivational syndrome" where users are said to withdraw from society and lose ambition. In reviewing evidence for and against the theory of this "syndrome," however, Marijuana and Health (Nat. Acad. Sciences, Inst. Medicine, 1982) concluded that:
"Such symptoms have been known to occur in the absence of marijuana. Even if there is an association between this syndrome and the use of marijuana, that does not prove that marijuana causes the syndrome.
So… what’s left is:
Research shows negative effects of smoking marijuana (other than the obvious short term mental impairment) to chronic use include "impaired cognitive performance", addiction (although less severe than nicotine and alcohol), possible immunosuppression and other relatively minor problems."
I don’t have an article offhand, but I’d be willing to bet if there is any impaired cognitive performance it’s totally due to correlation and not causation, as the other research, if anything, points to an increase in brain cell growth.
Something important to remember about most of this research:
Correlation = / = Causation
Remember that folks, just because an article shows an increase in X is correlated to an increase in Y does not imply X causes Y. X could cause Y, or Y could cause X, or Z could cause both X and Y, etc.
Not research related but an excellent post by Feral, so good that it needs posting to explain why we’re having so many arguments and controversy with this:
The real problem here is that psilocybin (and many other schedule I drugs) were made illegal without any evidence that they were harmful in the first place. The burden of proof should have been on those who wanted to ban them in the 1960s, but it wasn't, and now the burden of proof is being defined by a government agency with broad powers to define what substances are legal or illegal, and whose livelihood is dependent upon there being illegal drugs to chase down.
What about tar from marijuana?
When only the flowers are smoked, only “1/3 of the Tar [of] the same weight of tobacco” (Légaré) is released. This argument is also weakened by the fact that cannabis smokers use far less cannabis by weight than do tobacco smokers use tobacco.
Medical reasons to use marijuana?
Numerous, from fighting brain tumors to counteracting negative effects of HIV and chemotherapy to fighting depression and anxiety, but honestly this isn’t that interesting of a branch of debate since a lot of places already use marijuana for medical purposes. Simply pointing to their medical experts confirming the medical benefits of marijuana ends any debate on that end.
Does marijuana lower sperm count?
Wu et al. (1988) found a correlation between cannabis use and low sperm counts in human males. This is misleading because a decrease in sperm count has not been shown to have a negative effect on fertility and because the sperm count returns to normal after cannabis use has stopped. (Natl. Acad. Sciences, Inst. Medicine, 1982)
Does marijuana cause lung cancer?
Despite cannabis' known negative effects to lung function, it has never been reported to cause a single instance of lung cancer. Tobacco, though, is expected to kill 400,000 people this year (Glenn, 1992). If cannabis is so much more dangerous to a user's lungs than tobacco and is so much more carcinogenic, why aren't there stacks of reports of cannabis-induced lung cancer? One interesting theory is that it's because tobacco tars are significantly radioactive, while marijuana tars aren't at all. Winters et al. (1982) found that a pack-and-a-half-a-day smoker of tobacco is exposed to 8000 mrem of radiation a year, equal to the dose of 300 chest x-rays
One PA’er said: It kills off pre-cancerous cells in a way that mimics apoptosis.
*actually, it's kinda a mess. Seems all over the damn place from the summaries. Most of it seems to support positive correlation between some cannabinoids(including those present in weed) and apoptosis.
Another study: The new findings "were against our expectations," said Donald Tashkin of the University of California at Los Angeles, a pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years.
"We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use," he said. "What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect."
And numerous studies show marijuana is used to fight certain cancers, and protect against certain cancers, so that may be in play as well.
Won’t marijuana make me lazy and unambitious?
There are claims of an "amotivational syndrome" where users are said to withdraw from society and lose ambition. In reviewing evidence for and against the theory of this "syndrome," however, Marijuana and Health (Nat. Acad. Sciences, Inst. Medicine, 1982) concluded that:
"Such symptoms have been known to occur in the absence of marijuana. Even if there is an association between this syndrome and the use of marijuana, that does not prove that marijuana causes the syndrome.”
Isn’t drug experimentation a bad thing?
"Adolescents who engaged in some drug experimentation (primarily with marijuana) were the best adjusted in the sample. Adolescents who used drugs frequently were maladjusted, showing distinct personality syndrome marked by interpersonal alienation, poor impulse control, and manifest emotional distress. Adolescents who, by age 18, had never experimented with any drug were relatively anxious, emotionally constricted, and lacking in social skills."
Isn’t drug use after experimentation a bad thing?
Among other findings, Utah Power and Light spent $215.00 per year less on health insurance benefits for drug users than on the control group, and employees who tested positive for cannabis at Georgia Power Co. had a higher promotion rate than the company average, and were absent 30 percent less (Morris, 1991).
Sorry for not citing most of the results/quoting most of you guys, but all the information is in this thread.
King Boo Hoo on
0
Posts
Getting stoned every day leads to becoming a dumb fuck.
Research says whatever the fuck it's paid to say.
I will rely on some of our distinguished colleagues to supply the actual study.
Anyway, I believe pot to be relatively safe in moderation.
The problems are that you develop a tolerance to it very quickly, and it saps your ambition. But on the whole it's a much safer drug than alcohol.
I hate to let my hippy roots out, but pot comes naturally... from nature, and I trust that a lot more to alleviate nausea (Not gonna comment on other proposed effects) than a manufactured pill that may have side effects just as bad or worse than anything weed will do to me
Also, if you like Doug Benson watch Super High Me, which recently came out. Not that it's a reliable scientific test, but it is damn funny, and kind of interesting too in it's coverage of Medical Marijuana in California and a look at one person's experience going from "none-pot" to "Smoke weed all day"
Truly, the kind of response a stoner might give.
There are lots of fields where essentially all of the research has partisan bias built right in. Wasn't that one of the conclusions of the Byron Report, for instance? I'm not sure if it holds true for cannabis, though.
Maaan, come on maaaan. Like...don't be mean? Mmmmmmkay?
There are, I just have a problem with that kind of sweeping distrust of research.
I wasn't serious for even a second. I'm totally editing a smiley in there. The whole post was so tongue & cheek I didn't think it would be taken seriously!
Although the taxation of marijuana, were it legal, could create some revenue for states/federal government, I think the health problems created by smoke aren't worth it.
For the record: I think tobacco products should be outlawed too, especially cigarettes. So by no means am I objective, and I haven't really done all that much research into the subject.
Internet sarcasm breaks my brain for whatever reason.
I say it needs to be restricted by age because getting pot was easy as fuck as a kid while I never got ahold of cigarettes, and if I hadn't been able to smoke as much before 18 I might have realized how much time I waste with it and how dependant I was becoming on it.
C'est la vie.
Joints would fall under the same anti-smoking laws that already exist, depending on your state, so it wouldn't be any different from what you experience now. Only with more happy people and Doritos sales going through the roof.
Personally, I feel that outlawing a naturally occurring substance constitutes a war on reality. That goes for psilocybin as well.
There's evidence that there are some anti-cancer properties in marijuana that counteract the carcinogens created by burning it.
Eh, Michigan's anti-smoking laws are in the form of cigarette taxes, last I knew (meaning, there aren't really any).
I phrased the outlaw tobacco thing wrong. I feel that it shouldn't be allowed for recreational use. If it has medical purposes or whatever, that's fine. Same thing for pot, really. I have no problem with people using it as a prescribed pain killer or whatever (I don't have a huge problem with people smoking/eating/however else you can take pot, so long as it's not around me)
I'm not worried about getting cancer from second-hand smoke, so much as just the smoke in general clogs up my sinuses and does a whole variety of nasty things to my body.
Likely it'd be much more strict than that, along the lines of alchohol. In fact pretty much the same. I.E. not in public, not while driving, not at work, not till you're 21
I know studies can show it going either way, but it is pretty important to know where marijuana is going to fuck up your unborn kid, or possibly, even enhance your pre-born kid.
What about doing it in high school? We talking pure correlation, or is there some causation involved between diminished grades and marijuana?
And as adults? Once the brain stops developing? How bad are the "400 chemicals found in marijuana". Not according to the statistics that assume you smoke 20 joints a day, 1gram in each joint (no joke, a study was done using those figures), but like, 1gram a day, tops. Still bad for you?
NOTE: This article is on lycaeum.org, so it is obviously going to be quite pro weed. However, it seemed well cited. The end result seemed to be that early studies indicated all sorts of health problems, but followup studies can never verify these results.
PERSONAL FEELINGS: Anyone who's actually smoked the stuff can tell you it's infinitely less dangerous than Tobacco or Alcohol. If those substances are legal there is absolutely no reason why Marijuana is illegal. It's an illogical law from a time when use of the substance was associated with "undesirables" like Mexicans and black jazz musicians. US drug policies racist origins are quite well documented.
The problem with wanting to have solid research on this is that it does different things to different people. Just like some people don't get drunk very easily while others get smashed. And research into pot is heavily, heavily restricted, at least in the U.S.
Here's an article (opinion peice, it seems) about those restrictions: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=marijuana-research
However while I trust the AAP a lot more than the goons they've hired to justify spending billions each year on police and prisons to "stop people smoking," I would still not recommend smoking weed to a pregnant woman. There could easily be other factors at work here. (Perhaps women who smoke pot are more likely to be attentive mothers in the child's early days? It's just a hypothesis) This study doesn't show that weed is good for an unborn child, it shows there is a correlation between a mother smoking weed and a child's development at one month. (I'd like to see the study as well, if you still have the link)
Interestingly, marijuana does not seem to impair driving skills unduly, at least not in an amount that can cause accidents. (I know that's from NORML, but they're just citing work done by six other independent groups) Apparently the degree to which weed impairs your reaction time is counteracted by the degree to which you slow down to compensate. I used to have a link to a study that showed that in fatal crashes, the people involved who were between 45 and 55 years old who had THC in their systems were slightly less culpable for the crash than those of the same age group who were clean, but I cannot now locate it.
This. Crack cocaine minimum sentencing anyone?
Great idea. Let's legalize cocaine too so we can get some unbiased numbers on how it works.
Except cocaine isn't cannabis.
gg
1. Huge expansions of executive power
2. Catastrophic expense to the taxpayer
3. Lots of dead or imprisoned brown people
4. Curtailing of civil liberties
To name a few. Number 1 is really the driving force behind the whole situation. The law enforcement organizations love the WoD, because they get funding for sweet new equipment and a damn German shepherd to chase down the dirty druggies who probably are politically opposed to them.
Not to mention the well-established companies that rely on intoxication and medication for their income. It would be highly unlikely that Coors Brewing Company or GlaxoSmithKline wouldn't oppose a move to enter new substances into the market, especially one like marijuana which is purported to have a large range of health benefits. Also, as a naturally occurring substance, you can't patent pot and sell it for years at inflated cost until a generic is released.
Here
Sperm are highly inhibited by THC.
Here
This study suggests THC might cause even non-excessive users problems while visually processing.
Here
"Short-term use of existing medical cannabinoids appeared to increase the risk of nonserious adverse events. The risks associated with long-term use were poorly characterized in published clinical trials and observational studies. High-quality trials of long-term exposure are required to further characterize safety issues related to the use of medical cannabinoids."
This article, a review of many cannabinoid studies, sums up the academic environment regarding cannibis.
Basically, as it says above, we pretty much need a hell of a lot more long term studies on both recreational and chronic users to determine any kind of answer.
Here
I don't smoke marijuana or cigarettes, so I'm not saying that as a personal bias. The problem is that no one who really could change anything is paying for research to evaluate the safety of the drug -- similar to how little money is spent on the negatives of alcohol. These are old laws, and funding for research comes from government. If the gov't is socially conservative, the only funding is probably going to go towards researching negatives -- which is less likely than simply no funding at all. A more socially liberal gov't may evaluate the current laws and fund research into negatives, or evaluate the existing research.
The catch is that the political positions that control the laws in place don't really understand the research, and generally the research that's out there doesn't really shift much. It's well established what THC does, and MOST scientific research stops fall short of declaring anything is absolute truth.
I'd say it's less that statistics or research is biased, but rather that people who don't understand science can read a paper and glean whatever *they* want to get from it. You can have someone stating that marijuana will cause severe brain damage among children, and another stating that marijuana is shown to be safe at all age levels, and it'll turn out to be the exact same research paper. Why? Because a scientific paper will make assumptions and state possibilities in order to ensure they're not stating more than what their actual research shows.
In other words, the vast majority of scientific research studies a specific thing, or a thing inside a thing inside another thing. And if that thing might affect, say, brain development, but the researchers didn't investigate that, they'll state "This chemical compound may possibly affect brain development in developing fetuses," which is a fancy way of saying "we didn't look at human babies *shrug*."
Do, do you know how Science works, Eggytoast?
Didn't we go through this in the last pot thread?
Vaporizer or ingestion. Otherwise, the amount of air pollution released by me sparking a doobie in my living room is inconsequential. Especially if there's a 6' cannabis bush next to me sucking up CO2.
Rags are better than carbon neutral. They have a negative carbon footprint.
I know this is the type of rabbit trails we aren't supposed to be going on but you're for banning a substance because of your own personal health problems? Yes, if you have such an adverse reaction to smoke in the air then you have problems. That isn't much different than someone wanting to put a prohibition on peanuts because they're allergic.
The one thing that has been bashed over my head plenty of times is how marijuana abuses the gland that produces dopamine in the brain which affects a person's ability to naturally produce it. It's why you have to smoke more later on to get the same sort of high. But I heard this a long time ago and second hand from someone who just happened to have a bachelor's degree in psychology so I don't know how accurate that is.
Yes, we're in agreement. I'm saying that the actual published papers focus on their own data, and rarely speculate beyond their own particular focus. Typically, they do only to point out that they didn't look into it.
My wife's about 2 months from a biology PhD, and she's handed me my ass when I make assumptions about The Science enough now that I "get it."
But yeah, we're not in disagreement. It's not the studies that are coming up with bias, it's the interpreters on either side.
Then don't post it. It might be an accurate statement referring to cocaine or heroin, but not cannabis.
This is why I hate drug threads.
You can always tell which ones are the potheads because they call it like "cannabis" to make it seem refined and proper.