Reefer Madness in Reverse: Happy Talk about Pot

AmericanThinker ^ | May 3, 2019 | Richard Kirk

[ransomnote]

Marijuana is safer than alcohol.  No one has ever died from using marijuana.  Legalization of marijuana will allow law enforcement to focus on more serious crimes and will eliminate the black market.  Marijuana has clear medical benefits.  State regulation of marijuana will guarantee product uniformity and produce significant tax revenue.  Marijuana reduces opioid addiction and crime.  Mental health problems related to marijuana (like psychosis) are overstated and can be explained away without viewing pot as the primary cause.  All these claims, especially those about safety and mental health, are debunked by Alex Berenson’s book Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence. 

Berenson, a novelist and New York Times journalist, only began this countercultural work after his typically liberal sentiments about marijuana were challenged by his wife, a forensic psychiatrist, who matter-of-factly suggested he read relevant studies on the subject after she observed, to her husband’s surprise, that one of the violent criminals she evaluated in New York was “of course… high” and had “been smoking pot his whole life.”  Berenson’s book was the unexpected and (for marijuana advocates) unwelcome, result of that challenge.

SNIP

 Currently more than sixty percent of Americans have followed that buzzed logic even though “neither cannabis nor THC has ever been shown to work in randomized clinical trials” which, as the author further notes, is “the only reliable way to prove a drug works.” Moreover, what may be marijuana’s most effective pain-relieving component, cannabidiol (CBD), is almost nonexistent in most cannabis today, so “whatever good [it] may do is irrelevant.”  

[ransomnote]

The article is from 2019, so I wonder how high the rate of ER visits for cannabis dependence/abuse is now. From the article:

Even those figures may be understated in view of the fact that in 2014 America’s “emergency rooms saw more than 1.1 million cases that included a diagnosis of marijuana abuse or dependence -- up from fewer than 400,000 in 2006.

[Jan_Sobieski]

Reefer Madness was spot on…and pretty well made for the 1930s

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Oddly enough, health risks are not enough to dissuade younger users. What does work is to point out that marijuana *makes you stupid*.

The supposedly glorifying song, “Because I got high”, by ‘Afroman’, is instead about somebody whose life has been ruined by smoking marijuana. This actually makes *sense* to young users, and it is profoundly anti-marijuana.

If you think of all the fun, entertaining, educational and emotional stuff you can do, the alternative to *experience* is getting high, and sitting like a bump on a log as life passes you by. To be emotionally numb.

And this simple message makes a lot of sense to young people.

[BipolarBob]

Duuudddeeee! You need to chill. Get a coupla’ bottles of Boones Farm wine (Tickle Pink or Strawberry Hill) and have some doobies rolled up.Turn on Cartoon Network. (Be sure and have a bag of Cheetos close) . Start drinking and smoking until the show starts not only making sense but seems insightful. Don’t forget you have an emergency bag of Cheetos when you get the munchies. After several hours of this, your stress and problems just dissipate. And it’s cheaper than therapy. I’ve saved you several hundred dollars there. You’re welcome.

[jmacusa]

No substance such as marijuana is with out harmful side effects. All drugs are. And I’m not in favor of legalizing hard rugs like cocaine or heroin How ever marijuana and compounds from it have certain medicinal benefits.

Alcohol has none. Legalize marijuana or outlaw everything again, booze, tobacco , gambling, seriously and we’ll live as the Puritans did . Legalize marijuana. Or out law every thing else and stop the moronic arguments of moral equivalence once and for all.

[irishjuggler]

“certain medicinal benefits.
Alcohol has none. “

This is untrue. Resveratrol in red wine has been shown to have certain cardiovascular benefits. Beers containing containing malted barley and hops have high levels of silicon which is beneficial for bone density.

Walk down the streets of San Francisco with me, and tell me that legalized weed have been a good thing. Stoned, stupid, psychotic people... that’s the reality of widespread weed usage. I’m not saying that alcohol doesn’t have negative externalities, but walk down the streets of beer-drinking Munich, and you’re not going to see anything comparable to what I see from the “heads” in San Francisco. Walk down the streets of any wine-drinking town in Tuscany, and you’re not going to see anything comparable either.

[CaptainK]

The smell of pot getting sucked up into my car’s exhaust system from the pot smoker in the car in front of me is becoming more and more common. Are pot high drivers better than alcohol high drivers? The potheads will tell you, yes.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Taking anything that puts you in an altered mental state on a regular basis is going to have a down side.

Does not matter what that thing is, it is going to cause problems. And if you are taking things that put you in an altered mental state on a regular basis you have enough problems that you do not need more.

[wardaddy]

Don’t let your mind post toastie regardless the vice

Being stoned all the time is just that

From SWIM

LOL I’m lying

I was stoned as a coot 71-85 24/7 unless sick like high fever

I managed to do quite a bit

But I learned at 27 I could do more less not high

No at 66 I’m thinking I’d like to get stoned again a little bit anyhow at nite

Most folks I know who aren’t drinkers smoke weed at nite and as they say

Chill lol

Some are 80 something

Who woulda ever thought back in 70-78 such things

Real geriatrics getting stoned lol

They tend to prefer edibles or vape

Doobs are too harsh for old lungs I guess

I know an old couple

Been married since before he went to Indochina

Couple glasses pinot

Cook dinner

Then twist one up and watch faux news or a movie

It’s a routine for them

He’s a retired builder and she’s former banking executive who cashed in (she’s tribe she’s no dummy)

Anyhow 60s Gen done got old

That describes 75% of the people I know from 25-85

[midwest_hiker]

Yes, ER visits due to pot ARE high… no pun intended. It is that no one cares or wants to shine a light on it.

[Garth Tater]

>>marijuana and compounds from it have certain medicinal benefits. Alcohol has none.

"Ethanol is known to have a significant influence on human bodies, especially on the nervous system (1). Despite those negative effects as described in various studies, patients with certain diseases benefited from the consumption of ethanol. The clinical manifestation of ethanol-responsive movement disorders (ERMDs) could be significantly improved after ethanol intake. Patients with essential tremor (ET), one of the most common movement disorders influencing ~1% of the population worldwide (2), were first reported to respond to ethanol in 1949 by Critchley (3). Similarly, alcohol intake has long been known to decrease myoclonic symptoms in most myoclonus dystonia (MD) patients since 1967 (4). Besides, cases of different phenotypes of dystonia (5–7), dyssynergia cerebellaris myoclonica (8–11), epilepsia partialis continua (12), post-hypoxic myoclonus (13), and tremor with multiple sclerosis (14) are also reported to have similar positive responses to ethanol"

Cheers!

[Organic Panic]

My personal evidence.... NO prescription drug has worked for my crippling migraines. When I feel the ‘auras’ coming on one or two drags from a vape pen stops them in minutes saving me three or four days of misery. This has been reported by many people.

As for CBD...l There are strains of hemp almost completely devoid of THC. There is a large industry for CBD. I have personally witnessed CBD with trade amounts of thc suppress epileptic fits. In fact, a CBD drug has been approved and patented to treat child hood epilepsy. And as a anti-inflammatory CBD does work. I can’t speak for the lotions and ointments as I only say people who used it orally.

But the reality is, for all THC’s medical uses, people just want to get high. And any chemical that does that is going to cause problems when used in excess..

(I have a dog in the fight as I use to manufacture extraction and distillation equipment in the past during the big CBD boon. )

[jmacusa]

Nah, sorry saw too many drunks try their own way.
Almost all of them made it.

[jmacusa]

Winos, drunks, alcoholic. As I once was.

Please spare me the moral relativism.
It's either legalize weed nation wide or bring back alcohol prohibition. That was such a sterling success.

[irishjuggler]

“It’s either legalize weed nation wide or bring back alcohol prohibition. That was such a sterling success.”

Why does it have to be “either” of those? There are plenty of countries around the world that seem to be getting along just fine with a system where alcohol is legal but weed isn’t. That’s more than 90% of countries, actually. Why is it impossible for us to be doing what 90% of countries are able to do?

[Chad C. Mulligan]

One of the worst aspects of the "Reefer Madness" meme is loss of trust in authority figures among young people who try smoking rope and find out that none of it is true. It's been 50 years since I even smelled marijuana smoke, but I still remember how theaters in Cambridge ran the Reefer Madness movie for us to laugh at.

Was it a "gateway drug"? Well just about everybody I knew back then smoked, but in the ten+ years I lived in Cambridge I never even met a smack user, despite being a semi-pro musician. Acid, yeah. Maybe a few tried speed, but the vast majority never did. Worst long-term effect was that it seemed to encourage some people to become slackers.

[dennisw]

pong

[equaviator]

Getting stoned is one thing while catching a buzz is another. Smoke or take too much and you can get uncomfortably high. Know your limitations and keep it private, even though it’s legal or at least decriminalized. Infrequent use doesn’t necessarily lead to chronic heavy use or abuse. People have to realize that not everyone who uses or enjoys marijuana feel the psychoactive effects at the same level. Those who’ve had a bad experience with it probably got too high and it scared them away after only two or three tries, which is when the stuff can make your head spin, make you cough and feel paranoid, etc. I’m not suggesting that they keep trying because it’s to each his own to decide whether to continue or to stop right there.

[Getready]

If the punishment for a crime, or legal infraction, is enhanced if the guilty was under the influence of ethanol or marijuana that could make people in general decide whether to use those chemicals indiscriminately. Going to a morgue to watch the autopsy of someone killed by alcohol or marijuana impaired car driver might he illuminating.
Enough of the “hold my beer” or “marijuana is no worse than alcohol” mentality. We need to take responsibility for the sequelae of our actions.

[muir_redwoods]

If your exhaust system is sucking up anything you have a serious mechanical problem.