Posted on 06/10/2005 2:32:31 PM PDT by Nachum
It is this reporter's opinion that each generation in turn takes a new look at the marijuana question. Now it's this generation's turn. In a 6-to-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal anti-marijuana statutes overrule the laws in ten states that allow the use of marijuana plants to ease pain or nausea.
Fifty years ago, as a much younger television reporter, I did a series of interviews with Dr. Hardin B. Jones, Professor of Medical Physics and Physiology at the University of California Berkeley. Dr. Jones, in his thorough study, raised disturbing questions about marijuana's effects on the vital systems of the body, on the brain and mind, on immunity and resistance, and on sex reproduction.
Dr. Jones addressed such problems of society as the hazards to non-smokers, crime, the law, and the effect of widespread smoking among the military – including atomic weapons personnel. And he didn't stop there. The good doctor included telling comments from interviews conducted with scores of marijuana users and ex-users.
I concluded, after this exhaustive study, that the very idea of legalizing marijuana is to follow a senseless, immoral, perilous path – a slippery slope, that the use of marijuana is dangerous on many fronts, that it impairs memory, alters time perception, reduces coordination, damages the immune system, is psychologically habit-forming and creates a wide range of effects on moods and behavior.
Dr. Jones offered an open letter to parents. Following are the main points discussed in his letter:
Marijuana is not a benign drug. Use of this drug impairs learning and judgment and may lead to the development of mental health problems.
Smoking marijuana can injure or destroy lung tissue.
Teens who are high on marijuana are less able to make safe, smart decisions about sex, including knowing when to say "no."
Marijuana can impair perception and reaction time, putting young drivers and others in danger.
Marijuana use may trigger panic attacks, paranoia, and even psychoses.
Marijuana can impair concentration and the ability to retain information during a teen's peak learning years.
Recent research indicates a correlation between frequent marijuana use and aggressive or violent behavior.
Dr. Jones concludes: MARIJUANA IS ADDICTIVE, and says that more teens are in treatment with a primary diagnosis of marijuana dependence than for all other illicit drugs combined.
Personally, I recall one visitation to a rehabilitation center where we interviewed recovering heroin addicts. We had to interview 25 hard-core drug users before we found a single one who had not started with marijuana!
As for those who say they must rely on marijuana to treat their pain, Dr. Jones cited a Washington University School of Medicine study on the subject: the experiment on twenty young men who were experienced marijuana smokers. Before and after they smoked reefers, electric impulses of different strengths were applied to their fingers and pain thresholds recorded. It was a method that earlier had verified the pain-killing effects of morphine, aspirin and codeine. MARIJUANA NOT ONLY FAILED TO LESSEN PAIN, IT ACTUALLY INCREASED IT! That finding casts doubt on the usefulness of marijuana as an analgesic.
The same facts and conclusions are repeated generation after generation with the same conclusion: DON'T EVER LEGALIZE POT!
PS: Will miss the beginning of your Drudge thread because I'll be picking someone up at LAX.
I don't oppose the right to your self ownership of a house, dog, stock, car, gun and so one.
I oppose your ownership of illegal medications.
I even more so hope those that share those illegal addictive medications, are stricken quickly thereafter with a deadly disease that kills them pronto so they can't continue to corrupt the young.
I'm sorry for your car wreck but that crime is different from social drinking amongst friends, at home or in restaurants or what have you. Of course alcohol has the potential for abuse, but the nanny state is not what needs to be making the call for individuals. Anything has the potential for abuse. The method one chooses has no bearing on anything.
The larger question here is why you think the federal government should be the final arbiter of the marijuana question -- when it is not for drinking and driving. Each state has its own laws regarding the latter, why not the former?
Have fun at LAX. (I know this is not possible..)
You laugh!! I'm interested in understanding the Bible without "upgrades" or contemporary interpretations & I think that's as fundamentalist as one can get. Part of my study has included delving into the multitude of things that led to the many schisms, throughout the ages.
You're remembering the good old days! Fundamentalism has evolved into the same old paternalistic tyranny our great founders, like Robert Paine, rejected.
R.T. Paine was following an old family tradition. The base for the word protestant is protest. There was a time when having a Bible in a language other than Latin was grounds for being guilty of heresy, as it challenged the power of the Church. I have some mighty controversial Pastors in my ancestry, besides the ones in my Paine & Treat family lines. I would love to get my hands on any of their sermons or writings.
Very true, but the balance of power has tilted toward the zealots.
I dunno if the power has tilted toward them as much as you fear. Sometimes it's a button pushing kind of thing, to see if we can get secularists to go into a meltdown. We're Christians, not angels. :o)
Conservatives have traditionally been divided into two camps. Many called them faith conservatives and doubting conservatives. We used to work together to try to limit government intrusion into our lives. We both opposed socialism and shunned the zealots, both religious and social.
We lost in the fight for our schools & changes in the laws made the indoctrination camps nearly mandatory.
This new wave of fundamentalism we see today, has not only divided us into warring factions, it supports government intrusion into our lives. They desire to force their dogma on us all, using government as their tool.
Sadly true, though the doubters did their share, by going along with making sure that any "good" idea had to be made good everywhere. IOW, if a prayer was a bad thing in your child's school, it was a bad thing for every single school, everywhere.
I really wish the good old time Christians like you would make a come back.
Well, thank you. Me too. LOL
I love the Christmas season and hate to see it being law suited away because of a backlash from those who fear modern fundamentalism.
The nonsense started before modern fundamentalism & it infected many of the "traditional" religions ages ago. You have that backlash business backwards.
I don't want any drugs. I am no doper. The Constitution is more than a word to me. This is a Constitutional issue, whether you think it is or not.
I oppose the way drugs are made "illegal". You should have no problem pushing through the Constitutional amendment that would get rid of the "living" Constitution garbage on this issue.
I even more so hope those that share those illegal addictive medications, are stricken quickly thereafter with a deadly disease that kills them pronto so they can't continue to corrupt the young.
After they're gone, who will be next on your list needing to die? At what point are you going to start to think that helping the process along might be a good idea?
How many did he have to interview before he found a single one who had not started with alcohol? Tobacco? Milk?
Idiot.
There for sure needs to be laws that say when what you can and can't legally use because some people are loons.
The ONLY reason we have laws is because we needed them.
Laws are for direction of human behavior.
People don't get to make the call on many dangerous behaviors by law, but do get the choice of breaking the law or not.
You legally can't murder, rape, molest or self medicate with various forms of substances.
There is a proper stigma to pot and other drugs and they need to remain there because the stuff is crap and harmful to people.
When it' concerning a vice, an illegal drug, it isn't about the constitution, it's about criminal behavior and dopers trying to make an unwanted social change that would have dire consequences on this country.
Disgusting!
Yes it is, the way they corrupt the younger generation to ruin their life is truely disgusting.
Better the creeps providing the drugs have a nasty end than the innocent as far as I am concerned.
Nope...your remark was disgusting.
You are a real piece of work.
You keep hogging bandwidth talking about some old study that doesn't really prove diddly. If pot smokers are four times as likely to develop serious mental illness then you would think that there would be substantially higher rates of mental illness in states with substantilly higher per capita marijuana use. Is there? Of course not, in fact it's really th other way around.
I saw this study you were talking about before and found it highly suspect. It did not prove causation. Just out of curiosity I did some checking into statistics on marijuana use and serious mental illness. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) collects data on both mental health issues and drug issues. My thinking was that if marijuana really causes serious mental illness, there would be correspondingly higher rates of mental illness in states with higher rates of marijuana use. Doesn't that seem logical?
First I looked at the state with the highest past month marijuana use, New Hampshire. In that state 10.23% reported use of marijuana in the past month on the last survey and and according to SAMHSA 8.8% of New Hampshire's population suffer from serious mental illness compared to the national average of 8.76%. Then I looked at the state with the lowest marijuana use, Utah. There only 4.00% reported past month marijuana use but SAMHSA says 10.97% suffer from serious mental illness.
Now, that was interesting to me but there are too many variables that can come into play that call into question the results from just two examples. So, I dug a little deeper and looked at the ten states with the highest and ten states with the lowest marijuana use. The national average past month marijuana use was 6.18%. The top ten states averaged 8.93%. Serious mental illness in these states averaged 8.73%, compared to the national average of 8.76%. Serious mental illness in the ten states with the lowest marijuana use averaged 9.44%, even though past month marijuana use only averaged 4.73% in these states.
Why is it that the states with the highest marijuana use actually lower rates of serious mental illness than the states with the lowest marijuana use? I honestly don't know. I don't think you could conclude from that that marijuana use reduces mental illness, but it certainly does call into question research that shows that marijuana use drastically increases mental illness.
Here are the tables I used from SAMHSA's 2003 NSDUH. The link to the past month marijuana use by state is here: http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/2k3State/appB.htm#tabB.3
The link to the serious mental illness numbers by state is here: http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/2k3State/appB.htm#tabB.21
"You ranting and anger seem to betray your own pot user descriptions... Funny how angry users are. Depressed. Schizophrenic."
The reason people get angry at the type of posts you make is because they are accusatory and insulting, pure troll material.
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