Posted on 08/20/2014 10:40:32 AM PDT by ConservingFreedom
Like it or not, marijuana use has increased exponentially since President Nixon declared a war no drugs in 1971. Today, marijuana — or weed, pot, cannabis, Mary Jane — is the third most popular recreational drug in the United States, behind only alcohol and tobacco. Upward of 24 million people have used it, based on the latest estimates, with 14 million using it regularly. But despite a growing warmth toward the drug, and two states (Washington and Colorado) legalizing its recreational use, there are still some people on the fence about its safety and usefulness. So, to educate you nonbelievers out there, here are five marijuana myths debunked.
This may be the biggest farce cooked up by marijuana opponents, but it makes sense. People who have tried marijuana may eventually go on to try harder drugs in search of a stronger high, and their experimentation leads them down a dangerous path toward addiction. But the science behind whether or not this is true overwhelmingly shows that it’s not.
“Because it is the most widely used illicit drug, marijuana is predictably the first illicit drug most people encounter,” a report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) said. “In the sense that marijuana use typically precedes rather than follows initiation of other illicit drug use, it is indeed a ‘gateway’ drug. But because underage smoking and alcohol use typically precede marijuana use, marijuana is not the most common and is rarely the first ‘gateway’ to illicit drug use. There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs.”
So what is the cause of other illicit drug use? As the IOM report suggested, other studies have also implicated alcohol and tobacco use as gateway drugs. But an alternative gateway may just be the trials and tribulations some kids face while growing up. “Whether marijuana smokers go on to use other illicit drugs depends more on social factors like being exposed to stress and being unemployed — not so much whether they smoked a joint in the eighth grade,” Dr. Karen Van Gundy, an associate professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire, told CBS News.
Although smoking weed won’t mess with a person’s body too much, it can cause a couple of the same issues that tobacco smokers experience, with the most likely one being respiratory problems. Ailments like bronchitis may sometimes develop as users inhale the tars from the rolling papers in joints and blunts. Because of this, eating marijuana-infused foods or smoking from a vaporizer, which heats the weed up just enough to release the THC (its active ingredient), may be healthier.
Smoking weed and getting behind the wheel is also relatively dangerous, with a number of studies this year finding that teens who drove while high were likely to get in crashes. One of the studies found that the number of people who crashed their cars while high tripled over the past 10 years. A person who drives while high can be up to two times more likely to crash. When accounting for teens only, another study concluded that a teen’s lack of driving experience paired with marijuana’s (or alcohol’s) effects led many teens to drive recklessly, even when not impaired, thus increasing their risk of a crash.
When it comes to more serious illnesses, marijuana may have more benefits than harms (we’ll get into that later). Despite a controversial study earlier this year suggesting it causes brain damage, other studies have shown no correlation, let alone cause. “Results indicated no significant effect of cannabis use on global neurocognitive performance,” one 2012 study said. Other opponents argue it can cause lung cancer, a condition not one study has found a link to yet.
With the majority of drugs being addicting — alcohol, tobacco, heroin, cocaine, etc — it’s easy to go ahead and say that marijuana’s addicting, too. But it’s a little more complex than that, and no, it’s not addicting. But users can develop a dependence, or a bad habit of lighting up. According to a 1994 study on the topic, however, only four percent of users develop this dependence. Compared to weed, alcohol and tobacco dependence was found among 14 and 24 percent of study participants. In a more recent study from 2007, only about nine percent of users developed dependency to the drug, whereas 15 and 24 percent of cocaine and heroin users went back again and again.
Breaking any habit can be really difficult, a recent study showed, but it’s possible with some dedication.
The stereotypical stoner is all too real, unfortunately. At 30 years old, he still lies in his parents’ home, unemployed, smoking weed in his room while playing video games. Although marijuana users may never get rid of the reputation of being lazy, some evidence points to it not affecting a person’s motivation at all.
But first, supporting evidence that it does get people lazy. A study from July looked at the brains of 19 users and measured concentrations of dopamine, the chemical linked to reward, pleasure, and motivation. They found that longtime and frequent users, who tended to have more THC in their bodies were also the ones who had lower levels of dopamine in their brains. The researchers suggested that marijuana could cause a controversial — and not entirely official condition — called “amotivational syndrome,” characterized by laziness.
But amotivational syndrome may affect other non-marijuana users just as much. One study published in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors found that the syndrome affected about five to six percent of the population, both users and nonusers. These findings were later supported by another study, which also found there was no difference in motivation.
What it comes down to is, if you’re lazy when you smoke weed, you were probably lazy before, too.
To say marijuana has no possible health benefits is to deny hundreds, if not thousands, of pages' worth of proof. Simply looking at this Collective Evolution article will point you in the direction of 20 studies proving its cancer-fighting benefits. According to the National Cancer Institute, cannabinoids may inhibit tumor growth by causing cell death, blocking its growth, and blocking the development of blood vessels that aid in metastasis. These marijuana ingredients may also help reduce inflammation in the colon, reducing colon cancer risk, as well as killing some kinds of breast cancer cells. And that’s only cancer.
Marijuana has also been implicated in treating glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, PTSD, anxiety, and a host of other conditions. Its medical use has already been approved in 23 states, even as leading politicians begrudgingly admit its benefits.
As more states sign on for medical marijuana and local governments notice the revenue pulled from recreational weed — sales in Colorado are expected to reach $1 billion during this fiscal year — it’s likely to become a slippery slope toward the end of prohibition.
Not to mention that people's poor diets and sleep habits are also paid for in healthcare - do these 'conservatives' want government monitoring our fridges and setting our bedtimes?
Conservative and freedom, says it all. I get to pick and choose what should be legal for everyone else in the masses. Typical liberalism.
Double blind trials are the gold standard - but it's not the case that no other kind of evidence has any weight.
And what percentage of drinkers become alcoholics?
The question of drug legalization turns not on whether drugs are bad for their users — they are — but whether the harms to society created by having the government not treat psychoactive substances as a criminal matter (basically an uptick in the number of people ruining their lives, and indirectly the lives of those around them by using drugs) are greater or less than the harms created by treating use of and trade in psychoactive substances as a matter of criminal law (erosion of civil liberties through increasingly drastic enforcement measures like no-knock raids and asset forfeiture laws, creating a cash-flow for ruthless and often terrorist-linked criminal enterprises, lack of quality control of the the product leading to dangers to users besides those inherent in the use of psychoactive drugs, black-market premium pricing of drugs leading to property crime to support habits, defining users to be criminals thereby preventing them from seeking medical help for their habit,...)
Psychoactive recreational drugs are bad. Keeping them illegal makes them worse, not just for the users, but for society as a whole.
That’s the serious argument — not “pro-dope” just anti-drug-war — not turning at all on the notion that one’s body is one’s own and one can ingest or inhale what one want (that’ a “pro-dope” argument), just that making them illegal rather than treating them the way we treat alcohol and tobacco, creates worse problems than it solves.
Honestly the only bright line I can find between the psychoactive drugs we’ve chosen to keep legal (alcohol, nicotine and caffeine) and those we’ve outlawed is that the former were popular in Europe at the time of the American Founding. None of the dire things drug warriors predict would happen under legalization were true in the 19th century when the government didn’t prevent trade in or use of marijuana, peyote, cocaine or opiates, includ laudanum (tincture of opium) which was suprisingly popular.
It actually surprises me the degree to which conservatives now champion what was originally a left-wing progressive cause: drug prohibition, like the income tax, direct election of Senators, moralizing foreign policy devoid of connection to American national interests and the Federal Reserve is one of the baleful legacies of Woodrow Wilson’s administration.
The legality of pot would impose no requirements on anyone - anybody who doesn't want to smoke it could continue to not smoke it.
About anywhere else it is a disaster. You should see the zombies coming out of the pot and vaping shop, so sad and so young.
Here in CA most all violent criminals jailed love their pot and often mixed it with other stuff during the crimes that put them in prison.
Pot is for losers and will make losers out of future generations.
Have a major health issue, then I can see its private use.
All I know is that almost all of the people I have ever known who are long-term pot smokers are: poor, lazy, apathetic, slackers. Not all, but nearly all.
<><><>
That’s interesting.
did you know any of these folks before they became long term pot smokers?
Of the folks I know from before pot usage (admittedly only 2 or 3 people) and then seeing them today, the two that were lazy, apathetic, moody ones before they took up the habit are still lazy, apathetic and moody.
So then the drugs I mentioned in an earlier post are next for "decriminalization"? Afterall, they cause enrichment as well.
Honestly the only bright line I can find between the psychoactive drugs we’ve chosen to keep legal (alcohol, nicotine and caffeine) and those we’ve outlawed is that the former were popular in Europe at the time of the American Founding. None of the dire things drug warriors predict would happen under legalization were true in the 19th century when the government didn’t prevent trade in or use of marijuana, peyote, cocaine or opiates, includ laudanum (tincture of opium) which was suprisingly popular.
It actually surprises me the degree to which conservatives now champion what was originally a left-wing progressive cause
Excellent post! My only caveat is that ownership of one's own body is neither unserious nor "pro-dope" - though I will agree that if criminalization was applied only to the nastiest drugs (e.g., meth) and was successful, I'd be roughly as concerned about that violation of bodily ownership as I am about public ownership of sidewalks.
In my area, the local “organic health solutions” shop is patronized by mainly young folks...I don’t recall seeing any elderly cancer patients going in or coming out.
I love it when pro-pot folks “defend” it by comparing it to alcohol and tobacco. For years, this same group has ranted endlessly about the horrors of smoking and the social costs of booze. They demand that they be regulated, taxed, and virtually outlawed.
Then they extoll the virtues of weed “because it’s no worse than alcohol and tobacco.”
Do we really need yet another substance to be abused? And why stop there? Why not make all drugs legal?
Anti-biotics, meth, cocaine, and everything else should be ‘take as you want’ unless they are hypocrites. They want only their drug legalized, for now. The rest would come with time.
This whole medical pot thing has really been a wise use of the left to get it more mainstream. They did it with homos and all the rest of their agenda, a little normalization at a time.
Comparing marijuana to liquor is a non sequitur. I won’t even discuss that.
<><><><
Exactly. Alcohol is much worse.
In 2011, nearly 10,000 were killed in alcohol related car crashes.
How many people died from pot in 2011?
I concur too. For a pro liberty website, FR seems to have many anti-liberty opinions. I don’t see how Conservatives who are against government regulating everything, would approve of laws that criminalize ADULTS in the privacy of their homes from using marijuana.
I am not changing my mind to your way of thinking.
I have no sympathies for those to push a view on millions of others when I know it would hurt society more than ever helping them, so count me out for the marches.
People like you are a liberal because you think you know what is best for all of society, when you don’t.
In my view, you all are using this as excuse to keep from being penalized (to heck with the damage to the population, like I expressed). Time for me to leave the pot thread. Ceya. Remember, you said I couldn’t read pass the title.
Young people report that they can get pot (which is illegal for all, except in a few states) more easily than beer or cigarettes (which are legal for adults). It appears that the most effective way to reduce access to marijuana by young people is harnessing the power of the market by legalizing for adults, so sellers have the potential loss of their legal adult market to discourage them from selling to minors.
Here in CA most all violent criminals jailed love their pot
Alcohol is even more popular among criminals - should we ban that drug too?
Exactly, f-ing the future of our young people and saying “Its going to happen anyway” as an excuss.
The older crowd into that are mostly in prison or dead I would guess.
----------------------------------------------------------
Your logic is flawed.. honesty is suspect.. and point is mute..
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.