Posted on 05/12/2024 6:29:15 AM PDT by karpov
Young people who smoked marijuana in the 1960s were seen as part of the counterculture. Now the cannabis culture is mainstream. A 2022 survey sponsored by the National Institutes of Health found that 28.8% of Americans age 19 to 30 had used marijuana in the preceding 30 days—more than three times as many as smoked cigarettes. Among those 35 to 50, 17.3% had used weed in the previous month, versus 12.2% for cigarettes.
While marijuana use remains a federal crime, 24 states have legalized it and another 14 permit it for medical purposes. Last week media outlets reported that the Biden administration is moving to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous Schedule III drug—on par with anabolic steroids and Tylenol with codeine—which would provide tax benefits and a financial boon to the pot industry.
Bertha Madras thinks this would be a colossal mistake. Ms. Madras, 81, is a psychobiology professor at Harvard Medical School and one of the foremost experts on marijuana. “It’s a political decision, not a scientific one,” she says. “And it’s a tragic one.” In 2024, that is a countercultural view.
Ms. Madras has spent 60 years studying drugs, starting with LSD when she was a graduate student at Allan Memorial Institute of Psychiatry, an affiliate of Montreal’s McGill University, in the 1960s. “I was interested in psychoactive drugs because I thought they could not only give us some insight into how the brain works, but also on how the brain undergoes dysfunction and disease states,” she says.
In 2015 the World Health Organization asked her to do a detailed review of cannabis and its medical uses. The 41-page report documented scant evidence of marijuana’s medicinal benefits and reams of research on its harms, from cognitive impairment and psychosis to car accidents.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Bertha Madras is on X/Twitter, where she writes about Neuroscience, drug policy, and public education. https://twitter.com/madras_bertha.
There’s mounting evidence that cannabis can cause schizophrenia. A large-scale study last year that examined health histories of some 6.9 million Danes between 1972 and 2021 estimated that up to 30% of young men’s schizophrenia diagnoses could have been prevented had they not become dependent on pot. Marijuana is worse in this regard than many drugs usually perceived as more dangerous. “Users of other potent recreational drugs develop chronic psychosis at much lower rates,” Ms. Madras says. When healthy volunteers in research experiments are given THC—as has been done in 15 studies—they develop transient symptoms of psychosis. “And if you treat them with an antipsychotic drug such as haloperidol, those symptoms will go away.”
Marijuana has also been associated with violent behavior, including in a study published this week in the International Journal of Drug Policy. Data from observational studies are inadequate to demonstrate causal relationships, but Ms. Madras says that the link between marijuana and schizophrenia fits all six criteria that scientists use to determine causality, including the strength of the association and its consistency.”
Marijuana destroyed my oldest son. He was bright and funny and a wonderful kid. He started smoking marijuana at age 14 and quickly became addicted. When he was around 18 his addiction became schizophrenia. He became disconnected from reality. He became threatening. Four weeks ago he died in a fire at his home at the age of 34. You will never convince me that marijuana didn’t cause his schizophrenia. You will never convince me that marijuana is not a gateway drug for at least some people. I am 100% against legalization of marijuana for any reason.
bttt
None of the studies here show the positive effects of marijuana. That’s not science, it’s biased. You should show the pros and cons to make a sensible conclusion. Besides, smoking marijuana is bad for your lungs. Gummies are the way to go for those suffering from PTSD.
That’s because very few studies are funded to examine health benefits - nearly all receive funding to focus on the abuse
It was definitely the gateway drug for me. Started smoking at 16 and by 20 I was using needles and doing acid, shrooms. etc. Some just smoke pot and never go on to anything stronger, but nearly everyone who does hard drugs started with pot.
Condolences for your son. I can't imagine what you're going through.
It can cause more than that. It is definitely a gateway drug. Although the contents of cannabis itself have health benefits, actually smoking cannabis itself has numerous bad side effects. My wife retired from the Texas Justice System as a diagnostician. She cannot recall any one of her cases where the perp wasn't a cannabis user. And, they were all high when they did their crimes.
“That’s because very few studies are funded to examine health benefits - nearly all receive funding to focus on the abuse”
In some cases, very tiny amounts of lethal poisons have some health benefits.
There is an agenda behind those pushing legalization of drugs.
Just look at the Jihad against the well studied drug Ivermectin and contrast that to the campaign for these poorly studied drugs.
Arsenic has health benefits, maybe we should start adding it to gummies.
Today’s marijuana is far more potent than what was available in the ‘60s.
Where we live marijuana has been easily available and used by many for at least 50 years. There should be vast amounts of data available to evaluate the health consequences of the drug. But most of the info we have is still anecdotal in nature. Why?
My wife is a retired nurse, and I am a retired fire officer. We both know and have known many long-term users in addition to our experiences responding and treating those with health issues related to marijuana.
For whatever reason... marijuana has been portrayed by the media, and entertainment industries as a nearly harmless substance with many health benefits. The negative consequences are almost never addressed.
What are these negative consequences? They vary from minor to severe mental health problems to minor and severe physical health problems. We also are subjected to risks especially on the road from people who are driving while under the influence of a psychoactive drug.
And one of the problems these days that is sometimes left out of the conversation is that the potency of the marijuana products being sold both legally and illegally is now so much greater than it once was. When I was working as a Hazmat Officer we had a saying, "The solution to pollution is dilution. Many products are not much of a problem until they reach greater concentrations. We are now getting into uncharted territory with marijuana. People are experiencing psychotic episodes from high dosages that were typically not as common in the past.
When I first started working in public safety alcohol was the drug of choice among derelicts that we were responding to on the street. During my career this changed to marijuana. From the media coverage one would think that this might be a good thing. In reality the psych issues we dealt with became much worse over time. But the vast number of experiences that both my wife and I had dealing with these are all anecdotal... very few studies have been done to quantify the problem.
In our view however the massive increase in panhandling, homelessness in our area is largely related to marijuana abuse. And many of the health and mental issues that our friends, family and acquaintances are experiencing in their advancing years is also related to their marijuana consumption.
As an example, one of my best lifelong friends began using marijuana in his 60s when it became legal where he now lives. He never used it in his younger years. His behavior began changing noticeably, and he started having difficulties that he does not attribute to marijuana. He has become extremely forgetful, and his cognitive abilities have declined greatly. I only hear from him every month or two so the declines may be more noticeable to me than those who interact with him more frequently. In truth I have started dreading conversations with him.
He has also started complaining about various health problems that one typically associates with aging. Strangely most of these problems did not seem to be problems for him until after the marijuana use started... now there is always some new malady from illnesses, to falls, to motor vehicle accidents, to unexplained headaches, aches and pains, neurological problems and who knows what else. It is not so much the complaints as the pattern of complaints that in the previous more than 50 years that I have known him have changed radically.
Could I prove that this change in behavior is the result of marijuana use? Probably not, but the timing is suspicious and the similarity to the problems that other marijuana users we interact with daily is noticeable.
Interesting. Thanks for posting.
I smoked a joint a couple of years ago. I was nearly catatonic, the crap was so strong. My buddies were laughing as I sat there staring at the TV saying “this sucks”. The stuff is way too strong nowadays. Give me back my dirtweed!
Retail marijuana products, from grass to edibles, are clearly marked as to its concentrations. The price point also is a reliable indicator as to the potency of a particular strain. You can buy a pre-rolled joint for $5 or as much as $30.
People don’t buy weed from strangers in the park anymore. You know what you are getting. I suppose inexperienced users would be more likely to overdose.
You can still buy crappy Mexican weed if that’s your choice.
- research has only just begun due to the fact of previous difficulties in studying schedule 1 drugs.
- ALL recent research shows no redeeming qualities other than getting high if that is “redeeming” and ONLY negative impacts with warnings that it could be much worse.
- legalization in the face of blatant disregard of harm is driven only by profit expectations. It is far worse than tobacco, which a war has been waged against. Pushed specifically to also injure and dumb down an already docile, imbecilic population.
The dopeheads here, of which there appear to be quite a few, will of course hold their ears and shout like the infant morons they are, “not true, not true, not true”.
As the kids ingest spiked gummies, let the fun begin.
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