Prohibition Is the Real “Gateway Drug”
09/29/2015
Inge Fryklund
Drug warriors claim that marijuana is a “gateway drug.” On the contrary, it is the policy of drug prohibition – not the drug per se – that creates a gateway into a criminal underworld of crime and contaminated products.
This was brought home by a recent study showing a correlation between alcohol prohibition and meth use by county. When people want a substance that is prohibited, their only option is to turn to criminals who can supply it. This entree into the criminal world becomes a gateway to other illegal – and often more dangerous – activities and substances.
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Forget What You?ve Heard About Cannabis, Science Says It?s Wrong
08.14.2015
#CannabisClaims is a campaign by scientists and academics to set the record straight on thirteen of the most oft-repeated claims on cannabis use and regulation, none of which are strongly supported by the scientific evidence.
Many scientists are increasingly frustrated by the disregard of scientific evidence on cannabis use and regulation. To set the record straight, the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy (ICSDP), a global network of scientists working on drug policy issues, released two groundbreaking reports evaluating the strength of commonly heard cannabis claims.
“Over the past year we?ve been working diligently on scanning the news media and online conversations about cannabis to identify the most often repeated or high-profile claims related to its use and regulation,” says Dr. Dan Werb, director of the ICSDP.
Read more and see the graphics.
More detailed information, including a list of the papers that were reviewed and cited by the ICSDP, is available here. http://www.icsdp.org/cannabis_claims
Could Marijuana Help Prevent the Rare Brain Disease Afflicting Football Players?
September 21, 2015
By Derek Rosenfeld
The NFL is back and I’m very excited about the upcoming season. But there is something that I have become more aware of recently that I can’t help but think about while watching the game ? the issue of concussions, their effects on the brain, and how medical marijuana can help play a role in treating the problem.
There is a growing body of evidence that shows football players at any level, especially ones who repeatedly use their head to hit another player, can eventually develop a brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The leading researchers studying the brains of deceased football players just released new figures showing they have found evidence of CTE in 87 out of 91 brains of former NFL players. The disease can lead to conditions such as memory loss, depression and dementia. The powerful special produced by PBS’ Frontline, “League of Denial: The NFL?s Concussion Crisis,” first opened my eyes to the gravity of the issue.
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Here’s Why We Hear So Many False Claims About Cannabis
09/15/2015
International Centre for Science in Drug Policy
Global scientific network working to improve community health & safety by informing illicit drug policies with the best available evidence
By: David Nutt, DM, Edmond J Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology, Division of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London and Founder of DrugScience
As a neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London, I study the impact of drug use on the brain. Like many scientists studying these issues, the results I detect in my lab have direct implications on how we can better equip ourselves as a society to deal with drugs.
On the whole, my many years of research on substance use has taught me a major overarching lesson: we are much more likely to demonize drugs for their negative effects than consider their neutral or potentially positive impacts. Or — in scientific terms — there is a built-in bias in the scientific literature, textbooks, and popular press towards highlighting the negative aspects of drug use. And more ink has been spilled about cannabis than any other drug, perhaps because it’s the most widely used illegal drug and the subject of intense debate concerning its regulation.
Because my research focuses on neurological function, I often come across claims about cannabis’ impact on the brain. You’ve likely heard them too: claims that cannabis use lowers IQ by up to eight points, that use of the drug causes schizophrenia, and that it impairs cognitive function in the long term. What’s fascinating about these claims is that they’re almost always “based on the scientific evidence.” But is that really the case?
A recent set of reports by the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy (note: I act as a scientific board member for the organization) addresses this question head-on by evaluating the science in support of some of the most high-profile claims about cannabis. The results are compelling: taken together, they demonstrate how easily evidence can be twisted to support political ends.
A recent example, often-repeated, is that cannabis causes drops in IQ, of up to eight points — which was the major finding of a 2012 report from Duke University. But, these results were based only on one study and the 8-point drop in IQ was observed in only 38 individuals (3.7 per cent of the total sample). Just last year, a University College London report was published that re-examined this issue in another group of young people, with a sample size over twice as large as the Duke study, and taking into account alcohol use, cigarette use, maternal education, and other potential confounders. The result? The authors found no association between cannabis and IQ at all, not even among heavy cannabis users. It is clear that we are some way off from a final answer to the question of whether cannabis is ever harmful to intelligence.
So given the conflicting findings on this issue, why does this claim continue to circulate as if it were unequivocally true? Part of it has to do with our appetite for discovery: our society is wired, for better or for worse, to celebrate and obsess over technological and scientific breakthroughs. So when a new scientific finding is made, particularly about a drug like cannabis that so many people are familiar with, it makes headlines. Unfortunately, our collective interest in the issue wilts away and the corrections and conflicting findings that come a year, two years or five years later don’t get nearly as much attention.
The other reason that false claims about cannabis continue to circulate is a little more insidious. It boils down to the trust we place in our gut feelings and the way that we’ve been educated about drug use in general. Using drugs like cannabis, we’ve been taught, makes you stupid. So when we see a headline touting scientific evidence inconsistent with how we’ve been educated to feel about cannabis, instead of changing our minds based on the evidence, it is much easier to ignore it. The end result is too often that the many scientific corrections, refutations, and re-interpretations of the evidence just get swept under the carpet. We don’t want to believe we have been mislead for all these years.
There’s one more important reason, I believe, that reporting on cannabis science tends towards the negative: money. Scientists examining the health and social impacts of drugs are usually funded by government agencies, and they often highlight the negative effects of drugs to justify their own source of funding. If a scientist can show that a drug is harmful, then they can show that it’s important to do more research on the topic to protect society. By contrast, if use of a drug appears to have only benign effects, then why would the government bother spending more research money on it? This cycle has perpetuated a scientific industry intent on demonstrating the harmful effects of drugs like cannabis, precisely because doing so allows the industry to justify its own existence. Of course, one of the major consequences of this cycle is that research on the potential benefits of drugs gets sidelined, for example with not nearly enough government funding for studies on cannabis’ health benefits.
There is a massive and growing scientific literature on cannabis. And yet, for all its complexities and contradictions, we only tend to hear about the most negative study outcomes. When people state with conviction that cannabis causes a loss of IQ points, or causes schizophrenia, they are wrong in their certainty. The evidence on these questions is ambiguous and contradictory. Whilst the evidence accumulates, we need to remain open-minded to the possibility that cannabis does not impact IQ or cause schizophrenia, just as we should remain open-minded to the likelihood that heavy cannabis use in adolescence can cause serious harm to some. Understanding the scientific evidence on these issues, which the ICSDP’s new reports help us to do, is the first step towards having an informed discussion about how we should treat cannabis. The harder part is understanding and overcoming the many obstacles that restrict the use of that same evidence in our public discourse.
Non-Smoker Exposure to Secondhand Cannabis Smoke II: Effect of Room Ventilation on the Physiological, Subjective, and Behavioral/Cognitive Effects
Evan S. Herrmann
Edward J. Cone
John M. Mitchell
George E. Bigelow
Charles LoDico
Ron Flegel
Ryan Vandrey
Received: October 10, 2014; Received in revised form: March 17, 2015; Accepted: March 18, 2015; Published Online: April 06, 2015
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2015.03.019
Publication stage: In Press Accepted Manuscript
Highlights
??Exposure to secondhand cannabis smoke results in absorption of cannabinoids.
??Secondhand exposure can produce mild subjective and behavioral/cognitive effects.
??Room ventilation ameliorates the effects of secondhand cannabis smoke exposure.
Abstract
Introduction
Cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug. Many individuals are incidentally exposed to secondhand cannabis smoke, but little is known about the effects of this exposure. This report examines the physiological, subjective, and behavioral/cognitive effects of secondhand cannabis exposure, and the influence of room ventilation on these effects.
Methods
Non-cannabis-using individuals were exposed to secondhand cannabis smoke from six individuals smoking cannabis (11.3% THC) ad libitum in a specially constructed chamber for one hour. Chamber ventilation was experimentally manipulated so that participants were exposed under unventilated conditions or with ventilation at a rate of 11 air exchanges/hour. Physiological, subjective and behavioral/cognitive measures of cannabis exposure assessed after exposure sessions were compared to baseline measures.
Results
Exposure to secondhand cannabis smoke under unventilated conditions produced detectable cannabinoid levels in blood and urine, minor increases in heart rate, mild to moderate self-reported sedative drug effects, and impaired performance on the Digit Symbol Substitution Task (DSST). One urine specimen tested positive at using a 50 ng/mL cut-off and several specimens were positive at 20 ng/mL. Exposure under ventilated conditions resulted in much lower blood cannabinoid levels, and did not produce sedative drug effects, impairments in performance, or positive urine screen results.
Conclusions
Room ventilation has a pronounced effect on exposure to secondhand cannabis smoke. Under extreme, unventilated conditions, secondhand cannabis smoke exposure can produce detectable levels of THC in blood and urine, minor physiological and subjective drug effects, and minor impairment on a task requiring psychomotor ability and working memory.
What causes teenagers to smoke weed?
March 20, 2015
By Michael J. McFadden, Author, “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains” & “TobakkoNacht — The Antismoking Endgame”
The same as tobacco:
The massive TV advertising campaigns that should be banned.
Its hypnotically bright packaging designed to lure children.
Permitting it to be smoked in bars and restaurants.
The constant use of it by characters on television.
Its advertising in all the children’s magazines.
Easy availability at the corner store.
Belief that it causes weight loss.
Its fun fruity candy flavors.
Pot smoking in movies.
Its low prices.
Big Pot.
Coupons.
Ubiquitous vending machines.
Modeling of public adult behavior.
Ads with sexy models holding joints.
Lack of laws prohibiting underage sales.
Deceptive advertising of “Low THC” brands.
Billions of dollars of promotions and billboards.
Not understanding how ugly and stupid it makes them look.
Its extreme addictiveness. (Ref: Film: Reefer Madness, and Hoover, JE.)
If we can whip up a campaign to convince people that secondhand pot smoke crawling through building walls is killing babies, stress that there’s No Safe Level Of Smell, and encourage good God-fearing citizens to snitch on and complain about pot smoke from their neighbors, we’ll soon be able to get rid of its stench and enjoy the pure floral scents of the meth lab around the corner.
Since most pot smokers become addicted as children, all we have to do is get rid of those things and pot will disappear just as tobacco smoking has!
– MJM, Pot Police Patrol Potentate
A Decade of Hard Work Turns into Historic Marijuana Victory in Congress
December 15, 2014
By Bill Piper
Over the weekend Congress passed the â??cromnibus,â? an end of year federal spending bill designed to fund most of the government through 2015. The bill contains the bipartisan Rohrabacher-Farr medical marijuana amendment prohibiting the Justice Department from spending any money to undermine state medical marijuana laws.
This is a huge victory â?” one that has taken 13 years to win. For the first time, Congress is cutting off funding to federal medical marijuana raids and saying no one should be arrested for complying with their state’s medical marijuana law.
The amendment was first offered by Congressman Maurice Hinchey in 2003. At the time it received 152 yes votes â?” far short of the 218 votes needed to win, but more than anyone expected. It was offered on the floor many more times over the years.
A lot of organizations spent more than a decade building support for the amendment â?” Drug Policy Alliance, Marijuana Policy Project, Americans for Safe Access, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, NORML, LEAP and others.
It was hard work.
I remember when Steve Fox (then at MPP) and I took Montel Williams, a well-known talk show host and medical marijuana patient, in to ask a member of Congress to support medical marijuana. The representative wouldnâ??t even look at Steve or me – just talked to Montel, repeatedly telling him he had been misled on medical marijuana and that marijuana reform advocates are liars.
Now that congressperson is one of our closest allies, not just on medical marijuana but legalization too. A lot of people who basically slammed their doors in our faces a decade ago are now our allies.
Last May, 219 members of the U.S. House voted for the medical marijuana amendment, which was sponsored this year by Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Democratic Congressman Sam Farr (D-CA), and ten other members of Congress. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) introduced a similar amendment in the Senate but a vote by the Senate on the amendment was never held.
The House amendment made it into the final appropriations bill, marking the first time Congress has ever cut off funding to marijuana enforcement.
Change almost never happens overnight. And it rarely happens by accident.
Year after year people wrote or called their members of Congress in support of medical marijuana. I know some people had doubts as to whether contacting their elected officials would matter. Now that the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment has passed it is clear that contacting members of Congress matters.
Many opponents became supporters because of pressure from their constituents.
There is still a lot more work ahead. This spending amendment is a good first step, but ultimately federal law needs to change to allow states to set their own marijuana policy without federal interference.
I like to say that members of Congress are good at jumping in front of parades, but first you have to build that parade.
Thanks to supporters like you, weâ??ve built a parade. Members of Congress are beginning to do the right thing; we need to hold them accountable and make sure they push reform further.
Bill Piper is the director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance.
