The one thing it doesn't touch on is the cost we have incurred as a nation by making it illegal. We have seen this before with prohibition, it didn't stop people from drinking it just made better criminals. Once we legalize it we can stop spending money fighting it and start taxing it!
Of course the funny thing will be watching all the farmers in Illinois plow down their corn fields to crow weed! Yes I am aware of what it takes to grown corn in terms of resources, time, and cost and at the current market rate for weed those fields would be plowed under in record time!
I'm not increadibly fammilar with current agriculturual laws in the US, but my understanding is that we are still artificially limiting crop production (a temporary measure from the great depression). Given that, it is not clear to me what the actual cost to farmers of replacing corn with weed is.
I am not that surprised. Dog biting man is not an interesting news. Man biting a dog - that's something. So, anti-cannabies doctor is a common creature, the opposite - that's catching subject.
It's unlikely that the end of prohibition would have a large impact on agriculture; growing weed usually requires an indoor or greenhouse environment to prevent pollination, it doesn't really lend itself to large-scale production, and the amount that people smoke is minuscule compared to tobacco/cigarettes. Of course, tobacco companies could roll out some industrial processing machines and drive the price of production down near to zero, but as long as the government uses taxes to keep the price high, people will demand the kind of quality that requires more of a greenhouse type of a solution.
"We have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years in the United States, and I apologize for my own role in that."
Wow. Ownership of a mistake. Rare to see on a 24 hour news network. +1 for Sanjay
Considering CNN's role (as a 24 hour news network) in forcing politician's to defend anything and everything they've ever said, I really like seeing something like this coming from someone within the network. Especially about something as absurd as the illegality of medical marijuana.
To be fair, it's somewhat rare to admit that's what you're doing so explicitly. Most public figures who do this kind of thing try to pretend like it never happened.
the headline should read "over-credulous member of establishment is finally swayed by overwhelming evidence to the contrary, although he has to travel to the ends of the earth to be convinced"
Or, "it's not enough that he agrees with me, agrees publicly with me, and apologized for disagreeing with me; the manner in which he arrived at his agreement with me is offensive, so let's make that a topic of conversation."
Maybe some people feel insulted after having been maligned for so many years. Gupta, as a member of the establishment that advocated against medical use of marijuana deserves some ire for his part in that. He faithfully preached the party line uncritically, and in absence of credible evidence, he now admits. Maybe you can forgive those who may remain skeptical of Gupta's motives (since none of us can know what they are anyway). I'm glad he's changed his stance. I think it is great. But, I understand why some people are annoyed at a subject-matter expert who admits that he had based his professional opinion on government propaganda.
I love this argument. It needs to become a reflexive and memetic response whenever anyone places someone in a damned-if-you-do situation for improving their position.
He's an extremely visible character expressing medical opinions on a regular basis to a large portion of the US population, shouldn't he have already done his research instead of being a tool? Does the past no longer exist, no such thing as "damned because he did?"
Gupta's defense is the sort of defense that will reach people like my mother convincing them that marijuana is not evil and has real medical uses. That outcome is a good thing and I do not wish any harm to his reputation now because it will be against my interest and I'm hoping/assuming having "done the research" this time will give persons like you ammo for pushing him to defend his position in the future.
I don't think the past goes away but generally I'd rather not condition people to not admit mistakes. And here I'd rather win now than be right now. Then maybe be right in the future.
you sounding real crazy right now... giving false scientific opinions when you make a living as a medical 'educator' because its better for you personally is cool now?
Dude coulda, woulda, shoulda been surgeon general with that much influence i would expect this dude to actually scientifically analyze stuff before giving his scientific evaluation.
He deserves some credit for having fessed up to being wrong.
On other topics, especially in economics, the punditry is full of people who have been hilariously wrong for years, having made predictions a long time ago that have been clearly incorrect, and who still have never once even hinted that their models were wrong.
Yes, Gupta should have done his research earlier. But compared to a lot of the scum in the media, he is basically a saint. He deserves to be praised, if only to encourage others to follow his lead and admit when they were wrong.
Does somebody deserve a cookie for doing the right thing and apologizing for using their image in the media to malign those they now agree with? I'm glad he changed his mind, but he doesn't deserve a special thank you and people are right to be bitter about it.
This is a good thing, I think. If even establishment figures are starting to realize the destructiveness of these policies then so much the better for those who are affected by them.
One of the biggest issues with marijuana in this country is the lack of research behind it. Here in Michigan where over 60% of the people voted for medical marijuana, they just outlawed medibles. Meaning no pot brownies for patients. Which makes no sense when applying medical marijuana.
Caregivers and patients are outraged because they feel like they know more than the judges or politician do, and I have to agree.
On another more general note about marijuana, I think most peoples perception of the drug is that out of a hollywood movie. In my own experience you can use marijuana to lose weight, as opposed to inducing the munchies, but generally people don't know that or expect it.
Medical marijuana is legal in more states than gay marriage and growing in all 50+ Canada and Mexico. I am so tired of the US lagging behind the rest of the world and not listening to the people.
Marijuana is safer than alcohol, and its time we treated it that way -quote from pulled commercial that was going to play of Nascar event..
Edit--
Additionally, here in Michigan we have real doctors that refuse to sign marijuana recommendation forms for fear of their contracts with hospitals and insurance agencies. Meanwhile we have doctors from states close and far recommending patients come to medical states to get marijuana. This leads to dingy doctors signing medical forms for patients they have little interaction with, which makes the law seem abused.
It seems clearly safer in some respects, and I agree with you on the policy implications, but I think the apples-oranges safety comparison that gets made between MJ and (alcohol, tobacco) is misleading and a little dangerous. MJ is not purely benign. There's some evidence that it reacts very badly with a small subset of the population. That's obviously true of alcohol too, and if you want to argue that it's "as safe as alcohol" I'll concede the point (while retaining my nerdy irkedness over the imprecision of the statement).
The blue ones were banned for a while, but that was because they give you super-powers.
edit: Sorry, it was the red ones that were "banned" for a short time. The public was frightened of red dye, even though according to Mars, they did not use the red dye that was suspect.
HFCS reacts badly with the majority of the population, inducing adiposis. So does MSG. Don't forget about the pesticides you chow down on with every meal, or the chloride in your water, or the phthalates in your soda, or the BPA in your nalgene, or...
The US is terrible for substance safety. Dire. Awful. Hell, on the note of colouring, you still use bloody anthracine red, which has been banned for decades in the rest of the planet, as its carcinogenic.
It's unlikely they'll find a good one. (For the thread): The initial studies on "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" seem to have conflated overconsumption of sodium with MSG. MSG has the misfortune of being known primarily by an acronym, which makes it sound scarier than it actually is (ie, not remotely scary).
I might be wrong about MSG. IIRC animals produce the D- entantiomer (MSG is chiral), and industrially produced stuff is D- and L-, and apparently L- can be harmful.
The studies that rebutted the MSG connection in Chinese Restaurant Syndrome used industrial products, like Ajinomoto MSG.
So, I was a little unclear: I offered two arguments against the CRS/MSG connection: first, that MSG is a scary-sounding name for a chemical that plays a central role in our metabolism and nervous system; second, that studies have attempted to isolate MSG as a cause of CRS and failed to find a link.
I'll go one further--it's clearly safer (in all respects) than either alcohol or tobacco.
My only fear with legalization is that it will get pulled from the grassroots production into industrial methods, and that in turn will lower its safety (as was the case, for example, with cigarettes and the additives in the paper for them).
The biggest safety problem with MJ is (as the original article hinted) the tendency in some people (especially teenagers) to increase the probability of them developing psychosis. This is why it is so apples to oranges. Yes, there are carcinogenic problems as well but the main problem is the increased risk of psychosis.
I'd throw in a LOT of anecdata for this one.
For agitating full blown psychosis, few things are better than the array of legal highs. Where MJ (alone) has negatively effected the people I've known, it's always been down to some anxiety disorder.
If I were to start armchair theorising, I'd say it is because of cannabis' effect on the "linguistic center" of the brain. Couple this with nicotine - similar effect to cocaine in that it reduces the activity of neurotransmitter depletion enzymes - and you have serious potential for wild ideas that could interact with underlying issues to create disturbing problems. From the reclusive shut in, to the raging paranoiac, I've seen it all and I've often thought that the prevailing notion that the drug is benign is downright wrong. It is a drug. A very powerful drug. One to be respected and used wisely, and left the hell alone if it doesn't 'work' for you. But I agree wholeheartedly that it should not be criminalised.
The substance of the cannabis-schizophrenia claims is largely based on Nordic research (given the extensive surveys carried out as part of Armed Forces programs). Typically (or at least in the study I have read), the association is based on around 10 cases in 10,000. Note that these are only the people who tested positive in their bloodstream, not those who (sensibly) stopped taking drugs a few weeks before joining the army.
After controlling for various factors, they found a significant association between marijuana use and later diagnosis of schizophrenia. I believe they used linear regression, rather than something more appropriate like survival analysis.
The interaction with anxiety disorders I am much less familiar with, can you provide some links (preferably to the original papers, even if they're paywalled)?
I don't mean to sound like a jerk here, but can you link the relevant studies?
We've had over half a century of malicious and premeditated disinformation on the topic of drugs--especially marijuana--and so forgive me if I'm skeptical of a claim which does reek somewhat of "think of the children!".
None of those demonstrate causality, just that cannabis use is associated with, or predicts depression / psychosis. Is cannabis use causal? If so, how does cannabis cause psychosis? Or, are depressed kids more likely to try drugs? Some psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists opine that some people's drug use is the person's attempt at self-medication.
Causality is a notoriously hard thing to prove. I challenge you to find a study or two that demonstrate a similar relationship proving causality beyond any doubt.
Working in psychiatry research myself, I definitely don't trust a single study out there that claims to have found a simple relationship between such incredibly complex things as moods, bioactive substances, person's environment, genetics, etc (same goes for nutritional science, environmental science, economics, and so on).
To me much more compelling evidence are anecdotal cases from my personal life. I know people who have smoked all the time since their teenage years and who lead happy lives, but I have also seen how people can get really messed up from pot and how it goes away when they stop (although occasional episodes and mood swings can persist long after stopping). Other huge factors no one seems to talk much about are interactions between everyday stress and smoking, between coffee consumption and smoking, alcohol and smoking. The list goes on forever.
That doesn't make it okay to invoke Chewbacca. The authors made the strongest argument they could. Some take that and bolster it as if it were concrete proof. If they really want to strengthen the connection, show some studies that reject the self-medication hypothesis.
>I have also seen how people can get really messed up from pot and how it goes away when they stop (although occasional episodes and mood swings can persist long after stopping).
People sometimes get really messed up without any drugs at all. As far as personal anecdotes go, I know more people who are recreational cannabis users whose lives are just fine than I do users whose lives are in turmoil. Of the recreational users I know who have suffered due to their drug use, the suffering can often be attributed or related to some punitive drugs policy.
I share the same fear about legalization: Phillip Morris will swoop in and start mass-producing packs of joints or find crafty ways to put small grow-ops out of business.
I think the "medical" route is the best way to go. Yes, it is a bit of hassle to go and get a green card, but I hope it will help slow the corporate industrialization of marijuana.
Furthermore, I think that marijuana's proper position in society should be that of a medicine, not as a general intoxicant.
It would be the same as the beer industry. There will be a couple Budweiser type brands that are mass produced, mass marketed, cheap, and consumed by 90% of the population. Then there will be craft brands that produce high quality small quantity products at high prices for the connoisseurs. There will also be hobbyists that want to produce their own.
Bring on full legalization, regulation and taxation. It is overdue.
Bring on full legalization, regulation and taxation. It is overdue.
Again, that's the trick here. Legalization and regulation could still end up banning production at home or anywhere but crazy high-grade pharma labs and greenhouses--especially if, for example, you are now suddenly on the hook for tax stamps or whatnot.
Shellfish, tree nuts, pumpkin, soy, and lots of other things very clearly react very badly -- indeed, fatally -- with a small subset of the population.
To the extent that we let this affect policy at all, its not to ban the products, its to make sure that (1) they are clearly identified when present in a composite product, (2) we very narrowly (usually as a matter of policy of particular facilities, which may be public policy to the extent that those are public facilities) restrict their use in circumstances where there is particularly high risk that extremely sensitive people might be subject to dangerous passive exposure.
Sure! I think I just wrote poorly in the previous comment. I definitely think we shouldn't have cannabis prohibition.
I just don't think it necessarily follows that cannabis is safer in all situations than alcohol or tobacco. Legal or not, it's still not OK with me if my kids are using it.
I just don't think it necessarily follows that XXXXX is safer in all situations than alcohol or tobacco. Legal or not, I don't want my kids using it.
EDIT: Also, I presumably wouldn't want anyone under 18 to use it, same as alcohol and tobacco (basically, considering college, the drinking age is 18).
Well. Two things. I ate largely due to anxiety. Weed makes me not anxious. Therefore I ate less.
Secondly, you can decide to morph that "hungry" feeling into a "full" feeling. Not quite sure how to put it, but you can convince yourself - a bit like when you're holding an ice cube, and convince yourself that it's heat you can feel.
My fix was always just drinking lots of fizzy water.
That and an electronic cigarette. I just don't seem to gain weight anymore, nor do I ever manage to finish takeout in one sitting. Seriously, our food portions here are insane.
Actually, it may be the closest thing to a panacea yet in medicine considering its potential to impact: pain management, obesity, diabetes, cancer treatment, psychiatry. I'm not aware of any other drug with such potentially wide-ranging applications, especially considering its risk of patient harm.
"I am so tired of the US lagging behind the rest of the world"
Can you give a list of countries that are "ahead" of the US in regards to marijuana decriminalization?
Lets see, there is North Korea, the Netherlands, and Uraguagy might decriminalize this year.
I am so tired of the "the US lagging behind the rest of the world" trope. It's the same thing with same sex marriage. The US has been and is ahead of curve when it come to sex marriage rights.
The fact you leave off Portugal indicates you don't really know what you're talking about. The US is often behind the curve. I have no idea what 'sex marriage rights' are but DOMA is pretty much not going to prove your point.
DOMA was just ruled unconstitutional by Supreme Court.
Even if we put Portugal in the "legalized" category (which the source I cited does not), that puts the list 3, possibly 4 when Uruguay passes their law.
>I am so tired of the "the US lagging behind the rest of the world" trope. It's the same thing with same sex marriage. The US has been and is ahead of curve when it come to sex marriage rights.
That statement is true of almost everything except cannabis legalization. It's certainly true for decriminalization. And the "country", the US, is no better than it was 5 years ago. The only thing that's changed is individual states making more reasonable laws.
The US is not lagging behind. When it comes to marijuana liberalisation, it is definitely leading the way. With the exception of Netherlands, attitudes to marijuana is pretty strict in Europe. The US has the most pot smokers/capita by a long shot.
Also, Hollywood movies seem to portray it as some cool party drug, that hippies and pseudo-intellectuals use. The drug is present in most American Pie-style movies, many sitcoms and animated series like Family Guy.
Personally I believe marijuana going mainstream is an engineered phenomena. Hollywood is able to create perceptions and demands where none was before. Older generations weren't miserable all the time because they couldn't smoke pot. New generations found out about it by the marketing.
What an insightful idea - HELP people instead of just locking them up in timeout only to release them back into the public with the same (or worse) problems that they started with.
Older generations could, in fact, smoke whatever the hell they wanted: large-scale criminalization of cannabis started in the 1960s in the US. In Europe, even heroin was legal during most of the XIX century!
I don't necessarily disagree with your post but you should be careful with generalizations that aren't backed up with evidence. "The US has the most pot smokers/capita by a long shot" sounds a lot like some assumption you just made up based on your own personal experience. A study like marijuana users per capita is inherently difficult because people don't like admitting that they partake in illegal activity. The only statistic to go on for that study is how many people were arrested for marijuana crimes, which only shows how many people were caught breaking a law, not how many people use.
Also I think your marijuana/drug law knowledge is a little behind. There are a number of countries in Europe and elsewhere who are changing to more relaxed drug policies similar to the progress in the US (including Portugal who effectively decriminalized all drugs in 2001).
Laws may be more lax in Europe but popular opinion of the drug is much more negative than in the US. But attitudes are changing largely due to how it is portrayed by Hollywood.
The "how many arrested" statistic is completely useless because the level to which marijuana possession results in arrest varies wildly between countries and even states or cities. Equally the frequency of searches, the criteria for selecting people to search all vary wildly.
Anecdotally, marijuana usage was much more prevalent amongst students I knew when I lived in Canada than it is in the UK. My experience (admittedly while travelling through) in the US was similar to Canada. This drug-use map[1] corroborates that (US 14%, Canada 12%, UK ~7%), although I do agree that any survey about drug use will probably not see completely truthful answers.
The problem with drug and tobacco companies is that marijuana is a garden weed. Anyone can grow it (if it becomes legal). Or rather, no large investment to start a weed farm.
Tobacco and drug manufacturing plants require a significant larger investment. So the lobby for anti-marijuana is strong and controlled by rich people.
Eh, I dunno. Brand names are powerful. Standardization is powerful. If marijuana were legal I could see there being a lot of money in being the McDonald's of pot. Low price, universal availability, and lots of advertising can lift a mediocre product quite high.
The thing is, we are not talking about "brands" but "strains". You could get seeds for the best marijuana strain that is out there and grow it yourself. No need for "brands".
You can, but you can also make the value calculations in your head and decide that instead of learning how to properly cultivate it, keeping bad plants out, and the time/money consumed in a quality growing op, you'd rather just throw a bit of cash at someone else and use all that time for other things.
There are only so many hours in a day, and outsourcing those hours for a little money is a perfectly reasonable explanation for how a real industry will pop up around this.
If nothing else, branding certainly kicks in once you consider the market for edibles. We have brands for store-bought brownies right now; we'll have brands for store-bought pot brownies too.
Tomatoes are a garden weed; most people still buy them from stores. Just because you can grow something yourself, doesn't mean most people will when it's much easier to simply buy it.
Drug companies would be affected positively by MJ legalization. Look at how drugs are developed and marketed, at how drug companies compete with generics over marginal improvements in outcomes (or, sometimes, no improvement at all), and look at the conditions from which drug companies derive most of their profits. It's hard to see much of a threat from cannabis.
For that matter, look at Abbott Labs, one of the largest pharma companies in the world; a huge portion of their revenues come from consumable products that aren't the product of a drug research pipeline (for instance, Abbott owns the Ensure meal replacement product).
Stipulating full MJ legalization, cannabis and its active ingredients will simply become a new vector for productization by existing major health care companies.
History shows that the major pharmaceutical companies will try every dirty trick in the book to position themselves as the exclusive producers of medical cannabis if and when the plant is descheduled at the federal level.
They won't necessarily call it cannabis, it will be a "cannabis product" flying under some other name. Also, does the history of generic meds policy not tell you something? These companies are fiercely anti-competitive. Another case study in a separate market is how alcohol distillation, for instance, is kept illegal.
I don't think legalized marijuana will negatively affect the alcohol or tobacco industries in the slightest. We've reached the point where if you want to smoke weed, the law is not going to stop you. Alcohol and tobacco are by no means "replacements" or "substitutes" for weed; they are often consumed together.
I was under the impression that the primary anti-marijuana lobbies were funded by tobacco companies along with the beer/liquor industry. Medical use aside, marijuana would primarily be competing with those other recreational substances.
Tobacco companies have no problems with marijuana - that's a new product line for them! They already have the machinery in place to roll cigarettes, so it's probably easy enough to change the substance inside of it.
Better late than never I guess, but what changed his mind really? "I actually did more research and was shocked, shocked by what I found!" or "I'm making a documentary and the tides of public opinion continue to shift, writing's on the wall, time to change my tune..."
Maybe (probably) I'm being overly cynical, but people like him have lent support and legitimacy to a machine that literally destroys people's lives for their involvement with a fairly innocuous plant. Oops!
He wrote that he's "shocked, shocked" at what he found as a device to get more people to read the piece. I'm sure that editorial decision was commercial and not public-spirited, but still.
Yes, you are being overly cynical. My guess is that you agree with virtually everything in the article, and, instead of being pleased that someone has not only come around to your position in the most public fashion possible, but also apologized for previously disagreeing with you, you manage to be unhappy about the prominence of the piece.
The impression you leave is that you'd be happier if he slunk off to hide somewhere like a petulant bridge troll. That might be more satisfying for you, but it's an outcome that serves the public poorly.
Being pleased about a new opinion and being cynical about its motivations are not mutually exclusive.
I think it's perfectly acceptable to question a public figure's motives when their changing outlook (regardless of stated reasons) are highly correlated with changes in public opinion.
It would be refreshing if Gupta had said "I finally opened my eyes to the truth that was in front of me all along' as opposed to an opener for an expose 'shocked at what I found...', as if there was a hidden conspiracy against the plant. all in a day's work, and a book to follow I presume. overall I like the Doc and am hopeful his revelation will enable others to do likewise.
>He wrote that he's "shocked, shocked" at what he found as a device to get more people to read the piece.
I felt a strong impression that he had written this article for the same reason as he wrote the exact opposite 4 years ago, i.e. self-serving commercial interest.
Hardly! He doesn't have to slink off anywhere, nor do I think he should.
But frankly, the convenience and timeliness of his argument is well worth pointing out. Speaking personally, I hold a special disdain in my heart for smart people that perpetuate the war on drugs for various reasons and then profess to stand for individual freedom.
In particular, the argument of not enough research, keep it illegal is the most insidious kind of argument because it sounds reasonable enough but inherently contains the opinion that we should keep jailing people until this research materializes. So yeah, when I get a chance to rub it in with someone like that, I take it. I guess that's petty, but so is jailing people for getting high.
Yeah I agree with you. It is utterly implausible that he was not previously aware of every last thing he mentioned in the article. There's just no way. Oops, I ignored all of this evidence and all the worldwide recommendations of doctors prescribing it to patience this whole time?
No, of course not. He knew full well - probably on his initial pass of the data a decade ago or whatever if he's at all competent - of all the things he "discovered" in this article.
He merely sacrificed the health and comfort all of those people who could have benefited until now, in order to further his career.
It shouldn't be pleasing when someone comes around to your position merely because it's advantageous for them at the moment. For one thing, it means you can't count on them, and their position will change again the next time the winds shift.
Maybe (to be even more cynical) he has come to the conclusion that the regime of marijuana prohibition is coming to an end (or at least losing public support); and as a TV doctor who needs make headlines and wants to maintain relevance in the future, he has finally taken a critical look at US drug policy and discovered that it was based mostly on sham evidence. It is commendable that he apologizes and admits that he based his previous opinion on that sham.
This Howard Samuels (a person who makes his living off of a drug rehabilitation clinic) guy is an immoral shit who appears to believe that peoples' real medical needs are secondary to his opposition of "people just getting loaded". He is a prohibitionist. I am so tired of this ridiculous and harmful policy.
Actually the Howard Samuels seemed pretty rational, was all for using marijuana as medicine, and even stated its less harmful than alcohol. He just was pretty clear on the fact that most of the users of marijuana are in it for the high, and that politically medical marijuana is more of a stepping stone for folks interested in recreational use, rather than a deep seeded concern for those who need it medically.
You are entirely correct. When I used to smoke, medical marijuana was essentially viewed by me as the thin edge of the wedge.
That being said, that doesn't mean there isn't good evidence for it. But, as with most things, we tend to believe the evidence that fits our preconceptions (and argue with the evidence that doesn't).
Maybe he is rational, but the way he was yelling and carrying on did not help him in my assessment of him. I also note his financial interest in maintaining drug prohibition, which he disclosed. I don't know why he kept carrying on about recreational users, because Gupta merely came out in support of research into medical use.
>He just was pretty clear on the fact that most of the users of marijuana are in it for the high,
I may be overly skeptical but I got the impression that he felt most medical marijuana users are just recreational users, and he meant for us to think that was a fact, but offered no evidence to support that notion as a fact.
>and that politically medical marijuana is more of a stepping stone for folks interested in recreational use,
Well, it is probably true that many people who support medical use of marijuana also support something on the spectrum of decriminalization:legalization. You can include me in that, I support both politically.
> rather than a deep seeded concern for those who need it medically.
Despite the fact that I support legalization, I do have a deep-seeded and personal concern for those who need it medically. As a teenager, I got to watch a close relative who I was very fond of die (in agony) of cancer. It is my personal belief that those in hospice who suffer from pain or are unable to eat, or whose care is complicated by the use of opiates should be denied no drug if it might improve their life/death.
As for lesser ailments than agonizingly painful terminal cancer, it appears IMO that marijuana is less harmful than almost everything, and potentially has a wide potential range of medical applications, and therefore it is immoral (and idiocy) to deny its use to people.
Your not being cynical at all, its pretty much right on the money. Its pretty cut and dry either:
LAST TIME, he didnt really look at the evidence and was just regurgitating the standard line without really doing scientific analysis
OR
THIS TIME, this time he is just trying to jump on the bandwagon and get out in front of this controversal topic...
either way he doesn't hold to much weight with me, i am all for smoking ganja but the whole medical marijuana being pushed by recreational smokers thing is kinda perturbing to me
He's a practicing neurosurgeon with published research, but, like half of HN, doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to radiological safety; therefore, his opinions on pharmacology are irrelevant to you?
That seems like a surprisingly dumb argument for you, John, but maybe I just misunderstood it.
At any rate, the importance of the piece isn't Gupta's authority on the subject. After all, vis a vis cannabis, Gupta is best known for his former opposition to legalization, which is a self-evidently dumb position for him to have taken.
The importance of the piece is that Gupta was Obama's first nominee for Surgeon General, and the best known medical reporter in the country; he's doing a very public about-face on the issue just as the US appears to be reaching a tipping point on legalization.
Also: it's just a good piece, or at least an atypically good one for CNN. That's why I posted it.
He's a practicing neurosurgeon with published research, but, like half of HN, doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to radiologic safety; therefore, his opinions on pharmacology are irrelevant to you?
I guess. I guess you are right. I probably should listen to his opinion about this. I just have a hard time with media personalities who are willing to spout crap when they don't know what they are talking about instead of simply shutting up.
I'm not saying it's a good thing the guy was CNN's subject matter expert on camera for radiation safety, just that he's got a legit claim to subject matter expertise regarding pharmacology. CNN is still awful.
Anyways far as I can tell his big revelation here is "yeah when i told you i looked at the facts before i really didn't but this time i did!". Makes me take all of his conclusions with a grain of salt.
Does seem clear indication that the american mainstream is getting acceptance for the idea of medical ganja though.
The license to prescribe drugs is largely useless as an indicator of pharmacological expertise. We let chiropractors prescribe drugs in this country (Edit: I was mistaken; we don't). The government has no idea what it's doing in its process for deciding who gets that power. I have encountered plenty of doctors who clearly had no idea what they were doing when it came to pharmacology, to the point of prescribing drugs together with dangerous interactions and not informing the patient of the risk.
As for his neurosurgery practice... what? Why would you think that would make him an expert on pharmacology? Because they both fall under the wide umbrella of "medicine"?
Not that I disagree with him on this issue, but your reasoning seems incredibly shaky here.
This isn't a debate I think is worth having. I'm just saying that there's practically no reason to believe Gupta was an appropriate choice for CNN as an expert in radiological hazards, but there is some reason to believe he should know what he's talking about re medicine.
There is also the article, wherein he describes four pages worth of research he did, and in medical school they teach you a good bit about how to read scientific papers, because doctors have to do that sort of thing (eg. GSK releases lamotrigine, do you give it to your patients?).
So, unless he's intentionally and maliciously lying (unlikely), he presents plenty of good and valuable information, and as a media correspondent is probably better than most at conveying that to people.
>because doctors have to do that sort of thing (eg. GSK releases lamotrigine, do you give it to your patients?).
Ideally, that's how it would work. In practice, it appears that in many cases, doctors do little research beyond what pharmaceutical reps tell them[1].
This seems to have a lot to do with time constraints. Doctors report spending an average of 4.4 hours per week reading medical journals, and they only read the full text of about a third of the articles they read[2]. On average, the FDA approves about three new drugs each month. If new drugs were all a doctor needed to read about, 6 hours for each one might be enough to get a decent idea of safety and efficacy. But of course, that's not all a doctor needs to read up on.
But of course that has no bearing on whether doctors know how to read scientific papers.
That's fine. I just feel like there's a dangerous overtrust of doctors among intelligent and educated people, and I hate to see comments that encourage that.
If you're scientifically illiterate and generally uneducated, trusting doctors is a very good idea. If you have the cognitive tools to check their work, though, it is very smart to do so.
Fair, but a little knowledge really can be a dangerous thing. I'm not a practicing physician, but several members of my family are (whose characters I tend to trust).
The annoyance you may feel when a non-engineer pontificates on a technical topic they clearly only have a surface level understanding of is similar to the aggravation they (M.D's) feel when patients who have perused pubmed and webmd decide they're better informed than they actually are.
I'm of the opinion that "trust, but verify" is a reasonable way to approach subject matter experts in other fields.
Sure, but unfortunately, most doctors don't seem to be able to distinguish the patient who's been reading alt med forums and maybe skimming some cherry-picked articles (perusing would actually be the correct thing to do with a study), from the patient who is scientifically literate and has a reasonable knowledge of pharmacology and the evidence regarding their own condition.
When your doctor is giving you opiates and not even trying to find a sustainable alternative, and you do a ton of research, find an alternative drug (with few side effects and no recognized potential for abuse) that has been shown to help people with similar conditions, and send that study to the doctor, only to have him say "Well, I've never heard of that drug being used for this, so no", it is... frustrating.
They're supposed to ignore their patients, dismiss scientific evidence without reading it, and keep their patients on dangerous, addictive, and tolerance building drugs indefinitely?
We let chiropractors prescribe drugs in this country.
What country is that, mistercow? Here in the United States, they cannot prescribe drugs with one notable exception in New Mexico for chiropractors that have received "advance practice" training.
In fact, prescribing drugs actually goes against the chiropractic philosophy that involves physical manipulation of the body and your body's ability to heal itself.
>You seem to be equating osteopathy (a completely accepted medical science)
No, osteopathy is not completely accepted by medical science. Osteopathy is absolute pseudoscience. Please do your research.
Yes, I realize that DOs undergo actual medical training in addition to the quackery that gives their field its name, but they are still taught the pseudoscience on which the practice was originally based. That they believe these techniques are legitimate medicine is indicative that their entire understanding of science and medicine is compromised. This hypothesis has been borne out by literally every experience I have had with a DO.
It's not about what their predecessors believed. It's about what is still taught in their standard training.
Also, by no means should you take this to mean that I am giving MDs any special immunity. The only leg up they have is that I can't tell just by looking at the letters at the end of their name that their model of science in medicine has been poisoned by bullshit.
If you are outside the U.S. then I understand your belief that osteopathy is quackery because outside the U.S., it is. Inside the U.S. though a D.O. is equivalent to an M.D.
You would know this if you bothered to read either of the citations I provided. You and the person downvoting me apparently disagree with the American Medical Association that says a D.O. is equivalent to an M.D.
For failing to read my citations before you replied to them and for providing no citations of your own other than "every experience I have had with a DO." you are currently in the category of Ignorant Fool. If you would like to provide a citation or two for what you say and perhaps if you actually respond to my citations instead of around them I might be able to upgrade you to Misguided Goof.
EDIT: Never mind, I see in another comment below you are saying that you are just as suspicious of medical doctors. I have no further desire to discuss this with you.
> Never mind, I see in another comment below you are saying that you are just as suspicious of medical doctors.
You accuse me of not reading your citations (I did), did not actually read my response to your comment, and then somehow you got that out of my comment below?
I said that MDs don't have immunity. If I find out that my doctor believes in pseudo-medicine, I will find a new doctor. If you think that's unreasonable, then I guess this "no further desire to discuss" feeling you mentioned is mutual.
Because their training also includes the scientifically bankrupt "osteopathic manipulative medicine", presented as if it were real medicine.
If you found out that your doctor had, in addition to her ordinary training, received training in psychic healing, and believed that this was a valid approach to medicine, how comfortable would you feel with that doctor being allowed to prescribe potentially dangerous medications to patients?
In an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine in November 1999, researchers concluded that osteopathic manipulative medicine and traditional drug therapy resulted in equivalent resolution of lower back pain in a nearly identical time frame. The difference was that participants receiving osteopathic manipulative medicine required less pharmaceutical intervention. The advantage of osteopathic manipulative medicine was a diminution of adverse drug reactions while the disadvantage was the greater amount of physician time required for each patient.[22]
A 2005 meta-analysis and systematic review of six randomized controlled trials of osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) that involved blinded assessments of lower back pain in ambulatory settings concluded that OMT significantly reduces low back pain, and that the level of pain reduction is greater than expected from placebo effects alone and persists for at least three months.[23]
The National Institutes of Health's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine states[24] that overall, studies have shown that spinal manipulation can provide mild to moderate relief from low-back pain and appears to be as effective as conventional medical treatments.
You are the worst kind of debater. You say something wrong, are called out on it, then you change the entire topic. Only you're wrong about that new topic too, so you cling to it to death. So now you're in the position of arguing against the American Medical Association, the National Institute of Health, the New England Journal of Medicine and frankly thousands of studies.
See my other responses. In summary, DOs are fully trained doctors who also believe that a completely pseudoscientific methodology (OMM) is valid medicine. I have very little confidence in such a person's ability to critically weigh evidence, and it seems crazy to me to let them give people drugs.
DOs are fully trained doctors that happen to have gone to medical schools affiliated with osteopathy. A previous commenter related osteopathy to Catholicism via Georgetown; that sounds about right. People choose medical schools for a variety of reasons (cost, admissions, locations). One of the practitioners at my primary care doctor's office is a DO, and does not believe in pseudoscience.
I think what happened here is that you overreached; you claimed that chiropractors could prescribe drugs, were corrected, and then scrambled to recover your argument instead of just admitting you were wrong. Now we're in a totally pointless and, from what I can tell, one-sided discussion about the legitimacy of DOs, despite the total irrelevance of osteopathy to the thread we're on.
>I think what happened here is that you overreached; you claimed that chiropractors could prescribe drugs, were corrected, and then scrambled to recover your argument instead of just admitting you were wrong.
It's a good hypothesis, but for the purposes of updating your model, I should inform you that your guess is wrong. This is a position I've given a lot of thought to. I know that a lot of people disagree with it, so I chose chiropractic for my argument, as it would have been a less controversial and more clear cut example - had I not been mistaken about their ability to write prescriptions. That was sloppy of me.
The difference between OMM and Catholicism is that Catholicism does not purport to be medicine and is not part of the medical curriculum. If it were a Pentecostal school and they taught all of real medicine, but also taught faith healing, then I would feel very similarly about that to how I feel about DOs.
Here's a test: ask the DO at your primary care office if he thinks that OMM is a valid medical practice.
You should submit a story to HN about the problems of osteopathy; that would make this an interesting discussion.
But here, it's just a sideshow. Your point was that being able to prescribe medicine is not a big deal. Whatever you may think of the philosophy of osteopathy, being a DO is a big deal; DO's are doctors, licensed by the state to practice medicine. It is approximately as hard to become a licensed DO as it is to be an MD. DO's are not like chiropractors. Chiropractors don't go to med school.
You were wrong, obviously wrong, and it is clear that no matter what your underlying feelings about osteopathy are, this subthread is irrelevant. In fact, you're doing your opinions about osteopathy a disservice by hitching them to to this particular argument!
To be fair, the one DO I know is a DO rather than an MD because he couldn't get into a normal medical school (schools of osteopathy are not as selective in general).
Though I suppose that also may not be something you'd want to know about your doctor. But as far as I know the academic rigor of his medical program was no less than that of any MD school, minus the inclusion of osteopathy itself. I wouldn't have any issues going to him as a primary care doctor.
Obvious can also mean Easily understood or Easily seen through because of a lack of subtlety not just Easily perceived. Basicly as soon as you look at the requirements to study pot in the US the bias is easy to notice until then it's easy to overlook.
Ehh, it'd be nice if authorities made perfect pronouncements, but they don't, which is why "appeal to authority" is a logical fallacy. You shouldn't be for or against medical marijuana based on what a celebrity says, even if he's a celebrity doctor.
But conversely it's unfair to criticize an authority for being fallible. At least today, at least in this case, Dr Sanjay Gupta is one of the good guys. Not for espousing one opinion or another, but because he's publicly changed his mind after considering more evidence. Maybe he has incomplete evidence, and maybe in the future he'll change his mind three or four ways from more evidence. But he's basing his opinion on evidence and telling you what that evidence is.
Perhaps you are venting your outrage about U.S. based armchair experts in lieu of tackling your own homegrown quacks and associations promoting quackery in your country, because moronic English scofflaws forbid you from so much as expressing your frustration, much less dishing out a sound shellacking.
The British Chiropractic Association has sued science writer Simon Singh for a piece written in the Guardian's comment pages criticizing the association for defending chiropractors who use treatments on children with conditions such as colic and asthma, when there is little evidence such treatments work.
"English libel law is so intimidating, so expensive, so hostile to serious journalists that it has a chilling effect on all areas of debate, silencing scientists, journalists, bloggers, human rights activists and everyone else who dares to tackle serious matters of public interest.
In the area of medicine alone, fear of libel means that good research is not always published because those with vested interests might sue, and bad research that should be withdrawn is not pulled because the authors might sue the journal, and in both cases it is the public that loses out because the truth is never exposed. My victory does not mean that our libel laws are OK, because I won despite the libel laws. We still have the most notoriously anti-free speech libel laws in the free world."
Did I misunderstand something here? Are you really saying that because the country he happens to be from has some problems in a certain area, he can't criticise similar problems in countries he happens not to be from?
The Singh case flagged up a problem which drew massive support (which is still ongoing and should improve the situation some epoch). Also, he won.
The case has cost Singh more than £200,000 that he will never fully recover. "It still staggers me that the British Chiropractic Association and half the chiropractors in the UK were making unsubstantiated claims," he said. "It still baffles me that the BCA then dared to sue me for libel and put me through two years of hell before I was vindicated. And it still makes me angry that our libel laws not only tolerate but also encourage such ludicrous libel suits.
> but, like half of HN, doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to radiological safety
I think you're being awfully generous to HN...
But seriously, the key takeaway from articles like this one is that marijuana acceptance is finally becoming mainstream; five or ten years ago this kind of article would have been considered quite controversial for a major news organization like CNN, and may have been quashed at the editorial level.
Thankfully, it's only a matter of time before it's legalized and we can empty our jails of people who should never have been there in the first place for possession. The sooner the better.
I agree this is the major takeaway of the article.
Interesting to think that what is "mainstream" can be observed in what print-media outlet editors are brave (or un-scared) enough to publish. As you said, I imagine this would have been a pretty controversial article 10 years ago. Now, it feels almost like a me-too opinion piece from Sanjay Gupta, which is a big enough name on a trending topic for a CNN editor to call it news.
I think the problem is much more clear from just reading the article.
Gupta admits throughout that in the past, his decisions were based on incorrect information and assumptions. He seems to have a penchant for deciding "I'm against this!, here is the evidence that supports my point". Whereas now he finally seems to be coming around to the idea that maybe, just maybe, other evidence beside the evidence that supports his point should be considered. Perhaps he could even...gasp...put himself in someone else's shoes before making judgements based only on his own experience.
It's getting a little old hearing the "well I finally considered this from someone else's point of view and realized my viewpoint was insane" why does this take us so long?
People who don't know when to say "I don't know" get their 'ignore' flag set by me as well. If he's a genius in field X then makes ludicrous comments about field Y I might set his ignore flag as well. Maybe it's just one of my pet peeves as an engineer, but I really can't stand it when people aren't comfortable saying 'I don't know'. I consider it a character flaw.
If your job is to talk about stuff on TV, then you do the best with what you've got.
I've written Perl code. Really, really bad Perl code. I would've loved to throw my hands up and say "let someone who knows their shit do this" but I was the only person, and the job needed to be done.
You have to understand that for media personalities, offering their opinions... that's their work output. You can shut up and still keep earning a paycheck. Their job is to keep talking.
Essentially what you're advocating is to have TV channels just broadcast dead air most of the time. Maybe that's what you want. But it's not really a reasonable suggestion. I guess we can have a laugh about it though.
Ok I'm ignorant on the subject. I watched the CNN video but the page just says read Wikipedia. Gupta says the suits are to protect you from gamma radiation (maybe not those exact words). Is that not an accurate way to describe the purpose to their target audience? From what I understand, there are radioactive particles everywhere near the reactor and you don't want these in or on your body, because they are emitting high levels of radiation. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Highly educated people, especially medical doctors, love to opine on topics outside their field of expertise. So I'm willing to give Gupta a pass on the gamma radiation bit--it's just how surgeons are. That said, this article is about physiology. Gupta is a medical doctor licensed in three states, a member of the faculty of Emory Medical School, etc, so I think this one is within his domain of expertise.
> Highly educated people, especially medical doctors, love to opine on topics outside their field of expertise. So I'm willing to give Gupta a pass on the gamma radiation bit--it's just how surgeons are.
Programmers are that way as well, even if they are not highly educated.
I found it interesting they did not comment on the means of using weed. Smoking it cannot be much better for you than smoking cigarettes.
Even after the Feds remove it from the list there will be regulation governing its sale. You can grow tobacco all you want; most people don't because prep is much harder than marijuana; but run afoul of a few laws should you try to sell it.
It would certainly reduce the jailed population of this country and possibly even reduce the usage of harder drugs, after all if there was a legal outlet most people take the easy route
It's an article of faith that cannabis is a major contributor to US incarceration, but I think that's a belief worth questioning. I looked into this briefly for a thread a year ago and in the states I researched, domestic violence was far and away the leading cause of incarceration.
In many major metro areas, you're more likely to be ticketed for cannabis than arrested.
I haven't taken the time to come up with a conclusive answer for myself on the extent to which cannabis criminalization imprisons people in the US; maybe it's as bad as people think it is. I just think it's worth doing some research on.
The DOJ reported that there were 1,236,476 state inmates in 2000 (http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p00.pdf). So 3.6% of that would be 44,513 state inmates who were imprisoned for marijuana only in 2000.
It's important to remember that in most states, sentences of under one year are served in county jails, not state prisons. The state prison numbers you describe are likely significantly to understate both absolute numbers and relative proportion, for this reason.
> It's an article of faith that cannabis is a major contributor to US incarceration, but I think that's a belief worth questioning. I looked into this briefly for a thread a year ago and in the states I researched, domestic violence was far and away the leading cause of incarceration.
Its been a while since I saw figures, but last I did domestic violence was at the top of the reasons people were sentenced to incarceration (that is, if you did a ticker at the door, it would be the most common reason) but narcotics were the most common reason people were incarcerated (that is, if you did a count of the currently incarcerated population, drugs would be the most common reason.)
The difference, of course, is length of sentence.
I don't think marijuana is all that high a share of those incarcerated for drugs, but if you are using the prominence of the reason people get incarcerated rather than the prominence of the reason people are incarcerated as your standard, you aren't looking at the right issue.
"In many major metro areas, you're more likely to be ticketed for cannabis than arrested." - as long as you are white and not wanted by the authorities for some other issue.
How many instances in a sampling size? How large was the sampling size? How rigorous was the study? Peer reviewed? Publisher?
Offhand, I can immediately tell you the overwhelming evidence is that tobacco (cigarettes) is far more harmful than cannabis. I direct your attention to the myth of cannabis being as harmful as x number of cigarettes[1] and the myth that cannabis harms brain cells[2]. While it does alter the brain, it is up for heavy debate whether it's harmful, especially on long-term use.
I appreciate that you came back with a legitimate citation, but the rest of your comment is uncalled for. What I googled were the points that defend my position, not the other way around - the burden for that is on the opposing defense, not my own.
What about my comments appears as though I just look for self-validating information and ignore the rest? The parts where I questioned scientific rigor, sampling size, case instances, etc?
It's less harmful than cigarettes - nicotine is a vasoconstrictor and bronchioconstrictor. Weed is neither, and actually also has expectorant qualities, so you tend to cough most of the tar back up.
That said, smoking anything is not good for you, but IMHO it's up to the individual what risk they take with their body.
>In summary, the accumulated weight of evidence implies far lower risks for pulmonary complications of even regular heavy use of marijuana compared with the grave pulmonary consequences of tobacco.
the reason cigarettes are so dangerous is the tar and carbon monoxide. Smoking weed does not have that problem.
Also, many people vaporize their weed or use wick to smoke with - which lowers the temperature of the heat. Across the board, smoking weed is much safer than smoking cigarettes
Isn't any effect that marijuana has on patients going to be confounded with the placebo effect? Not that I disagree with what is being said, I still have my doubts about the actual medical usage of marijuana, and the studies that have been done on it.
300 seizures a month -> 3 seizures a month is unlikely to be a placebo affect, but plural of anecdotes and all that, sure.
For pain management and quality of life, we probably don't need to worry about the placebo effect too much; instead, we should just measure whether cannabis gets people off opiates.
"we should just measure whether cannabis gets people off opiates."
This is something that could be major. My wife was in the hospital off and on this summer with stomach pains. The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong (ran all of the tests, put her on liquid diet and the pain continued) so her doctor put her on OxyContin until the HMO approved a referral to a research university. The insurance declined the referral stating they wanted a second opinion, so my wife went to get one and the doctor wanted her to get off all of the medications. She did and almost killed herself the day after; the withdrawal from the OxyContin was terrible. If there was a way to manager her pain without constantly worrying about her becoming addicted or worrying that when she stops the med she will end up doing something drastic, it would be amazing!
I had back surgery following a few months of severe debilitating nerve pain. The surgery fixed the pain, but I was hooked on prescribed opiate painkillers. I quit the pills cold turkey rather than tapering, because tapering just prolongs the horrible withdrawals... less severe, but longer lasting, and more chances you'll just say F-it and not really taper but stay hooked. I used MJ edibles to zonk myself out silly during the 7 days of the withdrawals so that they would be more tolerable, and that REALLY REALLY helped, and I succeeded.
>We don't need a mediocre surgeon to tell us weed is OK.
We don't. The US government does. Who do you think they listen to more: the people or the rich and famous? I've certainly never been asked into Congress to testify for anything.
I am a medical marijuana user. I have fibromyalgia (a catch all label for constant pain), and it helps some with neuropathic pain. My doctor is kept informed about how much I am using, and I have to get my card renewed each year. MJ works, but at best it dulls the pain, and also helps to make the pain less 'front and center' and instead kind of makes it more something that is in the background.
I was never a stoner, and did not use it until I was 38 years old. I am happy it exists, because I was being treated with Vicodin for pain and was on a schedule of 6 pills a day. Enough that liver damage and addiction started to be a concern. I am allergic to pills in the Percoset family (hives and skin lesions) and I consume about 5 joints a day worth of weed. I don't even get high anymore, but it does help with the pain. It is costing me about $100 per week, compared to the $3 per month the Vicodin cost on my medical insurance. I could buy a new car with the weed money, but couldn't buy a coffee at Starbucks with the Vicodin money.
I hope the government gets around to reclassifying the drug soon. In the current situation, Child Protective Services would take my kids away if I was to consume the drug in front of them. A reclassification would enable more research, more research would lead to easier ways to ingest it. I find food products make me stomach sick, vaporizing doesn't work as well as smoking, and smoking is unappealing and difficult to do with any discretion.
I am fortunate that I can afford it, and can fit it into my schedule (I own my business). Many people need something like MMJ and can neither afford it, nor can they keep their employment with it because of widespread drug testing. While the state I live in says that card holders can't be fired for holding a card, it is a state that has 'right-to-work' laws and you can fire someone for no specified reason at all. (source- I employ ten people).
Definitely would fall into the impairs motor skills category. You can develop a tolerance for almost all drugs, even alcohol and yet many still fall within that category so wouldnt expect ganja to be any different.
At 5 joints a day OP probably has built up a pretty high resistance to THC. Speak to enough every-day smokers and you'll find they go on breaks every once in a while to address this.
>I wondered whether MMJ would fall into the category of "do not drive or operate machinery" whilst using.
Depends on the strain, if you're smoking Indicas then yes you should not operate machinery.
I believe most states have rules that are about "driving under the influence" and the influence could be alcohol, drugs, illness, or basically anything that would alter your mental state. I have had days when the pain alone would make me fail a roadside sobriety test (slurred words, can't walk a straight line). I don't recommend consuming drugs or alcohol and driving, prescription or otherwise.
At work I avoid operating the forklift, milling machine, or anything else that could cause injury to me or my people. I still get a very slight buzz, but nothing at all like when I first started using it (think 5 or 10% of previous effects). I have had times when I consumed what I needed (four or five bowls) when friends were in the same room, and they have gotten high from just being there while I had no change. In general I consume in the very early morning and at night when I know I won't be leaving again before sleep. I avoid using during the day because most days I have to drive and work.
MMJ is certainly not a perfect solution, but it beats constant never ending pain (no drugs) or addiction and liver failure (opiates with acetaminophen) http://www.drugs.com/vicodin.html .
Fair enough. I wonder if the active component that dulls the pain also the one that causes the wooziness. Is it possible to have one without the other? I suppose smoking the raw leaf is a pretty blunt delivery mechanism vs putting the active compounds in a patch or a pill.
As a human, you are more able to handle hallucinations than you think. If you see a bear off in the distance, in real life do you freak out and drive off the road? No. You just remark at it. "Holy shit a bear in the distance!"
When you're on acid, you don't change as a person, your reactions don't change. If you see something weird you say "woah, that's weird" but, unless you're deep in a trip and forget you are on a substance, you can usually handle it like a normal person.
Not really in the conventional way people think of hallucinations.
What you see is distorted, but everything you see is actually there. The walls might look like they're dripping or wavy, the branches on a tree appear to reach out at you, and colors become more vibrant, but you won't ever see gigantic bunnies or flying unicorns or some other stupid shit that often ends up in film depictions of a psychedelic experience.
As dosage increases, your mind increasingly tends to interpret what you're seeing as something else, like a shadow may appear briefly to be a person. When this starts to happen I would no longer feel comfortable driving, but for me this occurs at the peak of 500 ug + experiences, the equivalent of 5 standard doses. Not saying that driving on LSD is a great idea, but on a single standard dose it's not nearly as dangerous as driving after you've pulled an all-nighter IMO.
In my experience, one dose of acid will make you see things, but not things that aren't there. More like interesting patterns in clouds. You can clearly distinguish what's real and what's not. That being said, I'd rather not drive, but could imagine doing so.
A 1998 Olympic gold medalist in snowboarding was stripped of his medal for testing positive for marijuana. Then someone at the IOC thought better of trying to call marijuana a performance enhancing drug.
It's very discreet and pretty effective, esp. if you are looking for a more CBD non-thc delivery method.
Unfortunately these are a local Denver product right now from what I can tell (my friend in SF can't find them their yet outside of driving to Berkley); so it might be difficult to find outside of colorado. They also make a variety of cartridges including Sativa, Indica and Hybrid.
I've switched to using this most of the time esp. outside the house, or when the kids are around. When you exhale there is hardly any smoke either and I've seen people smoking these at bars openly. I haven't been so bold even though I have a red-card, things sure have changed fast, at least in Denver.
Edit: Also, the high effect is minimal, esp with the Sativa cartridges. Much more of a body, pain reliever type effect.
Edit 2: Cartridges are rated for around 300 hits, and at 40 dollars per that works out be a pretty cost-effective solution from a cost standpoint too. This might not be as effective as a mj joint however; I would be curious to know if you get one if it's more or less effective.
From my limited understanding THC is the aspect that causes the 'high' whereas the CBD's are effective at pain relief, seizure control, and generally the medical benefit side of things. Around Denver there are a whole class of food additives and edibles that are high in CBD's because of this effect.
Look at THC / CBD proportions. There's research [0] into CBD mitigating THC's interference with memory formation.
Also, intentionally-high-CBD strains are under development [1]:
"A high-CBD cannabis strain was developed in the 1980s by David Watson and Robert Clarke, American naturalists who founded a company called Hortapharm in Amsterdam to pursue their goal of developing plant strains for different purposes. (The day Watson and Clarke became expatriates is the day the U.S. lost its lead in the field of cannabis therapeutics.) In 1998 Hortapharm sold its seed stock to a British start-up, GW Pharmaceuticals, which has since developed a strain that expresses 97% of its cannabinoid content as CBD.
GW plans to test its high-CBD strain as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel diseases, psychotic disorders, and epilepsy. It is now in Phase 2 trials to determine the dose levels to use in clinical trials involving people. GW mixes its high-CBD and high-THC strains in a 1:1 ratio to make Sativex, a plant extract formulated for spraying under the tongue that has been approved in Canada and elsewhere to treat neuropathic pain associated with multiple sclerosis. CBD evidently bolsters the pain-killing effects of THC while moderating its psychoactivity."
There are 3 main active ingredients in marijuana: THC, CBD, and CBN. The places I go get their strains and edibles/topicals/whatever lab tested so you know the %s of each. In general, higher CBD+CBN levels are better for pain relief and insomnia and will cause more grogginess/drowsiness than strains higher in THC which are more for appetite stimulation, euphoria, anxiety relief, etc.
At least in SF the legitimate dispensaries do a good job of informing you about these things and finding the strains that will accomplish what you want.
If I am trying to get relief for pain and insomnia, why would I begin with the assumption that I am looking for a strain of THC at all? Why not get medical advice on how to treat the pain/insomnia/underlying conditions?
People usually go to the weed doctor after they've exhausted other avenues. For one thing, if you have insurance it's going to be a lot cheaper to take standard pharma products than weed.
You are incorrect about the effects of CBD, in fact modern research has shown it's effect to be more stimulating and has been compared to ritalin by those with experience.
For more modern up to date science backed information on CBD see projectcbd.org
CBN is not a primary cannabinoid, it's a breakdown product of THC and simply indicates how old or stale the cannabis is. It's primary effect is grogginess and general unpleasantness so you want to avoid it as much as possible.
Any dispensary that says CBD is good for insomnia is simply repeating long disproven but widely spread information.
The idea of psychogenic disorders would have normally have sounded like esoteric BS to me, but I ended up picking up the book at the recommendation of an ex-Google coder who went through all the same things that I did. I'm glad I did; for 15$, I completely cured myself after years of trying everything else (physiotherapy, standing desk, stretching exercises, working out, various books on RSI, ergonomic chairs, keyboards, mouses, trackpads, switching hands, etc, etc), and it turns out the book takes a very scientific approach to these conditions, even if it admits that there's a lot we still don't understand about exactly how our minds work and how they can affect our bodies (it's kind of an engineering approach -- we figured out something that works, now we need to figure out why).
Highly recommended to all those of you suffering from constant back pain, neck pain, RSI, etc.
I was thinking of buying that book, but he sounded like a typical wackaloon to me.
I mean, just from reading the first few lines of the Amazon review:
> Dr. John Sarno caused quite a ruckus back in 1990 when he suggested that back pain is all in the head. In his bestselling book, Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection, he claimed that backaches, slipped discs, headaches, and other chronic pains are due to suppressed anger, and that once the cause of the anger is addressed, the pain will vanish.
Slipped discs are due to suppressed anger? What the fuck?
I've been having back pain for a few years now (it returns whenever I slouch), but it started directly after a gym injury... what has that got to do with suppressed anger?
I read his book (http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Back-Pain-Mind-Body-Connection...) expecting to have a similar reaction. While he doesn't make the strongest scientific case, you are not doing his proposition justice. It's more about people who injure themselves maintaining unconscious tension in areas which leads to stiffness and pain well after the physiological healing has finished, because they fear re-injury.
I found some of his advice helpful insofar as it suggests that mindfulness meditation can help ease tension-induced back pain (which I have found to be true for me) and that there is a mental component in overcoming the fear of re-injury and allowing yourself to resume your full range of motion without subconsciously tensing up.
As someone who struggles with anxiety from time to time, I can even believe his statement that he's referred some patients to therapy before attempting to treat their back pain.
Invest a couple hours in reading a few chapters of the book and find out for yourself. I can't possibly summarize it all here without skipping important steps.
All your objections are addressed very well in the book. It's not like he hasn't thought about those things and how it sounds at first. He came to his conclusions empirically by treating his patients, not by dreaming up some theory out of the ether.
I'll just re-iterate my recommendation for the book. It doesn't cost much and you can always get it from the library if you really don't want to spend the money.
I avoid books like this because they are almost all "wacakaloons" like you say. But this one seems to be much better. At least the entire first half of the book is the author making the medical case for his treatment. It is well cited, based on both his clinical experience and other studies.
Sarno doesn't claim that slipped discs are caused by suppressed anger. He never says that all backaches, headaches, slipped discs, and chronic pains are due to this and stresses the importance of getting examined before judging for yourself the cause of the pain. He believes that the pain from things like a slipped disc sometimes is, though. He cites a multitude of instances where people have slipped discs and aren't in pain.
Again, I'm not finished with it and am still a bit skeptical, but I would say it's probably worth a read.
I don't think he claims that, but rather that slipped discs being painful is.
Not really sure about this (I haven't read that particular book), but I will say that Sarno's theories cured my RSI pain, which crippled me for over a year. I'm not sure if his explanations of the mechanism for the pain are correct (they seem very hard to test), but I'm pretty sure the pain was all psychosomatic.
I was in Chiropractic School and dropped out because I
felt most patients got better by the placebo effect.
I once heard a Doctor describe psychosomatic pain. He
believed the artierioles constricted with psychological
stress. It's still real pain, but it will eventually
go away.
I was deeply effected by nagging pain throughout my twenties. I went to Doctors, but since I knew where
all the cranial nerves were(Chiro student), they didn't
think it was psychological.
The American way to success(what ever that is) is Stressful.
Especially, if you were the hard working type. Don't think
you are invincible. The mind does break.
My use of weed has not worked. I used it for anxiety/depression but, it just made me feel anxious, and
amplified any pain I had. But, everyone is different--try
it--it just might work.
I have a friend who grows and unless you are re-selling it to shops, you're unlikely to break even growing your own. The equipment is relatively costly and the care and attention required to consistently grow is very time consuming.
Yes, if you grow indoors you are spending a lot on electricity , but if you grow outdoors during the summer then the cost will be significantly lower. Grow enough to last through the winter. Weed grows in afghanistan in the harshest of climates.
It's called Weed for a reason. However, the stuff you get from a dispensary will have a significantly higher THC count than the stuff you grow in your backyard during the summer.
Yeah, you are right. My friend grows indoors, I am sure this is part of the reason I hear of his difficulty, among other things, he keeps a busy full time job and had no previous experience growing anything before diving in to it all.
The start-up cost is high, yes. Around 1200 for a good set-up shopping at the right places. This includes a tent, ballist, surge protectors, light, soil, nutrients, ect. The whole 9 yards.
The first few (maybe 2-3) grows will turn out pretty bad, but it will still be enough to last you to the next grow. You have to find a balance in the nutrients and water which only really comes with trial and error, but the recommended dose is generally pretty close.
On the time issue: Once everything is set up, it's surprising relatively low time commitment. Especially if you're only growing 2-3 plants for personal use, you're looking at _maybe_ 3 hours per week for maintenance just to water every 3-4 days, prune dead leaves, sweep the area up, ect. I've also known people who use an Arduino or RaPi to rig a drip irrigation system which they can leave unattended for up to 2-weeks with no issues. Those growing for dispensaries in mass quantities are growing hundreds of plants at a time all at different stages and that is certainly a full-time job to maintain.
The nice thing about growing your own is there's no obligation to grow right after you finish one, and keeping the buds frozen preserves them completely for months until you need it. So, if you aren't looking at giving it up in the next 2 years I think its an extremely viable option which will save you money in the long run.
If you tell me how many grams you consume weekly or monthly I could give you a pretty good idea of where to start and how many plants you'd need to maintain that.
Source: I live in Colorado, grew my own in college with my roommate for 4 years, and have several friends still maintaining large and small operations I occasionally help out with.
You touch on another way in which drug laws are positively evil - the only reason why Vicodin causes liver damage is because it is legally required to contain a large amount of acetaminophen. The express purpose of the acetaminophen is to permanently damage your liver if you are ever tempted to 'abuse' the Vicodin and exceed the approved dosage.
Of course, with opioid tolerance there is no clear line between therapeutic and recreational dosages, and no way of setting an acetaminophen level that hurts one group of users but not the other, so in practice we have legally mandated poisoning of thousands of chronic pain sufferers.
"Much in the same way I wouldn't let my own children drink alcohol, I wouldn't permit marijuana until they are adults. If they are adamant about trying marijuana, I will urge them to wait until they're in their mid-20s when their brains are fully developed."
I should imagine it's a bit like cigarettes. I have one friend that was stupid enough to start smoking in his 20's, but he's an outlier. I'd imagine if you did without fags or dope until your mid-20's, you'd be unlikely to bother starting.
Completely anecdotal of course, but I've never met someone who smoked pot in their teen years who wasn't a layabout stoner with no future prospects in the 20s. Meanwhile, I know plenty who started smoking pot in college who were just fine.
I think any drug that affects a developing brain can have grave consequences. I would love to see research that follows people who start MJ use at different stages of their lives.
I am wondering why British employers are testing employees for drugs usage.
Is this justified? Are cannabies, etc. really affecting badly people? If yes, then it makes sense for the employer to spend its money on tests. If no, it means that employers in UK are victims of some kind of paranoia against cannabies.
Which UK companies are carrying out drug tests on their employees? I've never experienced that first-hand, nor heard of it happening second- or even third-hand. It is definitely not widespread practice, and is probably a statistical insignificance.
I think people are forgetting his target audience, which is probably older. I doubt many young people watch CNN. Even the title "Why I Changed My Mind On Weed" sounds like it was written for the Readers Digest, which I used to read as a kid because my grandmother would give me her copies.
I think being borderline unprincipled and very self-promoting comes with the territory of being a TV personality, so if we factor that out, he's actually doing marijuana advocates a huge favor by speaking to the older generation of voters who have endured decades of propaganda against marijuana and who now, by listening to the most credible TV doctor in America, might vote to legalize.
has Gupta let you down some how? You sound bitter. I'm not that much interested in him or the issue. He's getting on the marijauna train or to quote some Dylan: The times, they are a changin'... You don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows... Gotta serve somebody ;-)
You're damn right I'm bitter. Did you know there are actual people languishing in actual prison due to the incurious mindset he supported for years? You're inhuman if you don't see a problem with that without speculating that I'm affected personally by this jackass.
On the contrary, I stay the hell away from people like him, and he has a lot more to answer for than is satisfied by his upper-crust PR-driven atonement assigned to him by the church of TV for the purpose of lining his wallet. Same goes for Obama and AG Eric Holder.
How's this for Dylan?
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good?
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could?
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul.
Now I understand your point of view, which I share. Much of this nation's drug war is an outrageous assault on civil liberties, from "we'll drop the charges if you forfeit assets" to swat teams breaking down the wrong door and shooting the family dog. People are still in prison for convictions long ago on outdated marijuana laws. Gupta is not hugely guilty here, but "choom gang" Obama and Holder are for continuing this madness, and now we're finding out the NSA data is being shared with local law enforcement.[1]
Teens these days with their 'smart' phones! This is interesting and something I'm just learning [from Wikipedia]:
For many years, Reader's Digest was the best-selling consumer magazine in the United States, losing the distinction in 2009 to Better Homes and Gardens...it reaches more readers with household incomes of $100,000+ than Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Inc. combined.
Cool. Can we have a dispassionate review of Performance Enhancing Drugs now? I'd be interested to see how harmful they are compared to alcohol, tobacco, MJ etc.
I dont smoke but I drink. I think alcohol is a more dangerous drug in terms of causing addiction and inciting violence. When was the last brawl you saw started when weed was the agitator? Nicotine in cigarettes are far more addictive than thc.
[I'm not talking about most parts of the US, where weed is harder to obtain; I'm talking about most poor countries, where it is readily available]
I've seen many of my friends waste years of their college lives running around like stoned hippies, overeating junk food, and watching absolute trash with loud sounds and bright colors. To make things worse, it's considered a great "social activity", much like going to a bar to get sloshed with friends. Only weed is _much_ easier to get hooked onto, because it's much cheaper than alcohol, and you don't need much more than rolling paper (as opposed to refrigerator, soft drinks etc).
That said, many of them have had very eye-opening experiences where they learn a lot more about the world and themselves. They have formed strong social bonds on the basis of meaningful experiences, and have learnt moderation. They've also found it to be an extremely good analgesic and laxative. Ofcourse, there are sections of society that need it more than anything: chemotherapy patients take it for increased appetite, and people with chronic headaches take it to reduce occurrences (although LSD has been shown to work with an even more extreme form: cluster headaches).
Every substance in the world has a potential for abuse: there are plenty of "sugar junkies" who will live horrible lives and die a painful death, for instance. All in all, the issue is that of education: we need to legalize all these substances, and objectively explain how people can practice moderation. In general, enforcing hard-abstinence is a very poor solution; only repressive regimes should practice them.
Weed is easier to get hooked onto than alcohol? Do you mean in some hypothetical universe where weed is legal and widely available? Because that's definitely not the case right now.
I'm from the same place as the artagnon. Anti-weed laws are almost never enforced, and weed is incredibly cheap (you'll get enough weed to get 10 people stoned out of their minds for the price of a bottle of beer). And the ease of storage means you can easily maintain a huge stash.
In my opinion, alcohol is very much easier to get hooked on to. Why? Because it's legal. Want a beer? Sure, grab a pack when you get back from work. Buy a bottle of wine while you are at it too!
"Only weed is _much_ easier to get hooked onto, because it's much cheaper than alcohol, and you don't need much more than rolling paper (as opposed to refrigerator, soft drinks etc)."
Stop spewing bullshit. You clearly don't know what you're talking about. A gram of marijuana costs $10-20 and that will get 4 people properly stoned with some even left over. Meanwhile, I could go to a liquor store and buy a handle of shitty vodka for under $20. A handle will get you 40+ shots, which will definitely get more than 4 people drunk.
I really can't understand it when people claim to be addicted to weed. From what I hear, it's not chemically addictive, so can it really be claimed so if the addiction is placebic?
People probably are not actually chemically addicted to weed, but rather habitually inclined to keep doing an activity that gives them pleasure or has positive benefits in their life. Not too much different from what happens with "runner's high" and eating potato chips :)
There are (arguably) different forms of addiction: Physical and psychological. Physical addiction is the more dangerous of the two, as it can induce truly horrifying symptoms during withdrawals. (Delirium tremens from alcohol withdrawals, for example.)
Marijuana--and indeed almost anything--can be psychologically addictive. As our brains operate chemically, it's a bit misleading to say that psychological addictions have no physical component. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter, is a key player in many (all?) psychological addictions. But to further complicate matters, dopamine is also heavily involved in the withdrawal process of some harder drugs, such as methamphetamine.
Because the line between physical and psychological addictions is so fuzzy, some professionals eschew the distinction. Still, it seems productive to discuss the nature and severity of withdrawal symptoms for each drug, even if we don't split the drugs into two camps. From that perspective, marijuana addiction is less severe than addiction to heroin, alcohol, and so on.
Part of that is a kind of devil's bargain where "offenders" are put into a treatment program that's doomed to be quack medicine for most of the participants who have no addiction. Better than jail I suppose.
I had no idea the startup community was so interested in the subject of marijuana. Well, I guess it's just about as interesting as reading a daily blog about somebody's impressions of the Go programming language.
I saw a short news report (over a decade ago) about a Swiss heroin addict who daily attended a clinic to be given heroin (not methadone) for free (the cost of legally available heroin would be minimal).
She was able to hold down a job, pay rent and had no need to beg or commit crime to fund the habit.
She also could afford to eat properly and was no longer at risk of acquiring disease through contaminated drugs, dirty needles or prostitution.
Also methadone is an absolute destroyer of teeth not least because of the slowness to provide a sugar free variety.
It's also highly addictive in its own right I believe.
I think a lot of problems in the world can come down to whether you try to force people to act in an ideal fashion, or whether you try to deal with people as they are. Drug policy certainly qualifies, anyway.
From the latter perspective, your heroin addict is a massive success story. She's contributing to society instead of being a burden, and the cost is low.
From the former perspective, this is a terrible story. You're supporting drug addiction!
The former perspective rarely works, but it's extremely common, on subjects ranging from drugs to crime to tax policy to education. It is IMO a cop-out, where you simply rely on vague principles rather than actually applying thought and study.
I swear I thought Weed was the name of a startup, and the guy was the name of a tech guru lol, thats why I skipped the article first time it was on first page. If I knew , i would have clicked it the first time hehe
Does anyone have statistics on what percentage of "medical marijuana" is actually used for the treatment of medical conditions? The de facto medical marijuana regime in California seems to be that anyone who wants marijuana goes to a doctor, says they're anxious or have trouble sleeping, and gets a card. I'm sure some people with legitimate medical problems get relief from using marijuana, but it seems to be a distinct minority.
Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. Recreational users having a steady supply has no real social cost, and sick people getting the care they need has real benefit. But as long as we're going to be talking about medical marijuana in the context of science, it seems like we should compile some kind of statistics on this.
What benefit is there to compiling statistics to say that x% of patients have legitimate medical reasons, and y% don't? Trying to exert tight control on this issue has achieved nothing but disaster and failure, at great expense.
There are legitimate medical uses of alcohol, too. A great many people self-medicate, but it does provide them relief.
Investigating the medical science of the drug is important, yes. But perhaps investigation of the socio/psychological reasons is a red herring.
380 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 312 ms ] threadThe one thing it doesn't touch on is the cost we have incurred as a nation by making it illegal. We have seen this before with prohibition, it didn't stop people from drinking it just made better criminals. Once we legalize it we can stop spending money fighting it and start taxing it!
Of course the funny thing will be watching all the farmers in Illinois plow down their corn fields to crow weed! Yes I am aware of what it takes to grown corn in terms of resources, time, and cost and at the current market rate for weed those fields would be plowed under in record time!
Wow. Ownership of a mistake. Rare to see on a 24 hour news network. +1 for Sanjay
Considering CNN's role (as a 24 hour news network) in forcing politician's to defend anything and everything they've ever said, I really like seeing something like this coming from someone within the network. Especially about something as absurd as the illegality of medical marijuana.
Renouncing a position that was formerly nearly universally held in favor of one that seems to be the new trend isn't actually that rare.
I do think he's doing the smart/right thing (now).
I don't think the past goes away but generally I'd rather not condition people to not admit mistakes. And here I'd rather win now than be right now. Then maybe be right in the future.
Dude coulda, woulda, shoulda been surgeon general with that much influence i would expect this dude to actually scientifically analyze stuff before giving his scientific evaluation.
On other topics, especially in economics, the punditry is full of people who have been hilariously wrong for years, having made predictions a long time ago that have been clearly incorrect, and who still have never once even hinted that their models were wrong.
Yes, Gupta should have done his research earlier. But compared to a lot of the scum in the media, he is basically a saint. He deserves to be praised, if only to encourage others to follow his lead and admit when they were wrong.
Caregivers and patients are outraged because they feel like they know more than the judges or politician do, and I have to agree.
On another more general note about marijuana, I think most peoples perception of the drug is that out of a hollywood movie. In my own experience you can use marijuana to lose weight, as opposed to inducing the munchies, but generally people don't know that or expect it.
Medical marijuana is legal in more states than gay marriage and growing in all 50+ Canada and Mexico. I am so tired of the US lagging behind the rest of the world and not listening to the people.
Marijuana is safer than alcohol, and its time we treated it that way -quote from pulled commercial that was going to play of Nascar event..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H8Cz9woC2A
Edit-- Additionally, here in Michigan we have real doctors that refuse to sign marijuana recommendation forms for fear of their contracts with hospitals and insurance agencies. Meanwhile we have doctors from states close and far recommending patients come to medical states to get marijuana. This leads to dingy doctors signing medical forms for patients they have little interaction with, which makes the law seem abused.
edit: Sorry, it was the red ones that were "banned" for a short time. The public was frightened of red dye, even though according to Mars, they did not use the red dye that was suspect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M&M's#Color_changes_summarized...
The US is terrible for substance safety. Dire. Awful. Hell, on the note of colouring, you still use bloody anthracine red, which has been banned for decades in the rest of the planet, as its carcinogenic.
So, I was a little unclear: I offered two arguments against the CRS/MSG connection: first, that MSG is a scary-sounding name for a chemical that plays a central role in our metabolism and nervous system; second, that studies have attempted to isolate MSG as a cause of CRS and failed to find a link.
My only fear with legalization is that it will get pulled from the grassroots production into industrial methods, and that in turn will lower its safety (as was the case, for example, with cigarettes and the additives in the paper for them).
If I were to start armchair theorising, I'd say it is because of cannabis' effect on the "linguistic center" of the brain. Couple this with nicotine - similar effect to cocaine in that it reduces the activity of neurotransmitter depletion enzymes - and you have serious potential for wild ideas that could interact with underlying issues to create disturbing problems. From the reclusive shut in, to the raging paranoiac, I've seen it all and I've often thought that the prevailing notion that the drug is benign is downright wrong. It is a drug. A very powerful drug. One to be respected and used wisely, and left the hell alone if it doesn't 'work' for you. But I agree wholeheartedly that it should not be criminalised.
The substance of the cannabis-schizophrenia claims is largely based on Nordic research (given the extensive surveys carried out as part of Armed Forces programs). Typically (or at least in the study I have read), the association is based on around 10 cases in 10,000. Note that these are only the people who tested positive in their bloodstream, not those who (sensibly) stopped taking drugs a few weeks before joining the army.
After controlling for various factors, they found a significant association between marijuana use and later diagnosis of schizophrenia. I believe they used linear regression, rather than something more appropriate like survival analysis.
The interaction with anxiety disorders I am much less familiar with, can you provide some links (preferably to the original papers, even if they're paywalled)?
We've had over half a century of malicious and premeditated disinformation on the topic of drugs--especially marijuana--and so forgive me if I'm skeptical of a claim which does reek somewhat of "think of the children!".
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890856709...
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/180/3/216.short
http://www.bmj.com/content/325/7374/1195.1.short
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022395607...
Working in psychiatry research myself, I definitely don't trust a single study out there that claims to have found a simple relationship between such incredibly complex things as moods, bioactive substances, person's environment, genetics, etc (same goes for nutritional science, environmental science, economics, and so on).
To me much more compelling evidence are anecdotal cases from my personal life. I know people who have smoked all the time since their teenage years and who lead happy lives, but I have also seen how people can get really messed up from pot and how it goes away when they stop (although occasional episodes and mood swings can persist long after stopping). Other huge factors no one seems to talk much about are interactions between everyday stress and smoking, between coffee consumption and smoking, alcohol and smoking. The list goes on forever.
That doesn't make it okay to invoke Chewbacca. The authors made the strongest argument they could. Some take that and bolster it as if it were concrete proof. If they really want to strengthen the connection, show some studies that reject the self-medication hypothesis.
>I have also seen how people can get really messed up from pot and how it goes away when they stop (although occasional episodes and mood swings can persist long after stopping).
People sometimes get really messed up without any drugs at all. As far as personal anecdotes go, I know more people who are recreational cannabis users whose lives are just fine than I do users whose lives are in turmoil. Of the recreational users I know who have suffered due to their drug use, the suffering can often be attributed or related to some punitive drugs policy.
I think the "medical" route is the best way to go. Yes, it is a bit of hassle to go and get a green card, but I hope it will help slow the corporate industrialization of marijuana.
Furthermore, I think that marijuana's proper position in society should be that of a medicine, not as a general intoxicant.
Bring on full legalization, regulation and taxation. It is overdue.
Again, that's the trick here. Legalization and regulation could still end up banning production at home or anywhere but crazy high-grade pharma labs and greenhouses--especially if, for example, you are now suddenly on the hook for tax stamps or whatnot.
Be careful what you wish for.
To the extent that we let this affect policy at all, its not to ban the products, its to make sure that (1) they are clearly identified when present in a composite product, (2) we very narrowly (usually as a matter of policy of particular facilities, which may be public policy to the extent that those are public facilities) restrict their use in circumstances where there is particularly high risk that extremely sensitive people might be subject to dangerous passive exposure.
I just don't think it necessarily follows that cannabis is safer in all situations than alcohol or tobacco. Legal or not, it's still not OK with me if my kids are using it.
EDIT: Also, I presumably wouldn't want anyone under 18 to use it, same as alcohol and tobacco (basically, considering college, the drinking age is 18).
I'm a filthy criminal.
Secondly, you can decide to morph that "hungry" feeling into a "full" feeling. Not quite sure how to put it, but you can convince yourself - a bit like when you're holding an ice cube, and convince yourself that it's heat you can feel.
That and an electronic cigarette. I just don't seem to gain weight anymore, nor do I ever manage to finish takeout in one sitting. Seriously, our food portions here are insane.
Can you give a list of countries that are "ahead" of the US in regards to marijuana decriminalization?
Lets see, there is North Korea, the Netherlands, and Uraguagy might decriminalize this year.
I am so tired of the "the US lagging behind the rest of the world" trope. It's the same thing with same sex marriage. The US has been and is ahead of curve when it come to sex marriage rights.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World-cannabis-laws.png
Even if we put Portugal in the "legalized" category (which the source I cited does not), that puts the list 3, possibly 4 when Uruguay passes their law.
>I am so tired of the "the US lagging behind the rest of the world" trope. It's the same thing with same sex marriage. The US has been and is ahead of curve when it come to sex marriage rights.
That statement is true of almost everything except cannabis legalization. It's certainly true for decriminalization. And the "country", the US, is no better than it was 5 years ago. The only thing that's changed is individual states making more reasonable laws.
Also, Hollywood movies seem to portray it as some cool party drug, that hippies and pseudo-intellectuals use. The drug is present in most American Pie-style movies, many sitcoms and animated series like Family Guy.
Personally I believe marijuana going mainstream is an engineered phenomena. Hollywood is able to create perceptions and demands where none was before. Older generations weren't miserable all the time because they couldn't smoke pot. New generations found out about it by the marketing.
Also I think your marijuana/drug law knowledge is a little behind. There are a number of countries in Europe and elsewhere who are changing to more relaxed drug policies similar to the progress in the US (including Portugal who effectively decriminalized all drugs in 2001).
Laws may be more lax in Europe but popular opinion of the drug is much more negative than in the US. But attitudes are changing largely due to how it is portrayed by Hollywood.
Anecdotally, marijuana usage was much more prevalent amongst students I knew when I lived in Canada than it is in the UK. My experience (admittedly while travelling through) in the US was similar to Canada. This drug-use map[1] corroborates that (US 14%, Canada 12%, UK ~7%), although I do agree that any survey about drug use will probably not see completely truthful answers.
[1]: http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/interactive/2012/ju...
Reminds me of the quote: If you're not a part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.
Tobacco and drug manufacturing plants require a significant larger investment. So the lobby for anti-marijuana is strong and controlled by rich people.
There are only so many hours in a day, and outsourcing those hours for a little money is a perfectly reasonable explanation for how a real industry will pop up around this.
For that matter, look at Abbott Labs, one of the largest pharma companies in the world; a huge portion of their revenues come from consumable products that aren't the product of a drug research pipeline (for instance, Abbott owns the Ensure meal replacement product).
Stipulating full MJ legalization, cannabis and its active ingredients will simply become a new vector for productization by existing major health care companies.
They won't necessarily call it cannabis, it will be a "cannabis product" flying under some other name. Also, does the history of generic meds policy not tell you something? These companies are fiercely anti-competitive. Another case study in a separate market is how alcohol distillation, for instance, is kept illegal.
That said they did isolate it, so it's not parity, but at least peripheral.
I think the more persistent lobbies will be other "sin" industries - tobacco, alcohol, etc.
Maybe (probably) I'm being overly cynical, but people like him have lent support and legitimacy to a machine that literally destroys people's lives for their involvement with a fairly innocuous plant. Oops!
Yes, you are being overly cynical. My guess is that you agree with virtually everything in the article, and, instead of being pleased that someone has not only come around to your position in the most public fashion possible, but also apologized for previously disagreeing with you, you manage to be unhappy about the prominence of the piece.
The impression you leave is that you'd be happier if he slunk off to hide somewhere like a petulant bridge troll. That might be more satisfying for you, but it's an outcome that serves the public poorly.
I think it's perfectly acceptable to question a public figure's motives when their changing outlook (regardless of stated reasons) are highly correlated with changes in public opinion.
I felt a strong impression that he had written this article for the same reason as he wrote the exact opposite 4 years ago, i.e. self-serving commercial interest.
But frankly, the convenience and timeliness of his argument is well worth pointing out. Speaking personally, I hold a special disdain in my heart for smart people that perpetuate the war on drugs for various reasons and then profess to stand for individual freedom.
In particular, the argument of not enough research, keep it illegal is the most insidious kind of argument because it sounds reasonable enough but inherently contains the opinion that we should keep jailing people until this research materializes. So yeah, when I get a chance to rub it in with someone like that, I take it. I guess that's petty, but so is jailing people for getting high.
No, of course not. He knew full well - probably on his initial pass of the data a decade ago or whatever if he's at all competent - of all the things he "discovered" in this article.
He merely sacrificed the health and comfort all of those people who could have benefited until now, in order to further his career.
This Howard Samuels (a person who makes his living off of a drug rehabilitation clinic) guy is an immoral shit who appears to believe that peoples' real medical needs are secondary to his opposition of "people just getting loaded". He is a prohibitionist. I am so tired of this ridiculous and harmful policy.
That being said, that doesn't mean there isn't good evidence for it. But, as with most things, we tend to believe the evidence that fits our preconceptions (and argue with the evidence that doesn't).
>He just was pretty clear on the fact that most of the users of marijuana are in it for the high,
I may be overly skeptical but I got the impression that he felt most medical marijuana users are just recreational users, and he meant for us to think that was a fact, but offered no evidence to support that notion as a fact.
>and that politically medical marijuana is more of a stepping stone for folks interested in recreational use,
Well, it is probably true that many people who support medical use of marijuana also support something on the spectrum of decriminalization:legalization. You can include me in that, I support both politically.
> rather than a deep seeded concern for those who need it medically.
Despite the fact that I support legalization, I do have a deep-seeded and personal concern for those who need it medically. As a teenager, I got to watch a close relative who I was very fond of die (in agony) of cancer. It is my personal belief that those in hospice who suffer from pain or are unable to eat, or whose care is complicated by the use of opiates should be denied no drug if it might improve their life/death.
As for lesser ailments than agonizingly painful terminal cancer, it appears IMO that marijuana is less harmful than almost everything, and potentially has a wide potential range of medical applications, and therefore it is immoral (and idiocy) to deny its use to people.
LAST TIME, he didnt really look at the evidence and was just regurgitating the standard line without really doing scientific analysis
OR
THIS TIME, this time he is just trying to jump on the bandwagon and get out in front of this controversal topic...
either way he doesn't hold to much weight with me, i am all for smoking ganja but the whole medical marijuana being pushed by recreational smokers thing is kinda perturbing to me
That seems like a surprisingly dumb argument for you, John, but maybe I just misunderstood it.
At any rate, the importance of the piece isn't Gupta's authority on the subject. After all, vis a vis cannabis, Gupta is best known for his former opposition to legalization, which is a self-evidently dumb position for him to have taken.
The importance of the piece is that Gupta was Obama's first nominee for Surgeon General, and the best known medical reporter in the country; he's doing a very public about-face on the issue just as the US appears to be reaching a tipping point on legalization.
Also: it's just a good piece, or at least an atypically good one for CNN. That's why I posted it.
I guess. I guess you are right. I probably should listen to his opinion about this. I just have a hard time with media personalities who are willing to spout crap when they don't know what they are talking about instead of simply shutting up.
Anyways far as I can tell his big revelation here is "yeah when i told you i looked at the facts before i really didn't but this time i did!". Makes me take all of his conclusions with a grain of salt.
Does seem clear indication that the american mainstream is getting acceptance for the idea of medical ganja though.
As for his neurosurgery practice... what? Why would you think that would make him an expert on pharmacology? Because they both fall under the wide umbrella of "medicine"?
Not that I disagree with him on this issue, but your reasoning seems incredibly shaky here.
So, unless he's intentionally and maliciously lying (unlikely), he presents plenty of good and valuable information, and as a media correspondent is probably better than most at conveying that to people.
Ideally, that's how it would work. In practice, it appears that in many cases, doctors do little research beyond what pharmaceutical reps tell them[1].
This seems to have a lot to do with time constraints. Doctors report spending an average of 4.4 hours per week reading medical journals, and they only read the full text of about a third of the articles they read[2]. On average, the FDA approves about three new drugs each month. If new drugs were all a doctor needed to read about, 6 hours for each one might be enough to get a decent idea of safety and efficacy. But of course, that's not all a doctor needs to read up on.
But of course that has no bearing on whether doctors know how to read scientific papers.
[1] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-013-2411-7
[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1495716/
If you're scientifically illiterate and generally uneducated, trusting doctors is a very good idea. If you have the cognitive tools to check their work, though, it is very smart to do so.
The annoyance you may feel when a non-engineer pontificates on a technical topic they clearly only have a surface level understanding of is similar to the aggravation they (M.D's) feel when patients who have perused pubmed and webmd decide they're better informed than they actually are.
I'm of the opinion that "trust, but verify" is a reasonable way to approach subject matter experts in other fields.
When your doctor is giving you opiates and not even trying to find a sustainable alternative, and you do a ton of research, find an alternative drug (with few side effects and no recognized potential for abuse) that has been shown to help people with similar conditions, and send that study to the doctor, only to have him say "Well, I've never heard of that drug being used for this, so no", it is... frustrating.
No, I don't think so.
What country is that, mistercow? Here in the United States, they cannot prescribe drugs with one notable exception in New Mexico for chiropractors that have received "advance practice" training.
In fact, prescribing drugs actually goes against the chiropractic philosophy that involves physical manipulation of the body and your body's ability to heal itself.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic
I have to take issue again with what you have said.
You seem to be equating osteopathy (a completely accepted medical science) to homeopathy (a complete quackery). To quote Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_MD_and_DO_in_the_...
Other than teaching manual medicine, the medical training for an M.D. and D.O. is virtually indistinguishable.
To quote the American Medical Association:
http://www.ama-assn.org//ama/pub/education-careers/becoming-...
Q: What is the difference between an MD and a DO?
A: A DO (Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine) is a physician just as an MD is a physician.
Please do more research before you continue to spread additional misinformation. Thank you.
No, osteopathy is not completely accepted by medical science. Osteopathy is absolute pseudoscience. Please do your research.
Yes, I realize that DOs undergo actual medical training in addition to the quackery that gives their field its name, but they are still taught the pseudoscience on which the practice was originally based. That they believe these techniques are legitimate medicine is indicative that their entire understanding of science and medicine is compromised. This hypothesis has been borne out by literally every experience I have had with a DO.
Let's also remember that "MDs" work in a field founded by bloodletters who believed in the four humors.
The important thing is whether the field is progressing via scientific method, not what its founded believed long ago.
Also, by no means should you take this to mean that I am giving MDs any special immunity. The only leg up they have is that I can't tell just by looking at the letters at the end of their name that their model of science in medicine has been poisoned by bullshit.
You would know this if you bothered to read either of the citations I provided. You and the person downvoting me apparently disagree with the American Medical Association that says a D.O. is equivalent to an M.D.
For failing to read my citations before you replied to them and for providing no citations of your own other than "every experience I have had with a DO." you are currently in the category of Ignorant Fool. If you would like to provide a citation or two for what you say and perhaps if you actually respond to my citations instead of around them I might be able to upgrade you to Misguided Goof.
EDIT: Never mind, I see in another comment below you are saying that you are just as suspicious of medical doctors. I have no further desire to discuss this with you.
You accuse me of not reading your citations (I did), did not actually read my response to your comment, and then somehow you got that out of my comment below?
I said that MDs don't have immunity. If I find out that my doctor believes in pseudo-medicine, I will find a new doctor. If you think that's unreasonable, then I guess this "no further desire to discuss" feeling you mentioned is mutual.
D.O's have an education that AFAIK is equivalent to that of an M.D. Why should they not be allowed to prescribe medication?
If you found out that your doctor had, in addition to her ordinary training, received training in psychic healing, and believed that this was a valid approach to medicine, how comfortable would you feel with that doctor being allowed to prescribe potentially dangerous medications to patients?
I'm sorry and I don't say this lightly but you should really just shut up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteopathic_manipulative_medic...
In an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine in November 1999, researchers concluded that osteopathic manipulative medicine and traditional drug therapy resulted in equivalent resolution of lower back pain in a nearly identical time frame. The difference was that participants receiving osteopathic manipulative medicine required less pharmaceutical intervention. The advantage of osteopathic manipulative medicine was a diminution of adverse drug reactions while the disadvantage was the greater amount of physician time required for each patient.[22]
A 2005 meta-analysis and systematic review of six randomized controlled trials of osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) that involved blinded assessments of lower back pain in ambulatory settings concluded that OMT significantly reduces low back pain, and that the level of pain reduction is greater than expected from placebo effects alone and persists for at least three months.[23]
The National Institutes of Health's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine states[24] that overall, studies have shown that spinal manipulation can provide mild to moderate relief from low-back pain and appears to be as effective as conventional medical treatments.
You are the worst kind of debater. You say something wrong, are called out on it, then you change the entire topic. Only you're wrong about that new topic too, so you cling to it to death. So now you're in the position of arguing against the American Medical Association, the National Institute of Health, the New England Journal of Medicine and frankly thousands of studies.
You are a colossal fool.
I think what happened here is that you overreached; you claimed that chiropractors could prescribe drugs, were corrected, and then scrambled to recover your argument instead of just admitting you were wrong. Now we're in a totally pointless and, from what I can tell, one-sided discussion about the legitimacy of DOs, despite the total irrelevance of osteopathy to the thread we're on.
It's a good hypothesis, but for the purposes of updating your model, I should inform you that your guess is wrong. This is a position I've given a lot of thought to. I know that a lot of people disagree with it, so I chose chiropractic for my argument, as it would have been a less controversial and more clear cut example - had I not been mistaken about their ability to write prescriptions. That was sloppy of me.
The difference between OMM and Catholicism is that Catholicism does not purport to be medicine and is not part of the medical curriculum. If it were a Pentecostal school and they taught all of real medicine, but also taught faith healing, then I would feel very similarly about that to how I feel about DOs.
Here's a test: ask the DO at your primary care office if he thinks that OMM is a valid medical practice.
But here, it's just a sideshow. Your point was that being able to prescribe medicine is not a big deal. Whatever you may think of the philosophy of osteopathy, being a DO is a big deal; DO's are doctors, licensed by the state to practice medicine. It is approximately as hard to become a licensed DO as it is to be an MD. DO's are not like chiropractors. Chiropractors don't go to med school.
You were wrong, obviously wrong, and it is clear that no matter what your underlying feelings about osteopathy are, this subthread is irrelevant. In fact, you're doing your opinions about osteopathy a disservice by hitching them to to this particular argument!
Though I suppose that also may not be something you'd want to know about your doctor. But as far as I know the academic rigor of his medical program was no less than that of any MD school, minus the inclusion of osteopathy itself. I wouldn't have any issues going to him as a primary care doctor.
But conversely it's unfair to criticize an authority for being fallible. At least today, at least in this case, Dr Sanjay Gupta is one of the good guys. Not for espousing one opinion or another, but because he's publicly changed his mind after considering more evidence. Maybe he has incomplete evidence, and maybe in the future he'll change his mind three or four ways from more evidence. But he's basing his opinion on evidence and telling you what that evidence is.
The British Chiropractic Association has sued science writer Simon Singh for a piece written in the Guardian's comment pages criticizing the association for defending chiropractors who use treatments on children with conditions such as colic and asthma, when there is little evidence such treatments work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Singh#Chiropractic_lawsui...
"English libel law is so intimidating, so expensive, so hostile to serious journalists that it has a chilling effect on all areas of debate, silencing scientists, journalists, bloggers, human rights activists and everyone else who dares to tackle serious matters of public interest.
In the area of medicine alone, fear of libel means that good research is not always published because those with vested interests might sue, and bad research that should be withdrawn is not pulled because the authors might sue the journal, and in both cases it is the public that loses out because the truth is never exposed. My victory does not mean that our libel laws are OK, because I won despite the libel laws. We still have the most notoriously anti-free speech libel laws in the free world."
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/apr/15/simon-singh-l...
So next time around, practice what you preach, perhaps.
The Singh case flagged up a problem which drew massive support (which is still ongoing and should improve the situation some epoch). Also, he won.
I think you're being awfully generous to HN...
But seriously, the key takeaway from articles like this one is that marijuana acceptance is finally becoming mainstream; five or ten years ago this kind of article would have been considered quite controversial for a major news organization like CNN, and may have been quashed at the editorial level.
Thankfully, it's only a matter of time before it's legalized and we can empty our jails of people who should never have been there in the first place for possession. The sooner the better.
Interesting to think that what is "mainstream" can be observed in what print-media outlet editors are brave (or un-scared) enough to publish. As you said, I imagine this would have been a pretty controversial article 10 years ago. Now, it feels almost like a me-too opinion piece from Sanjay Gupta, which is a big enough name on a trending topic for a CNN editor to call it news.
Gupta admits throughout that in the past, his decisions were based on incorrect information and assumptions. He seems to have a penchant for deciding "I'm against this!, here is the evidence that supports my point". Whereas now he finally seems to be coming around to the idea that maybe, just maybe, other evidence beside the evidence that supports his point should be considered. Perhaps he could even...gasp...put himself in someone else's shoes before making judgements based only on his own experience.
It's getting a little old hearing the "well I finally considered this from someone else's point of view and realized my viewpoint was insane" why does this take us so long?
I've written Perl code. Really, really bad Perl code. I would've loved to throw my hands up and say "let someone who knows their shit do this" but I was the only person, and the job needed to be done.
You have to understand that for media personalities, offering their opinions... that's their work output. You can shut up and still keep earning a paycheck. Their job is to keep talking.
Essentially what you're advocating is to have TV channels just broadcast dead air most of the time. Maybe that's what you want. But it's not really a reasonable suggestion. I guess we can have a laugh about it though.
Programmers are that way as well, even if they are not highly educated.
At his previous job, he might have been.
Now? Now he's an entertainer. That's what media figures are.
Like Ann Coulter or Rachel Maddow, or even John Stewart or Matt Drudge, his job is to entertain you with the news.
He's going to write about whatever topic that a lot of people enjoy, and make it seem exciting and new.
It's no different from what Oprah or Katie Couric do. This is the great secret of the news media and the voices for public science.
Their job is to sell ads by entertaining a majority of us. Truth and science are secondary considerations.
Even after the Feds remove it from the list there will be regulation governing its sale. You can grow tobacco all you want; most people don't because prep is much harder than marijuana; but run afoul of a few laws should you try to sell it.
It would certainly reduce the jailed population of this country and possibly even reduce the usage of harder drugs, after all if there was a legal outlet most people take the easy route
In many major metro areas, you're more likely to be ticketed for cannabis than arrested.
I haven't taken the time to come up with a conclusive answer for myself on the extent to which cannabis criminalization imprisons people in the US; maybe it's as bad as people think it is. I just think it's worth doing some research on.
"the proportion of state prison inmates who were sentenced for marijuana-only offenses rose from 2.6% in 1990 to 3.6% in 2000"
http://www.aclu-wa.org/library_files/BeckettandHerbert.pdf
The DOJ reported that there were 1,236,476 state inmates in 2000 (http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p00.pdf). So 3.6% of that would be 44,513 state inmates who were imprisoned for marijuana only in 2000.
"King and Mauer (2005) estimate that at least 68,000 people were in prison, on probation, or serving a jail sentence for a marijuana offense in 2003"
So, that's 52% higher than the number I quoted for state prisons.
Its been a while since I saw figures, but last I did domestic violence was at the top of the reasons people were sentenced to incarceration (that is, if you did a ticker at the door, it would be the most common reason) but narcotics were the most common reason people were incarcerated (that is, if you did a count of the currently incarcerated population, drugs would be the most common reason.)
The difference, of course, is length of sentence.
I don't think marijuana is all that high a share of those incarcerated for drugs, but if you are using the prominence of the reason people get incarcerated rather than the prominence of the reason people are incarcerated as your standard, you aren't looking at the right issue.
Depending on certain attributes that in practice cause one to end up in cuffs nonetheless.
How many instances in a sampling size? How large was the sampling size? How rigorous was the study? Peer reviewed? Publisher?
Offhand, I can immediately tell you the overwhelming evidence is that tobacco (cigarettes) is far more harmful than cannabis. I direct your attention to the myth of cannabis being as harmful as x number of cigarettes[1] and the myth that cannabis harms brain cells[2]. While it does alter the brain, it is up for heavy debate whether it's harmful, especially on long-term use.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_misconceptions_about_il...
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_misconceptions_about_il...
http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/135/7/2245
Of course, you could have googled this up yourself in 10 seconds but I guess people believe what they want to believe.
What about my comments appears as though I just look for self-validating information and ignore the rest? The parts where I questioned scientific rigor, sampling size, case instances, etc?
That said, smoking anything is not good for you, but IMHO it's up to the individual what risk they take with their body.
That's what common sense would have us believe, but cigarette smoke is indeed much worse for you than marijuana smoke.
http://www.atsjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1513/AnnalsATS.201212-...
from the abstract:
>In summary, the accumulated weight of evidence implies far lower risks for pulmonary complications of even regular heavy use of marijuana compared with the grave pulmonary consequences of tobacco.
It is probably way better for you than cigarettes based on the amount smoked.
Also, many people vaporize their weed or use wick to smoke with - which lowers the temperature of the heat. Across the board, smoking weed is much safer than smoking cigarettes
http://norml.org/component/zoo/category/cannabis-smoke-and-c...
For pain management and quality of life, we probably don't need to worry about the placebo effect too much; instead, we should just measure whether cannabis gets people off opiates.
This is something that could be major. My wife was in the hospital off and on this summer with stomach pains. The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong (ran all of the tests, put her on liquid diet and the pain continued) so her doctor put her on OxyContin until the HMO approved a referral to a research university. The insurance declined the referral stating they wanted a second opinion, so my wife went to get one and the doctor wanted her to get off all of the medications. She did and almost killed herself the day after; the withdrawal from the OxyContin was terrible. If there was a way to manager her pain without constantly worrying about her becoming addicted or worrying that when she stops the med she will end up doing something drastic, it would be amazing!
This all reminds me of how some famous supposed atheists convert to a religion X and then write books about it selling millions of copies.
Same shit. You're being manipulated.
We don't need a mediocre surgeon to tell us weed is OK. Any idiot with internet access knew that for the last 15 years.
Plus you would be the idiot if you believed everything you read on the internet over the last 15 years.
We don't. The US government does. Who do you think they listen to more: the people or the rich and famous? I've certainly never been asked into Congress to testify for anything.
What is this referring to?
I was never a stoner, and did not use it until I was 38 years old. I am happy it exists, because I was being treated with Vicodin for pain and was on a schedule of 6 pills a day. Enough that liver damage and addiction started to be a concern. I am allergic to pills in the Percoset family (hives and skin lesions) and I consume about 5 joints a day worth of weed. I don't even get high anymore, but it does help with the pain. It is costing me about $100 per week, compared to the $3 per month the Vicodin cost on my medical insurance. I could buy a new car with the weed money, but couldn't buy a coffee at Starbucks with the Vicodin money.
I hope the government gets around to reclassifying the drug soon. In the current situation, Child Protective Services would take my kids away if I was to consume the drug in front of them. A reclassification would enable more research, more research would lead to easier ways to ingest it. I find food products make me stomach sick, vaporizing doesn't work as well as smoking, and smoking is unappealing and difficult to do with any discretion.
I am fortunate that I can afford it, and can fit it into my schedule (I own my business). Many people need something like MMJ and can neither afford it, nor can they keep their employment with it because of widespread drug testing. While the state I live in says that card holders can't be fired for holding a card, it is a state that has 'right-to-work' laws and you can fire someone for no specified reason at all. (source- I employ ten people).
That seems to be the common wisdom, but is there any evidence that that's true?
At 5 joints a day OP probably has built up a pretty high resistance to THC. Speak to enough every-day smokers and you'll find they go on breaks every once in a while to address this.
>I wondered whether MMJ would fall into the category of "do not drive or operate machinery" whilst using.
Depends on the strain, if you're smoking Indicas then yes you should not operate machinery.
At work I avoid operating the forklift, milling machine, or anything else that could cause injury to me or my people. I still get a very slight buzz, but nothing at all like when I first started using it (think 5 or 10% of previous effects). I have had times when I consumed what I needed (four or five bowls) when friends were in the same room, and they have gotten high from just being there while I had no change. In general I consume in the very early morning and at night when I know I won't be leaving again before sleep. I avoid using during the day because most days I have to drive and work.
MMJ is certainly not a perfect solution, but it beats constant never ending pain (no drugs) or addiction and liver failure (opiates with acetaminophen) http://www.drugs.com/vicodin.html .
http://norml.org/library/item/cannabis-and-driving-a-scienti...
It's also important to note the most dangerous thing you can do, bar none, is to drive tired and unfocused. Which is very much legal.
Try driving on LSD. While drunk. And high on xanax. While shooting heroin.
Obviously, there are more dangerous states to drive in than tired and unfocused...
When you're on acid, you don't change as a person, your reactions don't change. If you see something weird you say "woah, that's weird" but, unless you're deep in a trip and forget you are on a substance, you can usually handle it like a normal person.
What you see is distorted, but everything you see is actually there. The walls might look like they're dripping or wavy, the branches on a tree appear to reach out at you, and colors become more vibrant, but you won't ever see gigantic bunnies or flying unicorns or some other stupid shit that often ends up in film depictions of a psychedelic experience.
As dosage increases, your mind increasingly tends to interpret what you're seeing as something else, like a shadow may appear briefly to be a person. When this starts to happen I would no longer feel comfortable driving, but for me this occurs at the peak of 500 ug + experiences, the equivalent of 5 standard doses. Not saying that driving on LSD is a great idea, but on a single standard dose it's not nearly as dangerous as driving after you've pulled an all-nighter IMO.
It's very discreet and pretty effective, esp. if you are looking for a more CBD non-thc delivery method.
Unfortunately these are a local Denver product right now from what I can tell (my friend in SF can't find them their yet outside of driving to Berkley); so it might be difficult to find outside of colorado. They also make a variety of cartridges including Sativa, Indica and Hybrid.
I've switched to using this most of the time esp. outside the house, or when the kids are around. When you exhale there is hardly any smoke either and I've seen people smoking these at bars openly. I haven't been so bold even though I have a red-card, things sure have changed fast, at least in Denver.
Edit: Also, the high effect is minimal, esp with the Sativa cartridges. Much more of a body, pain reliever type effect.
Edit 2: Cartridges are rated for around 300 hits, and at 40 dollars per that works out be a pretty cost-effective solution from a cost standpoint too. This might not be as effective as a mj joint however; I would be curious to know if you get one if it's more or less effective.
It seems to me the studies in the posted article are from a time when marijuana was dramatically 'weaker' than what you get today.
Also, intentionally-high-CBD strains are under development [1]:
"A high-CBD cannabis strain was developed in the 1980s by David Watson and Robert Clarke, American naturalists who founded a company called Hortapharm in Amsterdam to pursue their goal of developing plant strains for different purposes. (The day Watson and Clarke became expatriates is the day the U.S. lost its lead in the field of cannabis therapeutics.) In 1998 Hortapharm sold its seed stock to a British start-up, GW Pharmaceuticals, which has since developed a strain that expresses 97% of its cannabinoid content as CBD.
GW plans to test its high-CBD strain as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel diseases, psychotic disorders, and epilepsy. It is now in Phase 2 trials to determine the dose levels to use in clinical trials involving people. GW mixes its high-CBD and high-THC strains in a 1:1 ratio to make Sativex, a plant extract formulated for spraying under the tongue that has been approved in Canada and elsewhere to treat neuropathic pain associated with multiple sclerosis. CBD evidently bolsters the pain-killing effects of THC while moderating its psychoactivity."
[0] http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101001/full/news.2010.508.ht...
[1] http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/07/14/who-s-afraid-of-canna...
At least in SF the legitimate dispensaries do a good job of informing you about these things and finding the strains that will accomplish what you want.
For more modern up to date science backed information on CBD see projectcbd.org
CBN is not a primary cannabinoid, it's a breakdown product of THC and simply indicates how old or stale the cannabis is. It's primary effect is grogginess and general unpleasantness so you want to avoid it as much as possible.
Any dispensary that says CBD is good for insomnia is simply repeating long disproven but widely spread information.
It's the only thing that could cure my constant RSI/chronic pain after years of trying everything, and in the book he talks about fibromyalgia.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mindbody-Prescription-Healing-Body...
The idea of psychogenic disorders would have normally have sounded like esoteric BS to me, but I ended up picking up the book at the recommendation of an ex-Google coder who went through all the same things that I did. I'm glad I did; for 15$, I completely cured myself after years of trying everything else (physiotherapy, standing desk, stretching exercises, working out, various books on RSI, ergonomic chairs, keyboards, mouses, trackpads, switching hands, etc, etc), and it turns out the book takes a very scientific approach to these conditions, even if it admits that there's a lot we still don't understand about exactly how our minds work and how they can affect our bodies (it's kind of an engineering approach -- we figured out something that works, now we need to figure out why).
Highly recommended to all those of you suffering from constant back pain, neck pain, RSI, etc.
> Dr. John Sarno caused quite a ruckus back in 1990 when he suggested that back pain is all in the head. In his bestselling book, Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection, he claimed that backaches, slipped discs, headaches, and other chronic pains are due to suppressed anger, and that once the cause of the anger is addressed, the pain will vanish.
Slipped discs are due to suppressed anger? What the fuck? I've been having back pain for a few years now (it returns whenever I slouch), but it started directly after a gym injury... what has that got to do with suppressed anger?
I found some of his advice helpful insofar as it suggests that mindfulness meditation can help ease tension-induced back pain (which I have found to be true for me) and that there is a mental component in overcoming the fear of re-injury and allowing yourself to resume your full range of motion without subconsciously tensing up.
As someone who struggles with anxiety from time to time, I can even believe his statement that he's referred some patients to therapy before attempting to treat their back pain.
All your objections are addressed very well in the book. It's not like he hasn't thought about those things and how it sounds at first. He came to his conclusions empirically by treating his patients, not by dreaming up some theory out of the ether.
I'll just re-iterate my recommendation for the book. It doesn't cost much and you can always get it from the library if you really don't want to spend the money.
I avoid books like this because they are almost all "wacakaloons" like you say. But this one seems to be much better. At least the entire first half of the book is the author making the medical case for his treatment. It is well cited, based on both his clinical experience and other studies.
Sarno doesn't claim that slipped discs are caused by suppressed anger. He never says that all backaches, headaches, slipped discs, and chronic pains are due to this and stresses the importance of getting examined before judging for yourself the cause of the pain. He believes that the pain from things like a slipped disc sometimes is, though. He cites a multitude of instances where people have slipped discs and aren't in pain.
Again, I'm not finished with it and am still a bit skeptical, but I would say it's probably worth a read.
Not really sure about this (I haven't read that particular book), but I will say that Sarno's theories cured my RSI pain, which crippled me for over a year. I'm not sure if his explanations of the mechanism for the pain are correct (they seem very hard to test), but I'm pretty sure the pain was all psychosomatic.
I once heard a Doctor describe psychosomatic pain. He believed the artierioles constricted with psychological stress. It's still real pain, but it will eventually go away.
I was deeply effected by nagging pain throughout my twenties. I went to Doctors, but since I knew where all the cranial nerves were(Chiro student), they didn't think it was psychological.
The American way to success(what ever that is) is Stressful. Especially, if you were the hard working type. Don't think you are invincible. The mind does break.
My use of weed has not worked. I used it for anxiety/depression but, it just made me feel anxious, and amplified any pain I had. But, everyone is different--try it--it just might work.
The first few (maybe 2-3) grows will turn out pretty bad, but it will still be enough to last you to the next grow. You have to find a balance in the nutrients and water which only really comes with trial and error, but the recommended dose is generally pretty close.
On the time issue: Once everything is set up, it's surprising relatively low time commitment. Especially if you're only growing 2-3 plants for personal use, you're looking at _maybe_ 3 hours per week for maintenance just to water every 3-4 days, prune dead leaves, sweep the area up, ect. I've also known people who use an Arduino or RaPi to rig a drip irrigation system which they can leave unattended for up to 2-weeks with no issues. Those growing for dispensaries in mass quantities are growing hundreds of plants at a time all at different stages and that is certainly a full-time job to maintain.
The nice thing about growing your own is there's no obligation to grow right after you finish one, and keeping the buds frozen preserves them completely for months until you need it. So, if you aren't looking at giving it up in the next 2 years I think its an extremely viable option which will save you money in the long run.
If you tell me how many grams you consume weekly or monthly I could give you a pretty good idea of where to start and how many plants you'd need to maintain that.
Source: I live in Colorado, grew my own in college with my roommate for 4 years, and have several friends still maintaining large and small operations I occasionally help out with.
I'm interested in hearing more about this, purely for scientific reasons of course!
Of course, with opioid tolerance there is no clear line between therapeutic and recreational dosages, and no way of setting an acetaminophen level that hurts one group of users but not the other, so in practice we have legally mandated poisoning of thousands of chronic pain sufferers.
Good luck with that.
I wonder if one could synthesize cards that change color when exposed to MJ fumes? I bet you could sell those like crazy.
I think any drug that affects a developing brain can have grave consequences. I would love to see research that follows people who start MJ use at different stages of their lives.
Is this justified? Are cannabies, etc. really affecting badly people? If yes, then it makes sense for the employer to spend its money on tests. If no, it means that employers in UK are victims of some kind of paranoia against cannabies.
On the contrary, I stay the hell away from people like him, and he has a lot more to answer for than is satisfied by his upper-crust PR-driven atonement assigned to him by the church of TV for the purpose of lining his wallet. Same goes for Obama and AG Eric Holder.
How's this for Dylan?
[1] http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7a7_1375808882
http://rt.com/usa/dea-nsa-irs-snowden-216/
For many years, Reader's Digest was the best-selling consumer magazine in the United States, losing the distinction in 2009 to Better Homes and Gardens...it reaches more readers with household incomes of $100,000+ than Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Inc. combined.
They've got the app market pretty well covered; http://www.rd.com/readers-digest-mobile/
I've seen many of my friends waste years of their college lives running around like stoned hippies, overeating junk food, and watching absolute trash with loud sounds and bright colors. To make things worse, it's considered a great "social activity", much like going to a bar to get sloshed with friends. Only weed is _much_ easier to get hooked onto, because it's much cheaper than alcohol, and you don't need much more than rolling paper (as opposed to refrigerator, soft drinks etc).
That said, many of them have had very eye-opening experiences where they learn a lot more about the world and themselves. They have formed strong social bonds on the basis of meaningful experiences, and have learnt moderation. They've also found it to be an extremely good analgesic and laxative. Ofcourse, there are sections of society that need it more than anything: chemotherapy patients take it for increased appetite, and people with chronic headaches take it to reduce occurrences (although LSD has been shown to work with an even more extreme form: cluster headaches).
Every substance in the world has a potential for abuse: there are plenty of "sugar junkies" who will live horrible lives and die a painful death, for instance. All in all, the issue is that of education: we need to legalize all these substances, and objectively explain how people can practice moderation. In general, enforcing hard-abstinence is a very poor solution; only repressive regimes should practice them.
Come over sometime ;)
Stop spewing bullshit. You clearly don't know what you're talking about. A gram of marijuana costs $10-20 and that will get 4 people properly stoned with some even left over. Meanwhile, I could go to a liquor store and buy a handle of shitty vodka for under $20. A handle will get you 40+ shots, which will definitely get more than 4 people drunk.
I am introducing another point for consideration.
And what does "not chemically addicted" mean anyway? Is there anything else inside a human brain except chemicals?
Well, I really can't understand how people can be addicted to gambling. Doesn't mean it's not a problem for some.
Marijuana--and indeed almost anything--can be psychologically addictive. As our brains operate chemically, it's a bit misleading to say that psychological addictions have no physical component. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter, is a key player in many (all?) psychological addictions. But to further complicate matters, dopamine is also heavily involved in the withdrawal process of some harder drugs, such as methamphetamine.
Because the line between physical and psychological addictions is so fuzzy, some professionals eschew the distinction. Still, it seems productive to discuss the nature and severity of withdrawal symptoms for each drug, even if we don't split the drugs into two camps. From that perspective, marijuana addiction is less severe than addiction to heroin, alcohol, and so on.
It takes a large soul to admit, in public, that you've been wrong about something that has to do with your profession.
And he's right, Americans have been misled about hemp and its products:
http://cannabis.neocities.org/
She was able to hold down a job, pay rent and had no need to beg or commit crime to fund the habit.
She also could afford to eat properly and was no longer at risk of acquiring disease through contaminated drugs, dirty needles or prostitution.
Also methadone is an absolute destroyer of teeth not least because of the slowness to provide a sugar free variety. It's also highly addictive in its own right I believe.
From the latter perspective, your heroin addict is a massive success story. She's contributing to society instead of being a burden, and the cost is low.
From the former perspective, this is a terrible story. You're supporting drug addiction!
The former perspective rarely works, but it's extremely common, on subjects ranging from drugs to crime to tax policy to education. It is IMO a cop-out, where you simply rely on vague principles rather than actually applying thought and study.
this is where my thinking starts on marijuana: what's wrong with getting high?
It's evident what all of you get up to in your free time :)
Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. Recreational users having a steady supply has no real social cost, and sick people getting the care they need has real benefit. But as long as we're going to be talking about medical marijuana in the context of science, it seems like we should compile some kind of statistics on this.
There are legitimate medical uses of alcohol, too. A great many people self-medicate, but it does provide them relief.
Investigating the medical science of the drug is important, yes. But perhaps investigation of the socio/psychological reasons is a red herring.