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Marijuana - Both Sides of the Story

posted by janrinok on Saturday February 21 2015, @05:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the read-it-before-the-feds-distort-the-facts-again dept.

"gewg_" writes:

5 Discoveries About Marijuana That You Won't Hear in the Corporate Media

Paul Armentano of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) reports via AlterNet

Scientific discoveries are published almost daily in regard to the healing properties of the cannabis. But most of these findings appear solely in subscription-only peer-reviewed journals and, therefore, go largely unnoticed by the mainstream media and by the public. Here are five just-published cannabis-centric studies that warrant attention.

  • Men Who Smoke Pot Possess a Reduced Risk of Bladder Cancer
  • Long-Term Pot Exposure Isn't Damaging to Lung Health
  • Alcohol, Not Pot, Alters the Brain
  • Marijuana Use Doesn't Lead to Depression
  • Marijuana Possesses a Unique Margin of Safety Compared to Other legal and Illegal Drugs

janrinok writes:

Cannabis is Bad for You, Cannabis is Good for You - Confused?

The BBC's Radio 4 has been running a series this week regarding the use and abuse of cannabis in the UK, and they offer this report of part of the discussions that have been aired. From the report:

Cannabis is bad for you, cannabis is good for you - confused? That's not surprising. Complicated and controversial, cannabis is revealed by recent science to have a dual personality, with a dark side and a more positive one. Radio 4's PM programme is this week running a whole series on cannabis, and the debate surrounding it.

Key to understanding this strange plant are two of the ingredients that make it up, known by their initials as THC and CBD. I asked Professor Val Curran of University College London to describe how they work and she came up a memorable answer:

"In a way, THC and CBD are a bit like yin and yang. The THC makes you stoned, but it can also make you anxious. It can also make you feel a bit psychotic, and it will seriously impair your memory.

"The other side of the yin/yang is CBD, which has almost the opposite effects. CBD calms you down, it has anti-psychotic properties and it also offsets the effects on memory, so that on CBD-containing cannabis you're less likely to forget what's going on."

So the first step to understanding cannabis is to realise how it can vary, how different types contain very different quantities of these polar opposites, with dramatically different outcomes.

One of the problems highlighted is that the cannabis available today (particularly 'skunk') is often much stronger than was available 20 - 30 years ago, and the balance of THC to CBD has changed, with potentially serious consequences. For example: "If you smoke high-potency skunk at all, then you are three times more likely to be psychotic. If you smoke high-potency cannabis every day, you are five times more likely to be psychotic." There is much more in the article, so give it a look.

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 21 2015, @12:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 21 2015, @12:12PM (#147742)

    So you feel it should be illegal because you don't like the smell? Suck it up buttercup. This shit is medication to me. Let me go outside and smoke it without fear of getting arrested for smoking in public and then you wont have an issue.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Pax on Saturday February 21 2015, @02:04PM

    by Pax (5056) on Saturday February 21 2015, @02:04PM (#147762)
    indeed, I am a disabled Veteran and rather than take the Tramadol as prescribed by my Doctor I'll have some cannabis. My doctor approves of this and it was he who actually suggested it as an alternative when I stated i didn't want to get addicted to the Tramadol.
    it's medicine and has been used as such for thousands of years. Also no mention that CBD(the cannabanoid that gives the heavy stone and is present is higher numbers in the likes of black hashish) is actually a known and studied anti-psychotic??????
    however here's the rub.. www.fullfacts.org looked at this so called study in South London and ripped it apart.

    “Cannabis causing a quarter of psychosis”—Daily Telegraph front page, Monday 16 February 2015

    This claim also appeared in the Daily Mail and the Mirror yesterday.

    But it’s not true. Researchers studied people who had psychotic disorders in South London, and found that 24% of these cases were linked to use of a claim verdictmore potent type of cannabis (often called ‘skunk’). But the use of skunk, and consequently psychotic disorders, is more common in South London than elsewhere in the UK.

    So the figure isn’t representative of the rest of the UK, as the researchers pointed out in their paper. While this was made clearer in the body of the Telegraph and Mirror articles, that doesn’t justify the misleading headlines. We’re asking for these to be corrected.

    Why population matters—an example

    Imagine a study that looks at broken legs in an alpine town. Half the people in the town ski regularly, and the other don’t.

    For the sake of argument let’s say people who ski are far more likely to break a leg or two. So much so that 90% of broken legs in our fictional town are a result of skiing accidents.

    The study would tell you a lot about the relative riskiness of skiing in the alps compared to not doing so, and could make interesting reading for anyone who’s considering a holiday to that particular resort.

    But it’d be ludicrous to suggest that 90% of all broken legs are a result of skiing accidents. That figure is specific to the people under study because the way they behave (particularly their skiing habits) isn’t typical.

    That’s what we’re doing when we take the proportion of cases in South London that are cannabis-related and apply it to everyone in the UK.

    The research found that smoking skunk—but not hash—increases the risk of psychosis

    The research found that compared to people who’d never used cannabis, skunk users were at three times the risk of developing a psychotic disorder. If they smoked it every day they were at five times the risk.

    Users of hash, a less potent form of cannabis, were found to be at no higher risk of psychotic disorders than non-users, irrespective of how often they smoked it.

    source https://fullfact.org/factcheck/health/cannabis_psychosis_risk_skunk_hash-39451 [fullfact.org] comment

    what is crazy is that they "study" only included 100 people from a part of South London, 24 of those admitted they cannabis was used at "SOME POINT" and this somehow constitutes a scientific study?? MY ACHING ANUS !!!!! THAT is a statistically insignificant amount of people and a bullshit study which will be happily cherry picked and quoted a LOT as this is... AN ELECTION YEAR..... bullshit.. THAT WHAT IT IS!