The Liberal Narrative and Marijuana
Comedian Bill Maher on Saturday called President Barack Obama "the first pothead president" and advocated for the decriminalization of marijuana possession.
Barry was quite the accomplished marijuana enthusiast back in high school and college. Excerpts from David Maraniss'; Barack Obama: The Story dealing with the elaborate drug culture surrounding the president when he attended Punahou School in Honolulu and Occidental College in Los Angeles. He inhaled. A lot. 
For years, the federal government has reported that marijuana is the most prominent drug causing individuals to need treatment for addiction. Today, it is the source of more addiction referrals than all other illegal drugs combined.
Of the roughly 7 million individuals the federal government estimates need treatment (almost certainly an undercount), over 4 million have a primary or exclusive dependence on marijuana.
Moreover, marijuana dependence among teens exceeds even their dependence on alcohol, long more easily available and widely used.
Marijuana use is linked to diminished academic achievement, short-term memory loss, and impaired judgment. It impedes motor skills and diminishes impulse control, which contributes to violent behavior and weakened self-control in general.
Marijuana use worsens, and perhaps triggers, serious mental illness—including depression, psychosis, and suicidal thoughts and actions.
Effects of Marijuana on the Brain
Adults who smoked pot regularly as teens were shown to have “neuropsychological decline” and “more cognitive problems” than non-users in a study last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Dr. Gilman was reviewing a composite scan of the brains of 20 pot smokers, ages 18 to 25. What she and fellow researchers at Harvard and Northwestern University found within those scans surprised them. -Abigail Sullivan Moore
Young adults who used cannabis just once or twice a week showed significant abnormalities in two important brain structures.
Further, cessation of cannabis use did not fully restore neuropsychological functioning among adolescent-onset cannabis users.
Liberal, Guns, Incompetence, Funny, Brilliance, Protest, Drugs
An Idaho man charged with attempting to assassinate President Barack Obama by shooting at the White House practiced with his weapon for six months and may have been upset about the country’s marijuana policy, prosecutors said in a newly filed court document... In the document, prosecutors said Ortega-Hernandez “expressed anger towards the government regarding the continued criminalization of marijuana,” which they said he acknowledged smoking and claimed makes people more intelligent.
Liberal, Narrative, Islam, Drugs, Murder
A French prosecutor has dropped charges against the killer of Jewish kindergarten teacher Sarah Halimi after experts ruled he had suffered a massive psychotic episode by smoking cannabis.
Ms Halimi, who was Orthodox, was killed after Kobili Traoré broke into her council flat in eastern Paris on April 4 2017.
Witnesses said the 65-year-old was beaten and called a “demon” by her attacker, who recited Koranic verses as he threw her off her balcony.
Liberal, Narrative, Oops, Drugs
The association between level of cannabis consumption and development of schizophrenia during a 15-year follow-up was studied in a cohort of 45 570 Swedish conscripts. The relative risk for schizophrenia among high consumers of cannabis (use on more than fifty occasions) was 6·0 (95% confidence interval 4·0—8·9) compared with non-users. Persistence of the association after allowance for other psychiatric illness and social background indicated that cannabis is an independent risk factor for schizophrenia.
Liberal, Degeneracy, Brilliance, Oops, Crazy, Healthcare, Drugs
For the first time, researchers at Northwestern University have analyzed the relationship between casual use of marijuana and brain changes – and found that young adults who used cannabis just once or twice a week showed significant abnormalities in two important brain structures.
The study’s findings, to be published Wednesday in the Journal of Neuroscience, are similar to those of past research linking chronic, long-term marijuana use with mental illness and changes in brain development.
Liberal, Brilliance, Narrative, Oops, Drugs
Persistent cannabis use was associated with neuropsychological decline broadly across domains of functioning, even after controlling for years of education. Informants also reported noticing more cognitive problems for persistent cannabis users. Impairment was concentrated among adolescent-onset cannabis users, with more persistent use associated with greater decline.
Further, cessation of cannabis use did not fully restore neuropsychological functioning among adolescent-onset cannabis users.
-Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Liberal, Obama, Character, Brilliance, Oops, Drugs
Researchers found persistent users of the drug, who started smoking it at school, had lower IQ scores as adults. They were also significantly more likely to have attention and memory problems in later life, than their peers who abstained.
Furthermore, those who started as teenagers and used it heavily, but quit as adults, did not regain their full mental powers, found academics at King’s College London and Duke University in the US.
Democrat, Liberal, Obama, Brilliance, Oops, Drugs
Teenage pot smokers could be damaging brain structures critical to memory and reasoning, according to new research that found changes in the brains of heavy users... Adults who smoked pot regularly as teens were shown to have “neuropsychological decline” and “more cognitive problems” than non-users in a study last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). This was true even if users stopped using long before the study.
Liberal, Narrative, Drugs
We collected high-resolution MRI scans on young adult recreational marijuana users and non using controls and conducted three independent analyses of morphometry in these structures: (1) gray matter density using voxel-based morphometry, (2) volume (total brain and regional volumes), and (3) shape (surface morphometry)... Significant shape
differences were detected in the left nucleus accumbens and right amygdala. The left nucleus accumbens showed salient exposure-dependent alterations across all three measures and an altered multimodal relationship across measures in the marijuana group.
These data suggest that marijuana exposure, even in young recreational users, is associated with exposure-dependent alterations of the neural matrix of core reward structures and is consistent with animal studies of changes in dendritic arborization.
Don't be anti-science. Protect your brain from changes in dendritic arborization. -Bourgeois Norm
All smokers showed abnormalities in the shape, density and volume of the nucleus accumbens, which “is at the core of motivation, the core of pleasure and pain, and every decision that you make,” explained Dr. Hans Breiter, a co-author of the study and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern’s medical school.
Liberal, Narrative, Drugs
A study released in 2012 showed that teenagers who were found to be dependent on pot before age 18 and who continued using it into adulthood lost an average of eight I.Q. points by age 38. And last year at Northwestern, Dr. Breiter and colleagues also saw changes in the nucleus accumbens among adults in their early 20s who had smoked daily for three years but had stopped for at least two years.
They had impaired working memories as well. “Working memory is key for learning,” Dr. Breiter said. “If I were to design a substance that is bad for college students, it would be marijuana.” -Abigail Sullivan Moore
Schizophrenia, Poorer Cognitive Function, Substance Use Disorders...
"There is, unfortunately, evidence to suggest that cannabis is increasingly seen as a somewhat harmless substance. This is unfortunate, since we see links with schizophrenia, poorer cognitive function, substance use disorders, etc."
Liberal, Brilliance, Narrative, Oops, Drugs
Experimental mice have been telling us this for years, but pot-smoking humans didn't want to believe it could happen to them: Compared with a person who never smoked marijuana, someone who uses marijuana regularly has, on average, less gray matter in his orbital frontal cortex, a region that is a key node in the brain's reward, motivation, decision-making and addictive behaviors network...
Researchers noted that the IQ of the marijuana-using group was significantly lower than that of the non-using group--not a finding of the study, but an incidental factor that might be indirectly linked to marijuana use.
Liberal, Brilliance, Narrative, Oops, Drugs
Using marijuana at an early age could have long-term consequences on your brain and it may even lower your IQ, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers found that compared to nonusers, people who smoked marijuana starting as early as age 14 have less brain volume, or gray matter, in the orbitofrontal cortex. That's the area in the front of your brain that helps you make decisions.
Liberal, Brilliance, Narrative, Oops, Drugs
High-strength cannabis may damage nerve fibres that handle the flow of messages across the two halves of the brain, scientists claim. Brain scans of people who regularly smoked strong skunk-like cannabis revealed subtle differences in the white matter that connects the left and right hemispheres and carries signals from one side of the brain to the other.
The changes were not seen in those who never used cannabis or smoked only the less potent forms of the drug, the researchers found.
The study is thought to be the first to look at the effects of cannabis potency on brain structure, and suggests that greater use of skunk may cause more damage to the corpus callosum, making communications across the brain’s hemispheres less efficient.
Liberal, Narrative, Oops, Drugs
Marijuana, it seems, is not a performance-enhancing drug. That is, at least, not among young people, and not when the activity is learning.
A study published Tuesday in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry finds that when adolescents stop using marijuana — even for just one week — their verbal learning and memory improve. The study contributes to growing evidence that marijuana use in adolescents is associated with reduced neurocognitive functioning...
Researchers are particularly concerned with marijuana use among the young because THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, most sharply affects the parts of the brain that develop during adolescence.
"The adolescent brain is undergoing significant neurodevelopment well into the 20s, and the regions that are last to develop are those regions that are most populated by cannabis receptors and are also very critical to cognitive functioning," says Randi Schuster. Schuster is the director of neuropsychology at Massachusetts General Hospital's Center for Addiction Medicine and the study's lead author.
Liberal, Narrative, Oops, Crazy, Healthcare, Drugs
Smoking cannabis in your teenage years raises the risk of depression and suicide in later life, a landmark new study has found. Researchers from the US and UK have revealed the drug could impair a child's brain to the extent it triggers mental health disorders later in life.
In the largest research of its kind, experts from Oxford University and McGill University estimated that over half a million adults in the UK and US could be saved from mental health disorders by avoiding the drug as a teenager.
The teams have now warned that cannabis, legal in several US states and used by millions of young people is a significant public health risk with 'devastating consequences'. They have urgently called for officials to make tackling use of the drug a priority.
Liberal, Science, Narrative, Oops, Drugs
Marijuana use during adolescence may affect development of the areas of the brain that control emotions, an analysis published Wednesday by JAMA Psychiatry found.
Teens who reported using marijuana during a five-year period showed signs of reduced thickness of the left and right prefrontal cortices in their brains on magnetic resonance imaging, the researchers said.
Reduced thickness of these regions, which control positive and negative emotions, respectively, has in earlier studies been linked with increased risk for depression and suicide, as well as attention problems...
"Taken together, I think our findings provide compelling circumstantial evidence for an effect of cannabis use on the developing adolescent brain," study co-author Matthew Albaugh told UPI in an email.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Narrative, Oops, Fascism, AntiAmerican, Drugs, Constitution, Censorship
The proportion of schizophrenia cases linked with problematic use of marijuana has increased over the past 25 years, according to a new study from Denmark.
In 1995, 2% of schizophrenia diagnoses in the country were associated with cannabis use disorder. In 2000, it increased to around 4%. Since 2010, that figure increased to 8%, the study found.
"I think it is highly important to use both our study and other studies to highlight and emphasize that cannabis use is not harmless," said Carsten Hjorthøj, an associate professor at the Copenhagen Research Center for Mental Health and an author of the study published in the medical journal JAMA Psychiatry, via email.
The idea of marijuana causing a psychotic breakdown sounds like something out of the camp film classic "Reefer Madness," but many experts argue it's not that far-fetched.
As legalization of recreational marijuana spreads across the United States, more people are showing up in ERs with psychotic symptoms after consuming too much pot, said Dr. Itai Danovitch, chairman of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.
-Dennis Thompson
Marijuana: The Environmental Damage
The idea that the counterculture’s crop of choice is bad for the environment has gone down hard here. Marijuana is an economic staple, particularly in Humboldt County’s rural southern end, called SoHum.
Acres of ancient trees are disappearing and illegal marijuana farms are popping up in their place. Streams and rivers are being sucked dry, diverted sometimes miles away through plastic pipes into tanks. Several species of fish, along with a rare breed of wild rodent, are on the verge of extinction. -Fresno Bee Editorial Board
Growers had begun to spread rodenticide, with opened boxes of d-CON rat poison sitting a few steps from a creek. Many of the chemicals used in illegal pot grow sites are banned in the United States, and are brought in from Mexico.
“In my career I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Stormer Feiler, a scientist with California’s North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. “Since 2007 the amount of unregulated activities has exploded.” He added, “They are grading the mountaintops now, so it affects the whole watershed below.”
Environmentalist, Hypocrisy, Greed, Drugs
Growers clear native vegetation before planting and sometimes use miles of black plastic tubing to transport water from creeks that are often dammed for irrigation. Banned herbicides and pesticides often used by marijuana growers kill wildlife and competing vegetation. This loss of vegetation allows rainwater to erode the soil and wash poisons, human waste and trash from the grow sites into streams and rivers.
Environmentalist, Hypocrisy, Warming, Crime, Funny, Energy, Drugs
People growing marijuana indoors use 1 percent of the U.S. electricity supply, and they create 17 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every year (not counting the smoke exhaled) according to a report by Evan Mills, an energy analyst at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Environmentalist, Hypocrisy, Warming, Crime, Funny, Energy, Drugs
The letter highlighted the environmental damage caused by such grows, noting that in a single law enforcement operation in Mendocino National Forest in 2011, officers found 56 sites and removed "23 tons of trash, over a ton of fertilizer, 57 pounds of pesticides and herbicides, 22 miles of irrigation piping and 13 man-made dams."
Denver Civic Center Trashed After Pot Festival
April 2017
Denver wakes up to Civic Center Park covered in piles of trash after 4/20 rally https://t.co/8A1ulSYrKr
— 420stuffandsuch (@420stuffandsuch) April 21, 2017
No surprises from these drug-addled degenerates.
Environmentalist, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Character, Drugs
Marijuana smokers might praise their drug of choice as "natural," but pot growers in national forests all over the country have caused "severe" damage to these natural treasures, according to testimony by the U.S. Forest Service's director of law enforcement. "The illegal cultivation of marijuana on our National Forest System is a clear and present danger to the public and the environment," said David Ferrell
The worst damage is on public lands. There, extensive plantings are surrounded by d-Con-laced tuna and sardine cans placed around perimeters by the dozens, Dr. Gabriel said.
Environmentalist, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Narrative, Oops, Drugs
The only peer reviewed scientific study that begins to quantify the impacts of large-scale, illicit pot grows was released earlier this summer by UC Davis researchers. It concludes that the heavy use of high-powered rodenticides at outdoor marijuana grows is likely a leading cause of death for the Pacific fisher, a reclusive weasel-like creature that is currently a candidate for federal protection under the endangered species act.
Environmentalist, Hypocrisy, Warming, Liberal, Energy, Waste, Drugs
Marijuana growers use an estimated 90 million kilowatt hours per year, “about 70 times the total output of all the solar panels in the county… enough to power 13,000 typical homes,” a recent Humboldt State University report found. The extra electricity pumps an estimated 40,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, as much as 7,000 cars — and that’s just in one county.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Oops, Drugs
California cannabis growers may be making millions, but their thirsty plants are sucking up a priceless resource: water. Now scientists say that if no action is taken in the drought-wracked state, the consequences for fisheries and wildlife will be dire. "If this activity continues on the trajectory it's on, we're looking at potentially streams going dry, streams that harbor endangered fish species like salmon, steelhead," said Scott Bauer of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Environmentalist, Warming, Liberal, Narrative, Oops, Energy, Drugs
Marijuana has never been more popular in the U.S. — and its carbon emissions have never posed a bigger threat to the climate.
America’s patchwork approach to legalizing weed has helped make cannabis cultivation one of the most energy-intensive crops in the nation. And as states increasingly embrace marijuana, a growing source of greenhouse gases is going essentially unnoticed by climate hawks on Capitol Hill.
Nationally, 80 percent of cannabis is cultivated indoors with sophisticated lighting and environmental controls designed to maximize the plant’s yield. It’s a setup that can consume up to 2,000 watts of electricity per square meter, 40 times what it takes for leafy greens like lettuce, when grown indoors.
Obama Drug Use
Researchers found persistent users of the drug, who started smoking it at school, had lower IQ scores as adults. They were also significantly more likely to have attention and memory problems in later life, than their peers who abstained.
Crime, Incompetence, Oops, Drugs
The opening months of Colorado's first-in-the-nation recreational marijuana industry have seen a rise in fiery explosions and injuries as pot users try to make the drug's intoxicating oil in crude home-based laboratories. Since Jan. 1, when sales began, the state's only certified adult burn center has treated 10 people with serious injuries they suffered while making hash oil, compared with 11 in 2013 and one in 2012.
Liberal, Narrative, Oops, Drugs
That whiff of pot that drifts your way at a rock concert or outdoor event could damage your heart and blood vessels as much as secondhand cigarette smoke does, preliminary research suggests. Blood vessel function in laboratory rats dropped by 70 percent after a half-hour of exposure to secondhand marijuana smoke -- similar to results found with secondhand tobacco smoke, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco reported Sunday.
Liberal, Degeneracy, Oops, Drugs
Marijuana exposure incidents, or 'pot poisonings,' have spiked in Washington state, especially among teenagers... Marijuana exposures are defined as any situation where an adult or child suffers an adverse reaction to the consumption of marijuana, such as increased heart rate, paranoia or stomach illness, according to the Washington Poison Center.
Liberal, Narrative, Oops, Drugs
A definitive 20-year study into the effects of long-term cannabis use has demolished the argument that the drug is safe. Cannabis is highly addictive, causes mental health problems and opens the door to hard drugs, the study found. The paper by Professor Wayne Hall, a drugs advisor to the World Health Organisation, builds a compelling case against those who deny the devastation cannabis wreaks on the brain. Professor Hall found:
• One in six teenagers who regularly smoke the drug become dependent on it,
• Cannabis doubles the risk of developing psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia,
• Cannabis users do worse at school. Heavy use in adolescence appears to impair intellectual development
• One in ten adults who regularly smoke the drug become dependent on it and those who use it are more likely to go on to use harder drugs,
• Driving after smoking cannabis doubles the risk of a car crash, a risk which increases substantially if the driver has also had a drink,
• Smoking it while pregnant reduces the baby’s birth weight.
Liberal, Incompetence, Narrative, Oops, Drugs
When Colorado legalized marijuana two years ago, nobody was quite ready for the problem of exploding houses. But that is exactly what firefighters, courts and lawmakers across the state are confronting these days: amateur marijuana alchemists who are turning their kitchens and basements into “Breaking Bad”-style laboratories, using flammable chemicals to extract potent drops of a marijuana concentrate commonly called hash oil, and sometimes accidentally blowing up their homes and lighting themselves on fire in the process.
Democrat, Government, Drugs
Colorado’s decision to legalize marijuana was a bad idea, the state’s governor said Friday. Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat who opposed the 2012 decision by voters to make pot legal, said the state still doesn’t fully know what the unintended consequences of the move will be.
Liberal, Degeneracy, Narrative, Oops, Drugs
Boys who smoke cannabis before puberty could be stunting their growth by more than four inches, a new study suggests. Researchers found that youngsters who were addicted to the drug were far shorter than their non-smoking peers... Scientists at the Pir Mehr Ali Shah Agriculture University Rawalpindi in Pakistan studied the levels of certain hormones involved in growth and puberty in the blood of 220 non-smoking and 217 cannabis-addicted boys... It was also found that non-smoking boys were on average four kilos heavier and 4.6 inches taller by the age of 20 than the dope smokers.
Liberal, Narrative, Oops, Healthcare, Drugs
A new study led by researchers from Penn State is outlining a number of strategies that should be employed by cannabis growers to mitigate the plant’s ability to absorb heavy metals from soil. The study indicates it is possible consuming cannabis contaminated with heavy metals could lead to chronic diseases, including neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s...
“Cannabis consumed in combustive form represents the greatest danger to human health, as analysis of heavy metals in the smoke of cannabis revealed the presence of selenium, mercury, cadmium, lead, chromium, nickel and arsenic,” explains Louis Bengyella, an author on the new study. “It is disturbing to realize that the cannabis products being used by consumers, especially cancer patients, may be causing unnecessary harm to their bodies.”
Liberal, Narrative, Oops, Healthcare, Drugs
A bizarre syndrome that makes heavy cannabis users violently ill and leads them to take frequent hot baths to ease the pain has been reported by doctors. Symptoms of the illness include severe stomach pain, nausea and vomiting – and bathing in very hot water up to five times a day for relief. At least two cases of the syndrome which involve multiple visits to accident and emergency have been reported in the UK and worldwide the conditions is ‘increasing acutely’.
Liberal, Degeneracy, Oops, Drugs
Public school teachers and officials in Colorado say they are immensely concerned that large numbers of students are using lots of marijuana now that the drug is legal across the state... “It’s like they’re disguising alcohol as Kool-Aid and marketing it to kids,” Jeff Whitmore, a school transportation official in southwestern Colorado, told the newspaper. “These edibles are cookies and gummy bears, and they’re filled with high amounts of THC.”
Midway through a sold out two night stand at the Majestic Theater here, country music icon Willie Nelson said that in spite of recent breathing related health issues, he has no plans to give up touring...
Years of smoking marijuana, the country music legend admits, has taken a toll on his health.
-Paul Venema
Liberal, Narrative, Oops, Drugs
A number of investigations have linked marijuana to an increased risk of lung cancer. A recent Harvard study concluded that a middle-age person's chance of having a heart attack increases nearly five times during the first hour after smoking pot. That's especially meaningful for baby boomers who developed the habit in their teens and 20s and continue to use the drug in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. Other researchers have associated pot with impaired disease resistance and adverse effects on fetuses when mothers smoke the drug during pregnancy.
Smoking cannabis can alter a person's DNA, causing mutations that expose a user to serious illnesses, experts have warned. Furthermore, the heightened risk is not exclusive to the marijuana user, a study has shown. The disease-causing mutations are passed on to their children, and several future generations, it has emerged...
Dr Stuart Reece, and Professor Gary Hulse from the University of Western Australia's School of Psychiatry, analyzed literary and research material to understand the likely causes. Dr Reece said: 'Through our research we found that cancers and illnesses were likely caused by cell mutations resulting from cannabis properties having a chemical interaction with a person's DNA.
Liberal, Narrative, Metaphor, Drugs
The nation's homeless are proving to be especially susceptible to a new, dirt-cheap version of synthetic marijuana, which leaves users glassy-eyed, aimless, sprawled on streets and sidewalks oblivious to their surroundings or wandering into traffic.
Liberal, Narrative, Oops, Drugs
One minute of exposure to secondhand smoke (SHS) from marijuana diminishes blood vessel function to the same extent as tobacco, but the harmful cardiovascular effects last three times longer, according to a new study in rats led by UC San Francisco researchers.
In a healthy animal, increased blood flow prompts arteries to widen, a process known as flow-mediated dilation (FMD). When FMD is compromised, as happens during SHS exposure, blood flow is impeded, and the risks of heart attack, atherosclerosis and other heart problems increase, said UCSF’s Matthew Springer, Ph.D., professor of medicine and senior author of the new study.
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The answer was cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, or CHS. It’s caused by heavy, long-term use of various forms of marijuana... “They’ll often present to the emergency department three, four, five different times before we can sort this out,” said Dr. Kennon Heard, an emergency room physician at the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora, Colorado.
He co-authored a study showing that since 2009, when medical marijuana became widely available, emergency room visits diagnoses for CHS in two Colorado hospitals nearly doubled. In 2012, the state legalized recreational marijuana.
“It is certainly something that, before legalization, we almost never saw,” Heard said. “Now we are seeing it quite frequently.”
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Dr. Stuart Gitlow, a professor at the University of Florida and a past president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, said marijuana is much stronger than it was years ago, giving a more psychedelic feel rather than a mild sense of intoxication.
A small percentage, he said, could have hallucinations and paranoia. However, the vast majority, he said, experience that mild high, which fades after several hours.
After days of use, the pot becomes stored in the body's fatty tissue and THC is gradually released into the bloodstream, meaning a person can experience the effect of the drug around the clock.
Daily use, he said, promotes a chronic loss of attention, focus and concentration. Daily users perform at a lower level at jobs and at school. Focus and motivation also decrease, he said.
Liberal, Narrative, Drugs
Smoking cannabis ages the brain by an average of 2.8 years, new research suggests.
This is compared to four years in schizophrenia patients, according to the largest study of its kind. Brain ageing is defined as reduced blood flow through the organ. Excessive alcohol also ages the organ by 0.6 years, the research adds.
Lead author Dr Daniel Amen, founder of Amen Clinics, said: 'The cannabis abuse finding was especially important, as our culture is starting to see marijuana as an innocuous substance. This study should give us pause about it.'
Liberal, Narrative, Oops, Drugs
With more people using medical marijuana and recreational marijuana, there’s a condition that’s popping up in emergency rooms across the country.
It’s called Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome, or CHS, and the symptoms are not pretty. “Painful cramping, vomiting occurring. It can happen every few weeks, every few months, last a few days and be incredibly uncomfortable,” said Dr. Michael Lynch of the Pittsburgh Poison Control Center at UPMC.
The vomiting can be so severe that many go to the hospital, needing fluids to rehydrate.
Liberal, Narrative, Healthcare, Drugs
The legalization of recreational marijuana is associated with a rise of injuries, substance abuse and car accidents, according to new research. A study published Wednesday in the journal BMJ Open found that Colorado hospital admissions for cannabis abuse increased after the drug was legalized in the state.
Researchers found that car accidents in Colorado increased 10% after legalization, and increases in alcohol abuse and overdoses that resulted in injury or death increased by 5%.
Liberal, Narrative, Oops, Healthcare, Drugs
Ontario saw nine times more emergency department (ED) visits per month for cannabis poisonings in young children under the age of 10 after Canada legalized recreational cannabis, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open. While single hospitals have reported on child cannabis poisonings before, this is the first study to look at an entire region.
We saw more frequent and severe ED visits due to cannabis poisoning in children under 10 following the legalization of cannabis, and the legalization of edible cannabis products appears to be a key factor," said lead author Dr. Daniel Myran...
During the entire study period (January 2016 to March 2021), there were 522 ED visits for cannabis poisoning in children under 10. The average age of these children was three years, nine months.
Too often cannabis is wrongly seen as a safe drug, but as this review shows, there is a clear link with psychosis and schizophrenia, especially for teenagers.
-Mark Winstanley of Rethink Mental Illness