Show Posts
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
Fewer kids will be at risk because lawmakers made the correct decision.Where I'll still politely disagree with you.
...I think that if you want to prevent drug use, you ought to not be focused so much on keeping the penalties against use intact, but giving people a reason for not using -a reward.
You focus on the stick, from what I have seen so far.
From what I can tell it's the carrot-positive opportunities to work towards-that keep people off drugs.
This thread on an internet message board has been focused on the discussion of legalization. It is representative of precisely that, a discussion, and not my job. A job where I certainly do employ strength-based strategies to give kids positive alternatives to drugs, to build refusal skills, to engage and empower them to not need chemicals for fake strength. I do all these things. But it isn't either/or. I can do these with the substance still illegal, because the law itself isn't prevention, but lifting the ban on marijuana will create more access which is just not an acceptible move.
It's like one of LMNO's satires of corporate-speak, only it's not satire. I've got $5 that says those are lines and phrases lifted word-for-word from some textbook that RWHN probably re-reads every month or so.
Dr. Christian Thurstone is controversial in the marijuana community. But he hasn't backed away from warning about the dangers of weed, particularly for adolescent users.
His latest assertion? Users may soon start directly injecting THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, rather than smoking or ingesting marijuana.
"It seems like people are doing more and more to get a deeper high and presenting to us more and more addiction to marijuana," says Thurstone, whose main gig is as medical director of a Denver Health program called Substance Abuse Treatment, Education and Prevention (STEP). "I worry that might be a next step toward the injection of THC."
...
The seeds of the study were planted long ago. According to Thurstone, "I started thinking about this in 2004, when Dr. Wilson Compton published an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association showing that the prevalence of marijuana use in the U.S. was staying the same, but the prevalence of cannabis use disorders -- marijuana addiction -- was going up significantly."
...
"I don't think in the mainstream scientific world of addiction that there's debate any more that it's addictive," he maintains. "It works on the same part of the brain as all other addictive substances, and there's an animal model of marijuana addiction now. We know that it's not just psychologically addictive but physically addictive, and studies by Dr. Alan Budney at Dartmouth have characterized a physical addiction to marijuana. Marijuana withdrawal is clinically equivalent to tobacco withdrawal -- and anecdotally, in our experience, we see adolescents coming into treatment extremely addicted to marijuana. They're dropping out of life, giving up on school and families to pursue their marijuana addiction."
...
Anecdotally, we're hearing about patients who start with cheap, low-grade marijuana before moving on to more potent marijuana, and then other ways of consuming it: waxing marijuana, dabbing marijuana and chasing a bigger and bigger high."
Such actions echo the behavior of those using other drugs, Thurstone allows. "People who start with pills may graduate to snorting or smoking heroin -- and then to heroin injection. It's just a way to get a more intense high, because anything that's injected tends to reach the brain pretty quickly."
That's why Thurstone concludes his "Higher and Higher" article with the following line: "It is reasonable now to question how much longer it will be before we see injection use of THC -- especially as marijuana is legalized."
Thus far, however, Thurstone admits that none of his patients have taken this step. "I have not seen it clinically," he says, "and I have not seen it described except in research studies, which say it's possible to have an injectable form of marijuana. I don't know exactly how to do the preparation, to be honest, and I don't know how the high would differ. I can only hypothesize."
...
Marijuana addiction specialist Dr. Christian Thurstone conjured images like the one seen here when, earlier this week, he shared what he sees as evidence of weed users searching for bigger and bigger highs -- and added his fear that such people may soon turn to injecting THC, the active ingredient in pot.
Dr. Bob Melamede, among the country's most vocal advocates for the medicinal benefits of cannabis, pulls no punches when asked his opinion about such a prospect. "This is nonsense," he says. "It's idiotic."
Thurstone is an extremely prominent figure locally and nationally on the subject of opposition to marijuana regulation and legalization. The medical director of a Denver Health program called Substance Abuse Treatment, Education and Prevention (STEP), he was also a member of the Amendment 64 Task Force, and he remains a primary figure in Project SAM, an organization spearheaded by former Congressman Patrick Kennedy that backs a public-health approach to pot.
In "Higher and Higher, the latest blog post on his personal website, Thurstone shares statistics from urinalysis tests done on STEP patients dating back to 2007; most of them were between thirteen and nineteen when they entered the program.
According to his data, THC levels in such samples have gone up from an average of 358 nanograms per milliliter of urine prior to the 2009-2010 period that marked what he calls the "big commercialization of marijuana" -- the boom period that led to hundreds of dispensaries opening in Colorado -- to 536 nanograms. He believes the reason for this rise has to do with the increasing potency of cannabis, particularly in Colorado, and widespread diversion of medical marijuana beyond the patient population, with much of it reaching teens.
Lately, Thurstone's patients have come to him with "more severe marijuana dependence and more symptoms than teens not using medical marijuana," he told us. "And it's also consistent with the whole idea that kids are using higher potency marijuana that's probably more addictive. Anecdotally, we're hearing about patients who start with cheap, low-grade marijuana before moving on to more potent marijuana, and then other ways of consuming it: waxing marijuana, dabbing marijuana and chasing a bigger and bigger high."
For that reason, Thurstone ends his essay with this line: "It is reasonable now to question how much longer it will be before we see injection use of THC -- especially as marijuana is legalized."
When asked about this prospect, he conceded that "I have not seen it clinically, and I have not seen it described except in research studies, which say it's possible to have an injectable form of marijuana. I don't know exactly how to do the preparation, to be honest, and I don't know how the high would differ. I can only hypothesize."
... we reached out to Melamede, a member of the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs faculty ...We wanted to find out if he agreed with Thurstone's critics -- and it turns out that for the most part, he does.
Melamede says intravenously delivered THC has been a goal that's thus far proven elusive.
"They've worked on more soluble versions that could be injectable, for medical reasons, but nothing has ever developed from any of that," he says.
As for the assertion that THC is essentially a sap, Melamede says the truth is more complicated. "THC is actually a single molecule -- and THC alone is horrible. That's what Marinol is, and that's why no one wants to take it. It makes you very uncomfortable and it doesn't get you high in the sense that it gives people relief. It gets you stressed, which is why Marinol isn't used by anyone with an alternative -- plus, it costs something like $1,500 a month....
"But in all cases, ranging from THC to a more diluted yet more medically advantageous form, like cannabis extract, they're highly hydro-phobic. They don't like water, so you can't put it into a liquid water suspension that you could inject. These are basically oils, and oil and water don't mix -- and they certainly don't mix into any kind of form that's going to be injectable."
His conclusion: "The only injections of cannabis have occurred in this guy's mind."
Melamede also has problems with Thurstone's comments about marijuana addiction.
"I don't think in the mainstream scientific world of addiction that there's debate any more that it's addictive," Thurstone told us earlier this week. "It works on the same part of the brain as all other addictive substances, and there's an animal model of marijuana addiction now. We know that it's not just psychologically addictive but physically addictive, and studies by Dr. Alan Budney at Dartmouth have characterized a physical addiction to marijuana. Marijuana withdrawal is clinically equivalent to tobacco withdrawal -- and anecdotally, in our experience, we see adolescents coming into treatment extremely addicted to marijuana. They're dropping out of life, giving up on school and families to pursue their marijuana addiction."
To that, Melamede says, "first of all, you can't separate the physical from the psychological. Everything in our brain comes from the physical ability of how our brain works. But the studies he's referring to are very poorly controlled. If you take a population of people who are using cannabis, especially in high doses, and then cut them off from it, they have stress, poor sleeping, etc. But those are the very things people use marijuana for -- because they are stressed or not sleeping well. So you're taking away the medicine that fixes their bio-medical problems and then saying that's proof they're addicted. That's like taking someone off antibiotics they're taking for an infection and when they infection comes back saying, 'This proves they're addicted to antibiotics.'
"In reality, it's been termed to be about as addictive as caffeine. Just use a little common sense and think about how many people used marijuana prior to 25 and then stopped using until they reached their forties, fifties, sixties and seventies and were starting to get age-related illnesses. If it was so addicting, why did they all stop?"
In Melamede's opinion, the same sort of common-sense approach should be applied to concerns about marijuana users potentially injecting THC. "Some of this stuff is just so stupid," he says, "that it reflects on the competence of the people making these statements."
Researchers working on a long-term study of risk factors for cardiovascular disease (the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults or CARDIA study) tested the lung function of 5115 young adults over the course of 20 years, starting in 1985 when they were aged 18 to 30.
They found that marijuana use was almost as common as cigarette smoking in the sample, which was designed to reflect the U.S. population. Among participants, the average marijuana user toked 2-3 times a month, while the average tobacco user smoked eight cigarettes a day. Those who smoked both tended to do so slightly more frequently than those who smoked only cigarettes or only marijuana.
The study was “well conducted” and is “essentially confirmatory of the findings from several previous studies that have examined the association between marijuana smoking and lung function,” says Dr. Donald Tashkin, professor of medicine at UCLA and a leading scientist in the area. He was not associated with the new research.
“The major strengths of this study are that it included a far larger number of subjects followed for longer than any of these previous studies,” he adds.
While tobacco smokers showed the expected drop in lung function over time, the new research found that marijuana smoke had unexpected and apparently positive effects. Low to moderate users actually showed increased lung capacity compared to nonsmokers on two tests, known as FEV1 and FVC. FEV1 is the amount of air someone breathes out in the first second after taking the deepest possible breath; FVC is the total volume of air exhaled after the deepest inhalation.
“FEV1 and FVC both actually increased with moderate and occasional use of marijuana,” says Dr. Mark Pletcher, associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco and the lead author of the study.
That was a bit of a surprise, says Pletcher, since “There are clearly adverse effects from tobacco use and marijuana smoke has a lot of the same constituents as tobacco smoke does so we thought it might have some of the same harmful effects. It’s a weird effect to see and we couldn’t make it go away,” he adds, explaining that the researchers used statistical models to look for errors or other factors that could explain the apparent benefit and did not find them.
While tobacco smokers showed the expected drop in lung function over time, the new research found that marijuana smoke had unexpected and apparently positive effects. Low to moderate users actually showed increased lung capacity compared to nonsmokers on two tests, known as FEV1 and FVC. FEV1 is the amount of air someone breathes out in the first second after taking the deepest possible breath; FVC is the total volume of air exhaled after the deepest inhalation.
“FEV1 and FVC both actually increased with moderate and occasional use of marijuana,” says Dr. Mark Pletcher, associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco and the lead author of the study.
That was a bit of a surprise, says Pletcher, since “There are clearly adverse effects from tobacco use and marijuana smoke has a lot of the same constituents as tobacco smoke does so we thought it might have some of the same harmful effects. It’s a weird effect to see and we couldn’t make it go away,” he adds, explaining that the researchers used statistical models to look for errors or other factors that could explain the apparent benefit and did not find them.
...
He cautions, however, that long term exposure to marijuana smoke at the most extreme doses probably does damage the lungs, although he concedes that the evidence from the study on this point is “weak.”
The authors conclude:
Marijuana may have beneficial effects on pain control, appetite, mood, and management of other chronic symptoms. Our findings suggest that occasional use of marijuana for these or other purposes may not be associated with adverse consequences on pulmonary function. It is more difficult to estimate the potential effects of regular heavy use, because this pattern of use is relatively rare in our study sample; however, our findings do suggest an accelerated decline in pulmonary function with heavy use and a resulting need for caution and moderation when marijuana use is considered.
Since the study focused on cardiovascular disease and even the oldest participants had not yet reached the highest risk ages for lung cancer, it does not provide new information on cancer risk, but it does confirm the link between cigarette smoking and long-term lung function declines.
Tashkin, however, has studied this issue extensively. He says, “The largest epidemiologic (case-control) study of the association between marijuana use and lung cancer failed to demonstrate that marijuana increases the risk of developing lung (or, for that matter, upper airway) cancer.”
He notes that a much smaller, recent study from New Zealand did claim to find a link, but only in very heavy users. He says, “The authors’ interpretation of their data can be faulted because of the small numbers of their subjects exhibiting such heavy use, which rendered their estimates of risk imprecise.”
Why smoking marijuana and smoking tobacco should have such different effects on the lungs is still a matter of dispute. Many researchers believe that it’s simply a matter of dose: most marijuana users smoke a few times a month, while most cigarette smokers light up multiple times a day.
But Tashkin argues that specific properties of marijuana also matter. He says that THC has anti-inflammatory and immune suppressing properties, which may prevent lung irritation from developing into chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a devastating lung disorder frequently caused by tobacco smoking.
As for cancer, he says, “the THC in marijuana has well-defined anti-tumoral effects that have been shown to inhibit the growth of a variety of cancers in animal models and tissue culture systems, thus counteracting the potentially tumorigenic effects of the procarcinogens in marijuana smoke.”
Whatever the cause, it seems that those who argue that marijuana is harmful because of its smoke are going to have to find a different line of attack.
Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/10/study-smoking-marijuana-not-linked-with-lung-damage/#ixzz2TWYKflVE
I'm glad I wasn't the only one having the impulse to quantify his posting patterns.
I could break it down in terms of total time spent post on this thread, timezone correlations with posts etc...but even though I don't have a life, I certainly have better things to do with my time.
I considered throwing it all into Statcrunch and seeing what it looked like after a week, but after I realized how many posts I'd be tracking I decided to do some gardening instead.
I'm not not a racist but...I don't judge people based on their race.
Julian Bond, with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said during a Tuesday interview on MSNBC that it’s only right and just that the federal government and the IRS target tea party groups.
Tea party groups are, after all, “overtly racist” and the “Taliban wing of American politics,” Mr. Bond said, Mediaite reported. The IRS ought to look over these groups’ shoulders, he said — at the same time condemning former President Bush, for what he alleged was that administration’s biased push for the IRS to investigate the NAACP.
Smoking Marijuana Causes ‘Complete Remission’ of Crohn’s Disease, No Side Effects, New Study Shows
Posted on May 14, 2013 at 9:38 am by David Downs
Smoking pot caused a “complete remission” of Crohn’s disease compared to placebo in half the patients who lit up for eight weeks, according to clinical trial data to be published the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
Researchers at Israel’s Meir Medical Center took 21 people with intractable, severe Crohn’s disease and gave 11 of them two joints a day for eight weeks. “The standardized cannabis cigarettes” contained 23 percent THC and 0.5 percent CBD (cannabidiol). (Such marijuana is available on dispensary shelves in San Francisco, Oakland, and other cities that have regulated access to the drug.) The other ten subjects smoked placebo cigarettes containing no active cannabinoids.
Investigators reported that smoking weed caused a “complete remission” of Crohn’s Disease in five of the 11 subjects. Another five of the eleven test subjects saw their Crohn’s Disease symptoms cut in half. Furthermore, “subjects receiving cannabis reported improved appetite and sleep, with no significant side effects.”
The study is the first placebo-controlled clinical trial to assess the consumption of cannabis for the treatment of Crohn’s[.] All of the patients had intractable forms of the disease and did not respond to conventional treatments. Still, the United States government claims that marijuana is as dangerous as heroin and has no medical use. U.S.
...
The disease of the digestive tract afflicts 400,000 – 600,000 people in North America alone causing abdominal pain, diarrhea (which can be bloody), severe vomiting, weight loss, as well as secondary skin rashes, arthritis, inflammation of the eye, tiredness, and lack of concentration.
I'm rooting for 200 pages, but I don't have anything constructive to add.
I've heard that rope made from hemp is really splintery and chafe-y.
The kanji for cannabis and hemp is two trees under a dotted cliff, or possibly two plants hanging in a shed, like this:
麻
Is that relevant?
