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Propaganda of the Marijuana Lobby: A Con Job
We’re all being conned. As legalization of marijuana is being pushed forward in the US, we are discovering how little we really know about the drug, and the information we do have is not widely publicized:
Despite being a substance that targets the brain, if and how long-term cannabis use alters brain structure and function remain unknown. There are some known adverse effects. It acutely impairs mental functions and may exacerbate depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and use of other substances. Whether it is more harmful than substances such as alcohol or nicotine is still undetermined. On the plus side, there is conclusive evidence that cannabis provides relief from symptoms related to chemotherapy and multiple sclerosis. Other potential benefits remain unknown.
Ten states have already allowed the recreational use of cannabis. According to an op-ed piece by Alex Berenson, the pro-marijuana groups have changed the discussion by talking about medical marijuana and the relief it can provide, rather than focusing on its recreational use.
Studies that are not widely publicized explain that the effects on children and teenagers can be long-term:
When marijuana users begin using as teenagers, the drug may reduce attention, memory, and learning functions and affect how the brain builds connections between the areas necessary for these functions. Marijuana’s effects on these abilities may last a long time or even be permanent.
Developing brains, like those in babies, children, and teenagers are especially susceptible to the hurtful effects of marijuana. Although scientists are still learning about these effects of marijuana on the developing brain, studies show that marijuana use by mothers during pregnancy may be linked to problems with attention, memory, problem-solving skills, and behavior problems in their children.
Following the states that have legalized marijuana to date, casual use doesn’t seem to have increased substantially. But for people who are heavy users, the increase in use is alarming:
…the number of Americans who use cannabis heavily is soaring. In 2006, about 3 million Americans reported using the drug at least 300 times a year, the standard for daily use. By 2017, that number had increased to 8 million—approaching the 12 million Americans who drank every day. Put another way, only one in 15 drinkers consumed alcohol daily; about one in five marijuana users used cannabis that often.
The potency of the drug has also increased. Rather than the 2% THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) of the 1970s, marijuana is routinely 20-25%.
Even more alarming than this data is the lack of information on the link between mental illness, violence, and the use of marijuana:
In 2017, 7.5% of young adults met the criteria for serious mental illness, double the rate in 2008.
None of these studies prove that rising cannabis use has caused population-wide increases in psychosis or other mental illness, although they do offer suggestive evidence of a link. What is clear is that, in individual cases, marijuana can cause psychosis, and psychosis is a high risk factor for violence. What’s more, much of that violence occurs when psychotic people are using drugs. As long as people with schizophrenia are avoiding recreational drugs, they are only moderately more likely to become violent than healthy people. But when they use drugs, their risk of violence skyrockets. The drug they are most likely to use is cannabis.
According to the National Academies of Sciences, US scientists can only receive access to “research-graded” cannabis, so they don’t conduct studies on the marijuana that is actually being used recreationally by the public.
Needless to say, the marijuana lobby is not interested in funding or encouraging research on their product. Due to the lack of research, we have no credible assessment of the damage that is being done to our children. The relationships between mental illness, psychosis, and violence are still unclear. And no one really knows the effect on crime statistics.
If you think the opioid crisis was a tragedy, just wait and see the results of widespread marijuana legalization.
Are you as concerned as I am?
Published in Culture
Not fair, @joshuabissey. I didn’t say anything close to that.
Some would say a preliminary case was made to ban it.
Amen.
The BAC gives you an idea of a person’s inebriation, but it’s far from perfect. An experienced alcoholic might be pretty capable of driving with a somewhat high BAC level, while someone unused to alcohol might be under the table and still be under the legal threshold for driving. The other tests a police officer administers (walk a straight line, etc.) may be more useful than the Breathalyzer. People can be zonked out on sleeping pills and they can be arrested for driving in such a condition, even though there’s not a Breathalyzer-type device to test for it.
Good points, @randyweivoda. A person can have a distorted perception from drugs and not be zonked out on them. I’d be all for having a pot user who isn’t attentive to staying in his lane get out of his car and walk a straight line.
@Joshua Bissey Part 1
I’ve always claimed I was born conservative. I remember as a ten or eleven year old in tears Richard Nixon had to resign. I remember saluting him on that famous clip of him boarding the helicopter as he left Washington. I don’t know why because just about my entire family were Democrats. I remember as a teen watching William Buckley’s Firing Line on TV. I just loved it. I don’t know how much I really understood because when I went off to college I guess I fell in with Liberals and absorbed their views and have to embarrassingly say I was on the left during that stupid period. But once I got out of college and started working in the real world and absorbing the Reagan presidency my innate conservatism came out. I found National Review magazine and devoured every issue. I was shortly pretty much a Buckley neo-conservative, and that pretty much meant Greco-Roman/Judeo-Christian foundation in culture, free market in economics, and a strong military to defend the nation and shape the world.
But National Review wasn’t the only magazine that shaped my views. Later there was The American Spectator, The New Criterion, and Chronicles, all of which emphasized more cultural aspects of conservatism. I don’t think I fully grasped how diverse conservatism was in those years, but I could sense it between the four magazines. From there I read up on Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk, and they would up superseding Buckley as my models of conservatism. In fact that is true conservatism. What Buckley magnificently did was find a governing coalition of conservative elements. So he took in those whose primary focus was economics. He took in the military and foreign policy minded people. Before the Cold War both the military and economics were not in alliance with conservatism. But the reaction of the Cold War, the formation of an anti-communist ideology pushed the free market and the strong defense minded people into the right. Buckley himself didn’t even start there. His famous book God and Man at Yale was mostly concerned with the anti-Christian elements of academic life. At some point I learned about Buckley’s split with his brother-in-law, Brent Bozell Jr. whose conservatism was more from his Roman Catholicism, and I think he was more inclined toward Russell Kirk than was Buckley.
@Joshua Bissey Part 2
At some point in the last dozen years I found my faith, which is Roman Catholicism, and the example of Brent Bozell and Russell Kirk was instrumental. Buckley, whether he believed in the Libertarian elements or not, was attempting to formulate a governing coalition, and he was brilliant at that. We would not have had Ronald Reagan. So Buckley’s coalition was critical. But along the way we took on more and more of the Libertarian dogmas (for many reasons but fundamentally because that’s how we can must an electoral majority), and so a conflation has occurred between what I’ll call traditional conservatism and Libertarianism. Like Russell Kirk, I too have come to question some of the economic beliefs, such as free trade (yes there’s an economic advantage but it destroys blue collar jobs for the non-college educated) or immigration (also minimizing blue collar pay and altering our culture). These blue collar men and women are Americans too and deserve the dignity of a decent job, and my patriotism certainly requires I keep their interest in mind. So over the last few years I’ve begun to question some of the economic tropes that get bantered about as truths. Nonetheless I’m a free market conservative, but like a true conservative I apply wisdom to policy, not just a formula. Communists and Libertarians apply formulas; conservatives apply wisdom. As Edmund Burke has put forth, conservatism rests on ordered liberty and the application of wisdom accumulated through the ages.
By the way, The Learning Company has a fine set of lectures titled, “The Conservative Tradition” which helped me orient all the various strands of conservatism.
So where I am now is much more a cultural conservative who is shocked at the secularization of our culture and country. It’s even more than just the secularization. What’s shocking is the religion of the left that is being forced on us, the sexualization of all aspects of our lives and a multiculturalism that is destroying the homogenization of the country. What a conservative is ultimately conserving is our culture and the foundations of our country.
I believe it was legal way back in the 19th century and good governance decided to outlaw it. So yeah, it did at one time have the presumption of liberty.
I answered #1 earlier. Alcohol has been in the culture for thousands of years. It is so integrated it cannot be prohibited. Pot has not been in the culture very long and is not integrated. There is no reason to add another dangerous substance to the cultural list.
You’re right on #2. I have not addressed that in this particular thread but I have elsewhere. The only way I can understand and would support the legalization of pot is if the cost of prohibition far outweighs (emphasis on “far”) the social impact. Unfortunately we’re getting to that point. However, let me emphasize, all the arguments made by politicians are not made on the basis of the cost of prohibition but on right to legalize it. But it’s an act of giving up and I don’t like it.
Well, there would be benefits to that. If Trump can find another electoral coalition, I would be fine with it. But I don’t see most Libertarian-minded conservatives leaving. Perhaps a few of you purists will.
What Libertarianism has is a formula. If you think humanity governs by formulas, you are in a utopia. Humanity governs by moral principles, whether they be Judeao-Christian, Feudal, socialist, and what not. By the way, it was Rush Limbaugh that taught me that. I stand by what I said. Libertarianism is moral relativism.
You may be the first person I’ve ever talked to that has self-identified as a neo-conservative (or maybe you’re a former neo-con). “Neo-con” has become one of those nebulous insults, like “hipster.” No one knows what it means anymore, so it’s just a convenient word for people we don’t like.
I do have the distinction of having been identified as a “hipster neo-con” by a co-worker. The co-worker is a conspiracy-tarian.
I think Bill Kristal (sp?) gave neo-conservatives a bad name. I thought highly of his father. The son has absolutely no wisdom.
Okay, so let me get this straight:
If a substance is dangerous, we should prohibit it. Unless it is integrated in the culture?
What about acetaminophen? It is definitely dangerous if used incorrectly. It’s very easy to overdose. There are tens of thousands of overdoses every year in the United States.
Acetaminophen has only been marketed in the US since 1950. Tylenol came out in 1959. Is that too recent?
By contrast, people have been smoking cannibals for thousands of years. It’s been “in the culture” for longer than acetaminophen has. In fact, it was so popular that it needed to be banned.
I’m just trying to understand the standard here.
The costs of prohibition already far outweigh the social impact.
The social damage caused by pot prohibition has actually been enormous. That doesn’t even begin to touch the legal costs, the economic costs, or the constitutional costs.
What is the formula?
Explain it to me please.
Oh please Fred. This is the kind of argument that show how ridiculous Libertarinaism is. Acetaminophen has societal value. A medical board through I assume the wisdom of legislators has determined the societal benefits of it being on the open market outweighs the abuse. No one is taking acetaminophen to get high. Like a true Libertarian, you’re applying a formula while wisdom should be and apparently in this case has been applied.
Do you believe in the constitution? The constitution has formulated our government to legislate through the collective wisdom of a mature (based on age) body of elected officials. It was not set up to legislate through a formula.
It may. But the cost of human lives and families is not something I put a low value on.
You are comparing a medicine to pot. This does not help your argument. It might help the argument that pot should be sold only as medicine, OTC. Let’s be honest though, most pot use is for people to get high. While there are medical uses, it is not the majority. Tylenol further does not hold a candle to the culture around Alcohol.
Modern pot has not been in the culture for 1000s of years. What we have now its totally new in strength and formats. Just as people used to chew coca leaves, Cocaine is nothing like that. Let’s be honest about that.
Alcohol is far more part of culture than pot has ever been, and you damn well know it. Wine, Beer, Spirits all are well intertwined. In fact, alcohol was a way to get nutrition and safe drinking fluid back in the day. The genes to process it spread like wildfire when they arose, showing they were strongly selected for.
Historically, the use and adoption of alcohol and pot are very different. You have much stronger arguments than this.
Sure. Succinctly: If someone wants to do it, you should let him, whether it’s wise or not. Everything stems from that formula.
To be fair to Fred, that damage he mentions is human lives and families.
Fair enough.
I didn’t claim that you said it. I said you seemed to presume it.
PowerLine highlights one of the studies connecting marijuana to mental illness and related crime, especially violent crime. We will regret legalizing weed. Except for those of use who used weed ten or more times in our youth, and therefore likely lost some of our sanity.
Not so much, no.
You have things backwards. It’s not your place to “let” someone do something. A person has the right to do what they want, so long as it doesn’t aggress against someone else. Whether you think it’s wise or not.
By the way, I can give you the conservative formula in three words: Daddy knows best.
In other words, some conservatives think they know what is best for others (“whether it’s wise or not”) and claim for themselves the right to impose their preferences on other people whenever they can get away with it.
I should note, that’s not all conservatives. Many conservatives believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility. But those liberty loving conservatives seems to be in short supply as of late.
If that is truly the case, you should favor pot legalization and oppose the War on Drugs.
Unfortunately, that PowerLine piece doesn’t link to any of the studies is references. So there’s no way to tell the validity of the studies, nor whether the author of the PowerLine piece is presenting them accurately.
I was using your own standards:
If a substance is dangerous, we should prohibit it … unless it is integrated in the culture.
Now you’re adding additional standards:
It has societal value
People aren’t taking it to get high
That fine. Add more standards if you want.
Look, I just want to hear your objective standards about when a substance should or shouldn’t be banned. Can you state them?
Indeed I do have much stronger arguments. I was trying to use your own standards.
The problem is that you keep talking about “the culture,” as if there’s one and it applies to everyone. Well, there isn’t just one culture. The world is filled with many different cultures.
Hell, America is filled with very different culture. Put a coder from Silicon Valley, next to a SLC Mormon, next to a Dakota gas field worker, next to an Amish farmer, next to a Hasidic Jew from Kiryas Joel, next to me, and tell us we’re all part of one homogeneous culture.
But yet you presume to speak for all of us when you say X is integrated into “the culture” and Y is not.
And I need to point out that you just moved the goalposts. No, “modern pot” has not been in the culture for thousands of years. Neither has modern wine, modern beer, or modern watermelons for that matter.
Again, I repeat the question I posted in the above comment (I realize you haven’t had a chance to reply yet):
I just want to hear your objective standards about when a substance should or shouldn’t be banned. Can you state them?
OK, that is more precise. But it is still a formula! Yes it is.
Daddy does know best! Yes, but that is not a formula. That is application of wisdom. And it’s not a single daddy but as the constitution has set up, the collective wisdom of 435 Congressman and 100 Senators, all of which are put in place by adults voting with their collective wisdom. I’ve always felt the voting age should be raised to 30, so that percentage of people with less accumulated wisdom can be filtered out.
So if conservatives are the Daddies, are Libertarians the children throwing a temper tantrum crying, “I want, I want, I want”? I like that analogy. ;)
It’s a bitter pill to accept. But you’re not supporting it based on that reason. You’re supporting it because you think it should be allowed.
No. I understood, but that’s you thinking that everything is determined by a formula. You’re projecting a formula onto me, and I’m telling you that human wisdom doesn’t work by formulas.
That is rather complicated. I would say that a substance that creates a negative societal impact (and getting high certainly constitutes that for a variety of reasons) without any offsetting societal benefits should be banned. And if there are societal benefits some sort of trade study needs to be performed to establish the level of accessibility.
Let’s ponder this. If there was a substance that could destroy your liver just like acetaminophen but did not have the medicinal benefits, and lets say it had an incredible sweetness not found elsewhere, should it be on the market?