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Interpreting Hazy Warnings about Pot
8-7-07|The Huffington Post| by Paul Armentano and Mitch Earleywine

USA -- Smoking pot won't make you crazy, but trying to find the truth behind the recent rash of headlines regarding a supposed link between cannabis and mental illness might.
According to the Associated Press and other news sources, a new study in the British medical journal The Lancet reports that smoking cannabis *- even occasionally *- can increase one's risk of becoming psychotic. It sounds alarming at first, but a closer look at the evidence reveals that there's less here than the headlines imply.

First, there is no new study. The paper published in The Lancet is a meta-analysis -- a summary of seven studies that previously appeared in other journals, including some that were published decades ago. Second, the touted association between cannabis and mental illness is small--about the same size as the link between head injury and psychosis. Finally, despite what some new sources suggest, this association is hardly proof of a cause-and-effect relationship between cannabis and psychosis,

So why the sudden fuss?

Part of the answer is political. The recently elected Conservative British government longs to stiffen penalties against marijuana users. One way to justify this move involves convincing the public that The Lancet proved that puffing the weed will make you batty. Of course, that's not what the article says at all.

In fact, investigators actually reported that cannabis use was associated with a slight increase in psychotic outcomes. However, the authors emphasized (even if many in the media did not) that this small association does not reflect a causal relationship. Folks with psychoses use all intoxicants more often than other people do, including alcohol and tobacco.

Cannabis use can correlate with mental illness for many reasons. People often turn to cannabis to alleviate the symptoms of distress. A recent study performed in Germany showed that cannabis offsets certain cognitive declines in schizophrenic patients. Another study shows that psychotic symptoms predict later use of cannabis, suggesting that people might turn to the plant for help rather than become ill after use.

Perhaps the most impressive evidence against the cause-and-effect relationship concerns the unvarying rate of psychoses across different eras and different countries. People are no more likely to be psychotic in Canada or the United States (two nations where large percentages of citizens use cannabis) than they are in Sweden or Japan (where self-reported marijuana use is extremely low). Even after the enormous popularity of cannabis in the 1960s and 1970s, rates of psychotic disorders haven't increased.

Despite this evidence, we'd like to spread the word that cannabis is not for everybody. Teens should avoid the plant. Folks with a predisposition for mental illness should stay away, too. This potential for health risks in a few people, however, does not justify criminal prohibitions for everyone. (We wouldn't pass blanket prohibitions against alcohol simply to protect pregnant women, for example.) The underground market does an extremely poor job of keeping marijuana out of the hands of teens and others who should stay away from it. A regulated market could better educate users to potential risks and prohibit sales to young people.

Consequently, the review in The Lancet suggests that if cannabis really does alter risk for mental illness, we can't leave control of sales to folks who are willing to break the law. Instead, a taxed, regulated, age-restricted market is our best chance to keep any negative consequences of marijuana under control.

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pkster8235

Funny because I find that smoking marijuana keeps me from going psychotic! But we will see thirty years down the road. lol.

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xxdr_zombiexx

It's called "fearmongering" and aside from outright lying and intimidation, it is what cannabis prohition is built on and how it keeps going.

The "suddenness" of the appearance of these fear-mongering bullshit articles was the UK's wrangling over "re-reclassifying cannabis" back to a more fear-mongering level.

A couple years ago, the UK decided to grow up and demote cannabis from "no medical use" (I don't recall their exact terms) to "ok.. it's not the end of the world".

Recently, for entirely political reasons some of the UK government wanted to classify it back to "horrible threat to mankind" and the nutjobs came out of the woodwork promoting what is uniquely British reefer madness, this very lurid pre-occupation with "cannabis will make you go insane".

It's VERY interesting to note their style of fear-mongering is very different from the bullshit we get from John Walters, the ONDCP and those miserable assholes in the DEA.

Walters and the DEA want to focus on how it will (somehow, it's not well stated) ruin lives and cause/support/encourage terrorism. And they talk about "addictiveness". I am not so aware of Walters going around babbling about "an increase in psychosis".

My interpretation of this is that

1) Cannabis prohibition is propaganda and

2) that propaganda is tailored to the psyche of the culture.

American culture, hijacked by the Bush administration and its (now dwindling number of supporters) has been crosseyed in its fixation on "terrorism" as the predominate fear-mongering here, while the Brits have been a lot more subduded about this terrorism stuff. They are more focused on "you'lll go innnnnnsaaaaaane)

So, in conclusion, the argument can be made that the Lancet, a premier medical journal, "hauled water for" the forces in the UK that wanted to re-invigorate their reefer madness.

Politicians endless force "science" to prostitute itself to the needs of government propaganda.

Watch this video, an outtake/remix of the old Reefer madness movie: EVERYTHING that the propagandists talk about today (with the exception of terrorism) is contained in this 50 year-old propaganda hit piece.

Reefer Madness 1937

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There's no money for your issue so long as we're squandering $50 billion a year on the DrugWar. Ben Masel

Fear became the ultimate tool of this government - V.