Marijuana's march toward mainstream confounds feds

[Jesus Malverde]

It took 50 years for American attitudes about marijuana to zigzag from the paranoia of "Reefer Madness" to the excesses of Woodstock back to the hard line of "Just Say No."

The next 25 years took the nation from Bill Clinton, who famously "didn't inhale," to Barack Obama, who most emphatically did.

And now, in just a few short years, public opinion has moved so dramatically toward general acceptance that even those who champion legalization are surprised at how quickly attitudes are changing and states are moving to approve the drug — for medical use and just for fun.

It is a moment in America that is rife with contradictions:

—People are looking more kindly on marijuana even as science reveals more about the drug's potential dangers, particularly for young people.

—States are giving the green light to the drug in direct defiance of a federal prohibition on its use.

—Exploration of the potential medical benefit is limited by high federal hurdles to research.

Washington policymakers seem reluctant to deal with any of it.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/medical/article/Marijuana-s-march-toward-mainstream-confounds-feds-4637771.php

[Warpy]

1. The Feds just bet on the wrong horse

Oh, they've had a fine run over the 40+ years of conservative rule from both parties that had the gummint using everything at its disposal to spy on and crack down on ordinary citizens, especially those of color, using a War Against Drugs as their main pretext. However, people have seen through this at last and the Feds are caught completely unprepared. What on earth are they going to do with all these men who have made lucrative careers based on this stuff, from local police departments fat with forefeiture to paramilitary groups in countries overseas, to the bank honchos gleefully laundering big money?

Men without a mission can be dangerous. The NSA was started to listen to the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. Deprived of its mission in the late 80s, they had to scramble around to find another one. We're it.

An end to the drug war will have to include reassigning all the drug warriors to something to keep them occupied, or they'll go the way of the NSA.

[99th_Monkey]

2. You must be reading very different "science" than I have been seeing

There has been a plethora of recent studies, continually finding more and
more healing applications for the herb. I see a new one of those come out, like
every month or so, where it's a new study finding that certain highly concentrated
cannabinoid oils & extracts that can even reliably put some forms of cancer in
pretty much permanent remission.

[RainDog]

3. I asked the OP to post here

because it's useful to see the propaganda the prohibitionists are touting.

This article pretends to present a balanced picture, but all the prohibitionists have to offer are the equivalent of Reagan's monkey study.

I'm sure you remember that one - when a scientist refused to release his research after claiming cannabis caused brain damage. Reagan touted that study as an excuse for the War on Marijuana.

Finally, after years of legal requests, the study was released and what the scientist had done was suffocate the monkey - the damage was from CO2, not cannabis.

This is the sort of research that the prohibitionists use until others have the opportunity to examine their claims.

[99th_Monkey]

4. Wow. I hadn't heard that one.

YIKES! Suffocating monkeys?!?!


It actually doesn't surprise me, as hardly anything does anymore.

[RainDog]

5. Yeah. Reagan's claim of mj brain damage was bullshit

And this claim is the basis for the lies that make this claim - even the BBC still has a reefer madness post about this "on this day" in 1974.

In 1974, Dr. Robert G. Heath, a researcher at Tulane University in New Orleans, reported that he had found proof that marijuana caused brain damage while experimenting on monkeys. Heath reported that rhesus monkeys smoking an equivalent of 30 joints a day began to atrophy and die after just 90 days. Autopsies revealed that the monkeys who had been exposed to the marijuana smoke had more dead brain cells than the control monkeys, who had not been exposed.

How did Heath come up with these results? What were his procedures? For six years, no one knew. It took Playboy and NORML six years of requesting and suing under the Freedom of Information Act to finally receive an accurate accounting of the procedures Heath used.

Four monkeys were strapped into chairs with transparent plastic boxes surrounding their heads. The head chamber was sealed so that the smoke being pumped in wouldn't be lost. This also meant that the carbon monoxide couldn't escape either. Instead of the 30-joints-a-day dosage that Heath had reported, the monkeys were given the equivalent of 63 joints in five minutes, every day, for three months.

The poor monkeys were being suffocated for five minutes at a time, on a daily basis, over a period of three months. After which they were killed so that their brains could be autopsied, and the dead brain cells caused by carbon monoxide poisoning were attributed to marijuana. This was Ronald Reagan's "reliable scientific" source.

here's a link to the original research report - http://www.wireheading.com/intracran/cannabis.html

This study was reviewed by a distinguished panel of scientists sponsored by the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences. Their results were published under the title, Cannabis and Health in 1982. Heath's work was sharply criticized for its insufficient sample size (only four monkeys), its failure to control experimental bias, and the misidentification of normal monkey brain structure as "damaged". Actual studies of human populations of cannabis users have shown no evidence of brain damage. For example, two studies from 1977, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) showed no evidence of brain damage in heavy users of cannabis. That same year, the American Medical Association (AMA) officially came out in favor of decriminalizing cannabis. That's not the sort of thing you'd expect if the AMA thought cannabis damaged the brain.

http://www.erowid.org/plants/cannabis/cannabis_info14.shtml

[WovenGems]

6. Studies?

Regarding is Pot this that doesn't need to be done and here's why. Let's do a little study here. I smoked all of Columbia when I was a youngster. No issues what so ever. Have you had any issues?

All these studies touting "New Dangers" are total BS. Fir it ain't new and would have popped up long ago if true.

[CanSocDem]

7. Here's a "new danger"...

After 45+ years of continuous use I am no longer a willing consumer of all the crap that the industrial ruling class insists is vital to my survival. I am healthy and aware. I am their worst nightmare.


.

[WovenGems]

8. Reds

In a movie -
"What's wrong with him?"
"The CIA gave him LSD everyday for eleven years."
"OK, that explains a lot".

I'm not even sure that would cause issues beyond starving to death long before eleven years passed. Or possibly psychosis due to sleep deprivation.