by Marc Myers – Yuba City
As a social worker with a long history in substance abuse counseling, I would like to provide correct clinical information about marijuana. Society needs to understand the dangers because they are not hearing about them, and the information on the streets are lies and misperceptions.
Marijuana is dangerous and addictive, not a benign drug. It causes medical, psychiatric, learning and social economic problems and diseases. It’s five times more carcinogenic then tobacco and it will cause cancer. As a controlled substance it will cause psychosis.
Marijuana causes cognitive problems such as difficulty concentrating, maintaining and shifting focus, memory, and processing information. These cognitive skills people need to drive, learn and communicate. These cognitive problems last up to 17 hours after use. Long-term use can lead to brain damage that can make these problems permanent.
Marijuana causes breathing and lung diseases, heart disease, a decrease in white blood cells, anxiety, panic attacks, depression and even sexual dysfunction. People who use marijuana weekly are three times more likely to have suicidal ideation than those who don’t. Marijuana now rivals cocaine as the No. 1 drug-induced reason people end up in the emergency room. It leads to behavioral changes such as impulsiveness, quick to anger, disobedience, aggression and violence.
The federal office of the National Drug Control Policy has pamphlets on marijuana titled, “Marijuana Myths and Facts,” and “What Americans need to know about Marijuana.” These can be obtained from the Internet. I encourage everyone to stay away from marijuana.
this person has a money issue.. Marc Myers makes his living from the continues lies about marijuana. There are many medical journals that in fact state the truth that marijuana heals or hepls most medical problems. Be a wise person just look at the medical reseach for yourself.
Its time to blunt the lies and misconceptions that issue forth from vacant pop culture minds.
The following excerpt from a Harvard paper provides useful information for both doctors and citizens and includes links to other informative sites. Before considering the use of this drug for either recreational or medical reasons I advise arming oneself with information gleaned from reliable sources rather than the smoke filled addled minds of users.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/evidence99/marijuana/Health_1.html
Thank you Mr. Myers. I concur. The way this state is going if you smoke and are refused a job for not passing a drug test, you will be able to bring a discrimination lawsuit.
That is my prediction. I hope I am wrong.
Shirely, thanks for your comments. I appreciate what you have to say even though I must disagree, You see, I have looked at the medical research, and not from the Dr. Feelgoods of this world, but from credible academics in the field. Pretty much all the real facts back up everything Marc has said.
Re Marc’s motives: If Marijuana is legalized Marc’s business will flourish because he treats people with marijuana problems. The more people on this stuff the more money he makes. So your argument that he is saying this for the money doesn’t hold up. In fact your argument is kinda silly and not well thought out…sorry, but that’s the way it looks from here. It makes me wonder if you have been some wacky weed – have you? C’mon be honest. Have you?
We know that there are as many or more carcinogens and co-carcinogens in marijuana smoke as in cigarettes, researcher Donald Tashkin, MD, of UCLAs David Geffen School of Medicine tells WebMD. But we did not find any evidence for an increase in cancer risk for even heavy marijuana smoking. Carcinogens are substances that cause cancer.
Gregory B. Bovasso, PhD, Assistant Professor of Behavioral Sciences at the Community College of Philadelphia, wrote the following in his Dec. 2001 article titled “Cannabis Abuse as a Risk Factor for Depressive Symptoms,” published in the American Journal of Psychiatry:
In participants with no baseline depressive symptoms, those with a diagnosis of cannabis abuse at baseline were four times more likely than those with no cannabis abuse diagnosis to have depressive symptoms at the follow-up assessment, after adjusting for age, gender, antisocial symptoms, and other baseline covariates.
In particular, these participants were more likely to have experienced suicidal ideation and anhedonia during the follow-up period.
Among the participants who had no diagnosis of cannabis abuse at baseline, depressive symptoms at baseline failed to significantly predict cannabis abuse at the follow-up assessment.
“HOW DOES MARIJUANA AFFECT THE BRAIN?
AKUDO EJELONU
Pot, weed, grass, ganja and skunk, are some of the common words used to describe the dried leaves drug known as marijuana. Marijuana is a cannabis plant that is “usually smoked or eaten to entice euphoria.” (1). Throughout the years, there has been research on the negative and positive effects of marijuana on the human body and the brain. Marijuana is frequently beneficial to the treatment of AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, and chronic pain. However, researchers such as Jacques-Joseph Moreau have been working to explain how marijuana has harmful affects on the functions of central nervous system and hinders the memory and movement of the user’s brain. The focus of my web paper is how the chemicals in marijuana, specifically cannabinoids and THC have an effect on the memory and emotions of a person’s central nervous system.
Marijuana impinges on the central nervous system by attaching to brain’s neurons and interfering with normal communication between the neurons. These nerves respond by altering their initial behavior. For example, if a nerve is suppose to assist one in retrieving short-term memory, cannabinoids receptors make them do the opposite. So if one has to remember what he did five minutes ago, after smoking a high dose of marijuana, he has trouble. Marijuana plant contains 400 chemicals and 60 of them are cannabinoids, which are psychoactive compounds that are produced inside the body after cannabis is metabolized or is extorted from the cannabis plant. Cannabinoids is an active ingredient of marijuana. The most psychoactive cannabinoids chemical in marijuana that has the biggest impact on the brain is tetrahydrocannibol, or THC. THC is the main active ingredient in marijuana because it affects the brain by binding to and activating specific receptors, known as cannabinoid receptors. “These receptors control memory, thought, concentration, time and depth, and coordinated movement. THC also affects the production, release or re-uptake (a regulating mechanism) of various neurotransmitters.”(2) Neurotransmitters are chemical messenger molecules that carry signals between neurons. Some of these affects are personality disturbances, depression and chronic anxiety. Psychiatrists who treat schizophrenic patient advice them to not use this drug because marijuana can trigger severe mental disturbances and cause a relapse.
When one’s memory is affected by high dose of marijuana, short-term memory is the first to be triggered. Marijuana’s damage to short-term memory occurs because THC alters the way in which information is processed by the hippocampus, a brain area responsible for memory formation. “One region of the brain that contains a lot of THC receptors is the hippocampus, which processes memory.”(3) Hippocampus is the part of the brain that is important for memory, learning, and the integration of sensory experiences with emotions and motivation. It also converts information into short-term memory. “Because it is a steroid, THC acts on the hippocampus and inhibits memory retrieval.”(4) THC also alters the way in which sensory information is interpreted. “When THC attaches to receptors in the hippocampus, it weakness the short-term memory,”(5) and damages the nerve cells by creating structural changes to the hippocampus region of the brain. When a user has a high dose of marijuana, new information does not register into their brain and this may be lost from memory and they are not able to retrieve new information for more than a few minutes. There is also a decrease in the activity of nerve cells.
There are two types of memory behavior that is affected by marijuana, recognition memory and free cells. Recognition memory is the ability to recognize correct words. Users can usually recognize words that they previous saw before smoking but claim to recognize words that they did not previously see before smoking. This mistake is known as memory intrusions. Memory intrusions are also the consequence of THC affecting the free cell of the brain. “Marijuana disrupts the ability to freely recall words from a list that has been presented to an intoxicated subject.”(6) For example, if a list of vocabulary words presented to the intoxicated subject and few minutes later, they have to recall the words that were on the list. The only words that they remember are the last group of words and not the words that are in the beginning of the list. This is an initiation that their memory storage has been affected. “The absence of an effect at short term delay times indicates that cannabinodis did not impair the ability to perform the basic task, but instead produce a selective learning and/or memory deficit.”(7) I did a study with two college students (Student A and Student B) who both smoke marijuana every other week. This particular study was done an hour before, while and after they were under the influence of the drug. Student A was watching television before she smoked marijuana, was asked which advertisement was splayed before the show started and she got four out of five of her answers correct. After this first section, she smoked a small dose of marijuana twice within an hour. Fifteen minutes after she smoked her last blunt, she continued her regular activity of watching sitcoms. When a commercial would come on, I would ask her simple questions like what happened before the show went to a commercial break. Her responses would be macro-answers about what was going on but when I asked her what the main character was wearing, she did not remember. This was ironic because the protagonist wore a bright yellow suit that my friend commenting on earlier when the show began ten minutes ago. Her short-term memory is weakening because she was only able to remember big picture information and not small picture. Though the results are interesting, I know that I would have had different response on someone else because it depends on how often the user smokes and if they have good memory prior to smoking weed.
Marijuana also impairs emotions. When smoking marijuana, the user may have uncontrollable laughter one minute and paranoia the next. This instant change in emotions has to do with the way that THC affects the brain’s limbic system. The limbic system is another region of the brain that governs one’s behavior and emotions. It also “coordinates activities between the visceral base-brain and the rest of the nervous system.”(8) I am now going to use Students B to describe how emotions are affected by marijuana. Students B is an articulate and well spoken young woman who has a troublesome relationship with her best friends which gets her upset and tense up. But after she smoked one high dose weed, her body was relaxed however, she had trouble formulating her thoughts clearly and would talk in pieces and was jubilant. It has been researched that a person needs to have high dose of marijuana would be in the state of euphoria. High dose of marijuana is measured as “15mg of THC can cause increased heart rate, gross motor disturbances, and can lead to panic attacks.”(9) Thankfully, Student A did not experience any of these extreme examples.
College students usually smoke marijuana because they are stressed over schoolwork and feel that marijuana can help them unwind. I have encountered marijuana smokers who are chilled and have no worries in the world but after the effect of the drug wears off, they’re sometimes capable to tacking their problem or at the original state that they were in before the drug. The effects of happiness that marijuana usually cause to the user is not a lasting effect because even though a user smokes weed to get away from the troubles of his/her own life, they still have to face these problems after the effects of the drug wears-off. In a survey with college student, an organization called, parents: the Anti-Drug interviewed college students and found that “compared to the light users, heavy marijuana users made more errors and had more difficulty sustaining attention.”(10) This was evident through my second experiment with Student B but not everyone who smoke high doses of marijuana experience the same affect.
The chemicals in marijuana bring cognitive impairment and troubles with learning for the user. “Smoking [marijuana] causes some changes in the brain that are like those caused but cocaine, heroin, and alcohol. Some researchers believe that has changes may put a person more at risk of becoming addicted to other drugs such a cocaine and heroin.”(11) To prevent such harm, one must be cautious of their actions. Those who do not do drugs do not risk harm. So please the next day you light up, remember you that you central nervous system and brain will be at risk.”
Brain Scans Show Negative Effects of Cannabis Consumption
Two professors at London’s Institute of Psychiatry have conducted research on how heavy consumption of cannabis may affect brain functions, and have produced brain scans that aim to prove how the drug can cause
psychosis and schizophrenia in a small percentage of the population that smoke marijuana regularly.
Scientists, health advocates and doctors have been conducting research into the effects of cannabis for decades. The 1936 cult classic “Reefer Madness” is an propaganda tale of harmful marijuana addiction, in which users become the equivalent of dangerous maniacs bent on violence, sex and mayhem after one puff of a marijuana cigarette. A large variety of early films shown in school also aimed to teach children about the dangerous effects of smoking marijuana. The films are laughable by today’s standards, but while the effects of smoking marijuana in these films may have been wildly exaggerated, there is still no shortage of concern over the effects of frequent cannabis consumption.
Professor Philip McGuire and Zerrin Atakan used MRIs to show that patients who had received a dose of the active cannabis compound tetrahydrocannabinol, more commonly referred to as THC, exhibited reduced brain function in an area associated with emotional and behavioral control and response
Professor Philip McGuire says that the THC acts as an inhibitor, in effect switching off that particular area of the brain, the inferior frontal cortex brain region, which results in increased paranoia.
The professors, like many others, are growing increasingly concerned about the stronger marijuana available today, also known as skunk. Skunk marijuana is a new variety of cannabis cultivated to produce the highest amount of THC possible, in effect doubling the amount of THC found in marijuana only a short time ago.
Professor Philip McGuire and Zerrin Atakan will discuss their research at the International Cannabis and Mental Health Conference at the Institute of Psychiatry.
Another robot controlled by the Alcohol lobby and Prison Industrial complex spews their lies and propaganda.
Biff, c’mon, nobody controls us at PS. We just call em like we see em. If you think we’re wrong, please feel free to cite your evidence. But, don’t come here and make wild accusations and just leave – that does not advance anything and you lose your credibility.
What’s in your cannabis? Some marijuana doesn’t impair memory. http://bit.ly/byo8B6
There are many ways to use cannabis other than combustion and inhalation. These include vaporization, ingestion and topical applications, none of which release toxic compounds of combustion.
Additionally due to the way cannabis modulates or immune system, cannabis and tobacco smoke not equally carcinogenic. The only human study I have seen suggests that tobacco, not cannabis smoke causes in lung cancer. http://bit.ly/aVPsw2
hmmm…. as a medical student and an occasional marijjuana user, i would like to point a lot of problems with this article. First off, the “cognitive problems such as difficulty concentrating, maintaining and shifting focus, memory, and processing information” are obvious… Thats the reason people take the drug smart one…. to feel that…. However, it does NOT last 17 hours… Even on my first try where the placebo effect hit me, I did not feel it for 17 hours…..
also, i have done research experiments in this field and these stupid people that always say weed can give people cancer are not telling people the straight truth. YES if you smoke 3 joints to get high (which is a content that usually only chronic smokers can handle), you have a higher chance of getting cancer than from one cigarette. I agree with that, but it is not because of the weed. It is because of the paper you wrap the weed with. Weed actually has a LOT less carcinogens than tobacco and it is only the blunt paper/joint paper that is more dangerous.
And yes you can do stupid studies that show the bad effects of weed if you use a lot and fool the uneducated, but keep in mind that those who use in moderation, it can actually be a blessing. Who knew a little alcohol a day could lengthen your life, but we found out now. If you are a chronic alcoholic, then what? Same with weed… most of these “studies” are on chronic intakes and the “chronic” users use so much weed that if an occasional smoker tried smoking that, they would pass out with only half the amount…… so don’t let these “studies” fool you guys.
on a side note, light but continuous smoking on the long run will change your personality, and weed IS addicting
In people with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, cannabis use was associated with better neurocognitive function. (Ref: Institute of Psychiatry, University of Oslo, N-0318 Oslo, Norway. Published in “Psychol Med. Journal 2009 Nov 6:1-11”.)
THC which causes psychosis especially in mentally unstable That is true. That is why marijuana only seem to affect those with schizophrenia the most.
The study done by Karl Burden – he gave near-lethal doses of cannaboids to animals (4 “”unlucky” monkeys)! This is like the monkeys taking massive quantities of THC, far beyond the doses used by heavy marijuana users.
Taking into consideration that Karl’s experiment failed to control experimental bias along with the mis-identification of normal monkey brain structure as “damaged”, his study results are easily thrown out. This study was never conducted on humans.
The other that has shown a weakened immune system was done on many different types of rodents and yielded a higher chance of contacting herpes. The amount of marijuana per kg given to these poor rodents is a dosage so high that it is about 1,000 times the amount needed for humans to feel high. The doses were comparable to a 160-pound man smoking 700 joints!
In recent years, compounds in cannabis or related molecules have been shown to :
* Slow the growth of lung tumors in mice: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11630-cannabis-compound-slows-lung-cancer-in-mice.html
* Decrease hardening of the arteries in rats: http://www.newscientist.com/blog/invention/2007/11/treating-heart-disease-with-cannabis.html
* Boost the egg-binding capability of tobacco smokers’ sperm: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/drugs-alcohol/dn10362-cannabisbased-boost-for-smokers-suffering-sperm.html
Subjects who used cannabis moderately had a reduced cancer risk. You can read the extract online “10 to 20 years of marijuana use was associated with a significantly reduced risk of HNSCC [odds ratio..10 to less than 20 years versus “never” (used marijuana) users]” from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19638490
Marijuana eases side-effects caused by Chemotherapy: “Marijuana stimulates the appetite and alleviate nausea and vomiting patients who received chemotherapy treatment.” Nahas, Gabriel G. and Nicholas A. Pace. Published in New York Times 4 December 1993: A20.
Medical uses of Medical Marijuana http://www.thebody.com/content/art1863.html
Chemicals in Marijuana May Fight MRSA http://bit.ly/d2B4to
Marijuana ingredients show promise in battling superbugs http://www.physorg.com/news140112587.html
Heterosexual men who used cannabis regularly were less likely to develop non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Ref: Holly, Lele, Bracci, & McGrath, 1999.
“Many of us have also heard stories from doctors, nurses, agencies, and peers that marijuana causes premature birth, low birth weight, and deformities. There have been many issues in trying to test these theories within the U.S. because of the availability of so many other illicit drugs, which cause mixed results. For this reason, the best studies have been done in places like Jamaica where other drugs are not as available and far less used. In a study of over 12.000 newborns who had been exposed to marijuana prenatally, none showed any link to issues with gestation (premature birth), birth weight, or malformation…..The government continues to use exaggeration and exploit only the data they know will further their cause, in order to keep those uneducated in the truth, fearful of all drugs.” – http://hubpages.com/hub/Decriminalization-of-Marijuana-Looking-at-Reason
Can Cigarettes DO All That Medical Marijuana Has Shown To Do? Obviously not, but yet marijuana is not allowed to be planted nor sold.