by Greg Campbell: There is no plant in the history of human existence with as checkered a reputation as cannabis. It is either a heaven-sent cure for all that ails us, or it’s a scourge on society on par with the Black Death.
Sussing out truth from fiction when it comes to marijuana is no easy undertaking, but after two years of intensive research related to the publication of my new book Pot Inc. [Sterling, $22.95], I can say with certainty that there are several old myths that can be put to rest for good (or at least put into context).
And no, I’m not talking about the old canards that smoking pot can make you gay or turn you into an ax murderer. I’m talking about those more lingering concerns that Nancy Reagan fretted about and which, despite quantum leaps in scientific knowledge and medical research, President Obama’s Administration hopes you will too.
This information is important because, despite his campaign promises prior to the 2008 election, in which he said federal resources shouldn’t be wasted busting medical marijuana patients and the state-compliant businesses that serve them, Obama has lately been embarked on a medical marijuana crackdown that Rolling Stone reported is on pace to go beyond George W. Bush’s undertaking. Leaders in his administration routinely deny that marijuana can be medicinal and have reverted back to the Reagan-era fear mongering about how any slip in the public’s perception of its harm poses a grave threat to the nation’s youths.
But it’s precisely because of medical marijuana laws that are now in place in 16 states and Washington D.C. that more accurate knowledge of marijuana’s relative risks and benefits are becoming more widely known. Think what you will about these often vague and easy to abuse laws; if nothing else, they’ve raised the level of debate in this country about a substance that has been maligned and vilified for more than seventy years, for no good reason.
Marijuana is addictive
This depends on your definition of “addictive.” Coffee, sex and surfing the Internet can be addictive, but not to the same degree as cocaine, methamphetamine and nicotine are addictive.
When asked in 1994 to rank marijuana compared to five other substances–alcohol, nicotine, cocaine, heroin and caffeine– Drs. Jack Henningfield of the National Institute for Drug Abuse and Neal Benowski of the University of California at San Francisco, ranked pot lowest in the categories of dependence, withdrawal and tolerance. It came in fifth for reinforcement, over only caffeine, and fourth for intoxication, ahead of caffeine and nicotine.
In other words, in these doctors’ opinions, you’re more likely to become dependent on your venti Americano from Starbucks than marijuana.
Marijuana is a “gateway” drug
You’ve heard this one before–smoke pot and you run the risk of moving on to heroin and cocaine as you chase bigger and better (and more deadly) highs. Marijuana critics find evidence for this in that many hard-drug users report smoking marijuana before graduating on to worse things.
But look at the numbers in reverse–in 2008, some 15.2 million Americans admitted being “past month” users of marijuana, but only 1.9 million were past-month cocaine users and only 200,000 past-month users of heroin.
In 2010, past-month marijuana use had gone up (to 17.4 million), but cocaine use had gone down (to 1.5 million) while heroin use was unchanged. If marijuana were a gateway drug, you’d expect the number of hard-drug users to be more aligned with marijuana users, which they’re not.
You’d also expect increases in marijuana use to trigger an increase in hard-drug use. In fact, the opposite is true; cocaine use has declined while marijuana use has increased. A 1999 study by the California-based Institute of Medicine concludes, “There is no evidence that marijuana serves as a stepping-stone on the basis of its particular physiological effect.”
Marijuana has no medicinal value
And President Clinton didn’t inhale. The number of studies that have concluded marijuana’s high potential as a valuable therapy in numerous illnesses is too long to list here.
But they’ve shown, in part, that marijuana relieves pain, quells nausea and vomiting, stimulates the appetite, relieves muscle spasticity, and may even fight cancerous tumors, among many other possible benefits.
The National Cancer Institute reports on cannabis’s many potential applications, including that it could help fight or prevent the spread of cancer; it notes, however, that there is little research on the topic to draw conclusions.
The American Medical Association suggested in 2010 that the federal government review marijuana’s current categorization as a Schedule I controlled substance (meaning that it has no medical use and no safe dosage) and consider moving it into Schedule II, so that it can be studied more freely, making it possible for doctors to prescribe it and pharmacies to distribute it.
Smoking marijuana can cause lung cancer
More people die from smoking cigarettes every year than die of AIDS/HIV, car crashes, suicides, alcohol use, and murders combined–and yet buying tobacco products is perfectly legal for anyone over the age of 18.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse had tried to transfer that lethality to smoked marijuana as recently as 2010, noting on its website that “marijuana smoke contains some of the same cancer-causing compounds as tobacco, sometimes in higher concentrations.”
Yet scientists have not found a definitive link between smoking marijuana and increased instances of lung cancer. In fact, the largest study ever done trying to link pot use to lung cancer found that even heavy pot smokers, those who’ve smoked as many as 22,000 joints in their lifetimes, show no increased risk of lung cancer than nonsmokers.
“We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use,” the lead researcher told the Washington Post. “What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect.”
NIDA has since changed its website, acknowledging no link between lung cancer and marijuana use, although it leaves open the possibility that one may be discovered in the future.
There is no “safe dosage” of marijuana
This bit of fantasy comes only from the definition of a Schedule I controlled substance, a category of the most dangerous drugs listed in the Controlled Substances Act.
It’s a catchall definition that applies to marijuana, heroin, GHB, ecstasy and other narcotics. But compared to its other Schedule I kin (not to mention legal substances like tobacco and alcohol, the first and third leading causes of preventable deaths, respectively), scientists have not been able to determine a lethal dose for marijuana.
No deaths due to overdose have ever been substantiated in all of recorded human history. You can suffer a fatal overdose of water or potatoes, but scientists have never been able to kill test animals with marijuana (except by asphyxiating them with pot smoke).
It’s estimated that to kill yourself with pot, you would need to smoke 1,500 pounds of marijuana in 15 minutes, which is, of course, physically impossible. And even that’s a guess.
Teen use of marijuana increases in medical marijuana states
One of the last remaining arguments against approving medical marijuana (or legalizing it across the board) is the concern that doing so will “send the wrong message” to children by making it seem less of a menace than it’s currently depicted, thereby encouraging them to give it a shot.
But recent studies suggest that the availability of medical marijuana may actually decrease teen use. Researchers in Rhode Island (a permissive state) compared teen use there to young pot smokers in Massachusetts, which does not have a medical marijuana law, and found no difference in use rates.
The findings (which have not yet been peer reviewed) are supported by an in-depth study of teen pot smoking in all of the medical marijuana states, on behalf of the Marijuana Policy Project by Dr. Mitch Earleywine of the University of Albany.
According to its summary: “Generally, no state with an overall change outside of the confidence intervals saw an increase in teens’ marijuana use, strongly suggesting that enactment of state medical marijuana laws does not increase teen marijuana use.”
Hemp is the same as marijuana
Hemp is in the same plant genus as marijuana, Cannabis L., but it is not the same as marijuana.
Hemp has a very low concentration of delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the main ingredient in pot that gets you high. Moreover, hemp contains relatively high amounts of CBD, cannabidiol, an ingredient believed to block or counteract the effects of THC, meaning you could smoke a hemp cigar the size of your arm and still not get high.
Hemp would be put to better use as a source of fiber and cordage, as a hardening ingredient in plastics, and as reinforcement for concrete, to name but a few examples. But because of the overall prohibition on cannabis plants, regardless of its psychoactive properties, hemp is just as illegal as marijuana.
As a result, hemp used in manufacturing in the United States is imported, rather than grown here.
Marijuana can cure illnesses
To date, there is no proof that marijuana cures anything except boredom. It has well known palliative effects, especially in dealing with such symptoms as lack of appetite, nausea and muscle spasticity.
Those who aren’t convinced about marijuana’s medical potential often wonder why, if it’s truly medicinal, it’s not available at licensed pharmacies, but instead only at sometimes-dubious dispensaries run (more often than not) by those without a medical background.
Mainly, this is because doctors cannot legally “prescribe” Schedule I drugs, which are said to have no medical benefit; they can only “recommend” pot, and only in states that have passed some from of medical marijuana legislation.
For the same reason, marijuana has not been run through the same rigorous human clinical trials as other drugs; those in Schedule I have an impenetrable gauntlet of bureaucracy to overcome just to get the actual marijuana to conduct the tests–ironically, from the government, which maintains the only source of legal pot in the United States, at a farm at the University of Mississippi.
In the words of a NIDA spokeswoman, “Our focus is primarily on the negative consequences of marijuana use. We generally do not fund research focused on the potential beneficial medical effects of marijuana.”
