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New Study Shows Marijuana Users Have Low Blood Flow To the Brain (eurekalert.org)
cold fjord writes: State level marijuana legalization efforts across the U.S. have been gaining traction driven by the folk wisdom that marijuana is both a harmless recreational drug and a useful medical treatment for many aliments. However, some cracks have appeared in that story with indications that marijuana use is associated with the development of mental disorders and the long-term blunting of the brain's reward system of dopamine levels. A new study has found that marijuana appears to have a widespread effect on blood flow in the brain. EurekAlert reports: "Published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, researchers using single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), a sophisticated imaging study that evaluates blood flow and activity patterns, demonstrated abnormally low blood flow in virtually every area of the brain studies in nearly 1,000 marijuana users compared to healthy controls, including areas known to be affected by Alzheimer's pathology such as the hippocampus. According to Daniel Amen, M.D., 'Our research demonstrates that marijuana can have significant negative effects on brain function. The media has given the general impression that marijuana is a safe recreational drug, this research directly challenges that notion. In another new study just released, researchers showed that marijuana use tripled the risk of psychosis. Caution is clearly in order.'"
Only a complete moron would think that a recreational drug that alters your mood and brain chemistry is 'safe'.
Doesn't matter if it's alcohol or THC, these work by fidgeting with things in the brain that should obviously be left alone (for the sake of health - I think the recreational value is apparent).
We don't do surgery for the fun of it, we don't do blunt force trauma for the fun of it, why should altering our insides via drug or drink be considered 'safe' when no other internal alteration is, and who could possibly be dumb enough to think so?
It's not the rum itself which is bad for you, it's the damn dihydrogen monoxide that's in it!
On the contrary, I want to see real science on the subject. I want to know what the REAL dangers are.
Unfortunately, the down side is that getting any real research on pot in the USA is pretty much impossible. If you give any hint that you don't INTEND to find something wrong with pot, good luck getting approval and funding for your study.
If you want actual research on pot you have to leave the US. You'll find a different view in any country outside the US, so you have to approach any study in the US with very very high skepticism. I'm not saying its wrong, but you know its biased from the start, so you have to be careful to pick out the facts from the implications.
When the people who make money off Alzheimer's studies start saying pot causes Alzheimer's type affects on the brain, you have to determine if thats true in any meaningful form or if its just another scary title to get more research money, or if its being promoted by others who don't want pot to be legal.
Remember, legalized pot destroys MANY industries. The prison business is fucked in states that legalize pot, thats half their population right there. Illegal pot growers ... they don't want it legal either, and invest LARGE sums of money keeping it illegal, as silly as that might sound cause legalization kills their sole reason to exist. California, as an example, doesn't have legalized recreational pot because THE GROWERS DON'T WANT IT TO BE LEGAL, its not as profitable that way. Police in certain places don't care, so legalizing it would kill profit.
I have no delusions about the dangerous side effects of inhaling smoke, but I would like some facts about what the end results are, from people who aren't biased by a preconception.
I.E. I want real science, not bullshit spewed by people like you who have made up your mind before you even read the summary. You don't know what science is, you treat science like a religion.
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I agree with everything you said, but recommend caution with regard to the following:
... If you want actual research on pot you have to leave the US. You'll find a different view in any country outside the US, so you have to approach any study in the US with very very high skepticism. I'm not saying its wrong, but you know its biased from the start, so you have to be careful to pick out the facts from the implications...
I would say that you have to approach any study ANYWHERE in the world with high skepticism. Yes, the US has a huge economic stake, (and the concomitant ideological stake), in proving the evils of pot. On the other hand, other jurisdictions have ideological stakes in proving pot's harmlessness. They also have economic stakes; for example, here in Canada where we're about to legalize pot, the government stands to make a lot of money from its controlled sale and distribution.
I would say that the American government's position on marijuana has the same level of ignorance, fear, and fervor as the typical fundamentalist religion. That doesn't mean that other more liberal, more moderate countries are neutral and without agendas on this issue.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Agreed, and I expect that as more states legalize pot the more the opioid and alcohol industries will fund "studies" to show the horrible dangers of THC. Forget about the facts that alcohol and opioids kill tens of thousands of people each year in the US. Forget about all the traffic accidents and domestic violence tied to alcohol abuse. Everyone knows pot is safer than alcohol, opioids and tobacco. But that won't stop the research into the "dangers" of pot.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
Drugs are fun. That's why.
But sometimes their effects are not fun. Sometimes their effects hurt other people. Nobody really gives a shit if you drink a beer or smoke a joint. But we do care when your use of those drugs causes undue risk or actual harm to others. We do care if you are not yet an adult and may not fully understand the consequences of your choices.
You're going to die, I'm going to die, everyone dies from something. Life is about having fun.
So you are arguing that we should hurry up the process of dying because we're all going to die anyway? Life is not all about having fun. That's an extremely immature and selfish attitude.
Drugs aren't for everybody, but people like drugs
People like all sorts of things but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have any rules to keep everyone safe.
treat drug abuse as a medical condition, not crime; that approach has failed.
Not that simple. Sometimes drug abuse is just a medical condition. But often drug abuse causes people to hurt others which is (and should be) a crime. See the difference?
You do what you want. Stop telling other people what's good for them.
I'm not telling people what is good for them. I'm telling them what is bad for other people. I honestly don't care if a consenting adult uses recreational drugs PROVIDED they do not hurt anyone else in the process. Problem is that people that abuse drugs are rarely able to avoid hurting others. Want to drink responsibly? Fine. Want to drink and drive? Hell no - now you are a risk to others. Your right to play with recreational drugs stops when it becomes a threat to the safety and well being of others.
There is a reason we are particularly squeamish about handing out legal medicine that works on brain chemistry
I don't think so, bud. Tell your primary physician that you don't feel like yourself and are depressed a lot, and they have ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM giving you a antidepressant/re-uptake inhibitor. Hell, they even perscribe such to help stop smoking. That is just antidepressants. Make your way to a psychiatrist and there is no end to the antidepressants, mood stabalizers, antipsychotics, benzodiazapines, etc not to mention drugs like depakote that not only treat seizures and mania, but also migraines. Do you like coffee? Do you know how caffeine "works on brain chemistry"? Get your agenda straight here
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The ban on marijuana in the US was, from day one, a completely ad-hoc political decision. It never had anything to do with the drug's effect on the brain. Ban alcohol before you talk about the disadvantages of marijuana legalisation with a straight face.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Anecdotal, I know, but the few marijuana users I have known had little drive in their lives (career, education, hobbies). I always wondered whether their personality type caused the use of marijuana or vice versa (or neither). I wonder if this study might explain that.
My guess is their personality, but again my experience is just as anecdotal as yours. I only know a few people who went from smoking weed every day to full-blown pothead. And I know a few people who smoke every day but work incredibly hard. I have never personally tried the stuff, I've never had any inclination, but these kinds of studies should be taken with a grain of salt strictly because we allow people to legally drink alcohol, which is by all appearances far more deadly than marijuana, so why all the hate for people who want to smoke weed from time to time? Society deals with alcoholics, I suspect we can openly deal with potheads, too.
C'mon, a little common sense says that ANYTHING that alters consciousness likely isn't that good for the human body. But there is a trade off, for occasional use and enjoyment vs the potential harmful effects.
It is YOUR body, the govt really shouldn't have a say in what you can do with it....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
This is just another attempt to define, in threatening terms, another risk for smoking marijuana. We already *know* that smoking marijuana isn't risk free and for some people can be even riskier.
But all of this is a distraction -- marijuana prohibitionists want, and actually need, the debate for legalization to be oriented around the *safety* of marijuana use, both demanding an artificial high standard of safety not applied to other substances and trying to demonstrate unique and insidious risks from marijuana use.
But this isn't really what legalization should be about. We have ample scientific and more importantly, long-term public use, evidence of the relative safety of marijuana. The debate about legalization is about the *failed* nature of criminal prohibition as public policy. Prohibition has been an utter failure, costing trillions of dollars, sacrificing civil liberties, poisoning the relationship between the police and the public, discrediting public health warnings on more dangerous drugs, and all the the while totally and utterly failing to deliver anything remotely resembling the elimination of marijuana use.
It doesn't work. It costs a fortune. Trying to make it work erodes civil liberties. Nobody believes anyone who spins scare stories about marijuana. Prohibition of marijuana is one of the worst public policies advanced by every possible measure.
I've often wondered, how that it took a constitutional amendment to prohibit alcohol in the US, and then ANOTHER constitutional amendment to repeal said alcohol prohibition....BUT it only took a few strokes of a pen for laws to ban other intoxicants, like pot????
I wonder why no one has challenged the constitutionality of said "scheduling" of drugs and their prohibition?
I've often wished we could get our presidents and politicians to chime in on that one....on camera, as a surprise question to see how they'd address that one.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
More than that, even if you are not trying to do bad science, there is always incentive to report bad science. I saw a great example myself a while back, big headline about marijuana use increasing the risk of heart attack.....as a pot smoker I was concerned, so I dig in....
First, it wasn't the main point of the study. Pot smokers made up a small portion of their study population. The overall study was good.
So out of a study of many hundreds, the big headline was on a small sub-population of somewhere around 20 people. The main metric they used was how many hours it had been since a person last smoked.... 24 hours being the lowest.
So basically.... a small number of pot smokers who had heart attacks before and had new ones, had them within 24 hours of smoking pot. Totally disregarding that if they had another heart attack at all, the likelyhood of it being within 24 hours of smoking was high, even if there is no connection.
It wasn't even a large difference, it was a small anomaly from a small population.
In the end, the result wasn't worth reporting, much less a headline, but reporting it like they did got their names int he paper and a big national headline.
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