Top 10 Cannabis Studies the Government Wished it Had Never Funded

Here's an article I stumbled across back in 2012. I decided not to post the topic at the time because ATS seemed to be very strict on any drug related threads, but since this seems to be a hot topic right now with the Colorado legalization thread, I thought it was a good time to post it, plus it hasn't been posted on ATS yet. I did post this article in the Colorado thread but figured it was important enough to get a thread of its own. I can only post the first three paragraphs of the article as per ATS rules, but I would highly suggest reading the full article because there are 2 studies which indicate prohibition doesn't work and another 4 studies which indicate cannabis can fight cancer, all government funded mind you.

Top 10 Cannabis Studies the Government Wished it Had Never Funded

10) MARIJUANA USE HAS NO EFFECT ON MORTALITY: A massive study of California HMO members funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) found marijuana use caused no significant increase in mortality. Tobacco use was associated with increased risk of death. Sidney, S et al. Marijuana Use and Mortality. American Journal of Public Health. Vol. 87 No. 4, April 1997. p. 585-590. Sept. 2002.

9) HEAVY MARIJUANA USE AS A YOUNG ADULT WON’T RUIN YOUR LIFE: Veterans Affairs scientists looked at whether heavy marijuana use as a young adult caused long-term problems later, studying identical twins in which one twin had been a heavy marijuana user for a year or longer but had stopped at least one month before the study, while the second twin had used marijuana no more than five times ever. Marijuana use had no significant impact on physical or mental health care utilization, health-related quality of life, or current socio-demographic characteristics. Eisen SE et al. Does Marijuana Use Have Residual Adverse Effects on Self-Reported Health Measures, Socio-Demographics or Quality of Life? A Monozygotic Co-Twin Control Study in Men. Addiction. Vol. 97 No. 9. p.1083-1086. Sept. 1997

8) THE “GATEWAY EFFECT” MAY BE A MIRAGE: Marijuana is often called a “gateway drug” by supporters of prohibition, who point to statistical “associations” indicating that persons who use marijuana are more likely to eventually try hard drugs than those who never use marijuana – implying that marijuana use somehow causes hard drug use. But a model developed by RAND Corp. researcher Andrew Morral demonstrates that these associations can be explained “without requiring a gateway effect.” More likely, this federally funded study suggests, some people simply have an underlying propensity to try drugs, and start with what’s most readily available. Morral AR, McCaffrey D and Paddock S. Reassessing the Marijuana Gateway Effect. Addiction. December 2002. p. 1493-1504.

What about the psychological effects?

Getting high could be slowly ruining your life if they are right about that.


Now i wont put my own opinion in here since thats against the forum rules.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

Thank you for your post SnF

Perhaps its time the government release the pot smokers who are only guilty of owning it and smoking it out of prison and esponge their records so that they can get own with their lives. Perhaps with a waver that they would not seek compensation as freedom and new current laws would allow them to become tax payers rather than system burden.

IMHO this would be a win win situation to both unjust jailed smoker and tax payers....

Just a thought... thanks again for your wonderful post!!!

originally posted by: Biigs
What about the psychological effects?

Getting high could be slowly ruining your life if they are right about that.


Now i wont put my own opinion in here since thats against the forum rules.

What about people who are addicted to gambling or alcohol. Both these activities are widely promoted in British society, be it tv adverts or even the Chancellors budget. Beer and Bingo, the nations favourite past times. These things are just as likely to ruin ones life, yet advocated from the top down.

originally posted by: woodwardjnr

originally posted by: Biigs
What about the psychological effects?

Getting high could be slowly ruining your life if they are right about that.


Now i wont put my own opinion in here since thats against the forum rules.

What about people who are addicted to gambling or alcohol. Both these activities are widely promoted in British society, be it tv adverts or even the Chancellors budget. Beer and Bingo, the nations favourite past times. These things are just as likely to ruin ones life, yet advocated from the top down.

Ah yes but both of those things are legal and therefore whatever happens is 100% fine and okay.

Just because internet doesnt do sarcasm very well, im saying you are correct and whats wierd is that both of those activities are quite significantly worse however in the laws eyes one less bad things isnt a good thing and so therefore stays illegal. The law says yes alcohol is a problem for many and dangerous in some cases and gambling ruins lives its okay because its all legal.

In the laws eyes you cant ban alcohol because its here and always has been, well so are knives and people stab people from time to time but you arnt going to ban all knives are you?

weird society, so scared of change.

There are pro's and con's, the effect wont show in 3 months, a year or 5 years, it's the long term effects that are going to tell if it's a good idea or a bad idea, i would guess thats in the range from 10 to 50 years.

If it's positiv, enjoy your freedom.

If it's negativ, good luck fixing it.

The dangers of any drug, legal or otherwise, is in overuse. It does not matter if it is alcohol or pain killers. Too much of a good thing is very bad for you.

Some substances, legal and otherwise, that alter the mind can be very beneficial if not overused. The small percentage of people that use drugs and medication are responding to a society that prefers issuing drugs rather than helping people through Psychology and Counseling.

But then, there is no money in Psychology and Counseling for big business.

The sad part is, if we offered Psychology and Counseling to our children, and fixed their problems when young, they would not turn into problematic adults on drugs.

Drugs are often an escape route, a very bad one.

P

a reply to: Biigs

You mean the negative effects it might have on memory? I know from personal experience that cannabis can affect short term memory (which is different from working memory), but the effect really only lasts when you are high and there are studies which suggest the process of removing useless short term memories helps create space for more important memories. There are even studies which suggest it can help improve cognitive abilities.

A three-year study of heavy cannabis users and controls suggests that “sustained moderate to heavy levels of cannabis” use do not affect working memory.

The longitudinal neuro-imaging study, published in the March 2014 issue of Addiction Biology, was investigating the relationship between substance use (alcohol, cannabis, nicotine, and illegal psychotropic drugs) and working-memory network function over time in heavy cannabis users, and in controls.

Forty-nine participants performed an n-back working-memory task at baseline, and at a three-year follow-up. At follow-up, there were 22 current heavy marijuana users, four abstinent heavy users and 23 non-cannabis-using controls. Tensor-independent component analysis (Tensor-ICA) was used to look at individual differences in working-memory network functionality over time.

Within the group of marijuana users, “cannabis-related problems” remained stable, whereas alcohol-related problems, nicotine dependence and illegal psychotropic drug use all increased over time.

Three-Year Scientific Study: Working Memory Unaffected In Heavy Marijuana Users

A new study on college students has linked marijuana use with better performance on certain brain-related tasks.

Despite popular belief, new findings from a team at the University of Minnesota suggest marijuana use at an early age may not be that detrimental to cognitive function.

“Marijuana users were high functioning, demonstrating comparable IQs to controls and relatively better processing speed,” note the researchers.

The study, published March 12 in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, found that college students who used marijuana scored better on tests of processing speed and verbal fluency.

The study compared the performance of 35 non-users with 35 daily marijuana users who began using marijuana before the age of 17.

Marijuana Users Have Better Cognitive Skills, Study Finds

originally posted by: pheonix358

The sad part is, if we offered Psychology and Counseling to our children, and fixed their problems when young, they would not turn into problematic adults on drugs.

Infinite stars. The addict is sick long before any substance is ever introduced.

If anything exhibiting the behavior of being addicted to a substance should be sign we can use to identify people in need of help.

Instead it's jail for them.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

You can find some positive, i can find some negative.

Who's right then?

CLICK ME

The study found that frequent marijuana users performed worse than non-users on tests of cognitive abilities, including divided attention (ability to pay attention to more than one stimulus at a time) and verbal fluency (number of words generated within a time limit). Those who had used marijuana for 10 years or more had more problems with their thinking abilities than those who had used marijuana for five to 10 years. All of the marijuana users were heavy users, which was defined as smoking four or more joints per week.

The study involved people ages 17 to 49 taking part in a drug abuse treatment program in Athens, Greece. There were 20 long-term users, 20 shorter-term users and 24 control subjects who had used marijuana at least once in their lives but not more than 20 times and not in the past two years.

The marijuana users performed worse in several cognitive domains, including delayed recall, recognition and executive functions of the brain. For example, on a test measuring the ability to make decisions, long-term users had 70 percent impaired performance, compared to 55 percent impaired performance for shorter-term users and 8 percent impaired performance for non-users. In a test where participants needed to remember a list of words that had been read to them earlier, the non-users remembered an average of 12 out of 15 words, the shorter-term users remembered an average of nine words and the long-term users remembered an average of seven words.

a reply to: Mianeye

I do think when studies are carried out that information on the people studied first, before they undertake the study requirements would be a very good thing. I have a friend I went to school with and his memory was diabolical before he was 12 and has never improved, he simply makes reminders. However you want an expert car mechanic and you wouldn't go to anyone else. I do think certain factors should be revealed in the outcome simply because who finances studies often has an agenda they want confirmed father than pure research.

I am glad some authorities are coming to their senses on weed, simply because there are heavy politics involved in its legalisation and both the pharma and church are very jittery about ltheir profits were people taking it - hence the bad press and some 'studies'

a reply to: Mianeye

Well for a start that study is from 2006 where as the two studies I just posted were published this year. But actually I think neither of us is correct, in reality I don't think marijuana improves or degrades cognitive abilities, I think it depends on the person. Here is something I posted in the Colorado thread:

MJ has nothing to do with intelligence, some of the most intelligent people in history were MJ users. It's all about how you train your brain and what you choose to learn. If you just smoke MJ all day and do nothing else you're obviously going to be a dumb fool, but if you do a lot of programming like I do the MJ can actually help you learn. And I know this sounds fairly controversial, but I'm confident it's the truth, and that's why most of the programmers I know smoke MJ... or maybe it's just because we can't sit in front of a computer all day without something to make it more entertaining. Lol I don't know, but either way it doesn't make people stupid. People make themselves stupid by not putting their brain to use.

Watch this short clip of dolphins passing around a pufferfish.
Dolphins appear to enjoy getting high.

Many animals take recreational drugs.

And here are monkeys getting drunk.

And lemurs getting high.

a reply to: Mianeye

The problem with that report, and why I would take little if any notice of it, is that it uses selective reasoning.

It is not how often it is used, but how much is used. Nowhere do they tell you how much the respondents used and how often they took it.

That omission of the quantity used by the individuals in the study opens the study to misuse in my opinion.

I have, on average, a glass of red wine per day. I have done so for the last 35 years. What his study then says is that I am a long term user. This is misleading science and misleading science always has an agenda.

P

a reply to: Itisnowagain

lol now that is hilarious... puffing on a pufferfish. Hahaha...

But actually I think neither of us is correct, in reality I don't think marijuana improves or degrades cognitive abilities, I think it depends on the person.

I agree.

But as society is getting worse, more people getting unemployed and depression is the norm these days, this one is the bad side.

If you just smoke MJ all day and do nothing else you're obviously going to be a dumb fool

I do know that THC can has some positve effect on depression, though it also has a negative effect, i know all about those two sides.

I am no dumb fool though

Here is a newer study (Dec 2013) which talks about the other sides, but as with all studies you can't really judge it unless you are the studie or doing the studie.

As i said earlier, there are pro's and con's.

CLICK ME

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and state that we are fast approaching a need for a new forum.

It seems myths and taboos are designed to protect us as a collective or probably better stated: To protect the ego. Long story short, the taboos on MJ are about as illogical as the taboo of: The US government doesn't and would never kill their own.

At this point its all irrelevant, there's no putting this cat bag in the bag....

a reply to: Mianeye

There are hospital wards and care homes that are full of people in their 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's who have never smoked, never drank alcohol and never taken drugs except pharma drugs...sufferring from degenerative brain diseases which are killing them slowly and robbing them and their families of treasured memories and dignity.

There is plenty of evidence that shows Cannabis (THC and other cannabinoids contained in MJ) at least, does indeed protect against neurological and degenerative disintegration if used soon enough by coating neurons and providing a protective effect . Have you ever seen a Parkinsons sufferer use MJ?

There was a BBC news segment some years ago, which featured a young ex-gymnast (in his 30's i think) who had developed Parkinsons to such an extent, he couldn't even put his own underwear or socks on the tremors were so bad...couldn't do anything for himself in fact.

Then the BBC filmed him taking several draws on a Cannabis cigarette...after a few minutes, it was as though the Universe had flipped a switch and taken away the Parkinsons...he was basically symptomless. The tremors went, and he was able to dress, to feed himself and to walk around unaided...he even did a few forward rolls and other gymnastics.

There are other studies available to researchers that show this protective effect on brain and nerve cells, slowing down or possibly even halting damage done by these terrible diseases if used regularly and soon enough.

Some further reading of interest:

From Canada.

A Canada Health Study was produced on Hemp farming and effects of Cannabinoids including THC, with a view to legalising Hemp farming (which they did in 1998), a review was conducted in 2001 by James Geiwitz, Ph.D., and the Ad Hoc Committee on Hemp Risks.

CBC Canada

Studies that have attempted to find brain damage from THC have been unsuccessful. Marijuana levels of THC do not kill brain cells. In one study, monkeys were forced to inhale five marijuana cigarettes a day for a year; there was no evidence of brain damage (Zimmer & Morgan, 1997). In humans, with brain damage assessed by CAT scans, no damage was observed in spite of the high dose: nine marijuana cigarettes a day.

And this is from the National MS Society's Research and Clinical Programs Department;

MS Dream Team research

* Further studies with compounds related to cannabis have provided evidence of neuroprotective effects and support an ongoing clinical trial in progressive MS (see below, "From cutting edge to clinic").

and

* A large multicenter study is investigating whether the active compound in cannabis, THC (tetrahydro-cannabinol), can slow MS progression. This effort is being coordinated by John Zajicek, MD (Peninsula Medical School, Plymouth). This study is now fully recruited and results are expected in late 2011. "This is essentially a phase 3 study," says Dr. Giovannoni. "If the results are positive, the compound is likely to be licensed for use in progressive MS."

So, propaganda aside..there are many studies that THC from Cannabis actually looks to be slowing the progression of neurological / brain diseases rather than causing them as negative propaganda would have us imagine, and provides a neuroprotective effect. It is a promising direction for research into these afflictions and other dibilitating or terminal diseases.

a reply to: MysterX

There is plenty of evidence that shows Cannabis (THC and other cannabinoids contained in MJ) at least, does indeed protect against neurological and degenerative disintegration if used soon enough by coating neurons and providing a protective effect .

I was just reading the Wikipedia page about cannabis and memory, and at the top of the page is the following notice:

"This article is missing information about the effects of cannabis on Alzheimer's disease patients"

Typical Wikipedia bias, always leave out the information that doesn't agree with the mainstream agenda... it's the same for any controversial topic. Maybe you should go and add that information to the page, it would be helpful... assuming the Wikipedia authorities let it stay there.