Articles

• The reality is that the medical marijuana argument is meant mostly to protect recreational users from legal problems.
• One in every 15 alcohol drinkers  drink every day while one in every five marijuana users do so daily.
• America is the Western country that uses the most marijuana and has the worst problem with opioids.

CONCLUSIONS:
Early cannabis use is associated with psychosis-related outcomes in young adults. The use of sibling pairs reduces the likelihood that unmeasured confounding explains these findings. This study provides further support for the hypothesis that early cannabis use is a risk-modifying factor for psychosis-related outcomes in young adults.

The authors discovered several interesting things. First, all elements of both alcohol and cannabis use increase annually across the various levels of frequency of use, with the exception of daily alcohol use. Second, the effects of cannabis are considerably greater than those of alcohol. Third, there appear to be both concurrent and lagged effects of cannabis use on several cognitive domains. Thus, use of cannabis has... Read More

Experts define addiction as continued marijuana use despite negative consequences in a person's life, such as issues relating to their family, job, or relationships.
People who use marijuana regularly and then stop abruptly can experience some withdrawal symptoms.

Given today's concerns about maintaining a healthy body eating organic foods, low carb diets, ... reading all the labels to verify safety and good health, it is ironic the same standards are not demanded by those that consume marijuana.  Dog food is safer than marijuana!

For example, smoking pot is widely supposed to diminish the... Read More

As state lawmakers continue hashing out a marijuana legalization bill, the list of towns in New Jersey saying no to legal weed just keeps growing.
There are now nearly 40 municipalities across the state that have either banned marijuana businesses or officially voiced opposition to legal weed.

RESULTS:
In acute settings, marijuana's effects peaked at approximately 1 hour post initiation, lasting 2-4 hours. Marijuana increased cardiac workload, myocardial infarctions and strokes in young, chronic users. Cannabis caused similar pulmonary complications to those of a tobacco smoker. Marijuana caused airway obstruction and increased anesthetic dosages needed to place laryngeal airways. Use within 72 hours of general anesthesia was advised against. In vitro and in vivo studies... Read More

“Painful cramping, vomiting occurring. It can happen every few weeks, every few months, last a few days and be incredibly uncomfortable,” said Dr. Michael Lynch of the Pittsburgh Poison Control Center at UPMC.

Marijuana concentrates such as shatter, butter or glass have THC concentrations as high as 90 percent. The same high levels are found in edible cannabis products sold in Colorado, packaged to look like popular candy bars and particularly appealing to children.

New research suggests that marijuana users may be more likely than nonusers to misuse prescription opioids and develop prescription opioid use disorder. The study was conducted by researchers at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, and Columbia University.

Executive Summary

CBD oil may potentially interact in a negative way with anti-epilepsy drugs. As of now, only in vitro (test tube) observations exist with no living organism testing proving safety. Drugs that may interact include: 

• carbamazepine (Tegretol)
• phenytoin (Dilantin)
• phenobarbital (Luminal, Solfoton, Tedral)
• primidone (anti-seizure)

A Canadian love-fest for Florida pot companies continues to blossom with a $93 million deal that includes a Ruskin-based grower yet to begin selling marijuana products.
 
In your recent article, Canadian firm strikes a deal to enter Florida marijuana market with Ruskin grower, you have a picture of medical marijuana in a pill bottle and with a prescription pad.  MEDICAL MARIJUANA in this form IS NOT A PRESCRIPTION AND IS NOT FDA APPROVED.. NOR DO ANY MEDICAL ASSOCIATIONS SUPPORT... Read More

First and foremost, marijuana is already associated with more abuse and dependency (now called substance abuse disorder) than all other illegal drugs combined. Roughly four out of seven problem usersof illegal drugs are using marijuana. This is a dangerous blind spot exploited by many legalization advocates (although ... Read More

The preliminary figures show that 959 people died in Colorado last year from drug... Read More

We found that among young recreational cannabis users, a regular dose of cannabis had no effect on simple and learned tasks, but its use led to significant impairments on complex and novel driving-related tasks, as well as perceived driving ability and safety, for up to 5 hours after use. The present finding that the first 5 hours after cannabis use affected driving-related performance substantiates the recommendations of Canada’s Lower-Risk Cannabis Use Guidelines, which recommend... Read More

During the same time period that cigarette smoking around children came down more than 7%, marijuana smoking around children went up nearly 5%. With more and more states legalizing marijuana for recreational use, that number is likely to continue going up.
This is not good. Besides the fact that we don’t want children getting high, or exposed to the dangers of inhaled secondhand marijuana smoke, there is the additional concern about long-term effects on the brain. While research is... Read More

When we talk about legalizing marijuana, we must acknowledge that we are talking about legalizing a mind-altering substance that affects the brain by impairing cognition, judgment, and reflexes. We need to discuss the science and data behind the consequences of marijuana consumption on our youth and their developing brains, as this is an issue that is far-too-often overlooked.

Teens have taken a technology that was supposed to help grownups stop smoking and invented a new kind of bad habit, molded in their own image.

“Juul is... Read More

The Netherland’s attempt to divide markets into soft vs. hard drugs by allowing coffee shops to sell cannabis did not result in lower consumption of hard drugs. Overall it has been a social disaster.
The cannabis grown and sold today is not same drug as was available in the 1970s. The average THC has increased to more than 15%. Cannabis issue can clearly lead to addiction. The damage to the brain from chronic use is worse compared with chronic use of heroin. Among the negative effects... Read More

This report finds that legalization in Illinois, however, would cost at least $670 million, outweighing the projected tax revenue.

Researchers had two women conduct "mystery caller" phone conversations with employees at 400 dispensaries across the state, telling them that they were eight weeks pregnant and suffering from morning sickness. During the majority of those calls, the employees recommended the women use cannabis products.

I'm here to tell you this is not a safe drug," McCance-Katz said during a town hall event at "NatCon18," the National Council for Behavioral Health's annual conference.
"Americans have a right to know that and we should be telling them that," she continued.
And while tobacco and alcohol rates have declined among pregnant women in recent years, illicit drugs -- mainly marijuana but also opioids -- have... Read More

"Trust me, if the data was coming back and we saw spikes in violent crime, we saw spikes in overall crime, there would be a lot of people looking for that bottle and figuring out how we get the genie back in," he said. "It doesn't seem likely to me, but I'm not ruling it out."

Conclusions: Our findings disconfirm the hypothesis that a population-level negative correlation between medical marijuana use and prescription drug harms occurs because medical marijuana users are less likely to use prescription drugs, either medically or nonmedically. Medical marijuana users should be a target population in efforts to combat nonmedical prescription drug use.

From 2005 to 2015, 4,202 marijuana-related visits were identified. Behavioral health evaluation was obtained for 2,813 (67%); a psychiatric diagnosis was made for the majority (71%) of these visits. Coingestants were common; the most common was ethanol (12%). Marijuana-related visits increased from 1.8 per 1,000 visits in 2009 to 4.9 in 2015. (p = < .0001) CONCLUSIONS: Despite national survey data suggesting no appreciable difference in adolescent marijuana use, our data demonstrate... Read More

1. Legalizing cannabis has been shown to increase the rates of motor vehicle accidents.
2. Cannabis use is a risk factor for mental illness.
3. Inhaled Cannabis use is a risk factor for respiratory infections.
4. Cannabis use increases the rate of vascular disease. Cannabis is the third most often identified drug of abuse
5. Cannabis use during pregnancy has been associated with increased risk of adverse birth outcomes
6. Legalization of cannabis has been shown... Read More

It is a sham that expands the conditions that qualify an individual for “medical marijuana” to any condition and for any person, no matter of age. It is a scheme to establish a system of “fake” medicine to further the game plan of the marijuana industry for full commercialism that will allow anyone for any reason to buy marijuana for the high they desire and the profit the industry demands. It is now up to the Vermont House to recognize what is happening and stop it before it is too late.... Read More

Overall, while less dangerous than opioids by far, and possibly helpful for some conditions, including pain, no findings, to my knowledge, clearly demonstrate that marijuana use positively impacts people with opioid use disorder. Moreover, marijuana use carries risks, including cannabis use disorder, psychosis and cognitive impairment, as well as additive effects when used with other substances, including opioids.

Kara Macek, spokeswoman for the GHSA, said the organization could point to several possible factors in the high level of fatalities: increased exposure to danger as more drivers hit the road and more people move to urbanized areas, an uptick in distracted driving from cellphone use, or even an increase in accidents in states that have legalized recreational marijuana use.
The GHSA report noted that in some states that have legalized recreational marijuana — Alaska, Colorado, Maine,... Read More

Marijuana use is associated with an increased risk of prescription opioid use.  
Marijuana use seems to strengthen the relationship between pain and depression and anxiety, not ease it.

"Every person I've ever asked that has a drug addiction problem, I would ask them intentionally 'what was your drug of choice that set you on this path?' Marijuana. Every time, marijuana," Judd said.
He went on to say that when you look at all the drugs killing people and contributing to drug related deaths, "leaving marijuana out of the recipe would be a horrible mistake."

“The violence is there with other drugs, but we don’t see the homicides associated with other narcotics as we do with marijuana,” said Anoka County Sheriff’s Lt. Wayne Heath, commander of the Anoka-Hennepin Narcotics and Violent Crimes Task Force. “No one knows why in marijuana it leads to that extra step.”

An 11-month-old Colorado boy’s death from a heart condition was likely related to ingestion of marijuana, two Denver doctors have concluded, but the precise link remains unclear.

Cryptococcal meningitis in a daily cannabis smoker without evidence of immunodeficiency.
Cryptococcal meningitis is a life-threatening condition most commonly observed in immunocompromised individuals. We describe a daily cannabis smoker without evidence of immunodeficiency presenting with confirmed Cryptococcus neoformans meningitis. An investigation of cannabis samples from the patient's preferred dispensary demonstrated contamination with several varieties... Read More

New research reveals that several species, including the northern spotted owl, are succumbing to rat poison from thousands of "unpermitted private marijuana grow sites" in the northwestern California counties of Humboldt, Mendocino and Del Norte.
It's the contamination of the owls' primary food source — mice and rats, which, like humans, are attracted to the aromatic crop — that has been the animals' undoing... Read More

Tetra Health Care, a California-based chain that hires licensed doctors to write medical marijuana recommendations at six clinics in Florida, is closing all but one to focus on working with state lawmakers to make access easier for patients, a spokeswoman said.

UC San Diego — along with every other University of California System institution, all of the California State University System, community colleges and private colleges — does not allow marijuana on university grounds or in campus buildings.

But she didn't have cancer. She had an obscure syndrome called cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, a condition only recently acknowledged by the medical community. It affects a small population — namely, a subset of marijuana users who smoke multiple times a day for months, years or even decades.

There's no hard data on the prevalence of the illness. But in California and Colorado, which have loosened marijuana laws in recent years, some emergency physicians say they're... Read More

bstract

Although recent Cannabis use is widely reported to be associated with drug-related traffic accidents, the evidence that Cannabis users show an increased risk of being involved in road crashes is still not unequivocally proved. The purpose of the present work is to provide an objective assessment of this hypothesis, by comparing the frequency of occurrence of positive urine analyses in drivers involved in traffic accidents (n = 1406) with that observed in a control population... Read More

Law enforcement officials applauded Sessions' move.

"We applaud the Attorney General for this action today that brings clarity on enforcement of the law by rescinding a confusing policy brought on by the previous administration that hindered law enforcement. This will allow sheriffs to carry out their mission of upholding the rule of law and keeping their communities safe," said National Sheriffs' Association President Harold Eavenson and Executive Director Jonathan... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Department of Justice today issued a memo on federal marijuana enforcement policy announcing a return to the rule of law and the rescission of previous guidance documents. Since the passage of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) in 1970, Congress has generally prohibited the cultivation, distribution, and possession of marijuana.
In the memorandum, Attorney General Jeff Sessions directs all U.S. Attorneys to enforce the laws enacted by Congress and to follow well-... Read More

Conclusions:

Cannabis use appears to increase rather than decrease the risk of developing nonmedical prescription opioid use and opioid use disorder.

Community-by-community, residents of Massachusetts are deciding if they want to be able to drive to the corner store to buy marijuana.

NIH’s 2017 Monitoring the Future survey shows both vaping and marijuana are more popular than traditional cigarettes or pain reliever misuse

Major self-mutilation (amputation, castration, self-inflicted eye injuries) is frequently associated with psychiatric disorders and/or substance abuse. A 35-year-old man presented with behavioral disturbances of sudden onset after oral cannabis consumption and major self-mutilation (attempted amputation of the right arm, self-enucleation of both eyes and impalement) which resulted in death. D