The Emery Effect

Excellent! A docile, dull witted populace is just what we need to effect the UN agenda!

The government should give marijuana sales licences to registered charities,so they can provide more housing and other services for the army of homeless and unemployed we should inherit in a few years.

"Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man!"
-- The Dude

This would certainly explain the choomer in chief's job performance problems.

What a surprise!

ya think !?!?

President Choom might actually have been smart at one time.

And to think that baby boomer politicians who are still pining for the days of John Lennon want to legalize the stuff.

FYI here in BC many of the lawyers who have drug dealers as clients get paid with bags of pot.

How can anyone tell?

I was never too sure whether the weed caused the stupidity or the stupidity caused the weed but people who have used for extended periods are all stupid and that isn't even debatable.

WWMD (What would Milton Do?)

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - A founding father of the Reagan Revolution has put his John Hancock on a pro-pot report.

Milton Friedman leads a list of more than 500 economists from around the U.S. who today will publicly endorse a Harvard University economist's report on the costs of marijuana prohibition and the potential revenue gains from the U.S. government instead legalizing it and taxing its sale. Ending prohibition enforcement would save $7.7 billion in combined state and federal spending, the report says, while taxation would yield up to $6.2 billion a year.

The report, "The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition," (available at www.prohibitioncosts.org) was written by Jeffrey A. Miron, a professor at Harvard , and largely paid for by the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), a Washington, D.C., group advocating the review and liberalization of marijuana laws.
...
"I've long been in favor of legalizing all drugs," he says, but not because of the standard libertarian arguments for unrestricted personal freedom. "Look at the factual consequences: The harm done and the corruption created by these laws...the costs are one of the lesser evils."

http://www.forbes.com/2005/06/02/cz_qh_0602pot.html

(NOTE: I am against all narcotic drugs.)

My wife tells me this is why I'm not a surgeon, etc. Some of us learned from our wayward ways. The choomer, er commander in chief is excluded from that select group.

paulinmordor aka "buffalo lungs"
Captain of the bong team 1981-1982

Q: What do you call a pothead that doesn't inhale?
A: Mr. President.

Q: What do you call a person who remembers what they did at woodstock ?
A: A Liar.

http://www.jokes4us.com/dirtyjokes/marijuanajokes.html

Actually Scar, I would be pleased to debate your 'undebatable' opinion.
People that compare recreational pot use with heroin addiction or the like are the truly uninformed.
I guess all those who like a glass of wine are also destined to be found on the street drinking rubbing alcohol from a brown paper bag.

Marijuana....makes you lose your memory...I think.

I was once told I could never be President because I smoked pot( although like Bill Clinton and Kim Campbell I never inhaled), now it seems I'm not qualified to be President because I didn't smoke ENOUGH pot!

Sometimes you just can't win.

I am a loyal,longtime reader and sometimes poster that is behind 99% of everything this blog stands for. I cannot howeever understand the jihad against weed, in my opinion you are not doing your research here.

C'mon man - dude - bro - y're $hittin me - right?

The difficulty arises in knowing whether to trust and believe the researchers. So much of what is published as science these days is just opinion dressed up in scientific terminology. Marijuana research has an especially checkered history of distortion and outright lies. One example that I recall as a biology student (45 years ago) was an article in Science (no less) where a researcher doused a human cell line with the equivalent of 100 lbs of THC. Oh it wasn't stated that way but it was that much. The cells died...... And my friends, this was peer reviewed science. So, is this a good (real, accurate, believable) study or just more crap? It could be important if it is true.

What a surprise.

"And to think that baby boomer politicians who are still pining for the days of John Lennon want to legalize the stuff."
~TJ

Well....Stephen Harper is a baby boomer and a Beatle fan, he doesn't want to legalize it.
Now Ron Paul, who was born in 1935 and isn't a boomer, wants to legalize it.

By the way, if they used weasel words like MAY and SUGGEST in a Global Warming study a lot of people here would be shooting the snot out of that bogus research from the word 'go'.

About five per cent of the study group were considered marijuana-dependent, or were using more than once a week before age 18.

So they lumped together people who smoke more than once everyday with people who smoke once or twice a week? Oh yeah, that sounds legit.

Most drug research is government propaganda that has systematically distorted the 'dangers' of drugs and even invented danger out of thin air as was the case for LSD and Ecstacy.

@Bob: to understand Kate's view of MJ and its users, just think of a Liberal'v view of guns and their owners. Same bigotry, same stupidity.

bob said: "I am a loyal,longtime reader and sometimes poster that is behind 99% of everything this blog stands for."

You know, when callers say that on Limbaugh's show he laughs at them bob.

Weed is -at least- as bad for you as cigarettes, and that's completely ignoring the effects of THC on the brain.

Don't liberals have this thing about smoking?

The most important factor in determining whether this study is valid is who is funding it. It it's NIDA or some similar statist organization determined to "prove" drugs are bad, then the study can be discounted.

As other commenters have already noticed, daily smokers are lumped in with once/week smokers. No doubt that THC affects brain development given the role of endocannabinoids in synaptic plasticity. It may be that ingestion of too much THC prior to some threshold age will affect IQ, but can't say that I've seen it. There's more support for increased psychosis in kids that starting toking too young but the studies suffer from lack of an appropriate control group.

Until we can perform studies where we take a group of kids and let them grow up under totally controlled conditions, we can't say anything about subtle effects of THC.

Now that we know that synaptic plasticity and neurogenesis is a lifelong process, some of the assumptions underlying the study may be invalid. Once I've had a chance to actually read the paper and study the methodology I'll have more to say on it.

"Teens who smoke marijuana regularly may suffer long-term damage to their brains...

...leaving them with only one employment option: writing flair-for-the-obvious stories for CBC."

Weed is -at least- as bad for you as cigarettes, and that's completely ignoring the effects of THC on the brain.

Lies. I can't find the link right now, but there was another study a while back that found weed had no -as in NONE-effect on lung capacity. Heavy tokers had BETTER lung capacity because of the 'holding your breath' technique.

Even the heaviest toker shouldn't end up dumber than Limbaugh.

bob
I was waiting for 99 to offer to shoot you bob but apparently he's not on tonight. I see others have picked up the slack.

Sorry man... i wasn't listening. Something about a pot... right?

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/08/22/1206820109.abstract

Here is the abstract.

It appears to be a well done observational study

Persistence use established by the time they were 18. THis was defined as more than weekly use by age 18. They had to dichotomize the data somehow. And it looks like they did some propensity and sensitivity analysis. Don't know well they controlled for confounding variables though. No stats were provided in the abstract unfortunately.

The full trial is behind a firewall.

Phantom, going to have to disagree with you about:
Weed is -at least- as bad for you as cigarettes
Inhaling tobacco smoke causes pulmonary inflammation as was noted in multiple studies that used neutrophil counts in broncheoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid as a marker for inflammation. There was considerable surprise when cannabis smokers were tested and they had less inflammation in their BAL fluid. Not surprising that, prior to its demonization, cannabis cigarettes could be obtained in US pharmacies as a treatment for asthma (side effects less than the "Asthmador" cigarettes which were made from atropine containing plants).

Cannabinoids are anti-inflammatory and there are actually a lot of cannabinoids out there. We just are familiar with the ones that activate CB1 receptors and cause psychoactive effects but there are far more plants that activate CB2 receptors; the most widely used one is clove oil for dental pain. Finally figured out WTF the stuff works as it didn't seem to have any analgesic properties looking at its chemistry.

Endocannabinoid pharmacology has taken off and it's gone from a field with a few publications/year in the early 1990's to thousands of publications/year and I've given up trying to keep up with the latest endocannabinoid literature. Just like too much ethanol can cause problems, too much THC can also. Then there's that huge gray area where the only thing that we can say with certainty is that the health effects of legal sanctions against cannabis are far more damaging than the effects of cannabinoids themselves.

Anyone who thinks weed is good for you should research some famous pot heads and how they met their maker. Start with Bob Marley. You're fooling yourself if you think smoking anything is good for you.

james, I think you have been misinformed.
Bob Marley died from a type of malignant melanoma under the nail of one of his toes which, because of his refusal to amputate the toe on religious grounds(Rastafarian), ended up spreading throughout his entire body.
How that relates to smoking marijuana I do not know.

I'm prone to confirmational bias, but having read Maggie Trudeau 's book I wonder if this study is on to something.

I'm prone to confirmational bias, but having read Maggie Trudeau 's book I wonder if this study is on to something.

Loki said: "There was considerable surprise when cannabis smokers were tested and they had less inflammation in their BAL fluid."

Colour me surprised too. That's the last thing one would expect. Nice to hear from somebody who's done his homework instead of the screeching of partisan goofs.

See LAS? That's how its done. I'm not even going to demand a reference because Loki knows his sh*t and didn't get his info off some crackpot Lefty website. I also know he's not going to cherry-pick a bunch of items just to pursue an agenda.

My experience of pot was that occasional use, (occasional being once a month or less in my case, once a week in friends cases, we were all poor) had no noticeable effect at all. The few people who smoked pot the way they smoked cigarettes, they had problems. "Stoner" is a cliche for a reason, right?

Culturally speaking, Canadians don't generally approve of children and teens smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol, tea or coffee. These things are reserved for adults who have finished their growing and are (presumably) able to both make an informed decision and control their appetites.

The culture takes its cue from everyone's collective experience. Alcohol particularly has well described ill-effects on children and teens, as do a lot of other drugs. That's why we have kid sized doses of everything, and there are some medicines and pain killers that are not used for kids. Proving out traditional practice.

One study, particularly of the quality of the thread subject, means diddly. However we do know that a lot of things can frig up a kid's growth in a lot of ways, so pot being one of them isn't unreasonable or unexpected.

As to the law regarding pot, we all know the law is an ass in general and in this particular. Prohibition is anathema to a free society, not to mention completely ineffective and encouraging of corruption besides.

Tradition though, that's different. Tradition is a -powerful- method of enforcing norms and protecting children from malign influence. One does not need the fumble fingered, blunt force of government to manage things like pot and alcohol, to imbibe with moderation and to OBVIOUSLY keep the stuff away from the kids.

I see no reason not to follow tradition while despising prohibition at the same time. The two are complementary, not exclusive.

Just to get started if you are green on the subject ,watch, "The Union" and "Grass" excellent documenteries ,both are on Netflix, it will give you an insight into the truth here. Will take 3 hrs of your time.

I think Canadian conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot here, adopt a libertarian policy on the herb and steal 25% support from the left,its that simple.

This is na passionate,linch-pin issue with many people.

I've relayed my personal story once or twice but generally don't go there. In this case I'll do it again.
In 2005 I was diagnosed with liver damage caused by Hep C.(Apparently I had carried Hep C for 25 or more years without knowing it,)
I was put on the waiting list for a liver transplant and waited 2.5 years for a suitable organ.
Over 50% of people waiting for livers die within the first two years.
One of the main causes of death in cases like mine comes down to nausea. Being constantly nauseated make taking food almost impossible. Those who don't take food properly get weaker and weaker and generally succumb before receiving the live saving transplant. In my case, (with both my doctor's and surgeon's knowledge) I would smoke a small amount of pot which immediately relieved the nausea and allowed me to maintain strength with a good appetite. (As a side note, when you use pot when ill you do not get the familiar 'buzz' most would expect.)
The fact I'm relaying the story to you in 2012 lets you know the rest of the story. Those that lump pot in with hard drugs are misinformed.
As to the point of pot making you stupid, I'll have to let others make that judgement in my case.

bob, easier said than done. In 2002 the BC Libertarian party tried to bring gun owners and potheads together and had as speakers someone from the Fraser institute, Vin Suprynowicz and Marc Emery. I was there with the group fighting C68. At the time it was obvious that, once Bill C68 had been passed, the majority of the population of BC were paper criminals. Either because they didn't register their guns (which gun owners did almost universally) or they had a fondness for cannabis.

Had a good conversation with Marc Emery and, while he paid lip service to the concept that banning guns and weed stemmed from the same statist prohibitionist impulse, he was more concerned with his right to get stoned. The militant potheads that attended that meeting may not be representative of the average BC toker but it was clear that they weren't deep thinkers. A lot of them seemed shocked by Vin Suprynowicz's talk and a few walked out.

What is likely going to make cannabis legal, finally after decades of waiting for it to happen, is the medicinal uses of cannabis. As Doowleb noted it's quite an effective anti-emetic and damn cheap compared to ondansetron which is still $25/dose and it needs to be dosed 3x/day. Cannabinoids are very effective in fibromyalgia and PTSD as well as in neuropathic pain.

The big question is when kids should be allowed to experiment with cannabis. Alcohol is only allowed to people 18 years of age and older (or 21 years old when I was younger), but we managed to score alcohol at 12-13 years of age. The problem is not the occasional experimentation with psychoactives (deliberate creation of altered states of consciousness seems to be a fundamental human trait), but rather people taking things to excess. My experience with the permanently stoned students in high school was that there was something not quite right with them although most of them seemed to develop into normal adults (based on my 25 year high school reunion impressions).

I'm hoping that the Conservative party will come to its senses before the next election and declare that prohibitionist policies are socially destructive and creating a police state. Robert Anton Wilson described the US culture as "Urine Nation" where one is judged primarily by the composition of ones urine. If, through some miracle the Conservative party announced an end to the war on (some) drugs then they would probably sweep BC in the next election.

If they drug test most of their employees the CBC could expect an improvement in their programming.

Choom!