Motivating Parents to Prevent Teen Cannabis Use
This parent resource seeks to help parents who may use medical cannabis to address issues about cannabis they may face with their teenager. Parents may want to support their teenager’s non-use of cannabis or to help the teen to reduce or stop using if use has already started.
More Teens Who Use Marijuana Are Suffering From Psychosis
This article in the Wall Street Journal speaks about the thousands of teenagers and young adults who have developed delusions and paranoia after using cannabis.
When addressing cannabis policy, Congress needs to start by protecting children
This essay from Dr. McCance-Katz, ex-DHS at federal level, published in the Washington Examiner, Sept., 2023.
Broken promises: How marijuana legalization failed communities hit hardest by the drug war
This commentary provides a cautionary tale when cannabis legalization does not deliver on promises to underserved communities
Big Weed today is a whole lot like Big Tobacco in the 1950s
An opinion piece by Thomas Farley, MD. He was commissioner of health for New York City from 2009 to 2014 and for Philadelphia from 2016 to 2021.
SAMSA Report on CBD
Early in 2023 the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration produced a comprehensive report on CBD.
Cannabis Quick Facts (Adults and Seniors)
New information on the effects of cannabis
You Can Be Addicted to Weed. I Was When I Was 12. - Boomers who fought for legalization have no idea how dangerous it is.
A 14 year-old tells his story of smoking high potency cannabis
https://www.thefp.com/p/legal-weed-destroying-my-generation?r=xakhi
Legalizing Marijuana is a big mistake
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/17/opinion/marijuana-legalization-disaster.html
Post-Accident Workforce Drug Positivity for Marijuana Reached 25-Year High in 2022, Quest Diagnostics Drug Testing Index Analysis Finds
Speeches from the Press Conference 4.13.23
Follow the science: Don't legalize pot
Yes, decriminalize it and expunge past convictions — but recognize its use for the scourge it is.
By John Hagen
JANUARY 2, 2023 — 6:00PM
Opinion editor's note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes a mix of national and local commentaries online and in print each day.
If you have a "SCIENCE IS REAL" sign in your yard and you're in favor of legalizing recreational marijuana, you should do some reading. The evidence emphatically disfavors legalization.
A good place to start is "Smokescreen: What the Marijuana Industry Doesn't Want You to Know" (2021) by Kevin Sabet of the Yale Medical School, a drug policy adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. It includes 355 footnotes to medical and social scientific research. Here are a few vital points:
• Frequent use of high-potency marijuana disrupts brain development in teenagers and young adults (brains develop to at least age 25). Pot impairs academic performance, and it can decrease intelligence.
• Marijuana is associated with psychosis — paranoia, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder. Psychiatric hospital admissions increase sharply after legalization.
• Contrary to what we've been told, marijuana is addictive. Compulsive use can cause all sorts of pathologies, including hyperemesis (chronic vomiting), depression and suicidality.
• Fatal car crashes in which a driver tests positive for THC (the psychoactive component in pot) increase sharply after legalization.
The underlying menace is potency. Today's marijuana is not the Woodstock weed of bygone years (1% to 3% THC). Genetic engineering has brought plant potency above 17%, and concentrates (in edibles, vapes and other products) can approach 99%.
The notion that bureaucratic regulation will limit potency is laughable. Illegal dealers flourish in states that have legalized recreational pot. They undersell dispensaries because they don't pay taxes, and they attract buyers precisely because their pot is more potent than the regulated pot.
The arc of the science is clear. Sabet says that 20,000 peer-reviewed studies show physical, mental or developmental impairments related to pot. Why, then, has legalization enjoyed such success since the first states legalized recreational pot in 2012?
The answer is massive promotional efforts bankrolled by billionaires and big business. In 2020, when five states legalized, pot proponents outspent opponents by $19.8 million to $1.3 million. These vast cash disparities drown out the science.
The billionaire promoters come from all political backgrounds. They include the anarchical George Soros, the Trumpian Peter Thiel, and the late insurance tycoon Peter Lewis. Soros alone apparently has shoveled $200 million into legalization.
Meanwhile, Big Tobacco has repositioned itself to sell marijuana. The makers of Marlboro and Winston cigarettes are key promoters of pot. Sabet names many other corporate behemoths who've poured in waterfalls of cash.
We all know how these forces have messaged and marketed legalizing pot. They've rebranded the skunky weed as "cannabis," to make it sound refined. They proclaim that Everybody's Doing It — that legalization is inevitable and resistance is futile. They broadcast images of beaming young people buying and selling edibles in dispensaries and bars.
This consumer protection fiasco is strikingly similar to the cigarette fiasco of the 1950s. At that time, too, the science was clear: Lung cancer was killing thousands of people, and cigarette smoke was the cause. But Big Tobacco disputed the evidence, and massive advertising drowned out the science and normalized cigarettes.
Sabet argues that normalization is pivotal. Putting pot into bars and storefronts, promoted by high-tech advertising, sends a message that it is safe. Young people's perception of risk drops drastically in states that have legalized pot. The law should give warning that pot is a menace to health and not a fit form of recreation.
Sabet argues that we should decriminalize and expunge past convictions for personal use, but ban cultivation and sale of marijuana. That gives us a fighting chance to keep the malignant genie in the bottle while scientific studies advance and educational efforts proceed.
Sabet, incidentally, defies stereotypes. He's an ethnic and religious minority (Iranian-Yemeni; Baha'i). He strongly admires Barack Obama. His instincts clearly are those of a Democrat, and he's confounded when Democrats march in lockstep toward legalization.
Democrats pride themselves on being the party of science and consumer protection and the scourge of tobacco companies. Commercializing marijuana utterly compromises those values.
We need some brave Democrats in the Minnesota Legislature to break with Soros and Thiel and Big Tobacco and Jesse Ventura and the rest of the Brobdingnagian parade that's leading us toward legalization. Decriminalize. Expunge. But don't commercialize and normalize marijuana. Science militates for this approach.
John Hagen, of Minneapolis, is an attorney and writer.
Misleading update
The most recent Monitoring the Future annual report from the National Institute on Drug Abuse provides important data on changes in cannabis use. Some media are highlighting in a misleading way that the news is good. One example:
It is true that there was no increase in 2022 in lifetime use among 12th graders. But there were increases in past year and prior 30-day cannabis use among 8th, 10th and 12th graders, and lifetime use also increased among 8th and 10th graders.
An excellent radio interview. It's from nationally known law enforcement officer Lt. Ed Moses, who discusses the harms of using cannabis.
Weed vapes probably sending a toxic gas to your lungs, study finds
September 17, 2022 Now, a new study by Portland State University's Robert Strongin, doctoral student Kaelas Munger, and Robert Jensen reveals that when cannabinoid acetates in marijuana vaping products are heated under vaping conditions, they create a toxic gas called ketene.
How Weed Became the New OxyContin
September 16, 2022 At the root of the misconception is the myth that “cannabis” as it exists today is a safe, natural, medicinal substance. But if people thought of today’s high-potency THC products the way they think of hard drugs, far fewer people would fall under its influence—which is why it’s so important to the industry that they don’t. Read the article
The reality of legal weed in California: Huge illegal grows, violence, worker exploitation and deaths
September 13, 2022 Proposition 64, California’s 2016 landmark cannabis initiative, sold voters on the promise a legal market would cripple the drug’s outlaw trade, with its associated violence and environmental wreckage. Instead, a Los Angeles Times investigation finds, the law triggered a surge in illegal cannabis on a scale California has never before witnessed. Read the article
Cannabis use in Minnesota - Cautions and suggestions for change in cannabis statutes
September 5, 2022 An excellent article on the current state of medical marijuana in Minnesota.
Black market marijuana still popular despite legalization
August 25, 2022 Despite the fact that marijuana is legal here in Massachusetts, this article shows illegal sales remain strong and dangerous. Like many things, the lower cost of illegal marijuana is a major reason illicit sales continue to flourish in the state.
Data should give policymakers pause as Congress considers further deregulating marijuana
How Delta-8 THC Works — and Why Experts Are Worried About It
This article from the NY Times explains the origins and pitfalls of Delta 8 THC
Arizona investigative reporter finds pesticide levels at 20 times the safety limit in some cannabis products.
Listen to this audio file on the problems Arizona is having with quality control.
Stop the “green rush”
Progressives tend to believe legalizing pot is a good idea. Here are 7 reasons they should think twice.
As Minnesota considers qualifying anxiety for its medical cannabis program, psychiatrists raise concerns
MINNPOST article on anxiety and medical marijuana.
High anxiety: Some Minnesota psychiatrists say 25 should be legal age for recreational cannabis
MINNPOST article of why the legal age should be 25.
For Minnesota’s leading critic of expanding access to cannabis, the issue is professional. And personal.
MINNPOST interview with George M. Realmuto M.D., Professor Emeritus Psychiatry, University of Minnesota