DdC
03-10-2005, 03:14 AM
By Bruce Mirken and Mitch Earleywine
CN Source: AlterNet March 07, 2005
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread20335.shtml
The mainstream media is eating it up, but a new study claiming a link between marijuana use and psychosis should be approached with great caution.
As the month began, the worldwide press jumped all over a study in the March issue of the journal Addiction purporting to show a causal link between marijuana use and psychosis. "Drug Doubles Mental Health Risk," the BBC reported. "Marijuana Increases Risk of Psychosis," the Washington Times chimed in.
Such purported links have lately become the darling of prohibitionists, but a close look at the new study reveals gaping holes unmentioned in those definitive-sounding headlines.
Before we look at the study itself, let's consider some basics: If X causes Y, it's reasonable to expect a huge increase in X to cause at least a modest increase in Y, but this has not been the case with marijuana and psychosis. Private and government surveys have documented a massive increase in marijuana use, particularly by young people, during the 1960s and '70s, but no corresponding increase in psychosis was ever reported. This strongly suggests that if marijuana use plays any role in triggering psychosis, that effect is weak, rare, or both.
For this reason, researchers should approach "proof" that marijuana causes serious mental illness with great caution. The researchers in this case, a New Zealand team led by David M. Fergusson of the Christchurch School of Medicine and Health Sciences, seem to have done just the reverse.
Fergusson's team looked at a group of 1,265 New Zealand kids who were followed from birth to age 25 and assessed at various points along the way for a variety of physical, mental and social problems and issues. At ages 18, 21 and 25 they were assessed for both marijuana use and supposed psychotic symptoms. Having found a correlation, with daily users reporting the highest frequency of psychotic symptoms, they then applied a series of mathematical models. These models are designed to adjust for possible variables that might confound the results and to assess whether the marijuana use caused the symptoms or vice versa.
Whatever model was applied, the correlation held up. But the reported "growing evidence" that "regular use of cannabis may increase risks of psychosis" depends completely on the validity of the underlying data, and those data raise some screamingly obvious questions.
Psychotic symptoms were measured using 10 items from something called Symptom Checklist 90. Participants were asked if they had certain ideas, feelings or beliefs that commonly accompany psychotic states. The researchers did not look at actual diagnoses, and the symptom checklist is not identical to the formal diagnostic criteria listed in the DSM-IV manual. Perhaps most important, they only used 10 "representative" items from a much larger questionnaire.
These 10 items focus heavily on paranoid thoughts or feelings, such as "feeling other people cannot be trusted," "feeling you are being watched or talked about by others," "having ideas or beliefs that others do not share." This presents a big methodological problem, because it is well known that paranoid feelings are a fairly common effect of being high on marijuana.
But the article gives no indication that respondents were asked to distinguish between feelings experienced while high and feelings experienced at other times. Thus, we are left with no indication at all as to whether these supposed psychotic symptoms are long-term effects or simply the normal, passing effects of marijuana intoxication. While it's possible the researchers had these data and didn't see a need to report them, the failure to do so is downright bizarre. It's like reporting that people who go to bars are more erratic drivers than people who don't, without bothering to look at whether they'd been drinking at the time their driving skills were assessed.
Even if these were long-term effects, the researchers seem not to have considered that what might be an indication of psychosis in other circumstances could be an entirely normal reaction for people who use marijuana. Consider: Someone using a substance that is both illegal and socially frowned-upon almost by definition has "ideas or beliefs that others do not share." This is not a sign of mental illness. It's a sign of a rational person realistically assessing his or her situation.
The same goes for "feeling other people cannot be trusted." Just ask Robin Prosser, the Montana medical marijuana patient arrested last summer on possession charges by the cops who came to save her life after she'd attempted suicide because she was in unbearable pain after running out of medicine.
Fergusson reports very little raw data, so we don't know which symptoms came up most often, or whether the differences in average levels of symptoms between users and non-users came from a few people having a lot of symptoms or a lot of people having a couple symptoms. The heavy-user group, with the highest levels of supposed psychosis, reported an average of less than two symptoms each. So it is entirely possible that the entire case for marijuana "causing" psychosis is based on marijuana smokers having the completely reasonable feelings that they have beliefs different from mainstream society and thus should be a tad suspicious of others.
"Proof" that marijuana makes you psychotic? No. Not even close. But don't expect the mainstream media to figure this out.
Bruce Mirken is communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project. Mitch Earleywine, Ph.D., is associate professor of psychology at the University of Southern California and author of "Understanding Marijuana" (Oxford University Press, 2002).
Contact: letters@alternet.org
Website: http://www.alternet.org/
DL: http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/21436/
Related Articles & Web Site
Marijuana Policy Project
http://www.mpp.org/
Cannabis Raises Risk of Psychosis
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19939.shtml
Text of Dr. Mitch Earleywine Interview on NPR
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread14712.shtml
http://www.cannabinoid.com/boards/politics/media/36/36558.gif
Soft line needed on recreational users - professor
The following article was published in various forms in The Press (18 Oct), Christchurch Star (19 Oct), Wairapapa Times-Age (18 Oct), Nelson Mail (18 Oct) and Evening Standard (18 Oct)
Policies governing the use of cannabis need to avoid criminalising the large number of occasional recreational users who pose no risk to themselves or others, says a Christchurch medical researcher.
Professor David Fergusson, of the Christchurch School of Medicine, said although cannabis may have harmful effects on a minority of heavy or vulnerable users, there was little evidence to suggest the occasional use of cannabis was harmful.
"However, potentially large numbers of young people who use cannabis are, in theory at least, at risk of criminal prosecution for their actions.
"There is a clear need for policies releting to cannabis to avoid criminalising the majority of occasional recreational users who do not appear to pose a risk to themselves or anyone around them." continued... http://www.norml.org.nz/article142.html
--
Recreational cannabis users 'low risk'
By Lois Watson, The Press, 18 October 2001
Recreational cannabis users pose little risk to themselves or others, says a leading Christchurch medical researcher.
David Fergusson, of the Christchurch School of Medicine, yesterday told Parliament's health select committee that policies on cannabis needed to avoid criminalising the majority of recreational users. continued...
http://www.norml.org.nz/article142.html
Govt's stand on cannabis law a 'missed opportunity' (Excerpted)
New Zealand Press Association - 31 Oct, 03
http://www.thehempire.com/pm/comments/1421_0_1_0_C/
Christchurch School of Medicine senior lecturer Fraser Todd said yesterday he and other colleagues working at the school's National Addiction Centre believed decriminalising cannabis could potentially reduce the health risks associated with the drug. Changing the current laws warranted further investigation, he said. "I think they're missing an opportunity to look at dealing with health issues around cannabis a little more proactively." In other countries and regions where cannabis use was restricted, but possession of small quantities had been decriminalised, there was no significant increase in use, he said.
US Jamaican Study 1974
"... as a multipurpose plant, ganga is used medicinally, even by non-smokers. ....There were no indications of organic brain damage or chromosome damage among smokers and no significant clinical psychiatric, psychological or medical) differences between smokers and controls." "No impairment of physiological, sensory and perceptual performance, tests of concept formation, abstracting ability, and cognitive style, and tests of memory" "[Cannabis smoking] does not lead directly to mental or physical deterioration... Those who have consumed marijuana for a period of years showed no mental or physical deterioration which may be attributed to the drug."
Lester Grinspoon
http://www.rxmarijuana.com
Tod Mikuriya
http://www.mikuriya.com/nojava.html
Medical Marijuana Information Links
http://freedomtoexhale.com/medical.htm
Can Cannabis the Antibiotic Treat/Prevent Anthrax?
http://makeashorterlink.com/?X19924555
Prenatal Cannabis Exposure and Neonatal Outcomes in Jamaica:
An Ethnographic Study
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/medical/can-babies.htm
http://www.cannabinoid.com/boards/politics/media/39/39670.gif
Excerpts from Jack Herer's Emperor Wears No Cloths, Chapter Fifteen:
THE OFFICIAL STORY
DEBUNKING "GUTTER SCIENCE"
After 15 days of taking testimony and more than a year's legal deliberation, DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young formally urged the DEA to allow doctors to prescribe marijuana in a September, 1988 judgement. Judge Young ruled: "The evidence in this record clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision. It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for the DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in light of the evidence in this record. In strict medical terms, marijuana is far safer
than many foods we commonly consume marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man." Yet DEA Administrator John Lawn and his successor, Robert Bonner, who finally resigned in November 1993, both refused to comply and have continued to deprive persons of medical cannabis, based on their own personal discretion and claims like the following:
* Wasting Time & Lives
* Doublespeak
* Brain Damage Reports
* Lingering Effects
* Lung Damage Reports
* Radioactivity in Tobacco
* Nahas' Studies
* & So On
* Alcohol
* Studies the Feds Don't Talk About
* Coptic Study
* Jamaican Studies
* Costa Rican Study
* Amsterdam Model
* Bush Strikes Again
* Corruption/Carlton Turner
http://www.cannabinoid.com/wwwboard/politics/binaries/33/33203.gif
WASTING TIME, WASTING LIVES
More than 100 years have passed since the 1894 British Raj commission study of hashish smokers in India reported cannabis use was harmless and even helpful. Numerous studies since have all agreed: The most prominent being Siler, LaGuardia, Nixon's Shafer Commission, Canada's LeDain Commission, and the California Research Advisory Commission.
Concurrently, American presidents have praised hemp, the USDA amassed volumes of data showing its value as a natural resource, and in 1942 the Roosevelt administration even made Hemp for Victory, a film glorifying our patriotic hemp farmers. That same year, Germany produced The Humorous Hemp Primer, a comic book, written in rhyme, extolling hemp's virtues. (See appendix I of the paper version of this book.)
Yet even the humane use of hemp for medicine is now denied. Asked in late 1989 about the DEA's failure to implement his decision quoted above, Judge Young responded that administrator John Lawn was being given time to comply.
More than a year after that ruling, Lawn officially refused to reschedule cannabis, again classing it as a Schedule One "dangerous" drug that is not even allowed to be used as medicine.
Decrying this needless suffering of helpless Americans, the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws (NORML) and the Family Council on Drug Awareness quickly demanded Lawn's resignation. His successor retains this policy.
What hypocrisy allows public officials to scoff at the facts and deny the truth? How do they rationalize their atrocities? How? They invent their own experts.
GOVERNMENT DOUBLESPEAK
Since 1976, our federal government (e.g., NIDA, NIH, DEA,* and Action), police sponsored groups (like DARE*), and special interest groups (like PDFA*) have proclaimed to public, press, and parent groups alike that they have "absolute evidence" of the shocking negative effects of marijuana smoking.
* National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Inst. of Health, Drug Enforcement Agency, Drug Abuse Resistance Education, Partnership for a Drug Free America.
When U.S. government sponsored research prior to 1976 indicated that cannabis was harmless or beneficial, the methodology of how each study was done was always presented in detail in the reports; e.g., read The Therapeutic Potential of Marijuana (1976) and you will see exactly what the methodology of each medical study was.
However, when our government bureaucrats deliberately sponsored negative marijuana research, time and time again Playboy magazine, NORML, High Times, etc. had to sue under the new Freedom of Information Act to find out the actual laboratory methodology these "experiments" employed.
What they found was shocking. continued in the book...
http://www.jackherer.com
* DR. HEATH/TULANE STUDY, 1974
The Hype: Brain Damage and Dead Monkeys
The Facts: Suffocation of Research Animals
*LINGERING THC METABOLITES
The Hype: It Stays in Your System for 30 Days
The Facts: Government's Own Experts Say That Metabolites Are Non-Toxic, Harmless Residue
LUNG DAMAGE STUDIES
The Hype: More Harmful Than Tobacco
The Fact: Not One Documented Case of Cancer
Lab Studies Fail to Reflect the Real World
RADIOACTIVE TOBACCO: THE UNTOLD STORY
No radioactivity exists in cannabis tars
http://www.cannabinoid.com/wwwboard/politics/binaries/33/33202.gif
CN Source: AlterNet March 07, 2005
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread20335.shtml
The mainstream media is eating it up, but a new study claiming a link between marijuana use and psychosis should be approached with great caution.
As the month began, the worldwide press jumped all over a study in the March issue of the journal Addiction purporting to show a causal link between marijuana use and psychosis. "Drug Doubles Mental Health Risk," the BBC reported. "Marijuana Increases Risk of Psychosis," the Washington Times chimed in.
Such purported links have lately become the darling of prohibitionists, but a close look at the new study reveals gaping holes unmentioned in those definitive-sounding headlines.
Before we look at the study itself, let's consider some basics: If X causes Y, it's reasonable to expect a huge increase in X to cause at least a modest increase in Y, but this has not been the case with marijuana and psychosis. Private and government surveys have documented a massive increase in marijuana use, particularly by young people, during the 1960s and '70s, but no corresponding increase in psychosis was ever reported. This strongly suggests that if marijuana use plays any role in triggering psychosis, that effect is weak, rare, or both.
For this reason, researchers should approach "proof" that marijuana causes serious mental illness with great caution. The researchers in this case, a New Zealand team led by David M. Fergusson of the Christchurch School of Medicine and Health Sciences, seem to have done just the reverse.
Fergusson's team looked at a group of 1,265 New Zealand kids who were followed from birth to age 25 and assessed at various points along the way for a variety of physical, mental and social problems and issues. At ages 18, 21 and 25 they were assessed for both marijuana use and supposed psychotic symptoms. Having found a correlation, with daily users reporting the highest frequency of psychotic symptoms, they then applied a series of mathematical models. These models are designed to adjust for possible variables that might confound the results and to assess whether the marijuana use caused the symptoms or vice versa.
Whatever model was applied, the correlation held up. But the reported "growing evidence" that "regular use of cannabis may increase risks of psychosis" depends completely on the validity of the underlying data, and those data raise some screamingly obvious questions.
Psychotic symptoms were measured using 10 items from something called Symptom Checklist 90. Participants were asked if they had certain ideas, feelings or beliefs that commonly accompany psychotic states. The researchers did not look at actual diagnoses, and the symptom checklist is not identical to the formal diagnostic criteria listed in the DSM-IV manual. Perhaps most important, they only used 10 "representative" items from a much larger questionnaire.
These 10 items focus heavily on paranoid thoughts or feelings, such as "feeling other people cannot be trusted," "feeling you are being watched or talked about by others," "having ideas or beliefs that others do not share." This presents a big methodological problem, because it is well known that paranoid feelings are a fairly common effect of being high on marijuana.
But the article gives no indication that respondents were asked to distinguish between feelings experienced while high and feelings experienced at other times. Thus, we are left with no indication at all as to whether these supposed psychotic symptoms are long-term effects or simply the normal, passing effects of marijuana intoxication. While it's possible the researchers had these data and didn't see a need to report them, the failure to do so is downright bizarre. It's like reporting that people who go to bars are more erratic drivers than people who don't, without bothering to look at whether they'd been drinking at the time their driving skills were assessed.
Even if these were long-term effects, the researchers seem not to have considered that what might be an indication of psychosis in other circumstances could be an entirely normal reaction for people who use marijuana. Consider: Someone using a substance that is both illegal and socially frowned-upon almost by definition has "ideas or beliefs that others do not share." This is not a sign of mental illness. It's a sign of a rational person realistically assessing his or her situation.
The same goes for "feeling other people cannot be trusted." Just ask Robin Prosser, the Montana medical marijuana patient arrested last summer on possession charges by the cops who came to save her life after she'd attempted suicide because she was in unbearable pain after running out of medicine.
Fergusson reports very little raw data, so we don't know which symptoms came up most often, or whether the differences in average levels of symptoms between users and non-users came from a few people having a lot of symptoms or a lot of people having a couple symptoms. The heavy-user group, with the highest levels of supposed psychosis, reported an average of less than two symptoms each. So it is entirely possible that the entire case for marijuana "causing" psychosis is based on marijuana smokers having the completely reasonable feelings that they have beliefs different from mainstream society and thus should be a tad suspicious of others.
"Proof" that marijuana makes you psychotic? No. Not even close. But don't expect the mainstream media to figure this out.
Bruce Mirken is communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project. Mitch Earleywine, Ph.D., is associate professor of psychology at the University of Southern California and author of "Understanding Marijuana" (Oxford University Press, 2002).
Contact: letters@alternet.org
Website: http://www.alternet.org/
DL: http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/21436/
Related Articles & Web Site
Marijuana Policy Project
http://www.mpp.org/
Cannabis Raises Risk of Psychosis
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19939.shtml
Text of Dr. Mitch Earleywine Interview on NPR
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread14712.shtml
http://www.cannabinoid.com/boards/politics/media/36/36558.gif
Soft line needed on recreational users - professor
The following article was published in various forms in The Press (18 Oct), Christchurch Star (19 Oct), Wairapapa Times-Age (18 Oct), Nelson Mail (18 Oct) and Evening Standard (18 Oct)
Policies governing the use of cannabis need to avoid criminalising the large number of occasional recreational users who pose no risk to themselves or others, says a Christchurch medical researcher.
Professor David Fergusson, of the Christchurch School of Medicine, said although cannabis may have harmful effects on a minority of heavy or vulnerable users, there was little evidence to suggest the occasional use of cannabis was harmful.
"However, potentially large numbers of young people who use cannabis are, in theory at least, at risk of criminal prosecution for their actions.
"There is a clear need for policies releting to cannabis to avoid criminalising the majority of occasional recreational users who do not appear to pose a risk to themselves or anyone around them." continued... http://www.norml.org.nz/article142.html
--
Recreational cannabis users 'low risk'
By Lois Watson, The Press, 18 October 2001
Recreational cannabis users pose little risk to themselves or others, says a leading Christchurch medical researcher.
David Fergusson, of the Christchurch School of Medicine, yesterday told Parliament's health select committee that policies on cannabis needed to avoid criminalising the majority of recreational users. continued...
http://www.norml.org.nz/article142.html
Govt's stand on cannabis law a 'missed opportunity' (Excerpted)
New Zealand Press Association - 31 Oct, 03
http://www.thehempire.com/pm/comments/1421_0_1_0_C/
Christchurch School of Medicine senior lecturer Fraser Todd said yesterday he and other colleagues working at the school's National Addiction Centre believed decriminalising cannabis could potentially reduce the health risks associated with the drug. Changing the current laws warranted further investigation, he said. "I think they're missing an opportunity to look at dealing with health issues around cannabis a little more proactively." In other countries and regions where cannabis use was restricted, but possession of small quantities had been decriminalised, there was no significant increase in use, he said.
US Jamaican Study 1974
"... as a multipurpose plant, ganga is used medicinally, even by non-smokers. ....There were no indications of organic brain damage or chromosome damage among smokers and no significant clinical psychiatric, psychological or medical) differences between smokers and controls." "No impairment of physiological, sensory and perceptual performance, tests of concept formation, abstracting ability, and cognitive style, and tests of memory" "[Cannabis smoking] does not lead directly to mental or physical deterioration... Those who have consumed marijuana for a period of years showed no mental or physical deterioration which may be attributed to the drug."
Lester Grinspoon
http://www.rxmarijuana.com
Tod Mikuriya
http://www.mikuriya.com/nojava.html
Medical Marijuana Information Links
http://freedomtoexhale.com/medical.htm
Can Cannabis the Antibiotic Treat/Prevent Anthrax?
http://makeashorterlink.com/?X19924555
Prenatal Cannabis Exposure and Neonatal Outcomes in Jamaica:
An Ethnographic Study
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/medical/can-babies.htm
http://www.cannabinoid.com/boards/politics/media/39/39670.gif
Excerpts from Jack Herer's Emperor Wears No Cloths, Chapter Fifteen:
THE OFFICIAL STORY
DEBUNKING "GUTTER SCIENCE"
After 15 days of taking testimony and more than a year's legal deliberation, DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young formally urged the DEA to allow doctors to prescribe marijuana in a September, 1988 judgement. Judge Young ruled: "The evidence in this record clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision. It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for the DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in light of the evidence in this record. In strict medical terms, marijuana is far safer
than many foods we commonly consume marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man." Yet DEA Administrator John Lawn and his successor, Robert Bonner, who finally resigned in November 1993, both refused to comply and have continued to deprive persons of medical cannabis, based on their own personal discretion and claims like the following:
* Wasting Time & Lives
* Doublespeak
* Brain Damage Reports
* Lingering Effects
* Lung Damage Reports
* Radioactivity in Tobacco
* Nahas' Studies
* & So On
* Alcohol
* Studies the Feds Don't Talk About
* Coptic Study
* Jamaican Studies
* Costa Rican Study
* Amsterdam Model
* Bush Strikes Again
* Corruption/Carlton Turner
http://www.cannabinoid.com/wwwboard/politics/binaries/33/33203.gif
WASTING TIME, WASTING LIVES
More than 100 years have passed since the 1894 British Raj commission study of hashish smokers in India reported cannabis use was harmless and even helpful. Numerous studies since have all agreed: The most prominent being Siler, LaGuardia, Nixon's Shafer Commission, Canada's LeDain Commission, and the California Research Advisory Commission.
Concurrently, American presidents have praised hemp, the USDA amassed volumes of data showing its value as a natural resource, and in 1942 the Roosevelt administration even made Hemp for Victory, a film glorifying our patriotic hemp farmers. That same year, Germany produced The Humorous Hemp Primer, a comic book, written in rhyme, extolling hemp's virtues. (See appendix I of the paper version of this book.)
Yet even the humane use of hemp for medicine is now denied. Asked in late 1989 about the DEA's failure to implement his decision quoted above, Judge Young responded that administrator John Lawn was being given time to comply.
More than a year after that ruling, Lawn officially refused to reschedule cannabis, again classing it as a Schedule One "dangerous" drug that is not even allowed to be used as medicine.
Decrying this needless suffering of helpless Americans, the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws (NORML) and the Family Council on Drug Awareness quickly demanded Lawn's resignation. His successor retains this policy.
What hypocrisy allows public officials to scoff at the facts and deny the truth? How do they rationalize their atrocities? How? They invent their own experts.
GOVERNMENT DOUBLESPEAK
Since 1976, our federal government (e.g., NIDA, NIH, DEA,* and Action), police sponsored groups (like DARE*), and special interest groups (like PDFA*) have proclaimed to public, press, and parent groups alike that they have "absolute evidence" of the shocking negative effects of marijuana smoking.
* National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Inst. of Health, Drug Enforcement Agency, Drug Abuse Resistance Education, Partnership for a Drug Free America.
When U.S. government sponsored research prior to 1976 indicated that cannabis was harmless or beneficial, the methodology of how each study was done was always presented in detail in the reports; e.g., read The Therapeutic Potential of Marijuana (1976) and you will see exactly what the methodology of each medical study was.
However, when our government bureaucrats deliberately sponsored negative marijuana research, time and time again Playboy magazine, NORML, High Times, etc. had to sue under the new Freedom of Information Act to find out the actual laboratory methodology these "experiments" employed.
What they found was shocking. continued in the book...
http://www.jackherer.com
* DR. HEATH/TULANE STUDY, 1974
The Hype: Brain Damage and Dead Monkeys
The Facts: Suffocation of Research Animals
*LINGERING THC METABOLITES
The Hype: It Stays in Your System for 30 Days
The Facts: Government's Own Experts Say That Metabolites Are Non-Toxic, Harmless Residue
LUNG DAMAGE STUDIES
The Hype: More Harmful Than Tobacco
The Fact: Not One Documented Case of Cancer
Lab Studies Fail to Reflect the Real World
RADIOACTIVE TOBACCO: THE UNTOLD STORY
No radioactivity exists in cannabis tars
http://www.cannabinoid.com/wwwboard/politics/binaries/33/33202.gif