25.4.10

Dr. says MDs should not encourage pot use

(Below is a letter Dr. Meldon Kahan sent to the National Post newspaper on March 2, 2010)...

" Re: How To Get Your Medicinal Pot, letter to the editor, Feb. 27.

Dr. David Saul implies that if patients request a Health Canada cannabis authorization form, physicians are obliged by the provincial medical college to sign the form or refer them to a physician who will. This is incorrect and it is reckless to promote cannabis as a harmless medicine. I have seen patients whose lives have been destroyed by cannabis addiction or cannabis-induced psychosis. Smoked cannabis has been shown to cause precancerous changes in various tissues. Also, THC serum levels rise rapidly when smoked, creating a risk for motor vehicle accidents. The oral and inhaled versions of cannabis are far safer.

I would discourage physicians from authorizing smoked cannabis. They should prescribe oral or inhaled cannabis only for patients with a medical condition for which cannabis has been shown to be effective, and who are at low risk for cannabis-related harms.

Dr. Meldon Kahan, medical director,
Addiction Medicine Service, St. Joseph's Health Centre, Toronto "

Prolonged Cannabis Use Linked To Psychosis

An Australian study found that prolonged use of cannabis or marijuana by young adults was linked to a higher risk of developing psychosis, with the highest risk affecting those who started using the substance in their teens, and continued using it for 6 years or more into adulthood: the risk of developing psychosis among these users was more than double that of never users. Read more at website or click below...

Criminals exploit Dutch liberal pot laws big time; Government retreats from drug liberalism

Dutch court fines coffee (pot) shop owner 10 mln euros
The government mooted plans last year to transform coffee shops near the Belgian border into private clubs, to address what critics describe as the nuisance created by millions of drug tourists a year.

THE HAGUE, March 25, 2010 (AFP) - A Dutch court fined the owner of the Netherlands' biggest cannabis-vending coffee shop 10 million euros on Thursday after police seized more than 200 kilogrammes of the drug on its premises.

The 13-million-dollar penalty would have been larger, the district court of southwestern Middelburg said in a statement, had it not been for the authorities' apparently contradictory approach to soft drug vending and use.

While finding that coffee shop Checkpoint was a criminal organisation that had transgressed the Opium Act, the court said "the role of the authorities weighed heavily in the determination of the sentence".

This included the "facilitating role of the municipality, of which the prosecution service had been aware, and years of non-enforcement of the law", according to the judgment.

Cannabis brain damage worse in teens than thought: study

New study suggests cannabis use by teens damages brain worse than suspected
Thu Dec 17, 5:58 PM, By Bernard Barbeau, The Canadian Press
MONTREAL - The effects of daily cannabis use on teenage brains is worse than originally thought and the long-term effects appear to be irreversible, new research from McGill University suggests.

The study, by Dr. Gabriella Gobbi, a psychiatric researcher from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, suggests that daily cannabis consumption can lead to depression and anxiety.

Active ingredients in marijuana found to spread and prolong pain

Click Read More below for full story...

Growing Evidence Of Marijuana Smoke's Potential Dangers

ScienceDaily (Aug. 5, 2009) - In a finding that challenges the increasingly popular belief that smoking marijuana is less harmful to health than smoking tobacco, researchers in Canada are reporting that smoking marijuana, like smoking tobacco, has toxic effects on cells. Read more at website  or click below:

Cannabis "can cause psychosis in healthy people"

A potent form of cannabis can cause healthy people to develop psychotic illnesses, a new British study has proved.
Article website at...
http://tinyurl.com/l9s59t
Or click Read More below...

Marijuana Damages DNA And May Cause Cancer, New Test Reveals

ScienceDaily (June 15, 2009)
Using a highly sensitive new test, scientists in Europe are reporting "convincing evidence" that marijuana smoke damages the genetic material DNA in ways that could increase the risk of cancer.
Read more at website or click below...
Read More>

24.4.10

Pot & drugs fueled destructive behaviors

(This was at a time in the 60's-70's when pot was still the mild stuff)
CHICAGO - Former child star Mackenzie Phillips said Wednesday that she had a decade-long sexual relationship with her father, pop superstar John Phillips, who also taught her how to roll joints and injected her with cocaine. 

Pot linked to testicular cancer and psychosis

testicular cancer:
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE5181BP20090209
psychosis:
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE52T6I820090330

21.4.10

Marijuana Worsens COPD Symptoms In Current Cigarette Smokers

ScienceDaily (May 23, 2007) Marijuana worsens breathing problems in current smokers with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to a new study.

The study found that among people 40 and older, smokers were two-and-a-half times as likely as nonsmokers to develop COPD, while smoking cigarettes and marijuana together boosted the odds of developing COPD to three-and-a-half times the risk of someone who did not smoke either cigarettes or marijuana--in other words, adding marijuana smoking to cigarette smoking increased the risk by one-third, says Wan Tan, M.D., of St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The odds of cigarette smokers having any respiratory symptoms was 2.36 times that of nonsmokers, while the odds of someone who smoked both cigarettes and marijuana having respiratory symptoms was 18 times that of someone who smoked neither--an eightfold jump in risk, Dr. Tan says.