14.4.15

Wild claims from "medical marijuana" dispensaries

The over-selling of ‘medical’ marijuana
Feb.3, 2015. • Section: The Search / VANCOUVER SUN STAFF BLOGS - VANCOUVER SUN COMMUNITY BLOGS

(One of the more creative signs raises high expectations outside a "medicinal dispensary" at Broadway near Alma, which calls itself the Cannabis Cellar. Just don't mention studies pointing to addiction and lower IQs.)
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Even though researchers have found benefits to marijuana use for some ailments, Metro Vancouver’s 60 new marijuana outlets are making exaggerated, to put it politely, claims about the medicinal value of their pot, which a strong story in The Vancouver Sun shows is often obtained illegally.

The Metro Vancouver medical marijuana scene is becoming surreal — with dispensary signs suggesting pot can cure, heal or otherwise be the salvation of people struggling with everything from cancer to psoriasis, anxiety to multiple sclerosis, chronic pain to depression. ....click "Read More" below to continue....
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One of the most over-the-top signs was (until a few days ago) blazing for all to see outside a marijuana dispensary at Broadway near Alma, which calls itself the Cannabis Cellar Medicinal Dispensary (the outlet replaced the much-lamented Jazz Cellar.)

Oddly enough, a couple of days after I photographed the sign (featured above), it disappeared. Why?
The Cannabis Cellar Medicinal Dispensary is on on Broadway, near Alma.
 
The Cannabis Cellar Medicinal Dispensary is on 
Broadway. It’s one of about 10 unregulated outlets 
that have cropped up in the past year in Kitsilano.
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Other Metro Vancouver journalists have done a great job of exposing the lack of regulation of everything associated with the way the federal government’s confusing response to marijuana is suddenly causing the number of  outlets to mushroom.

My point with this posting is simple: To remind readers that — while marijuana has some medicinal value in some cases — it’s worth noting how scientists are also discovering many downsides to marijuana use, especially among the young.

I expect you won’t hear many of those marijuana-related cautions — including about addiction or lower IQs — expressed at many of Metro Vancouver’s 60 dispensaries. A bit of healthy skepticism is in order.

Here’s an excerpt from a piece by neuroscientist Josh Gowin in Psychology Today, headlined “Long term effects of marijuana on the brain:”
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    Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, recently wrote a summary in the New England Journal of Medicine of the scientific findings on the lasting effects of marijuana use.

    1. Risk of addiction

    Smoking marijuana won’t set an irreversible course for addiction, but you must start using marijuana to become addicted. Almost one in ten people who use marijuana will eventually become dependent on it, according to findings from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. Half of the people who eventually met criteria for marijuana dependence did so within four years of their first use.

    A little under half of people who seek treatment for marijuana dependence experience withdrawal when they try to quit, becoming anxious, irritable or depressed. These symptoms can precipitate relapse, making it harder to quit.

    2. Alterations in brain development

    The brain can be molded and developed throughout our lives, but since it is particularly malleable from the months before birth to our twenty-first birthday, researchers have wondered whether smoking marijuana during adolescence could change the brain’s development.

    A team led by Andrew Zalesky from The University of Melbourne, Australia examined this question by performing MRI scans on regular marijuana users who started smoking in adolescence and a comparison group who never smoked. They found that the neural connections between the brain’s left and right hemispheres were impaired in the marijuana users relative to the non-users, which could mean that smokers’ brains have poorer internal communication.
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[A New Zealand study found those who started smoking marijuana in their teens had lower IQs in their thirties compared to their childhood. {Photo: Dispensary on Hastings in Vancouver)]
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Zalesky’s study, like much of the human work, compared people who already smoke to those who never smoked, so it doesn’t show that brains changed after the person started smoking. Smokers’ brains may have been different to begin with. The earlier someone started smoking, however, the more pronounced the impairments were, suggesting marijuana may cause changes.

    Zalesky’s study is hardly unassailable proof, but the suggestion is powerful. Especially considering a study in New Zealand that followed over a thousand individuals from birth to age 38, showed that people who started smoking marijuana in their teens had lower IQs in their thirties compared to their childhood.

    The IQ declines were not associated with personality, socioeconomic status, current drug use or presence of psychiatric diseases. The people who started smoking youngest and who smoked most heavily showed the greatest drop in cognitive performance.

    The deficits extended beyond laboratory tests. People who lived with the study participants filled out questionnaires about the memory and smarts of participants. The participants who started smoking marijuana as teens had more memory troubles in daily life, according to the people who knew them best.
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All of this is not to suggest that the sale of marijuana should return exclusively to street dealers and organized crime, as is largely the case now. But the Wild West approach to the sale of medicinal marijuana cries out for more serious regulation, perhaps somewhat like alcohol.
http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2015/02/03/the-dangerous-over-selling-of-medical-marijuana/

1 comment:

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