Exposing marijuana myths

[Weedguru Higher]

Exposing Marijuana Myths:
A Review of the Scientific Evidence

Lynn Zimmer
Associate Professor of Sociology, Queens College
John P. Morgan
Professor of Pharmacology, City University of New York Medical School
October 1995
© Open Society Institute/The Lindesmith Center


INTRODUCTION
Since the 1920s, supporters of marijuana prohibition have exaggerated the drug's dangers. In different eras, different claims have gained prominence, but few have ever been abandoned. Indeed, many of the "reefer madness" tales that were used to generate support for early anti-marijuana laws continue to appear in government and media reports today.

For a while in the 1970s, it seemed as if scientific inquiries were beginning to influence the government's marijuana policies. Following thorough reviews of the existing evidence by scholars 1 and official commissions, 2 criminal penalties for marijuana offenses were lessened and a number of states moved in the direction of decriminalization. 3 However, in response to lingering concerns about marijuana's potential toxicity, the government expanded its funding of scientific research, mostly through the newly-created National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

Probably the most important studies of the 1970s were three large "field studies" in Greece, Costa Rica and Jamaica. These studies, which evaluated the impact of marijuana on users in their natural environments, were supplemented by clinical examinations and laboratory experiments oriented toward answering the questions about marijuana that continued to be debated in the scientific literature. The data from these studies, published in numerous books and scholarly journals, covered such matters as marijuana's effects on the brain, lungs, immune and reproductive systems, its impact on personality, development, and motivational states, and its addictive potential. 4

Although these studies did not answer all remaining questions about marijuana toxicity, they generally supported the idea that marijuana was a relatively safe drug -- not totally free from potential harm, but unlikely to create serious harm for most individual users or society. In the years since, thousands of additional studies have been conducted, many of them funded by NIDA, and together they reaffirm marijuana's substantial margin of safety. Our review of that body of work reveals an occasional study indicating greater toxicity than previously thought. But in nearly all such cases, the methodologies were seriously flawed and the findings could not be replicated by other researchers.

Especially since the 1980s, when the federal government's renewed war on cannabis began, both the funding of marijuana research and the dissemination of its findings have been highly politicized. Indeed, NIDA's role seems to have become one of service to the War on Drugs. Dozens of claims of toxicity appear in its documents, despite the existence of scores of scientific studies refuting their validity. At the same time, studies that fail to find serious toxicity are ignored.

In the following pages, we review the scientific evidence surrounding the most prominent of the anti-marijuana claims.

CLAIM No. 1: MARIJUANA USE IS INCREASING AT AN ALARMING RATE

CLAIM No. 2: MARIJUANA POTENCY HAS INCREASED SUBSTANTIALLY

CLAIM No. 3: MARIJUANA IS A DRUG WITHOUT THERAPEUTIC VALUE

CLAIM No. 4: MARIJUANA CAUSES LUNG DISEASE

CLAIM No. 5: MARIJUANA IMPAIRS IMMUNE SYSTEM FUNCTIONING

CLAIM No. 6: MARIJUANA HARMS SEXUAL MATURATION AND REPRODUCTION

CLAIM No. 7: MARIJUANA USE DURING PREGNANCY HARMS THE FETUS

CLAIM No. 8: MARIJUANA CAUSES BRAIN DAMAGE

CLAIM No. 9: MARIJUANA IS AN ADDICTIVE DRUG

CLAIM No.10: MARIJUANA-RELATED MEDICAL EMERGENCIES ARE INCREASING

CLAIM No.11: MARIJUANA PRODUCES AN AMOTIVATIONAL SYNDROME

CLAIM No.12: MARIJUANA IS A MAJOR CAUSE OF HIGHWAY ACCIDENTS

CLAIM No.13: MARIJUANA IS A "GATEWAY" TO THE USE OF OTHER DRUGS

CLAIM No.14: DUTCH MARIJUANA POLICY HAS BEEN A FAILURE

[FIRE!!!]

Dude this is fucking excellent. I am totally printing copies of this shit and mailing it to random people!!! Great find higher!!

[WeedGuru_Flow]

Hell yeah man! This is excellent stuff, i'm bookmarking it for future use muahaha

[think]

the monkeys they test marijuana on have life pretty good

but yeah, great article

[Black Stan]

Yeah.......... Untill they get murdered

[danno_rollin_blunts]

i dont care about all the facts and myths about weed. as long as it makes me feel good im down with it.

[farmacyst]

As someone who has researched weed during the first few experiences, I have read significant amounts of information that have scientific evidence to show that weed is a harmless herb that have been used many centuries before christ. It was one of the 1st plants to be cultivated by humans and its medicinal use preceed its recreational use.

I have no problems with weed personally and have read articles where hemp has so much more uses than many other materials that are being used for various purposes in this day and age......

[Hatchetrunner420]

It's about time someone cleared those myths up