Topic: Smoking high-strength cannabis may damage nerve fibres in brain (Read 1436 times)

Cannabis was very popular in the Indian subcontinent, before the Islamic invasion. Indians appreciated the medicinal properties of cannabis. Similarly, the North American natives used Peyote, and the South American natives used Ayahuasca. These are all natural herbal products, having more merits than demerits for human usage.

... or eating food. the body takes care of itself when things are not overdone.

  

Smoking any kind of drugs damage or may damage with a really high probability your body. The same thing applies to alcohol and smoking.

This is completely false, no permanent damage whatsoever, it changes the way your brain functions, within 4 weeks of quitting, it returns back to normal.... dont spread propaganda to demonise our greatest medicine...

Drug map reveals the substances YOUR country is addicted to: Scotland is hooked on cocaine, Iceland smokes the most cannabis and opiates are rife in the US

Interactive map uses data from UN's Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
Shows the number of people treated for drug abuse round the world
Also shows most popular drugs abused and map of overdose deaths

By SARAH GRIFFITHS FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 09:46 GMT, 30 November 2015 | UPDATED: 00:40 GMT, 1 December 2015

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3333877/Drug-map-reveals-substances-country-addicted-Scotland-hooked-cocaine-Iceland-smokes-cannabis-opiates-rife-US.html

Yes sir. I think there is a economical reason why cannabis is illegal. Here are 5 reasons why its illegal

 It's extremely addictive for some people: If you don't want to take my word for it, listen to Dr. Drew Pinsky who has been working with addicts for decades.

 It would be malpractice to say that cannabis isn't addictive. Anybody who's experienced it, actually been addicted to it, knows how profound that addiction is.... The difficult thing about marijuana addiction is some people, even though they're addicted can do fine with it for many many years before they start to have difficultly, but eventually the high starts wearing off, people start smoking a lot more to try to get that high back and that's when they descend into difficulties. ...I've been treating cannabis addiction for 20 years. When people are addicted to cannabis, cocaine and alcohol the drug they have the most difficult time giving up is the cannabis. It is extremely addictive...for some people. I think that's where people get confused. It's not very addictive for many people. It's a small subset of people with a genetic potential for addiction. But for them it is really tough. You only need talk to them, they'll tell you how tough it is.
Additionally, that "small subset" Dr. Drew is talking about isn't so small in a big country like America. "Of the 7.3 million persons aged 12 or older classified with illicit drug dependence or abuse in 2012, 4.3 million persons had marijuana dependence or abuse." It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the more legal and available marijuana becomes, the higher those numbers are going to go.

2) This experiment hasn't worked out so well for Amsterdam: Humans being what they are, just about any stupid idea we can come up with has already been tried somewhere else. Amsterdam is the most famous place across the world that has effectively legalized pot. It has even turned into a tourist destination for potheads. Legalizing weed has been a huge success there, right? Actually, not so much...

Its citizens are now alarmed that their children are increasingly being exposed to it.

 Amsterdam today became the first city in the Netherlands to ban students from smoking marijuana at school.
The city's mayor Eberhard van der Laan introduced the law after school chiefs complained about pupils turning up to classes high after rolling up outside the grounds.

Marijuana is widely available in Holland as, although it is technically illegal, police can't prosecute people for possession of small amounts.

But it has also had the unwanted side effect that Dutch children are frequently exposed to the drug in public areas.

Additionally, contrary to the claims that legalizing it will reduce crime, in Amsterdam it’s been found that crime is now centering around the coffeehouses where marijuana is sold.

 …Certainly the outlook for coffee shops is bleak. Among the few policies that the three parties in the new coalition government agree on is the need to reduce their numbers. The governing agreement released last week laid out plans that will force them to become members-only clubs and shut down those shops located near schools.
The coalition is also advancing the idea of prohibiting the sale of cannabis to non-Dutch residents, which amounts to a death knell for many coffee shops.

...The circumstances that led to the tolerance policies have changed in the past decade, as large-scale crime around coffee shops and the legal sex trade became more visible. In particular, the absence of legal means for coffee shops to obtain cannabis has highlighted their association with organized crime.

But the open-minded instincts that helped foster the policies are also being questioned. And it is not just the far-right opposing coffee shops. The traditional parties of power on the center-right, the Christian Democrats and the Liberal VVD, have also moved against the policies they once promoted.

That doesn't exactly sound like a success story, does it?

3) Marijuana is terrible for your mental health: Marijuana may even be WORSE than cigarettes. At least cigarettes don't peel points off of your IQ.

 A recent Northwestern University study found that marijuana users have abnormal brain structure and poor memory and that chronic marijuana abuse may lead to brain changes resembling schizophrenia. The study also reported that the younger the person starts using marijuana, the worse the effects become.
In its own report arguing against marijuana legalization, the American Medical Association said: "Heavy cannabis use in adolescence causes persistent impairments in neurocognitive performance and IQ, and use is associated with increased rates of anxiety, mood and psychotic thought disorders."

So, there's a good reason most habitual marijuana users come off as stupid. The drug is making them stupider, even when they're not high. You really want your kids on that?

4) Marijuana is terrible for your physical health: How bad is marijuana for you? It's even more toxic than cigarette smoke. Regular users are hit with devastating lung problems as much as 20 years earlier than smokers. Even small amounts of marijuana can cause temporary sterility and it has a terrible impact on the babies of women who smoke including "birth defects, mental abnormalities and increased risk of leukemia in children." If your standard is, "Well, it's better for you than Meth or Crack," that's true, but you're deluding yourself if you think pot is anything other than absolutely horrible for your health.

5) The drug decimates many people's lives: Movies portray potheads as harmless, fun-loving people who spend their time giggling and munching Cheetos, but they don't show these people when they're flunking out of school, losing their jobs, frustrated because they can't concentrate or losing the love of their lives because they just don't want to be with a pot smoking loser anymore. Even in the limited number of studies that are out there, the numbers are stark.

 A study of 129 college students found that, among those who smoked the drug at least twenty-seven of the thirty days before being surveyed, critical skills related to attention, memory and learning were seriously diminished. A study of postal workers found that employees who tested positive for marijuana had 55% more accidents, 85% more injuries and a 75% increase in being absent from work. In Australia, a study found that cannabis intoxication was responsible for 4.3% of driver fatalities.
...Students who use marijuana have lower grades and are less likely to get into college than nonsmokers. They simply do not have the same abilities to remember and organize information compared to those who do not use these substances.

It's bad enough that we already lose so many Americans to cigarettes, alcoholism, and drunken driving. Do we really want to endorse the loss of millions more potentially productive Americans via Marijuana? Do we move on from there to Crack, Heroin or Meth? Some people would say, “If they want to do it, great, then it's no business of ours.” But, you can also bet that those same people will be complaining about all the junkies and welfare cases that will be created by the policy they endorsed.

So, ask yourself a few key questions. Is legalizing Marijuana going to make this a better country or a worse one? Would you want to live in a neighborhood filled with people who regularly smoke marijuana? Would you want your kids regularly smoking pot? Now is the time to think about it because although it's easy to thoughtlessly legalize a drug like marijuana, when things go predictably wrong down the road, it will be a lot harder to put the genie back in the bottle than people seem to think.

http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins

Simply pointing out the fact that legal medical drugs in big doses destroy people just like the illegal ones.

The difference is, the legal drugs aren't usually as much fun.

Not quite sure what you mean to indicate here.  It's obvious and consistent that balancing between negative and positive aspects of anything (chemo, medical pot, recreational pot, etc) is appropriate.  My point is that good info to make this balance is a necessary thing.

I've got no problems at all with recreational use of pot.  The damage it may or may not produce in some segment of those who indulge is clearly less problematic than that produced by other forms of entertainment (including watching mainstream TV imho.)  I will say that my experience knowing people who smoke pot heavily over a long period makes me believe that the study may well be describing a real phenomenon.  I've suspected as much before reading this post or the study overview.  I don't happen to like being high enough to do it very often so it is easy for me to choose to err on the side of caution here and in fact it is my natural default.  Nicotine is a different thing for me.  I chew rather than smoke in part because I consider the health risks to be lower.  I'm not in denial of the risks but the reward is just to great in my case.

If pot as a drug helped me in any significant way I would smoke it as much as needed.  Hopefully I won't be in this situation, but if I ever am I will be grateful to the activists who persevered and got to where we are today.  Actually, I am grateful to them on behalf of others who do benefit...even if it is just to enjoy their hobby with less hassle.  I don't have much use for people who discover medical problems so that they can have an excuse to toke out.  That's just dishonest.  I suspect that there have been a lot of people in this category over the years.

Touche!   

... Or some idiot who messd up his whole body and life by doing chemotherapy.   

Seems off-hand like the kind of research and communications of findings that I feel are appropriate.  Let people know the honest pros and cons and let them make their own decisions.

I personally don't find much to love about some aging boozer who fucked up his/her liver and life with alcohol, or with some aging stoner who cannot focus on something long enough to complete a sentence.  Or, for that matter, someone who's lungs are shot from smoking or who's mouth is torn up from chewing.  All of these activities are ones I've engaged in on occasion.  The legality of each has had next to zero impact on my choices about which to continue.  Reliable information about the effects, on the other hand, are key to the decisions I've made about how much to moderate my use of them.

Chemotherapy drugs do the same. See http://www.cancercare.org/publications/72-cognitive_problems_after_chemotherapy.

It's just that lower strength cannabis, and cannabis oil usage rather than smoking, causes healing, and doctors don't really want that. There isn't any doctor money in healthy people.

Absinthe, if prepared properly with natural ingredients is harmless (to a certain limit). The problem is when you add chemicals such as Ferric Chloride to the drink, to get the bright green color. Same with tobacco as well. Pure natural tobacco is somewhat harmless. But when you add chemicals such as Stearic Acid, Hexamine, Toluene.etc, you are increasing the harmful effects by manifold.

So this is the main issue with this study, the group of 56 patients had already reported episodes of psychosis. It's possible that the damage may have resulted from the psychosis itself, or that the cell damage makes it more likely that someone will smoke cannabis in the first place. So there's no strong evidence of causality.

Still a very interesting study, hopefully it will open a new avenue of marijuana research. I doubt it's a cancer-curing wonder drug like some believe, but it has already shown usefulness in treating cancer/chemo side effects and many other things, I'm sure it's got many more surprises up its sleeve.

I've been smoking almost every day for the past 2 years. I know is a very powerful medicine, and therefore shouldn't be used too much (yes, also cannabis can be used too much), but I really like the effects of it. Every day when I get home from another day of hard (slave) labour, just one joint will make all stress disappear.

I never heard of overdose with marijuana, not to anyone were physicaly addicted  no matter how much or how long he use. But alcohol kills or at least lead to strong physical addiction. I dont trust in any gov research, but you seems like one who bite on their crap so i found interesting read for you regarding alcohol.

http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/alcohol-facts-and-statistics

tell me your opinion about that

Let us talk numbers. It is estimated that addiction levels are between 25-50% in daily users of marijuana.
http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/marijuana-addictive

I don't think alcohol has such high levels of addiction.

I dont think cannabis is addictive at all, but alcohol sure is. I smoke occasionally for more than 20 years and still can do without with ease. I bet you can smoke cannabis every day for that time and stop with out any physical crisis but try that with alcohol.

I don't think it is as addictive as cannabis.
There are plenty of people who drink occasionally and don't become drunks.