"Reefer Madness" in the U.K.

[SHRED]

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Feel free to post comments there on this one.
I did.
We will see if they post it up.

:WARNING: unbelievable propaganda below.

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Smoking just one cannabis joint raises danger of mental illness by 40%
By FIONA MACRAE and EMILY ANDREWS - More by this author » Last updated at 23:57pm on 26th July 2007

Comments Comments
Cannabis

There are great risks in smoking cannabis, a new report has revealed
A single joint of cannabis raises the risk of schizophrenia by more than 40 per cent, a disturbing study warns.

The Government-commissioned report has also found that taking the drug regularly more than doubles the risk of serious mental illness.

Overall, cannabis could be to blame for one in seven cases of schizophrenia and other life-shattering mental illness, the Lancet reports.

The grim statistics - the latest to link teenage cannabis use with mental illness in later life - come only days after Gordon Brown ordered a review of the decision to downgrade cannabis to class C, the least serious category.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=471106&in_page_id=1770


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[wildbilln864]

1. done! thanks also! eom!

[malakai2]

2. Web news should be required to link to source material

I want to see the experimental design for this.

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

3. I Guess I'm Fucked

Mentally Deranged

[loudsue]

13. That's two of us.

In fact, I'm sitting here right now, mentally ill as hell, and I'm not even worried about it!

In fact, I'm going to get even MORE mentally ill right now.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

15. bogart

:hippie: :smoke:

[loudsue]

19. Ok. Your turn.

:smoke:

[HCE SuiGeneris]

21. I've moved on...

to Ben and Jerry's Mint Chocolate Cookie :9

Edited cause it's hard to read the label in the dark

[Swamp Rat]

4. The Daily Mail is a British tabloid.

The Daily Mail is a British newspaper and the oldest tabloid, first published in 1896. It is Britain's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun and arguably the most conservative in viewpoint. Its sister paper, the Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982, and an Irish version of the paper was launched on 6 February 2006. The Daily Mail was Britain's first daily newspaper aimed at what is now considered the middle-market and the first to sell 1 million copies a day.
The Mail was originally a broadsheet, but switched to its current tabloid format on 3 May 1971, on the 75th anniversary of its founding (on this date it also absorbed the Daily Sketch, which had previously been published as a tabloid by the same company). Its long-standing rival, the Daily Express, has a broadly similar political stance and target readership, but nowadays sells one-third the number of copies. Since 2005, the publisher of the Mail, the Daily Mail and General Trust, has been a FTSE 100 company, and the paper has a circulation of more than two million, giving it one of the largest circulations of any English language daily newspaper, and the twelfth highest of any newspaper in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail

[Greeby]

5. Don't pay attention to the Daily Hate-Mail

Bunch of right-wing mouth frothers

[emilyg]

6. BBC front page

[Diogenes2]

7. These assertions have no scientific basis...

and are laughable in their obvious absurdity. I can't believe anyone in this day and age would try to palm off crap "research" like this as a basis for a national drug policy. "Reefer Madness" Anslinger lives!

[smalll]

8. I don't think your headline is entirely fair -

I'm given to understand that in terms of law enforcement vis-a-vis pot, Britian became a de-facto legalized state during the Blair era.


I'm a little more worried about the mini-robot-helicopters they have flying around there now with police cameras on them. And I'm not generally a tin-foil-hatted conspiracy-theorist type with extreme fears of Elizabeth II, the Rothschilds or the Trilateral Commission. Heck, I even have doubts that Prescott Bush rivalled Goring and Goebbels as Hitler's head henchman, so you see how reasonable I am, but I don't like the idea of those robot-helicopter-cameras!

[EnviroBat]

37. The Robot Helicopters will eventually fail...

After enough people,(like me) start blowing them out of the sky for target practice. We don't have them here yet, but if they do come, they won't last long. I imagine they cost quite a bit of money too. Our crack police forces don't have the budgets to replenish the supplies of their expensive toys.

[madrchsod]

9. ya right

sounds like complete bullshit from my years of experience. from what i have seen over some 40+ years grass is one of the least harmful drug one can use

[The Straight Story]

10. Scientists would never lie in reports, so this must be true :) (nt)

[HCE SuiGeneris]

11. Best to keep the masses sedated with mother's milk and poverty,

can't have any free thinking (mentally ill?) cannabis users mucking up the political waters.

[Whoa_Nelly]

12. No wonder my friends think I'm crazy!

But, in (my personal stoned) REALITY

Am really pretty fucking cool!

[Usrename]

14. LOL

your sigline link is a riot..

:rofl:

[Whoa_Nelly]

16. Gotta love "Get Your War On"!

Here's the latest page of the series:

http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war66.html

[Usrename]

23. Hahaha..

yeah, that too, but I was talking about the youtube link..

here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnZb5wi_jsU

that's some funny stuff..

lol

what were we talking about? hehe...

[Whoa_Nelly]

29. mmmmmm....

BROWNIES!

[JeffR]

17. You are the personification of cool!

Maybe they mean "crazy" like in Beach Blanket Bingo. Like, crazy, man!

[Whoa_Nelly]

22. How did you KNOW I love Beach Blanket Bingo?!?!

It was the beginning of what Groovy was all about!

Dig it! :woohoo:

[JeffR]

24. Those racy swimsuits are going to get this thread locked!

B-)

[Whoa_Nelly]

27. It's not the suits...

It's the MOVES!

[Bennyboy]

18. Smoking Marijuana leads to

LOUD MUSIC!

[Mythsaje]

20. That's a steaming pile of dreck...

I can see anxiety, for some. But 40% schizophrenia?

:rofl:

Well, a good percentage of people who eat bread also end up with mental illnesses, therefore it's obvious that eating bread causes mental illness.

[KaptBunnyPants]

25. Uh huh.

Or could it be those who are least happy are most likely to use substances which alter their mood chemically? Self medication is not a new concept, and I doubt any serious scientific study would submit anything resembling this for peer review. Like many others, I'll save my outrage until I see this story verified by a legitimate news source.

edit after seeing BBC, thought this quote was interesting...

"It is possible that the people who use cannabis might have other characteristics that themselves increase risk of psychotic illness.
However, all the studies have found an association and it seems appropriate to warn members of the public about the possible risk."

Hmmm, so they admit the obvious flaw in their theory but submit the hysteria inducing story anyway. And here I thought the Lancet was a serious organization.

[Feron]

39. I was thinking along similar lines...

The symptoms of schizophrenia normally first present in early adulthood. So the simple fact that a few pot smokers develop that particular mental disorder is not particularly noteworthy. Pot may help control the symptoms and that is what may attract schizophrenics to the drug.

As you said, people find ways to self-medicate if they aren't getting proper treatment or marijuana may be a more effective treatment. Anti-psychotics can also have some nasty side effects as well.

The article is fearmongering at its best. Just because two things correlate does not always mean that one causes the other. Does marijuana cause cancer simply because a significant number of cancer patients smoke it?!

If marijuana use has presumably risen and schizophrenia diagnoses remain static, then it is plain that the drug doesn't play a role in the disorder. Why schizophrenics are drawn to marijuana is a far more interesting study than some sensational headline. But then again that probably wouldn't get a research grant. People would much rather blame a person for their disease.

[MisterP]

26. would 3 spliffs give you a 120%, or is it a Zeno's arrow kinda thing?

40%, then 64%, 78%, 87%, 92%, 95%, 97%, und so weiter?

[Warren DeMontague]

28. Oooh, that smell! Can't you smell that smell? Oooh that smell!

The smell of flaming bullshit.

[LeftishBrit]

30. The Daily Mail is BOTH highly sensationalist AND extremely right-wing

I'll wait to find out what the Lancet actually said.

So far, as I understand, medical research suggests that cannabis use before the age of 18, especially before 15, is associated with somewhat increased risk of later schizophrenia, though we don't know how much of this is because youngsters with a tendency to mental illness 'self-medicate' with cannabis.

Since the rate of schizophrenia has been fairly constant over time (one per cent), it is unlikely that cannabis plays a huge role. I would certainly recommend that under-18s avoid cannabis (as I would recommend that they avoid alcohol and tobacco), especially if they have a family history of schizophrenia; but I think that much of this is the Hate-Mail creating a sensational hullaballoo.

[muriel_volestrangler]

31. We Brits can emphasise this enough: the Daily Mail is sensationalist and right wing

and so should always be taken as a opinion, rather than honest reporting. It's about as reliable as the Washington Times.

So, if you find a story in the Daily Mail, look to see what a reliable news organisation is saying about it: BBC, Guardian, Independent - even the Daily Telegraph, while right wing, is much more honest in its news reporting, or the Murdoch-owned Times.

So, the BBC story on this is better for discussion: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6917003.stm

The "just one joint increases the chances by 40%" does not seem to be reported anywhere else. Instead, other sources seems to say that cannabis users, overall, are 40% more likely to have schizophrenic symptoms, and frequent users are twice as likely (so the figure for infrequent users is presumably less than 40%) - and they point out the "correlation is not causation" caveat.

People shouldn't be surprised that a drug potentially has a bad effect on some people, though. If an artificial drug was claimed to have no side effects whatsoever, how many people on DU would believe that? So why the widespread conviction here that cannabis can never have any side effects?

[Heidi]

32. That report is fear porn, plain and simple.

:thumbsdown:

[formercia]

33. Seeing 'Reefer Madness' and believing it will increase your chance

of mental illness to 100%.

[Heidi]

34. .

:thumbsup:

[mr blur]

35. Relax - the Daily Mail

is a hate-rag for right-wing morans.

[mainegreen]

36. This guy did the scientific study:

They could do a study proving the sky is green, that isn't going to change the overwhelming experience I've had that tells me otherwise.

[Fly by night]

38. From the GW Pharmaceuticals report, "Medical Uses of Marijuana"

GW is a British pharmaceutical firm that is growing cannabis and extracting its medically beneficial components for use in a sublingual spray. Note the criticisms of shoddy research on pot/mental illness and the larger number of references that indicate no relationship between pot use and mental illness. Now here's some real science:
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Mental Illness and Depression (GW Pharmaceuticals)

The use of cannabis by people with mental illness has historically been associated with claims of both benefits and harms (1, 2). In its recent review, the Institute of Medicine (3) observed (p. 106), ‘people with schizophrenia or with a family history of schizophrenia are likely to be at greater risk for adverse psychiatric effects from the use of cannabinoids,' and ‘there is little evidence that marijuana alone produces a psychosis that persists after the period of intoxication.'

In modern times, the suggestion that recreational cannabis use may be a risk factor for schizophrenia was first raised by Andreasson and collegeagues (4). Many of the other studies exploring this apparent association consist of retrospective analyses often relying on unreliable measures such as self-report, and are unable to distinguish association from causation. (5)(6)(7)(8). A recent retrospective and prospective examination of 232 newly diagnosed schizophrenic patients demonstrated no temporal correlation between substance abuse onset and that of psychosis (6). A recent review (7) concluded that cannabis may precipitate psychosis in vulnerable patients, increase relapse rates or produce dependency in those already affected. Similarly, in Italy (8), data supported a duality of experience such that some schizophrenics employ cannabis as self-treatment while in others it might be one factor predisposing to the disorder. It is noteworthy that endocannabinoid levels are elevated in the brains of schizophrenics (9), although the practical significance of this finding is not yet clear. The cannabis component cannabidiol may possess anti-psychotic activity (10), and a single case report was consistent with this (11).

Benefits were noted in depression measures in cancer patients treated with THC (12), and this has been supported by anecdotal reports (13). Both cannabidiol and nabilone (THC analogue) have demonstrated apparent benefit in clinical and experimental anxiety (10, 14, 15, 16). Anecdotal reports suggest that cannabis may alleviate symptoms of bipolar disease (17). The recent discovery that endocannabinoids regulate extinction of aversive memories (18) has led some to suggest the use of phytocannabinoids in treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

References
1. Russo EB. Handbook of psychotropic herbs: A scientific analysis of herbal remedies for psychiatric conditions. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press; 2001.
2. Grinspoon L, Bakalar JB. Marihuana, the forbidden medicine. Rev. and exp. ed. New Haven: Yale University Press; 1997.
3. Joy JE, Watson SJ, Benson JA, Jr. Marijuana and medicine: Assessing the science base. Washington, DC: Institute of Medicine; 1999.
4. Andreasson S, Allebeck P, Engstrom A, Rydberg U (1987). Cannabis and schizophrenia: a longitudinal study of Swedish conscripts. Lancet, ii, 1483 -86
5. Johns A. Psychiatric effects of cannabis. Br J Psychiatry 2001;178:116-22.
6. Buhler B, Hambrecht M, Loffler W, an der Heiden W, Hafner H. Precipitation and determination of the onset and course of schizophrenia by substance abuse--a retrospective and prospective study of 232 population-based first illness episodes. Schizophr Res 2002;54(3):243-51.
7. Degenhardt L, Hall W. Cannabis and psychosis. Curr Psychiatry Rep 2002;4(3):191-6.
8. Bersani G, Orlandi V, Kotzalidis GD, Pancheri P. Cannabis and schizophrenia: impact on onset, course, psychopathology and outcomes. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci 2002;252(2):86-92.
9. Leweke FM, Giuffrida A, Wurster U, Emrich HM, Piomelli D. Elevated endogenous cannabinoids in schizophrenia. Neuroreport 1999;10(8):1665-9.
10. Zuardi AW, Guimaraes FS. Cannabidiol as an anxiolytic and antipsychotic. In: Mathre ML, editor. Cannabis in medical practice: a legal, historical and pharmacological overview of the therapeutic use of marijuana. Jefferson, NC: McFarland; 1997. p. 133-141.
11. Zuardi AW, Morais SL, Guimaraes FS, Mechoulam R. Antipsychotic effect of cannabidiol . J Clin Psychiatry 1995;56(10):485-6.
12. Regelson W, Butler JR, Schulz J, Kirk T, Peek L, Green ML, et al. Delta 9-Tetrahydrocannabinol as an effective antidepressant and appetite- stimulating agent in advanced cancer patients. In: In: Braude MC, Szara S, ed. Pharmacology of marihuana. Vol 2. New York, Raven Press,; 1976. p. 763-776.
13. Russo EB, Mathre ML, Byrne A, Velin R, Bach PJ, Sanchez-Ramos J, et al. Chronic cannabis use in the Compassionate Investigational New Drug Program: An examination of benefits and adverse effects of legal clinical cannabis. Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics 2002;2(1):3-57. http://www.cannabis-med.org/jcant/russo_chronic_use.pdf
14. Zuardi AW, Cosme RA, Graeff FG, Guimaraes FS. Effects of ipsapirone and cannabidiol on human experimental anxiety. Journal of Psychopharmacology 1993;7(1):82-88.
15. Fabre LF, McLendon D (1981). The efficacy and safety of nabilone (a synthetic cannabinoid) in the treatment of anxiety. J Clin Pharm, 21, 377S-382S
16. Ilaria RL, Thornby JI, Fann WE (1981). Nabilone, a cannabinol derivative, in the treatment of anxiety neurosis. Current Therapeutic Research, 29, 943-9
17. Grinspoon L, Bakalar JB. The use of cannabis as a mood stabilizer in bipolar disorder: anecdotal evidence and the need for clinical research. J Psychoactive Drugs 1998;30(2):171-7.
18. Marsicano G, Wotjak CT, Azad SC, Bisogno T, Rammes G, Cascio MG, et al. The endogenous cannabinoid system controls extinction of aversive memories. Nature 2002;418(6897):530-4.

[Le Taz Hot]

40. I must not be smoking

the right stuff.