Anti-Cannabis Propoganda.

In this thread I would like us all to look at and evaluate the main-stream-media's anti-cannabis stance by fielding reports/articles that are negative towards cannabis and cannabis users.

To get the proverbial ball rolling on this, here is a Reuters article claiming that 'Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study'

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-marijuana-hypertension-idUSKBN1AP0JS

''LONDON (Reuters) - People who smoke marijuana have a three times greater risk of dying from hypertension, or high blood pressure, than those who have never used the drug, scientists said on Wednesday.

The risk grows with every year of use, they said.

The findings, from a study of some 1,200 people, could have implications in the United States among other countries. Several states have legalized marijuana and others are moving toward it. It is decriminalized in a number of other countries.

"Support for liberal marijuana use is partly due to claims that it is beneficial and possibly not harmful to health," said Barbara Yankey, who co-led the research at the school of public health at Georgia State University in the United States.

"It is important to establish whether any health benefits outweigh the potential health, social and economic risks. If marijuana use is implicated in cardiovascular diseases and deaths, then it rests on the health community and policy makers to protect the public."

Marijuana is also sometimes used for medicinal purposes, such as for glaucoma.

The study, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, was a retrospective follow-up study of 1,213 people aged 20 or above who had been involved in a large and ongoing National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. In 2005–2006, they were asked if they had ever used marijuana.

For Yankey's study, information on marijuana use was merged with mortality data in 2011 from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, and adjusted for confounding factors such as tobacco smoking and variables including sex, age and ethnicity.

The average duration of use among users of marijuana, or cannabis, was 11.5 years.

The results showed marijuana users had a 3.42-times higher risk of death from hypertension than non-users, and a 1.04 greater risk for each year of use.

There was no link between marijuana use and dying from heart or cerebrovascular diseases such as strokes.

Yankey said were limitations in the way marijuana use was assessed -- including that researchers could not be sure whether people had used the drug continuously since they first tried it.

But she said the results chimed with plausible risks, since marijuana is known to affect the cardiovascular system.

"Marijuana stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, leading to increases in heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen demand," she said.

Experts not directly involved in the study said its findings would need to be replicated, but already raised concerns.

"Despite the widely held view that cannabis is benign, this research adds to previous work suggesting otherwise," said Ian Hamilton, a lecturer in mental health at Britain's York University.''

Reporting by Kate Kelland, editing by Jeremy Gaunt

What a load of unmitigated CLAP-TRAP!

I don't see how they believe they reached any valid conclusions at all from this.

They looked at a study of 1,200 people who admitted to smoking pot 12 years ago, they did not say how much, or how long they smoked, they did not even include data to say if they were still smoking. They claim, death by high blood pressure but found no correlation between heart disease or strokes.

So what exactly are they claiming these people died from?

Hypertension in and of itself does not kill you. They don't say what killed them exactly. How many died from "hypertension" vs the average? Was this sample of 1,200 people random or where they picked back then for other factors? So far I can't see this as anything other than a scary study. The bias of the researchers also shows up in their interview on other sites. They made many assumptions and stated opinion as fact over and over. Furthermore, I have not been able to find out who paid for this study or even the most basic estimates on validity.

Very sloppy work and almost certainly a group who went looking for data points within a study to reach a preconceived conclusion. How much did they "massage" the data to reach this conclusion? Clearly quite a bit considering that they say "hypertension" not related to heart conditions or stroke.

By far the most common deaths from hypertension are in fact heart attacks and strokes and in a study this small if you remove the deaths from heart attack or stroke you are going to be left with a very very small number of people who could possibly have died from hypertension unrelated to heart attacks or stroke..... So it's likely they found a subset of data where 3 or 4 people died from something that might have been related to hypertension in the pot smokers and only 2 or 3 died on average from..... So you are really only looking at 1 or 2 extra people and you will always find that kind of statistical variation in a small group when looking at an even smaller portion of the whole.

I would suggest that this will be yet another "study" that proves to be unrepeatable in any actual scientific examination, which this clearly is not. But it will be cited by people even though it's yet to be peer reviewed or repeated in any way at all. Which of course is what has actually happens with practically every single piece like this. And confirmation bias being what it is, people who want to believe pot is going to kill you will believe this well after it's been debunked.

Sad but TRUE!

The number of people that have been using Cannabis therapeutically has surely been noticed by the those in the business of other kinds of "medicine"

And those that assume to be our overlords still have the same reasons as their predecessors to not want the populace partaking of our kind herb. . . consciousness control.

Nice post, Gypsy

Well Gypsy . This study and conclusion is a gross non-sense thing .
It has to be compare with USA general people health and more .

And there's also a big difference beetween what people admit and reality .
I would like to add some parameters to keep in mind, just a little question but important :
On 1200 random US people, how many cocaïne users ?

I wrote "cocaïne" and not "fast food" or "meth" because I don't want to fall into cliché .

Follow the money ! Who ordered this study ? Thomson/Reuters ? Big world company ..
They have big interests in publishing those craps for sure .

I am kind of curious what sort of controls were in place to account for different life circumstances. By that I mean, lots of folks have very stressful lives with job and family woes, stress is a big factor in hypertension. People often smoke weed or drink alcohol to help cope with the stress. Correlation does not equal causation however, the people with hypertension may smoke weed...but the cannabis is not reason for the hypertension. People with tumors get headaches so they take aspirin, so the pool of aspirin users correlates with the pool of people with tumors; but it would be dumb to say it is a cause. Since we are dealing with the Devils lettuce here, well sloppy science will abound and my guess is they can skew the data and results in whatever direction. It looks to be a pretty hard task to replicate their study/experiment so it's not likely to get challenged by alternative findings.

I would fully expect any study of smoking cannabis to show similar health impacts to smoking cigarettes, depending on scale of use.

This ad was floating around before the Question #4 vote in Mass.
"Thousands OF POT-SHOPS. More than McDonald's and Starbucks combined..." LOL.

[YOUTUBEIF]oycBIQ_aT78[/YOUTUBEIF]

i read that crap yesterday but didn't deem it worthy of this sites occupants.
if it comes across the AP or Rueters services you can bet it is anti-cannabis prohibition propaganda.
big pharma does not want this interfering with their mission.

I notice there's no mention of cigarette smoking in the data. I'd guess in a group of 'people who have tried cannabis' versus 'people who have never tried cannabis'. The group who has tried is far more likely to use tobacco.

Capt. Ahab's pot commercial is great. The ending where the woman has the shocking discovery that her son is a cannabis user. She should be glad he doesn't have to worry about going to prison now..

Reuters has always been the most Prohibitionist news agency

Just gonna put my .02 in. I'm ALL FOR pot obviously, but I personally know that SOME STRAINS do cause temporary elevations in heart rate and decreases in oxygen content.

It makes total sense that this happens because ANYTHING carried in the bloodstream that displaces oxygen is going to have that feature. Decreases in oxygen will create increases in both heart rate and blood pressure.

I know this to be true and observe this by using a pulse oximeter and sphygmomanometer. I did this not because I am concerned about weed, but because I do have a rapid heart rate often and I wanted to monitor it.

Now, having said that I have ALSO observed the opposite, but that is typically after having edibles infused with cannabis. I've seen 20 point drops in heart rate for me, as well as reduction of blood pressure by about 10-15 systolic, the diastolic may be impacted as well.

So this isn't a pro or anti message, it's just to say that absolutely drugs affect cardiovascular function. The question about whether or not that contributes to some cardiac event directly, indirectly or at all is still out there IMHO. There's simply not enough peer reviewed high quality evidence to suggest anything definitively.

Now, having said ALL THAT....SOMETHING is eventually going to get you. Maybe it's the extra pat of butter you put on your toast.....possibly it's that extra mile you didn't walk, maybe it's the never-ending psychological stress that manifests as physical duress from just working to make a living?

In the end, all that matters is that you enjoy life and try to be a good person. Maybe you'll squeeze out an extra month or year of life, but if you aren't even enjoying being around because you deny yourself of the simple pleasures that exist what's the point?

Quality over quantity, everything in moderation. Nothing is going to make you live forever, and it's arguable that the environmental pollution, psychosomatic noise, and the rest of just "being alive" is going to get you anyway. Heck, even oxygen is slowly killing us from the day we're born...the very substance that is the cornerstone of life is oxidizing us to death.

Smoke, be happy.

i would be interested to find out who paid for this so called study? it's the new way of things, the pharma co, pays the doc, scientist to build a study that can prove a particular conclusion. it's an insult to call a lot of this rubbish scientific study. it's often plain and simple unscientific. there is no info about their habits and life styles etc. what food they eat, how much exercize they do. it's just a propaganda piece not worth the paper it would take to print it out, let alone the ink.

I had open heart surgery in 2005, have smoked cannabis for 50+ years and am just fine thank you very much......had I never picked up a tobacco cigarette ( quit in 2005 ) I prolly would have never needed open heart surgery.

Gypsy's criticism also struck me on first read through a couple of days ago. Hypertension stresses the heart. If there is no effect on the heart then how do you die from high blood pressure?

Problem is none of us is qualified to either conduct proper scientific studies or really to criticize them. Takes lots of money and institutional support.

Studies and statistics are corrupt when the certain groups paying for them are the same ones profiteering from them.

Like I read the other day that 29% of all vehicular deaths in the USA where caused by drunk drivers.

In 2015, 10,265 people died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for nearly one-third (29%) of all traffic-related deaths in the United States.

Click to expand...

https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html

So I guess we should take the sober drivers off the road then since they kill more people than the drunks.

oldchuck said:

Gypsy's criticism also struck me on first read through a couple of days ago. Hypertension stresses the heart. If there is no effect on the heart then how do you die from high blood pressure?

Problem is none of us is qualified to either conduct proper scientific studies or really to criticize them. Takes lots of money and institutional support.

Click to expand...

seemed worthwhile to do some research on this research
to be fair i do see hypertension and cause of death described in other health studies
a finding of hypertension at the autopsy may be listed in cause of death
but just hypertension? that sounds incomplete to me
it's not a 'lie', it's an 'interpretation'

"Its all bullshit and its bad for you."

-George Carlin (RIP)

-Funk

I'm fairly certain accessndx's comment about some types of cannabis temporarily elevating heart rate and lowering blood oxygen levels is correct. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I believe it also temporarily increases blood pressure. But after the short increase in blood pressure and heart rate, then the heart rate and blood pressure drop below normal. If this is incorrect and someone has other information please correct me.
The reason this isn't 'bad', the effects are short term. There isn't any indication that these effects are long term. After five minutes the elevated blood pressure is normal or below normal.
Of course the real killer is cholesterol and 'bad' fats that clog the arteries. So when blood pressure increases it gets squeezed through the clogged arteries. This is why red wine is 'good'. It lowers blood pressure so it isn't getting squeezed through the clogged arteries. Cigarettes are 'bad' because it raises blood pressure for a long time. It isn't short term.
Lots of things increase blood pressure. Exercise, stress, sex, etc. So a short term increase in blood pressure is not 'bad'. I am putting bad and good in quotation marks because that is what popular science considers bad and good at the moment. Ten years from now we may have different notions of what's bad or good.

You're pretty much right rev. The effects are short term. Having said that, I can session for hours taking dabs and bong hits, and bowls...and bags...LMAO.

The effect which was 'short term' is in fact hours long and I do that for days and years on end, hence long term effect.

But, I digress: I saw this same article published again and read some interesting things that make me call "bullshit" on the whole study.

European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, Yankey looked at more than 1,200 people age 20 or older who had been recruited previously as part of a large and ongoing national health survey. In 2005, researchers asked them whether they had ever used marijuana or hashish. People who answered "yes" were classified as marijuana users.

Click to expand...

Ok, so you asked a bunch of folks if they ever smoked and then merged that with other data. That doesn't cover ALOT of territory that one would like to cover when talking to patients. Like, do you SMOKE ANYTHING ELSE? How about, DO YOU EXERCISE?
Do you have any congenital or hereditary things that could contribute to cardiac death or hypertension? What's your DIET LIKE? Are you taking any prescription drugs? Do you have a pacemaker, etc., etc. etc. I could literally go on for days with possible questions.

Here, let me put it another way: I asked the same clowns from the first study if they've ever had any alcohol to drink. Some of those folks died from hypertension for sure...but is there a connection? It's way too tenuous a connection to infer anything from the relationship. How about if I asked any of those folks if they liked scary movies? I betcha a percentage of those folks died and had hypertension as well, is there a connection? I don't know, but I'm not going to publish a study with results that say there's a connection between alcohol, scary movies and hypertensive death.

This was a low budget, very inefficient and ultimately useless study that only serves to terrify and confuse people. I'm not saying there is NO relationship, in fact I've already said the opposite....but as therevverend already alluded to: alot of stuff elevates blood pressure temporarily....including, but not limited to reading that stupid article about pot and hypertension.

Rueters wow

Rueters wow

I always use to think of them as non biased... i guess not so much anymore

Facts, I don't need any facts

Facts, I don't need any facts

Marijuana devastated Colorado, don’t legalize it nationally

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opin...galize-nationally-jeff-hunt-column/536010001/

That link is a little spamy, but it is legit.

How do these retards get their shit published?

___________________________________________________________

Marijuana devastated Colorado, don’t legalize it nationally
Jeff Hunt, Opinion contributor Published 7:00 a.m. ET Aug. 7, 2017 | Updated 2:06 p.m. ET Aug. 7, 2017

The proposed Marijuana Justice Act would remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act. Video provided by Newsy Newslook

Arrests are up. We still have a black market. And people are in danger.

Last week, Senator Cory Booker introduced the Marijuana Justice Act in an effort to legalize marijuana across the nation and penalize local communities that want nothing to do with this dangerous drug. This is the furthest reaching marijuana legalization effort to date and marks another sad moment in our nation’s embrace of a drug that will have generational consequences.

Our country is facing a drug epidemic. Legalizing recreational marijuana will do nothing that Senator Booker expects. We heard many of these same promises in 2012 when Colorado legalized recreational marijuana.

In the years since, Colorado has seen an increase in marijuana related traffic deaths, poison control calls, and emergency room visits. The marijuana black market has increased in Colorado, not decreased. And, numerous Colorado marijuana regulators have been indicted for corruption.

In 2012, we were promised funds from marijuana taxes would benefit our communities, particularly schools. Dr. Harry Bull, the Superintendent of Cherry Creek Schools, one of the largest school districts in the state, said, "So far, the only thing that the legalization of marijuana has brought to our schools has been marijuana."


In fiscal year 2016, marijuana tax revenue resulted in $156,701,018. The total tax revenue for Colorado was $13,327,123,798, making marijuana only 1.18% of the state's total tax revenue. The cost of marijuana legalization in public awareness campaigns, law enforcement, healthcare treatment, addiction recovery, and preventative work is an unknown cost to date.

Senator Booker stated his reasons for legalizing marijuana is to reduce "marijuana arrests happening so much in our country, targeting certain communities - poor communities, minority communities." It's a noble cause to seek to reduce incarceration rates among these communities but legalizing marijuana has had the opposite effect.

According to the Colorado Department of Public Safety, arrests in Colorado of black and Latino youth for marijuana possession have increased 58% and 29% respectively after legalization. This means that Black and Latino youth are being arrested more for marijuana possession after it became legal.

Furthermore, a vast majority of Colorado's marijuana businesses are concentrated in neighborhoods of color. Leaders from these communities, many of whom initially voted to legalize recreational marijuana, often speak out about the negative impacts of these businesses.

Senator Booker released his bill just a few days after the Washington Post reported on a study by the Review of Economic Studies that found "college students with access to recreational cannabis on average earn worse grades and fail classes at a higher rate." Getting off marijuana especially helped lower performing students who were at risk of dropping out. Since legalizing marijuana, Colorado's youth marijuana use rate is the highest in the nation, 74% higher than the national average, according to the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Report. This is having terribly negative effects on the education of our youth.

If Senator Booker is interested in serving poor and minority communities, legalizing marijuana is one of the worst decisions. There is much work to be done to reduce incarceration and recidivism, but flooding communities with drugs will do nothing but exacerbate the problems.

The true impact of marijuana on our communities is just starting to be learned. The negative consequences of legalizing recreational marijuana will be felt for generations. I encourage Senator Booker to spend time with parents, educators, law enforcement, counselors, community leaders, pastors, and legislators before rushing to legalize marijuana nationally. We’ve seen the effects in our neighborhoods in Colorado, and this is nothing we wish upon the nation.

Jeff Hunt is the Vice President of Public Policy at Colorado Christian University. Follow him on Twitter: @jeffhunt.

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @USATOpinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.