Remember John P. Walters?
Sigh…
We know marijuana is linked to mental illness — so what are we doing? by John P. Walters in the New York Post.
Yep. The same nonsense that he was promoting years ago. It’s the old “link” to schizophrenia story. And our own Servetus debunked the whole scare earlier this year: Alleged cannabis links to psychosis busted
Of course, Walters buries the important part… “The skeptical will note the study establishes no specific cause-and-effect process, which is more of a caution than a flashing red light.”
In fact, as you continue to read, you understand that he’s simply using the usual scare tactics in the headline in the hopes that people won’t really comprehend the lack of any real… substance in what he writes. He says:
Use your experience.
Almost everyone has family members and friends who have become victims of addiction.
Sometimes it is marijuana, sometimes it is booze, marijuana and other drugs.
Look at the addicted you walk past on downtown streets and the violent mental illness you observe or see reported in the news almost every day.
Yes, some of that mental illness is probably fueled by other addictive drugs such as meth.
But ask yourself how pervasive marijuana use can possibly be harmless to families and communities.
Marijuana’s connection to serious mental-health problems has been reported and studied for more than 100 years.
Yep. It has. And there’s still nothing there to justify not legalizing marijuana.
Former ONDCP Director John P. Walters has a few credibility problems. One is he’s now the CEO of a neocon “think tank” called the Hudson Institute whose tradition of thinking is to accept $7.9 million in funding from anonymous donors to defend or promote climate denial. His institute also attacked organic farming on behalf of Big Ag even though organic farming makes up just one-percent of the US agriculture industry. A military hardware manufacturer with a $10.7-billion-dollar yearly revenue, the Virginia based Huntington Ingalls Industries, hired the Hudson Institute to promote proposals to Congress that the US build some nuclear-powered 11-billion-dollar aircraft carriers and some more nuclear submarines.
The Hudson Institute’s services are not free. Far from it. So a big question is who is paying John P. Walters or the Hudson Institute to propagandize against marijuana at this late date in its legalization process? Walters has been retired from the ONDCP since 2009 when he first joined the organization.
Police in Uttar Pradesh, India, say rats ate over 500 kilograms of seized weed. The court wanted proof. Could researchers have provided the needed proof by investigating all the alleged marijuana-consuming psychotic rats roaming the streets?
And the rats operated way cheaper and more efficiently than the DEA.
Tourette syndrome is the latest disease to be effectively treated in a study using THC or CBD cannabinoids.
Cannabidiol (CBD) and its derivatives can make the opioid antidote Narcan (Naloxone) more effective in countering fentanyl ODs. […]
Psychedelic drugs are shown to reopen critical periods in the brain that speed social learning. Different psychedelics have different time spans of effectiveness.
United Airlines luggage handlers have been arrested for stealing people’s weed out of their luggage and reselling it. The bust was made by federal authorities.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco/sfo-baggage-handlers-arrested/3257221/
The FDA is gearing up to oversee clinical trials of psychedelic drugs. They’ve issued a draft guidance so that “You’re not sticking your neck out as much as you would 10 years ago, as one research director said”:
Facilitator credentialing has been criticized as burdening the research teams with too much cumbersome bureaucracy and monitoring. Researchers also expressed a wish to conduct experiments on healthy volunteers who have no mental pathologies and contrast them with patients who have PTSD, addictions, and so forth. Experts and representatives will be allowed 60 days to offer comments where such matters are expected to be resolved,
I support research on psychedelics for depression but have concerns over costs of treatment. I’ve seen ranges of $10,000-to-$15,000. Who can afford that but the wealthy?
Are you familiar with Mindbloom? Lots of vets push ketamine (no pun intended–for the same reason you never give a dentist a horse as a present) for PTSD. Mushrooms are quite more cost-effective. Too bad Fentanyl is poisoning our nation, LSD isn’t considered safe, unless you really trust the source, plus with all those 2CB and 25I-Nbome compounds that can create overdoses–with just a little blotter paper or liquid.
Thanks for the heads-up about Mindbloom. For me, weed usually handles any depression I may encounter. Too bad that we can’t trust getting the real-deal LSD anymore. I’ve got three blotter sheets in picture frames hanging on my walls.
Penn State is the recipient of a federal research grant for increasing the economic development of ecologically directed hemp products:
Researchers at the University of Central Florida have discovered an outstanding flaw in the health insurance system. Opioid addiction medications are the least covered by insurance plans that are available to people with addictions and who are members of the plans.
Improvements were made in the treatments of seedlings with ethylene that improve plant growth. The standard ethylene treatment was altered in a way that eliminated the reductions in plant stress tolerance occurring with previous methods.
I can’t tell you how proud I was to blow hash smoke in John Walters face in Blunt Brothers coffee shop in BC while I was a refugee back in 2003!
Berkeley’s most famous head shop and a celebrated city institution, Annapurna, is closing after 50 years of service to its community and to the cause of marijuana freedom.
Owned by Al Geyer, Annapurna was the only head shop left standing after the Reagan purge back when the “just-say-no-to-drugs” campaign claimed head shops were corrupting little children. No one in Berkeley cared that the shop was there, so it stayed open.
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2023/08/03/annapurna-berkeley-first-head-shop-closing
In a first, researchers at Lund University in Sweden have measured the brain waves in rats on LSD or ketamine:
UCLA researchers are studying cannabinoids other than THC that have physical and mental effects not yet fully understood. One chemical group is showing up in dispensary products. They’re called HHCs.
The use of gene therapy in primates to treat alcoholism shows promising results in preventing relapses after quitting drinking alcohol. Addictions to other substances that affect the same neural circuitry might be treatable as well.
Studies at the Indiana School of Medicine revealed a different brain region implicated in cocaine addiction:
Researchers at Florida Atlantic University have discovered a gene that modifies signaling by dopamine. Its discovery furthers the goal of finding a cure for addiction.
Need to quit cigarettes? Try theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation.
Researchers have discovered a brain network common to people with addictions to nicotine, alcohol, cocaine or heroin.
The fastest growing group of cannabis consumers include women who use it to relieve menopause symptoms, and adults age 50 or over.
Danish scientists have demonstrated in a study using rats that microdosing with psilocybin mushrooms can prove therapeutic:
It’s not called weed for nothing. Marijuana grew like a weed and was found and used everywhere in the old world by humans for at least 10,000 years, countering previous claims that its use was more contemporary:
A study by researchers in Hawaii at the American College of Chest Physicians compared the outcomes of COVID-19 infection and marijuana use to the lack thereof:
This is what’s called a BFD. I have been aware of the ability of cannabis to inhibit development of proinflammatory cytokines since before Covid-19 was around. I anticipated that pot smokers would get some benefit but these results are still a bit surprising.
I seem to recall that some sources were claiming that smoking pot would increase the risk and enhance Covid symptoms. Some people just can’t wrap their heads around the idea cannabinoids in smoke are helpful to good health.
The biggest threat to my well-being is the damn childproof packaging that comes with dispensary products. Needed a pair of gardening shears to open a RSO syringe recently.
CBD and CBG are potential drug candidates for treating bone fracture patients:
Eco-friendly hemp fibers can be treated to produce a robust flexible electrical conductor or electrode enabling the development of wearable devices that can track body movements.
CBD minus any THC content has been discovered to exist in a weed growing in Brazil.
If CBD isolates performed better than whole-plant CBD I’d be more excited about this discovery. Whole-plant CBD contains small amounts of THC in addition to terpenes and other cannabinoids like CBN.
THC-free isolated CBD is a prohibitionist’s dream and is medically inferior for most patients.
Research done at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México demonstrates that marijuana consumers increase their empathy with use.
Cannabinoids may have evolved as natural pesticides:
CBD outperforms opiates once again in the realm of pain reduction in dentistry and lack of side effects like addiction: