The media is often up for a juicy pot-related study, without requiring much critical thought.
The latest outrage-du-jour is that people are talking about marijuana… on Twitter.
Pro-marijuana ‘tweets’ are sky-high on Twitter
Analyzing every marijuana-related Twitter message sent during a one-month period in early 2014, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that the “Twitterverse” is a pot-friendly place. In that time, more than 7 million tweets referenced marijuana, with 15 times as many pro-pot tweets sent as anti-pot tweets. The findings are reported online Jan. 22 in the Journal of Adolescent Health and will appear in February in the journal’s print edition.
Most of those sending and receiving pot tweets were under age 25, with many in their teens, a demographic group at increased risk for developing marijuana dependence and other drug-related problems.
“It’s a concern because frequent marijuana use can affect brain structures and interfere with cognitive function, emotional development and academic performance,” said first author Patricia A. Cavazos-Rehg, PhD, an assistant professor of psychiatry and scholar in the Washington University Institute for Public Health.”
OMG, people are talking about pot. And they’re not saying enough bad things about it.
Really? Is this what passes for psychiatric science?
This is the same researcher who did a smaller study last year to “assess the content of ‘tweets’ and the demographics of followers of a popular pro-marijuana Twitter handle,” and came up with the following conclusion:
Our findings underscore the need for surveillance efforts to monitor the pro-marijuana content reaching young people on Twitter.
For what possible purpose?
Perhaps Patricia A. Cavazos-Rehg should get a twitter account and just say a lot of bad things about marijuana to balance things out.
People are talking about marijuana. And they’re no longer willing to spout the false propaganda fed to them. You really think you can put the cat back in the bag?
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The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends removing Cannabis from Schedule One.
Though you wouldn’t realize that by just reading the headline…
Pediatricians on medical marijuana: not so fast
This is reluctant and trepidatious acceptance, but with all the scary unfounded propaganda they still dare use…
Best comment so far:
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If I were willing to regulate any speech the first in line would be headlines over stories about cannabis. In my idea of censorship those headlines would have to bear at least a passing resemblance to the article’s content. How about a new round of “dueling headlines” culled from the “there’s more than one way to spin a fact” category?:
Pediatricians Say Don’t Lock Up Teenagers For Using Marijuana
NPR (blog)-9 hours ago
Across the country, efforts to make marijuana more accessible have quickly gained traction. Medical marijuana is now legal in 23 states, and recreational use is …
Pediatricians Oppose Medical Marijuana, with Some Exceptions
Live Science-11 hours ago
Major Doctors’ Group Supports Marijuana Decriminalization
ThinkProgress-9 hours ago
Pediatric Academy Now Says Medical Marijuana May Help Some Ill…
In-Depth-NBCNews.com-21 hours ago
Pediatricians Urge DEA to Reclassify Medical Marijuana to Boost…
Blog-Wall Street Journal (blog)-20 hours ago
New recommendations for medical marijuana cheer Utah parents of…
In-Depth-Salt Lake Tribune-1 hour ago
” You really think you can put the cat back in the bag?
Of course, they do. The unconscious arrogance of those who’ve held power too long usually erupts into silliness like this.
Until recently the prohibs controlled the behavior of the LameStream Media through access to their official mouthpieces via ‘official channels’…which only disseminated lies and half-truths.
Fearful of being cut off, the lapdogs of the LSM, already having been reduced from snarling investigative Dobermans to happily panting Pomeranians, thanks to corp-rat pressure from above, soon learned the interesting trick of swallowing prohib BS whole without it ever touching the lining of their alimentary canals, and defecating said BS, free of logical mastication or editorial digestive juices, to emerge in an almost pristine condition.
Thus was born the practice of cut-and-paste ‘journalism’. Richard Cowan is once more vindicated every time this happens: he said long ago that a major reason for the continuance of prohibition could be summed up in two words: “Bad journalism”
With the advent of the Internet, all that is changing. With no real information gatekeepers, reality looks a lot different from that described by said gatekeepers for so long.
The prohibs were sheltered by the LSM’s gatekeeper willingness to protect them. The Internet has knocked huge holes in the wall of that shelter, with more being punched through every day, and the prohibs are now exposed (in more ways than one) and are standing on the windy corner, being blasted with gusts of raw, freezing-cold truth, as it’s stripping away their clothing made of lies piece-by-piece.
And, unlucky for them, the wind chill factor is dropping…
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I tried to put a cat back in a cat travel cage once. If putting a cat back into a bag is in any way comparable then I highly recommend that it be avoided in all but the most urgent of circumstances.
“…he said long ago that a major reason for the continuance of prohibition could be summed up in two words: ‘Bad journalism'”
A terribly serious and undisclosed conflict of interest (one between benefiting journalists or the public “need to know” about government corruption) exists due to the mainstream media’s dominant reporting of tragic events.
Anyone familiar with journalism understands that the industry is highly competitive, so a journalist needs continuous access to the freshest newsworthy information for any possible advantage therein. That obviously means a surviving journalist must establish and sustain beneficial relationships with those people providing that information.
The group of people essentially always relied upon to provide newsworthy information about tragic events is our government.
While the mainstream media can safely go after ostracized government individuals wrestling with various scandals, and they can get away with exercising subtle political bias when their audience basically appreciates that bias, they cannot go after (honestly humiliate by extremely ripping into) a policy as abhorrent as the war on [some] drugs without risking “biting the hand that feeds” information-wise. For several decades, they supported (and still overwhelmingly support) that policy and feel the need to abandon their journalism code of ethics for that support.
The public (basically now through posterity) urgently needs to understand such conflict of interest effectively renders mainstream media as state-run media.
To eliminate that conflict (increasingly urgent for journalists due to public undermining of journalistic credibility online), journalists fearing their loss of credibility — such fear arguably responsible for the occasional ‘reporting cracks’ recently against that policy support — need to abandon the need for reporting tragic events (and successfully promote their consequent ‘only for the public good’ credibility to survive).
That elimination is unlikely on the one mainstream media hand (reporting tragedy is simply too convenient), but journalists online can turn to the other hand by becoming more granular in their reporting and set themselves up as the journalism equivalent of the government accountability office in some cases, while also offering content focused upon one or more professions/passions/etc. — i.e. activities that never rely upon that conflict of interest against the public good.
Though expensive to publicly expose corruption, and much less expensive to simply put a microphone in a government official’s face and basically repeat that message, journalists caring about their code of ethics and their professional legacy (in part by protecting their journalistic credibility) have no choice but to abandon their obvious tragedy addiction (and all of the undeniable societal harm, including sending the wrong message to children, that comes with that unethically unreported addiction).
Two public interventions are seriously promptly needed for the public good. One intervenes on behalf of journalistic integrity against tragedy addiction. The other intervenes on behalf of a legitimate (so credible) rule-of-law against prohibition (also tragedy) addiction.
Interesting, isn’t it, that the article is published, not in the hard-nosed science section, but in the ethereal “Psychology and Sociology” section.
Nothing to do with scientifically-derived facts, only ‘feelings’. Evidently, hers and that of the prohib cohort, and only theirs.
So typical of a prohib’s desire for control over others. Classic textbook case. They all need ‘help’ of that nature, but I’m not qualified…
Sciencenews.com sounds like one of those clickbait churnalism sites popular on Yahoo. Copied-and-pasted examples (just from today’s page):
As soon as one ‘Uber for weed’ startup gets cut down, another grows in its place
In Case You Missed It, This New Marijuana Study Has a Smoking Revelation (GWPH)
IRS Advice On Marijuana: Deduct It…But Prepare For 50% Tax
Marijuana Has Surprising Effects On Athletic Performance
Taylor Swift shares photos from tropical holiday in Hawaii
I don’t know if everyone has the same Yahoo page or if they tracked me to this site, or a certain porn page, but please click and help our advertisers! Crut’s pediatrician story is also there.
No doubt this “research” is funded by tax-payers through NIDA.
“Funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), grants R01 DA032843, R01 DA039455, K02 DA021237 and R01 DA031288.†Need we say more? What else are we to expect from NIDA prohibitches?
Following up on the WUSTL publication and its various news outlets, here’s another clearing house of junk science for marijuana, complete with juicy titles like:
All pseudo-science at its worst. The U.S. government buys into it with taxpayer’s money like some gambling addict hoping for that one lucky break — that one moment when after several millennia the laws of physics recede and something really bad about marijuana is finally revealed.
I joined twitter in Jan 2012 and I have 21,200 of those tweets, all about the drug war and marijuana. All the facts I can find.
Surveilance? This is America,Patricia A. Cavazos-Rehg. Even adolescents deserve to know the truth. They can’t get it from you.
80 years of research and still milking the NIDA money cow. You and your cohorts must be slow studies.
Freedom of speech isn’t one of your majors I’ll bet.
p.s.- psychiatric science?
You mean the art of prescribing dangerous and physically addictive SSRI’s and anti-psychotics and speed (amphetamines) to young adolescents for their doctor approved treatment?
I seriously urge surveillance over this run away excuse for a study masquerading as treatment advice.
I am so angry about this. She is asking for assistance from what? Secret federal agencies capable of monitoring social content for the purpose of “weeding out” the bad elements (as defined by Patricia A. Cavazos-Rehg)? What arrogance! At the very least she is inferring needing assistance from law enforcement. Or who?
This fascist approach to wielding her authority just reeks of authoritarianism (http://tinyurl.com/m8t8k).
American Academy of Pediatrics Calls For Rescheduling Cannabis
http://shar.es/1bFaPF
Hey guys, what’s your position on skateboards? Do you think skateboard legalisation in Norway* was a mistake?
*http://www.oslogames.no/fakta/history
There’s a link to submitting an ‘e-letter’ here (right hand box): http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2015/01/20/peds.2014-4146
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what a surprise, if you can’t beat em…
call to censor them?
Man, this place is stupid.
apparently people here have no clue what the word surveillance means within the context of public health research. She’s not calling for additional NSA snooping into your personal lives to see if you’re smoking a joint or not. All she is calling for is for additional public health research into existing sources of anonymous data to inform psychiatric epidemiological knowledge vis-à -vis substance use. Public health researchers have also called for increased surveillance of the use of alternative tobacco products…not so they can somehow identify individual users, but to understand the impact such products are having on public health at a national level by including questions about whether or not people are using them or how people are using them in existing yearly national health and psychiatric epidemiology surveys. Look I am anything but a prohibitionist – far from it in fact-and I happen to know Dr. Cavazos personally and I’m telling you you guys are completely misinterpreting what she means by “surveillance”.