"What weed smokers need to know before going into surgery"

If you are a weed smoker, it is really important for you to tell your doctor before undergoing surgery, as regular marijuana users need more anesthesia for surgery than non-users to ensure they become, and stay, sedated and don't awaken mid-procedure. Melissa Pandika writes that and much more in an excellent article here in Mic.

A holy weekend

Did you know this is a holy weekend? Yes, it is 4-20, and I have composed a song for the celebrants. It goes like this...

Holy, holy marijuana,
Holy, holy marijuana,
Holy, holy marijuana,
My lungs are burning now!

Hickenlooper announces candidacy

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper has officially announced that he is a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020. Will he brag about how many young Coloradans are hooked on marijuana?

"The more cannabis you smoke, the more likely you are to be a loser!"

Alexander Robertson reports in the Daily Mail,

International research has revealed that the more cannabis you smoke, the more likely you are to be lower paid and have relationship difficulties.

The study followed children from birth up to the age of 38 and found people who smoked cannabis four or more days a week over many years ended up in a lower social class than their parents.

It also found that regular and persistent users ended up with lower-paying, less skilled and less prestigious jobs than those who were not regular cannabis smokers.

Financial, work-related and relationship difficulties were further experienced by those taking the drug, which worsened as the number of years of regular cannabis use progressed.

The study, conducted by a team of researchers led by Magdalena Cerda at the University of California and Avshalom Caspi and Terrie Moffitt at Duke University, appeared in the journal Clinical Psychological Science.

'Our research does not support arguments for or against cannabis legalization,' said Cerda. 'But it does show that cannabis was not safe for the long-term users tracked in our study.

'Our study found that regular cannabis users experienced downward social mobility and more financial problems such as troubles with debt and cash flow than those who did not report such persistent use.

'Regular long-term users also had more antisocial behaviors at work, such as stealing money or lying to get a job, and experienced more relationship problems, such as intimate partner violence and controlling abuse.'

Researchers claimed the study was important as it addresses an array of 'potentially confounding factors' not included in past studies assessing cannabis' long-term effects on users.

Economic and social problems persisted in long-term, regular users of pot even after the authors accounted for other potential differences between regular cannabis users and other participants.

These factors included socioeconomic problems in childhood, lower IQ, antisocial behavior and depression in adolescence, higher levels of impulsivity, lower motivation to achieve, criminal conviction of cannabis users, and abuse of alcohol and hard drugs.

Read more here.

Marijuana alters the DNA of sperm

Alexandra Thompson reports in the Daily Mail,

Men should stop using cannabis for at least six months before they hope to father children, scientists have warned.

Researchers took sperm samples from 12 men who used the drug at least once a week and found it altered the DNA of their swimmers.

Changes were found in the DNA that codes for both growth and organ development, with such genetic mutations even being linked to cancer.

Read more here.

Rahm Emmanuel. Where have I heard that name before?

Oh yes, I remember now. He was Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama, wasn't he?

Wyoming traffic stop yields over $7 million worth of marijuana!

Madeline Farber reports for Fox News,

Officials with the Wyoming Highway Patrol seized more than $7 million worth — about 1,849 pounds — of marijuana during a traffic stop on Wednesday.

Around 11:30 a.m., a trooper with the state’s highway patrol stopped a Dodge Ram pickup truck that was pulling a flatbed trailer. During the inspection, the trooper’s K-9 officer was “alerted to the odor of narcotics within the load of the trailer,” the Wyoming Highway Patrol said in an online statement.

Read more here.

Marijuana. "“The mantra about how this is a harmless, natural, and non-addictive substance—it’s now known by everybody. And it’s a lie.”

With the increasingly permissive cannabis legislation across the country, Annie Lowrey writes at The Atlantic,

self-described cannabis-use disorders are becoming more common.

Public-health experts worry about the increasingly potent options available, and the striking number of constant users. “Cannabis is potentially a real public-health problem,” said Mark A. R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at New York University. “It wasn’t obvious to me 25 years ago, when 9 percent of self-reported cannabis users over the last month reported daily or near-daily use. I always was prepared to say, ‘No, it’s not a very abusable drug. Nine percent of anybody will do something stupid.’ But that number is now [something like] 40 percent.” They argue that state and local governments are setting up legal regimes without sufficient public-health protection, with some even warning that the country is replacing one form of reefer madness with another, careening from treating cannabis as if it were as dangerous as heroin to treating it as if it were as benign as kombucha.

But cannabis is not benign, even if it is relatively benign, compared with alcohol, opiates, and cigarettes, among other substances. Thousands of Americans are finding their own use problematic in a climate where pot products are getting more potent, more socially acceptable to use, and yet easier to come by, not that it was particularly hard before.

For Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, the most compelling evidence of the deleterious effects comes from users themselves. “In large national surveys, about one in 10 people who smoke it say they have a lot of problems. They say things like, ‘I have trouble quitting. I think a lot about quitting and I can’t do it. I smoked more than I intended to. I neglect responsibilities.’ There are plenty of people who have problems with it, in terms of things like concentration, short-term memory, and motivation,” he said. “People will say, ‘Oh, that’s just you fuddy-duddy doctors.’ Actually, no. It’s millions of people who use the drug who say that it causes problems.”

Users or former users I spoke with described lost jobs, lost marriages, lost houses, lost money, lost time. Foreclosures and divorces. Weight gain and mental-health problems. And one other thing: the problem of convincing other people that what they were experiencing was real. A few mentioned jokes about Doritos, and comments implying that the real issue was that they were lazy stoners. Others mentioned the common belief that you can be “psychologically” addicted to pot, but not “physically” or “really” addicted. The condition remains misunderstood, discounted, and strangely invisible, even as legalization and white-marketization pitches ahead.

The country is in the midst of a volte-face on marijuana. The federal government still classifies cannabis as a Schedule I drug, with no accepted medical use. (Meth and PCP, among other drugs, are Schedule II.) Politicians still argue it is a gateway to the use of things like heroin and cocaine. The country still spends billions of dollars fighting it in a bloody and futile drug war, and still arrests more people for offenses related to cannabis than it does for all violent crimes combined.

...“The mantra about how this is a harmless, natural, and non-addictive substance—it’s now known by everybody. And it’s a lie.”

Thousands of businesses, as well as local governments earning tax money off of sales, are now literally invested in that lie. “The liquor companies are salivating,” Matt Karnes of GreenWave Advisors told me. “They can’t wait to come in full force.” He added that Big Pharma was targeting the medical market, with Wall Street, Silicon Valley, food businesses, and tobacco companies aiming at the recreational market.

...Perhaps most important might be reintroducing some reasonable skepticism about cannabis, especially until scientists have a better sense of the health effects of high-potency products, used frequently. Until then, listening to and believing the hundreds of thousands of users who argue marijuana is not always benign might be a good start.

Read more here.

Gardner puts discretionary federal marijuana enforcement above U.S. national security

Alfred S. Regnery reports in Breitbart,

John Demers, the man President Trump nominated last September to head Justice’s National Security Division, is waiting to be confirmed by the Senate because Cory Gardner, Republican Senator from Colorado, has a beef with Attorney General Sessions over enforcement of Federal marijuana laws in Colorado. Yes, you read that right. There is no permanent presidential appointee in charge of combatting terrorism at the Justice Department because a Republican senator has put discretionary federal marijuana enforcement above U.S. national security in his priorities.

...That one Senator is capable – and willing — to hold up the machinery of the federal government, particularly in an area as important as protecting the country from terrorism – is nothing short of irresponsibility, and is the worst kind of example of how politics dominates everything in Washington, including reason.

Read more here.
Read more here

Some risks from being dependent on marijuana

Alexandra Thompson reports in Mail Online,

Cannabis users are more likely to experience negative emotions, particularly feeling alienated from others, new research reveals.

People who use marijuana are significantly more likely to feel that others wish them harm or are deceiving them, a US study found.

Brain scans also reveal the class-B drug increases signal connectivity in regions of the brain that have previously been linked to psychosis, the research adds, which is associated with severe depression.

Teenage cannabis users are particularly affected as their brains are still developing, according to the researchers.

In the US, 44 percent of those aged 12 or over have used cannabis at some point in their lives.

Cannabis users are more likely to experience negative emotions, particularly feeling alienated

GOING FROM BEING AN OCCASIONAL MARIJUANA USER TO INDULGING EVERY DAY RAISES A PERSON'S RISK OF PSYCHOSIS BY 159%
Going from being an occasional marijuana user to indulging every day increases the risk of psychosis by up to 159 percent, research revealed last July.

Marijuana is thought to cause psychosis-like experiences by increasing a user's risk of depression, a study found. The two mental health conditions have previously been linked.

Frequently abusing the substance also significantly reduces a user's ability to resist socially unacceptable behavior when provoked, the research adds.

Study author Josiane Bourque from the University of Montreal, said: 'Our findings confirm that becoming a more regular marijuana user during adolescence is, indeed, associated with a risk of psychotic symptoms.

'[Psychosis symptoms] may be infrequent and thus not problematic for the adolescent, when these experiences are reported continuously, year after year, then there's an increased risk of a first psychotic episode or another psychiatric condition.'

How the research was carried out

The researchers, from the National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse in Bethesda, Maryland, analyzed 60 people, half of which were cannabis dependent.

The study's participants completed a questionnaire that asked them about their feelings of stress, aggression, reactivity and alienation.

Brain scans were also taken of all of the participants.

Link between cannabis and mental health

Dr Cameron Carter, editor of the journal Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, where the study was published, said: 'These brain imaging data provide a link between changes in brain systems involved in reward and psychopathology and chronic cannabis abuse, suggesting a mechanism by which heavy use of this popular drug may lead to depression and other even more severe forms of mental illness.'

According to study author Dr Peter Manza, measuring brain activity is relatively easy and non-invasive.

Therefore, the procedure used in the investigation could be carried out to monitor cannabis users' mental health risks.

This comes after researchers from Warwick Medical School discovered in December last year teenage cannabis use may increase a person's risk of suffering from bipolar disorder in later life.

People who used cannabis at least two-to-three times a week at 17 years old are more likely to experience hypomania in their earlier 20s, according to the first study of its kind.

Go here to watch video.

Long term use of marijuana can bring serious misery

Pauline Bartolone reports for Kaiser Health News that heavy use of marijuana can bring people some serious misery. A small percentage of people who smoke marijuana find that long-term use makes them sick with a violent vomiting illness. Read more here.

There is a college degree program for that!

USA Today has a story explaining where you can get a college degree in growing marijuana. It also has an interactive map showing where it is legal for medicinal purposes, recreational use, and for Cannabidiol oil only. Read more here.

Not so fast, Booker!

Jeff Hunt writes at azcentral,

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.

Marijuana use is associated with a three-fold risk of death from hypertension

Science Daily reports,

Marijuana use is associated with a three-fold risk of death from hypertension, according to research published today in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.

... "We found that marijuana users had a greater than three-fold risk of death from hypertension and the risk increased with each additional year of use."

In the market for a new car? You might want to look at the Ford Fusion!

Ohio's Vindy.com reports,

The head of the Youngstown Federal Drug Enforcement Administration says a recent marijuana-smuggling operation with ties to Warren is the first of its kind he has seen in this area.

In fact, said Bob Balzano, who runs the local DEA office, the only time he has heard of the method being deployed was in April, when a similar discovery was made in Minnesota.

The marijuana was found last week inside the wheel well for a spare tire in a new Ford Fusion which was manufactured in Sonora, Mexico, at a Ford dealership in Kent, after one of the vehicles was unloaded from a car carrier, Balzano said.

Investigators were then able to find 14 more packages of marijuana in other Fusions, which all came through a rail yard in Warren.

All together, about 14.5 per kilos per car, or 400 pounds of marijuana, was found. It has a street value between $400,000 to $1 million.

The Portage County Sheriff’s Office is also investigating, along with the DEA.

Read more about the case in Friday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.

Pro-marijuana groups worried

At the Washington Examiner, Kelly Cohen reports,

Attorney General Jeff Sessions created a wave of worry among pro-marijuana groups this week when he said he doesn't think the United States is a better place with "more people smoking pot."

"I am definitely not a fan of expanded use of marijuana," Sessions said Monday. "But states, they can pass the laws they choose. I would just say, it does remain a violation of federal law to distribute marijuana throughout any place in the United States, whether a state legalizes it or not."

Sessions' comments paralleled those of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who said last week that states with legalized recreational marijuana use will see "greater enforcement" of federal laws.

Read more and watch an interview here.

Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome

Jonathan Lapook reports for CBS,

For more than two years, Lance Crowder was having severe abdominal pain and vomiting, and no local doctor could figure out why. Finally, an emergency room physician in Indianapolis had an idea.

“The first question he asked was if I was taking hot showers to find relief. When he asked me that question, I basically fell into tears because I knew he had an answer,” Crowder said.

The answer was cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, or CHS. It’s caused by heavy, long-term use of various forms of marijuana. For unclear reasons, the nausea and vomiting are relieved by hot showers or baths.

“They’ll often present to the emergency department three, four, five different times before we can sort this out,” said Dr. Kennon Heard, an emergency room physician in Aurora, Colorado.

He co-authored a study showing that since 2009, when medical marijuana became widely available, emergency room visits diagnoses for CHS in two Colorado hospitals nearly doubled. In 2012, the state legalized recreational marijuana.

“It is certainly something that, before legalization, we almost never saw,” Heard said. “Now we are seeing it quite frequently.”

Outside of Colorado, when patients do end up in an emergency room, the diagnosis is often missed. Partly because doctors don’t know about CHS, and partly because patients don’t want to admit to using a substance that’s illegal.

CHS can lead to dehydration and kidney failure, but usually resolves within days of stopping drug use. That’s what happened with Crowder, who has been off all forms of marijuana for seven months.

“Now all kinds of ambition has come back. I desire so much more in life and, at 37 years old, it’s a little late to do it, but better now than never,”he said.

CHS has only been recognized for about the past decade, and nobody knows exactly how many people suffer from it. But as more states move towards the legalization of marijuana, emergency room physicians like Dr. Heard are eager to make sure both doctors and patients have CHS on their radar.

Clemency denied

Tana Ganeva writes in the Washington Post about a black man who was convicted of pot possession and conspiracy to distribute. He has served 8 years, and asked President Obama for clemency. Clemency was denied. He got life without parole. Read more here.
Maybe if he were an illegal immigrant he would have gotten clemency.

"Marijuana may be harmful to the heart and blood vessels"

Date:
November 13, 2016
Source:
American Heart Association
Summary:
Active marijuana use may double the risk of stress cardiomyopathy, an uncommon heart muscle malfunction that can mimic heart attack symptoms, according to new research.

Active marijuana use may double the risk of stress cardiomyopathy, an uncommon heart muscle malfunction that can mimic heart attack symptoms, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2016.

The researchers found that marijuana users were almost twice as likely to develop stress cardiomyopathy compared to non-users, even after taking other cardiovascular risk factors into consideration. Active marijuana use was identified either by information provided by the patient in their medical history, or by a marker in the patient's urine.

"The effects of marijuana, especially on the cardiovascular system, are not well known yet. With its increasing availability and legalization in some states, people need to know that marijuana may be harmful to the heart and blood vessels in some people," said Amitoj Singh, M.D. study co-author and chief cardiology fellow at St. Luke's University Health Network in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Stress cardiomyopathy is a sudden, usually temporary, weakening of the heart muscle that reduces the heart's ability to pump, leading to chest pain, shortness of breath, dizziness and sometimes fainting.
Read more here.

9 more states voting on marijuana measures today

Christianna Silva writes,

Trump vs. Clinton isn’t the only divisive question on the ballot this Election Day. Many voters will be considering marijuana legalization as well. Over the last 20 years, 25 states and Washington, D.C. have legalized or decriminalized medical marijuana, 15 have legalized the use of cannabis oil and four (plus D.C.) have approved recreational marijuana entirely. And today, nine more states are voting on marijuana measures — five (Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada) to legalize recreational marijuana, and four (Arkansas, Florida, Montana and North Dakota) to legalize medical marijuana.

Amidst all the legal changes, the country has become a whole lot more comfortable with the idea of legal pot: a Gallup poll shows support climbing from 25 percent in the mid-90s to 58 percent in 2015. Support has increased in all age brackets, and young adults now overwhelmingly support legalization (71 percent of them). “It’s our generation’s Vietnam,” said Brian Vicente, an activist and partner at the marijuana law firm Vicente Sederberg, of the current push to legalize the drug.

Read more here.