Posts here at Big Jolly are political in nature and therefore debatable. Generally, out of respect to the authors, regular contributor or guest, I won’t offer a rebuttal as the marketplace of ideas should not be stymied. However, in regards to the legalization of marijuana the facts/claims need to be clearly and accurately articulated as the issue is relatively new and opinions are still being formed. To that end, this rebuttal is offered to correct some perceived misstatements and to add nuance to the argumentation in Mr. White’s post for the purpose of better evaluation and opinion formation.
“Other studies contradict Mr. Katz and Mr. Halls claims that marijuana is a gateway drug…Other studies by the National Institute of Drug abuse bolster the claim that marijuana is not a gateway drug”
“Truly the gateway drug idea itself is simply absurd. There is nothing intrinsic in marijuana that makes users more likely to use other drugs.”
These two points are related and discussed together. In an emerging field it’s not unusual to find contradictory studies. As long as the studies are peer reviewed arguing the specific studies are appropriate argumentation as they have scientific support to some degree. Studies are like the saying about statistics, “He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts – for support rather than for illumination. ~ Andrew Lang.” You can find studies to support both sides of most scientific propositions. So the fact that Howie and Mr. White can both point to studies doesn’t do much for illumination.
What’s striking, though, is Mr. White refers to the National Institute of Drug Abuse for support that marijuana isn’t a gateway drug. This brings us to the claim that the gateway drug idea is simply absurd. Although Mr. White is correct in claiming “there is nothing intrinsic in marijuana that makes users more likely to use other drugs” the statement is misleading. Just because the individual components don’t “make[]users more likely to use other drugs” doesn’t mean marijuana use doesn’t “make[] users more likely to use other drugs.” Who published information in support of a gateway element to marijuana? None other than the National Institute of Drug Abuse (hereinafter NIDA). Specifically, NIDA points to the studies showing the cross-sensitization as a result of marijuana exposure.
Just because none of the components in marijuana makes “harder” drug use more likely doesn’t mean that marijuana itself doesn’t. When discussing cross-sensitization studies NIDA states, “These findings are consistent with the idea of marijuana as a “gateway drug.”” Does this mean that marijuana users will go on to use harder drugs? No, and NIDA acknowledges the same. However, it does lend some support to the concept of a gateway drug. Claiming otherwise isn’t accurately presenting the current state of the science.
“[D]eny life saving medicine to millions of Americans each year because of this outdated and factually incorrect theory.”
Let’s leave out the opinion of “outatdated an factually incorrect theory” and look at the claim of “deny life saving medicine to millions of Americans each year.” To assess this claim it’s necessary to look at exactly what medical marijuana is used to treat. In order to be “life saving medicine” the medicinal use needs to be directed at curative measures rather than symptom control. With that in mind, let’s look at what the studies on medical marijuana say the purpose of the marijuana is in treatment.
Looking at National Institute of Health publications, the studies looking at medical marijuana show treatment is for: treatment of chronic noncancer pain specifically neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, and mixed chronic pain; chemotherapy-related nausea and vomiting; patient-reported spasticity scores and central pain or painful spasms when used for MS. Successful treatment in these areas would improve quality of life, but cannot be considered to be life saving medicine. Even turning to the states that approved medicinal marijuana doesn’t support the life saving medicine argument as the “conditions accepted by states that allow medicinal cannabis relate to relief of the symptoms of cancer, glaucoma, human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, and MS.” Emphasis added. Treating symptoms isn’t life saving, so these treatments are out when arguing life saving medicine. This leaves us with epilepsy as the condition that may support the claim.
In regards to epilepsy the same article notes CBD, not THC, can be used as an adjunct treatment to other antiepileptic treatment. Any given seizure has an extremely small chance of mortality. However, epilepsy prevalence is 2.2 million people. Out of this population, thirty to forty percent are uncontrolled seizures. Splitting the difference gives uncontrolled seizures prevalence at 770,000. This number is the cap, and would be further reduced by the nature of the seizures. Not all of the seizures will be tonic-clonic and therefore dangerous. Not all tonic-clonic seizures are without aura reducing the danger further. CBD doesn’t eliminate all the remaining seizures. While it’s not possible to completely eliminate the chance of death from seizures, the claim of marijuana as “lifesaving medicine to millions of Americans” doesn’t survive factual analysis.
“It is impossible to overdose on marijuana.”
This statement may or may not be factually accurate depending on how someone defines overdose. What’s not up for interpretation is someone can get marijuana poisoning. While the absolute number of marijuana poisoning events isn’t high, it is increasing. So far none of the instances of marijuana poisoning have been deadly, but the effects can be severe, with documented instances of respiratory arrest and ventilator use necessary. So while it’s potentially accurate to say it’s “impossible to overdose on marijuana” that’s a misleading argument.
“Mr. Katz claims that marijuana use poses a risk of triggering Schizophrenia, however what he fails to point out from the study he sites, or findings from other studies on this subject is that risk is only prominent in those who already have a genetic predisposition to Schizophrenia… Mr. Katz fearmongering obscures the reality of the findings.”
Both gentlemen seem to not understand schizophrenia. In order to be schizophrenia the disease must exist outside the presence of the effect of a substance, legal or illegal. This is directly addressed in DSM-V which states, “The disturbance is not attributable to the direct physiological effects of a substance (eg, a drug of abuse, a medication) or another medical condition.” However, there is support for marijuana leading to earlier onset of schizophrenia. While there’s no causal effect between marijuana and the incidence of marijuana, there is some evidence for marijuana hastening the onset of schizophrenia. Given how debilitating schizophrenia is, the only word to describe this is tragic.
Conclusion
I don’t like criticizing others ideas. The marketplace of ideas is what makes democracy great. However, the marketplace is only as good as the ideas proffered. In instances where misleading argumentation is being proffered, or flat out false facts being offered to support an idea in the marketplace of ideas, it’s important to set the record straight for the sake of the marketplace.
Take the dueling articles as you will. This is an attempt at informative writing rather than persuasive writing. But when forming your own opinion keep some things in mind. The evidence doesn’t support the claims that marijuana is lifesaving medicine for millions of Americans. That’s simply a blatant falsehood. It is possible to be harmed by over-consumption of marijuana. Don’t let the technicalities of what is and is not an “overdose” cloud the issue. Over-consumption of marijuana is harmful and potentially deadly.
Nicely done Greg.
Yes, it’s done very well, Greg.
Hunter White, who couldn’t even get the title of my article right, heads a pot advocacy group of ‘Republicans.’ I’m sure those Republicans are a small minority of Republicans in this country and they are very likely to be RINOs. And there are probably a bunch of Democrats in his organization as well.
The whole point of my article was to show that marijuana is so dangerous because people have been conned into believing it is not dangerous. There is a good reason the DEA classifies marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, and it’s not for “anti-life and racist” reasons as one demented reader commented.
As I’ve said before, I’ve known for some time that I’ve been tilting at windmills. The fight against the legalization of marijuana is all but over. Some years down the road, this country will come to regret that it legalized marijuana.
For many with chronic illnesses, symptom management is the best we can hope for at the moment. Just because marijuana isn’t a cure for many chronic illnesses doesn’t mean it isn’t life-saving. Many people with chronic illnesses become despondent and even suicidal when denied access to medications that make life livable. Especially with recent crackdowns RE: prescription opioids.
My pain was not being treated successfully because my doctor—like many—is extremely stingy with the very medications that would improve my quality of life. I am not an addict. I have no history of addiction. I should not have such difficulty finding relief from my fibromyalgia and osteoarthritis.
I was severely depressed and borderline suicidal until I was approved for medical marijuana. It’s been literally life-saving for me. I’m not sure how much longer I could’ve hung in without it. I think if you took the time to actually speak with other medical marijuana users, you’d hear many similar stories.
You seem to very much misunderstand what symptom management means to people with chronic illnesses.
Symptom management is often the only thing that many of us can hope for and in many instances means the difference between a decent existence and wishing for your own death.
I would encourage you to speak with more medical marijuana patients and actually listen to them how much of a difference symptom management makes to their lives.
As someone with an autoimmune disease, in which there is no “cure”, being put in remission by marijuana use is both a huge medical breakthrough, and a cost-efficient one. Remicade costs over $23,000/MONTH, every month, for the rest of my life. Marijuana is cheaper, has a better success rate, does not weaken my immune system at all, increases my appetite, and has been proven to put 45% of those who use it into remission, according to the NCBI, and 10 out of 11 patients didn’t need steroids, which make your bones brittle, your face puffy, your mood irritable, and your mental health terrible. Your pedantic nature is akin to a middle school debate team, where you don’t understand the vocabulary and want to “one up” the competition but don’t know how to do it. Try harder next time.
Michelle, such a presumptuous comment. You have no idea what my health status is.
Life saving is just that. It’s not palliative care. Palliative care is a separate argument to be made in regards to medical marijuana. It’s also not one I addressed because I didn’t think Mr. White’s argumentation in that regard was misleading or faulty.
Just like you don’t die from AIDS, you die from complications from AIDS, those palliative care measures are just as important in life-saving medicine. I didn’t almost die from Crohn’s, I almost died from TMC which is a complication of Crohn’s. You don’t have to cure HIV or AIDS to see the massive life saving benefits that come from the management of other health issues associated with the disease.
As presumptuous as my comment might have been it comes from someone, me, who has a chronic illness.
Again, for those of us with an issue palliative care as you term it is just as important as what you are terming as life saving care.
You are trying to draw a black and white line into something that is usually gray.
Greg, are you a fiscal conservative? Would you like to slow down government spending in regards to Medicare and Medicaid spending? Medical marijuana will do that, ten-fold. As stated above, I am charged $23k a month for a drug that medical marijuana can do for MUCH cheaper, but am barred from using it because it’s not legal in my state and I would lose SNAP benefits if discovered. So now it’s a question of “Do I take a drug that increases my likelihood of cancer in multiple forms, costs enormous amounts of money, lowers my immune system requiring more hospitalizations, but am able to eat OR do I take a cost-effective, low side effect edible that takes away three other prescriptions and not be able to have government support for 10 years”
For a vast number of suicidal veterans (22+ does not include either Texas or Ca) cannabis HAS been life saving. As others mentioned, life saving isn’t just literal. I would be dead if I took the opiates and psycotropics as I have been prescribed them from the VA in the past. The medicine supposed to help with my Complex PTSD made me suicidal. Cannabis helped that. I know of hundreds of other veterans who have had the same experience. For chronic pain to insomnia, hyper anxiety I have replaced a hand full of pills for cannabis. Even my VA doc is very supportive as she A) Doesn’t have to worry about my accidental overdose. B) She doesn’t have to test my organs for toxic buildup she would have to for the prescriptions I would be taking otherwise. It was my WW2 Uncle who talked me into switching from the alcohol that I was slowly killing myself with to cannabis instead. He didn’t have a high enough security clearance for me to tell him (a fellow Navy veteran) what had happened to me. I couldn’t tell anyone. Cannabis gave me my life back. It was an EXIT from alcohol and pain pills. It certainty did save my life.
Greg, as I well know, you cannot win an argument with a bunch of pot users. To say that marijuana is a life-saver in that it keeps veterans from committing suicide is absurd. As for symptom management, a few shots of Jim Beam or Jack Daniels are likely to have the same results. Jägermeister is even better.
So you know the symptom management of Crohn’s Disease? And how detrimental alcohol is to the digestive tract? What about the treatment plan for a severe Crohn’s patient? It’s a $23,000/month infusion called Remicade, anti-nausea meds, anti-anxiety medications, and Methotrexate, which is used to treat cancer but also increases the user to other forms of cancer, as well as being an abortifacient. Marijuana might not seem “life saving” to you, but it is to those who suffer chronic illness and chronic poverty because of those illnesses. Also, I don’t use marijuana, it’s illegal in my state and if I use it illegally I could lose what little amount of food stamps I receive to feed myself.
Lady, while I sympathize with your situation, get this through your head. The DEA has classified marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug because it is highly addictive and has no medical value, and has presented Congress with 27 studies to that effect.
I happen to suffer from chronic pain. I sure as hell do not smoke pot for relief. While I occasionally have a couple of beers, I do not use alcohol for relief. I do not ask my doctors for any pain killers because they constipate me, and at my age. it’s hard enough to shit as it is. So what do I do for my pain? … I suck it up.
Sucking it up, put me into a 10 day coma. I gave the link to a medical journal where medical marijuana DOES in fact treat Crohn’s Disease. While I don’t have a “problem” with shitting (with only six inches of colon, it happens pretty regularly on its own, about 8-10 times a day.) I do have a problem with being unable to take NSAIDS for pain, and I don’t like being on prescription pain killers for long periods of time. Are you telling cancer patients to suck it up as well, or just the people who disagree with you?
Also, broad scale, anti-anxiety medications (benzodiazepines) are HIGHLY addictive and one of only two drugs that withdrawal will actually KILL you. I’ve been on them since 2011, marijuana treats anxiety (which is what PTSD stems from BTW) without the addictive side effects. It is actually saving lives. But go ahead and drink your shots, I’m sure alcohol and anxiety go GREAT together (they don’t.)
Marijuana does not save lives and is certainly no cure for PTSD.
That’s actually against what MANY doctors have studied for years. But okay.
Since a few want to beat the chronic condition drum and/or suggest without saying I’m not sympathetic or don’t know what it’s like here’s my situation. I have had 4 spine surgeries resulting in permanent nerve damage in two extermities. On top of the nerve damage C3, T12, and S1 all have cord or nerve involvement. This is currently resulting in some bladder and bowel incontinence.
On top of that I also have Chron’s disease. Let that sink in for a moment. Bowel incontinence with Chron’s disease. So from the suffering standpoint I do understand.
If that weren’t enough, both my father and my baby are disabled. So in addition to my experiences I see the impacts of disability from both the generation before and from a care taker standpoint. So, yes, I do understand. If someone wants to beat the experience drum, that’s the bar to clear.
It’s amazing the lengths that have been given in response to a post pointing out the false narrative given by Mr. White that intentionally, specifically, didn’t take issue with the palliative effects of marijuana. The criticisms raised against the post regarding the palliative effects are purely straw men since that aspect was not criticized.
Just to point out, it seems all of your counter-arguments are mainly based on a lack of research in general to marijuana (i.e. making it easier to find a biased source for either side). With that being said, do you support Mr. Katz’s opinion that it should remain a Schedule 1 substance? Because I would argue that is the main reason we have so little research telling us concretely about the positive and negative effects of the drug.
That’s a fair criticism of the first point.
However, the you can’t overdose argument is misleading and needs to be addressed.
The “life saving” argument is also misleading. There is an argument to be made in that vein, but it’s potential future lifesaving drugs. That’s not how Mr. White presented his argument so it was addressed.
Which brings us to your question regarding agreeing with Howie. As you posed the question, yes I would keep it a schedule 1 drug. However, I would support studies testing CBD. Many medications are extracts from natural sources (Asprin from the Willow tree as an example.) If CBD can be extracted and a medinicial purpose found that survives FDA scrutiny then great. I would support such a medication.
The overdose argument is very much rooted in a lack of evidence, for both your argument and Mr. White’s…we have not nearly enough research to establish what exactly is an overdose, and whether someone is just having a bad reaction to the drug or an actual overdose (as you freely admit the definition is subjective).
As for the “life-saving” part, it is very much rooted in a lack of evidence, and I don’t understand how you can dispute that. For example, there have been studies that show decreases in malignant cells for cancer patients that use marijuana, while there was a study which came out last week which states that second hand smoke from marijuana smoke can cause cancer. The fact that there are so many polarizing studies is irrefutable proof that more dedicated, and less restrictive, research is needed.
But let’s get to that last part, where you seem to contradict yourself a bit. You yourself, in the article and ensuing comments, have acknowledged that marijuana does have some medicinal value (even if it’s not life-saving in your eyes). With that being said, the DEA’s definition of a Schedule 1 Substance is “…drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse”. Putting those two points together, I fail to see what logic you can use to justify keeping it as a Schedule 1 Substance, and restricting further research into it, when even the DEA’s definition shows it should at least be considered for reclassification as a at least a Schedule 2 substance. There are far more intense, and widely accepted as detrimental, drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamine, and opioids which are already categorized as Schedule 2…not because they are thought of as lesser, but so more research can be done into their effects.
I respectfully disagree on the overdose issue. The argument Mr. White presented was using the claim that you can’t overdose on marijuana as evidence that marijuana is not unsafe. That’s flat out misleading. Marijuana poisioning is a well established medical condition with its own IDC 10 code T40.7X1.
I don’t support legalizing marijuana for recreational use. Schedule 1 or schedule 2 either way doesn’t matter in my calculations.
While I think schedule 1 is appropriate until CBD extracts gain FDA approval in the end the big picture belief is that just like any other flora it may have components that are of medinical value. If those can be extracted and put to use great.
However, I also believe that the medinical purposes should be from the extracts and not from consumption from marijuana itself just like a person takes Asprin rather than smoking Willow bark or pulp.
You realize you misspelled Crohn’s Disease, right? While we’re at it, the National Institute of Health released these findings on the nature of Crohn’s and cannabis, stating that remission can be found through marijuana use. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5193087/
The founders wanted laws that punished people for causing others harm, no victim no crime, the state isn’t a victim. I am astonished by the so called conservatives that love the nanny/police state.
With all due respect, You are in deep error. The founders were focused on creating a Federal Government that was bounded and controlled by the States. They weren’t particularly concerned with individual laws that the States put in place. I will agree that State laws regulating drugs would be more appropriate.
As for victimless crimes – there are significant arguments on either side. However in the interest of conciliation, how about this: No penalty for using, but the death penalty for selling or distributing.
I hear that birth is a gateway to ALL kinds of troubles.
This website just jet ski’ed over a shark.
Way to destroy the credibility of the site with fiscal conservative / libertarian-ish people or anyone who uses logic and reason. Between this and the now retroactively heavily edited blog post defending Jim Murphy, I just don’t see how this website has credibility left. Start working on gaining back your credibility.
Until you do, expect much of Harris County and all of CoH to be run by democrats along with the correpsonding historic levels of corruptions. Nice work, team.
Reader,
There was no editing of whatever Jim Murphy post you are referring to. Just wanted to clear that up for you.
DJ
Ummmm
Cannabis has been proven (Israeli studies,) to kill cancer cells while leaving good cells untouched. I believe that killing cancer is life saving! And killing it naturally is… well… in a common sense way, better for you.
Chemo (which is legal) kills both good and bad cells indiscriminately. It also kills 50% if it’s patients. It does this by killing to many good cells. Its radiation people. Ask someone from 1945 Japan what radiation does to people.
So your argument that Cannabis is nit life saving.. Is plain WRONG.. and I didn’t even spwak of saving babies with seizures lives!!!
Be Honest CJ. The research is laboratory only, not in human trials. That’s consistent with an argument about potential future live saving treatment. Your argument, just like Mr. White’s argument that marijuana is presently life saving medication for millions, is misleading.
As far as the seizures, my post already addressed your point.
Cjstarz (and others): There are indeed several studies that show that various components in cannabis may have medicinal uses. Which is completely irrelevant to the discussion about whether to legalize marijuana. Curare is a medicine that is derived from plants that grow in South America – completely natural. But it has to be used correctly to have medicinal effects. I am completely supportive of using drugs developed from marijuana, and I think that we need to continue research to find additional treatment modalities. But please stop with the whole “Marijuana can save lives” thing.
By the way, cocaine is a completely natural substance derived from an innocent plant. So is heroin. Both have valid medical uses in certain forms and certain situations. Should we legalize Cocaine and Heroin also?