raises serious mental illness by 40 percent

[smellthefunk420]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070726/ap_on_he_me/marijuana_psychosis

fairly mainstream news.. I agree, people with certain conditions, cannabis will not help, but other then that, it's a miracle!

fucked up news

 

[DogBoy]

Like all things though, if something is good it's not newsworthy. They only report the bad cases as thats what sells papers and pleases the populous. No mention of the millions like me who gain great benefit and mental stability from our precious plant.

I'm all for banning it again, quicker we get the kids and mentally unstable out the picture the quicker we can go back to being a nonmainstream niche market populated by friendly old stoner types. I may also stop living in my delusion soon and wake up!

 

[smellthefunk420]

perfect

 

[Guest]

"Several authors reported being paid to attend drug company-sponsored meetings related to marijuana, and one received consulting fees from companies that make antipsychotic medications."

MJ is the pharma industry's worst nightmare, they sponsor researchers like this one to come to a conclusion that suits them.

I started smoking MJ after my first psychosis and i find it to be very beneficial, it really calms me down and helps a lot to tone down the paranoia.

Never believe pharma industry sponsored research, MJ helps against anxiety, chemo therapy sickness, depression, chronic pain and many more disorders, if everyone knew this big pharma revenues would drop drastically and that is the reason this kind of articles get published.

 

[Guest]

Because pot is taboo to bring up and can have you jailed in some places it more than likly takes a crazy person and makes them paranoid.This is propaganda by those damn crazy researchers paid by drug companies. This is a war and multi-national drug companies just fired a propaganda bullet.

 

[mrgrowmez]

They found that people who used marijuana had roughly a 40 percent higher chance of developing a psychotic disorder later in life. The overall risk remains very low.

i dont know how many times in my short life i've seen the same study (with a different name ) presenting the same information.
yes smoking lots of ganja can cause some people to go over the edge, as does cutting some people off in your car by accident etc etc.

its like they just regurgitate (sp?) this psychosis info a couple of times a year to keep it fresh in the public's heads so they wont forget to tell their kids they will get reefer madness..........for fucks sake, think of all the money they have used to fund these useless studies...everytime its the same thing...."your going to go crazy"

if it was so bad would we not of had a massive rise in crazy people over the last 40 years as marijuana has become more and more popular....oh thats right, lets not forget the often repeated "marijuana is so much stronger these days" line as well

 

[DickAnubis]

OOPS, in my fervor I posted the same storyline in a new thread.
Sorry didn't mean to jump on your thread brother.

But man such double talk has me pissed off.

PEACE DA

 

[Guest]

With all the Important news happening right now why this study while debates are happening in america? This is trash science. The statment that air may cause downs syndrome would also be=> or just as factual, because all the mothers of all downs syndrome babies breathed air early on in their life. Learn to recognise propaganda for what it is and important is the timing of such statments.

 

[BirdDawg]

Junk science, for sure. Not even new studies, a reexamining of old studies. They've pulled data to suit their conclusion, said conclusion being made BEFORE they went looking for data. Makes me mad. I once worked as a lab tech in a large pharma company...way before they got so powerful. Back then, 30 years ago, a study like the one described in the article would have been thrown out before the protocol was even in it's second draft. Sad state of affairs when anyone can rehash old junk science to make new junk science, and call it conclusive evidence.

 

[Discombobul8]

The researchers said they couldn't prove that marijuana use itself increases the risk of psychosis, a category of several disorders with schizophrenia being the most commonly known.

There could be something else about marijuana users, "like their tendency to use other drugs or certain personality traits, that could be causing the psychoses," Zammit said.

This is a bit out of that article.

Maybe it is all of those pesky head medicines that the government let pharmaceutical companies put on our supermarket shelves and let the doc prescribe to us. Of course things like valium are non damaging to a person psychological health. BOLLOX. Or what about the nasty state of pollution in cities causing brain damage to the young kids. No, stop it. It can only be cannabis. No other reasons that we have demented children running around stabbing people. What you say? Oh parenting!!! No could never be bad parenting or all the crap that parents let the kids eat. i could go on...... but i am just having a bout of psychosis. I know let me take some drugs to calm it down. Oh shit i just made it worse. Fuck me i might go on a killing spree. Oh no i will smoke a joint and just chill...

 

[DogBoy]

Maybe we should run an ICMAG club to buy up all the shares in pharmaeutical companies and then elect a spokesman to represent us. I'm sure they'd shit a brick if they found a stake in the company owned by a group of 'terrorists'.

That would be an entire cattery among the pigeons. I'd also bet that Bush would suddenly create another law banning us from having the shares and then seize them as 'terrorist assets'. Should be enough to buy him another oil barrel or two.

 

[Bob Labla]

british government funded the study, and pharmacorps fund political campaigns. even if this were legit 40% increase of 5 out of 1000 people is only like 7 out of 1000. you could find that kind of correlation with virtually anything. i garuntee it would be greater for alcohol users.

 

[Sammet]

british government funded the study, and pharmacorps fund political campaigns. even if this were legit 40% increase of 5 out of 1000 people is only like 7 out of 1000. you could find that kind of correlation with virtually anything. i garuntee it would be greater for alcohol users.

Great post. They forget to mention the average % of people who develop psycosis in the population in the first place. A raise from 0.5% to 0. 7% doesn't sound so "news sexy".

 

[Guest]

This is a telling article that disproves the 'cannabis makes you go mad' myth:

Source: The Huffington Post
Date: July 30 2007
Author: Maia Szalavitz

---
Watching the media cover marijuana is fascinating, offering deep insight
into conventional wisdom, bias and failure to properly place science in
context. The coverage of a new study claiming that marijuana increases
the risk of later psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia by 40% displays
many of these flaws.

What are the key questions reporters writing about such a study needs to
ask? First, can the research prove causality? Most of the reporting
here, to its credit, establishes at some point that it cannot, though
you have to read pretty far down in some of it to understand this.

Second -- and this is where virtually all of the coverage falls flat --
if marijuana produces what seems like such a large jump in risk for
schizophrenia, have schizophrenia rates increased in line with marijuana
use rates? A quick search of Medline shows that this is not the case --
in fact, as I noted here
(http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/09/19/reefer_madness/index.html)
earlier, some experts think they may actually have fallen. Around the
world, roughly 1% of the population has schizophrenia (and another 2% or
so have other psychotic disorders), and this proportion doesn't seem to
change much. It is not correlated with population use rates of marijuana.

Since marijuana use rates have skyrocketed since the 1940's and 50's,
going from single digit percentages of the population trying it to a
peak of some 60% of high school seniors trying it in 1979 (stabilizing
thereafter at roughly 50% of each high school class), we would expect to
see this trend have some visible effect on the prevalence of
schizophrenia and other psychoses.

When cigarette smoking barreled through the population, lung cancer rose
in parallel; when smoking rates fell, lung cancer rates fell. This is
not the case with marijuana and psychotic disorders; if it were, we'd be
seeing an epidemic of psychosis.

But readers of the AP, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, and Reuters were
not presented with this information. While CBS/WebMD mentioned the
absence of a surge in schizophrenia, it did so by quoting an advocate of
marijuana policy reform, rather than citing a study or quoting a doctor.
This slants the story by pitting an advocate with an agenda against a
presumably neutral medical authority.

Furthermore, very little of the coverage put the risk in context. A 40%
increase in risk sounds scary, and this was the risk linked to trying
marijuana once, not to heavy use. To epidemiologists, however, a 40%
increase is not especially noteworthy-- they usually don't find risk
factors worth worrying about until the number hits at least 200% and
some major journals won't publish studies unless the risk is 300 or even
400%. The marijuana paper did find that heavy use increased risk by
200-300%, but that's hardly as sexy as try marijuana once, increase your
risk of schizophrenia by nearly half!

By contrast, one study (
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/e...ez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
) found that alcohol has been found to increase the risk of psychosis by
800% for men and 300% for women. Although this study was not a
meta-analysis (which looks at multiple studies, as the marijuana
research did), it certainly is worth citing to help readers get a sense
of the magnitude of the risk in comparison with other drugs linked to
psychosis.

Of course, if journalists wanted to do that, they would also cite
researchers who disagree with the notion that marijuana poses a large
risk of inducing psychosis at all, such as Oxford's Leslie Iversen,
author of one of the key texts on psychopharmacology, who told the Times
of London that

"Despite a thorough review the authors admit that there is no conclusive
evidence that cannabis use causes psychotic illness. Their prediction
that 14 per cent of psychotic outcomes in young adults in the UK may be
due to cannabis use is not supported by the fact that the incidence of
schizophrenia has not shown any significant change in the past 30 years."

Such comments don't help the media stir up reefer madness, which they've
been doing, quite successfully, for the last few decades. Perhaps
covering the marijuana beat makes you crazy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maia-szalavitz/reefer-inanity-never-tru_b_58353.html

 

[PhenoMenal]

I think the key is everything in moderation !

 

[Guest]

I think the key is everything in moderation !

My grandmother always said that and I think it is true. Alcohol is not harmful unless overdone, cannabis is not harmful unless overdone. I have yet to discover what is too much with ganja, had about a half dozen 'whiteys' in my life and I'm 32.

Last time I smoked too much was the 420 Cup. On the first night at the Pax House I was sat with some indica judges and they kept passing me different indica samples to try. I was gone by 8pm, just sat their staring at the floor and trying not to fall off the end of the wooden bench I was perched on. I had to get a taxi back to my hotel at 8.20 just cos I needed to lie down for a bit, everything else was just too difficult. By 10.30pm I was fine again and went and had a meal in a Chinese retaurant and smoked a few more before hittin the sack.

I think Gypsy thought I was strange cos when he came round asking folks if they were gonna have a go at the karaoke all I could do was shake my head, couldn't manage to speak, was sooo stoned. Blame that more on being a sativa smoker most of the time, all the indicas pure joints and pipes that kept being passed my way just melted me. Next two days of the cup I never had that happen again tho no matter what I smoked, including Sam the Skunkman's bubble hash.

No puking, no falling over, no upsetting people, no acting like an arse, those are all things that can happen when I drink too much, and no hangover the next day, just woke up had a joint, had a shower, another joint then went to the Dampkring, got blazed then wandered to the seed boutique. Drinking messes me up far more then pot ever has.

 

[Pops]

BH, it is obvious that due to your excessive mj usage, you are a menace to British society. You are now a mass of psychotic problems waiting to happen. You need to call the British medical authorities and ask them to reserve a rubber room for you. Please turn yourself in to the medical authorities before you turn murderously violent and kill the PM and all members of Parliament who are anti-cannabis.

On second thought, wait until after you turn violent and kill all the anti-pot legislators, and then turn yourself in and tell them you couldn't help yourself because of all the pot you smoked.

P.S. If you aren't murderous and violent yet, go ahead and smoke some more pot.

 

[Nifty]

a

 

[Fidel Castro]

you said it yourself "chicken and egg thing" alcohol is the same way... does alcohol induce psychosis? or do psychos tend to drink alcohol?

 

[Nifty]

a