USA: Pot use among college students at 30-year high

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Breana Noble, The Detroit News  Sept. 5, 2018

Marijuana use among college-age people is at the highest level in three decades and fewer think using it is harmful, according to researchers at the University of Michigan.

Months before Michigan voters will decide whether to legalize marijuana for recreational use, the annual study found marijuana use among the nation's 19-to-22-year-olds has increased gradually over the past decade as marijuana becomes more easily accessible and young people view the drug as less risky.

Researchers also found that youths who do not attend college are more likely to use marijuana. The study also surveyed other drug use among the age group and found non-medical use of prescription narcotic drugs was at its lowest since the late 1990s. 

The federal National Institute on Drug Abuse paid for the survey, Monitoring the Future Panel Study.

"In this country, laws are changing, attitudes are changing, people are not perceiving use, even regular use, as dangerous as they used to," said John Schulenberg, the study's principal investigator and a psychology professor at the university.

"And this could be the problem. On this daily use, the scientific evidence is pretty clear that this gets in the way of things, and it can be associated with, if not contributing to, a decline in mental health.

"If one is involved in heavy use, and they continue with that," Schulenberg said, "then their health and wellness and happiness is probably not as high as those who do not use or do not continue to use."

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Spike in cannabis overdoses blamed on potent edibles, poor public education

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"He had eaten a [cannabis] edible and just couldn't handle it," MacIntosh said.

Cannabis overdoses are something he said he's personally witnessed at the bar three times in the past year.

That mirrors a trend happening across the country — as the Oct. 17 date for legalization of recreational pot looms, CBC News has learned that cannabis-related emergency room visits have spiked.

Data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) shows that over the past three years the number of emergency room visits because of cannabis overdoses in Ontario has almost tripled — from 449 in 2013-14, to nearly 1,500 in 2017-18.

In Alberta, the number has nearly doubled over the same timeframe, from 431 to 832.

Symptoms of cannabis overdose — or more precisely, THC poisoning, THC being the main psychoactive chemical in pot — include elevated heart rate and blood pressure, anxiety, vomiting and in some cases psychosis, possibly necessitating hospitalization.

Symptoms of cannabis overdose — or more precisely, THC poisoning, THC being the main psychoactive chemical in pot — include elevated heart rate and blood pressure, anxiety, vomiting and in some cases psychosis, possibly necessitating hospitalization.

Outside of Alberta and Ontario, the statistics on cannabis overdoses are sparse. But the CIHI figures that are available for other reporting jurisdictions, which include small samples from health centres in Nova Scotia, P.E.I., Yukon, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, show Canadians in some regions are being sent to a hospital because of pot at four times the rate they were in 2013.

"That's just the tip of the iceberg," said Heather Hudson at the Ontario Poison Centre at SickKids children's hospital in Toronto, pointing to a rise in the number of cases involving children and cannabis.

"We are certainly getting more calls about children who are being exposed unintentionally," she said.

For complete article go to ‘Who said WEED was Harmless??

The interdependence of cigarette, alcohol, and marijuana use in the context of school-based social networks

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Cheng Wang1 *, John R. Hipp2,3, Carter T. Butts3,4, Cynthia M. Lakon5 1 Department of Sociology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, United States of America, 2 Department of Criminology, Law and Society, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States of America, 3 Department of Sociology, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States of America, 4 Department of Statistics, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States of America, 5 Program in Public Health, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States of America

Abstract: The concurrent or sequential usage of multiple substances during adolescence is a serious public health problem. Given the importance of understanding interdependence in substance use during adolescence, the purpose of this study is to examine the co-evolution of cigarette smoking, alcohol, and marijuana use within the ever-changing landscape of adolescent friendship networks, which are a primary socialization context for adolescent substance use. Utilizing Stochastic Actor-Based models, we examine how multiple simultaneous social processes co-evolve with adolescent smoking, drinking, and marijuana use within adolescent friendship networks using two school samples from early waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). We also estimate two separate models examining the effects from using one substance to the initiation and cessation of other substances for each sample. 

Based on the initial model results, we simulate the model forward in time by turning off one key effect in the estimated model at a time, and observe how the distribution of use of each substance changes. We find evidence of a unilateral causal relationship from marijuana use to subsequent smoking and drinking behaviors, resulting in the initiation of drinking behavior. 

Marijuana use is also associated with smoking initiation in a school with a low substance use level, and smoking cessation in a school with a high substance use level. In addition, in a simulation model excluding the effect from marijuana use to smoking and drinking behavior, the number of smokers and drinkers decreases precipitously. Overall, our findings indicate some evidence of sequential drug use, as marijuana use increased subsequent smoking and drinking behavior and indicate that an adolescent’s level of marijuana use affects the initiation and continuation of smoking and drinking

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What is the Evidence for Medical Marijuana to Treat the Addiction Epidemic?

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The Marijuana Policy Project promotes their drug as a substitute for opiate pain pills.  Like the worst offenders in the opiate industry, the cannabis lobby follows an addiction-for-profit business model. Their master plan needs 80% of the demand to be met by 20% of the users.  Science shows no evidence for using medical marijuana as a substitute for pain pills.

Governor David Ige of Hawaii wisely refused to cave to lobbyists, and he vetoed a measure that would have allowed medical marijuana to treat opiate addiction.

A large-scale, major study from Australia demonstrates that cannabis doesn’t work as a substitute for opiate pills in instances of chronic, non-cancer pain.  The study came out in July, 2018 and it supports the findings of an American study published in September, 2017.

The three-year research  study by Olfson, Wall et. al., Cannabis use and the Risk of Prescription Opioid Use Disorder, 2018, concluded: “Cannabis use appears to increase rather than decrease the risk of developing nonmedical prescription opioid use and opioid use disorder.”   More than a year ago, Dr. Ken Finn, professional advisorto Parents Opposed to Pot, published Current Research on Marijuana in Pain is lacking.

It seems we should NOT be encouraging “medical” marijuana use if our goal is to stop  addiction. Theodore Caputi and Keith Humphreys recently published in the Journal of Addiction: Medical marijuana users are more likely to use prescription drugs medically and nonmedically.  They concluded: “Medical marijuana users should be a target population in efforts to combat nonmedical prescription drug use.”   See our page on Marijuana vs. Pain Pills.

The Canadian Family Physicians wrote an editorial about Medical Marijuana in February, 2018, p. 87, after devoting an entire issue to the journal on medical marijuana.  Like the NAS report in the United States, the Canadian physicians reviewed hundreds of relevant studies. In the editorial, they concluded:

“Evidence indicates the most consistent effects of medical cannabinoids are adverse events.  A variety of adverse events have a greater magnitude of effect than the potential benefits for the conditions targeted.

Read the Clinical Conundrum of Medical Marijuana for more information.   Dr. Ken Finn treats pain patients at of Springs Rehab in Colorado Springs.  He advises that there are more than 600 drug interactions with medical marijuana.   Are any medical marijuana dispensaries giving these warnings?  Another Colorado doctor who advocates marijuana for pain recently stated that marijuana edibles and concentrates should be banned.

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