LIFESTYLE CANNABIS
‘No Evidence that Occasional Marijana Use Has Harmful Effects,’ Says Top Federal Drug Researcher BY JEAN-GABRIEL FERNANDEZ
Photo by Olga Tsareva/Getty Images.
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nyone raised on a steady diet of Reefer Madness and the well-honed tradition of vilifying cannabis in the media probably assumes that marijuana’s harmful effects are well-documented, by now. After all, marijuana has been banned for nearly a century, and more than 600,000 Americans are arrested every year for possession of personal-use amounts. Cannabis is even categorized as a Schedule I drug, alongside heroin and other potentially deadly drugs. Surely, it ought to be at least somewhat harmful … right? Wrong, says the country’s foremost drug expert. “There’s no evidence to my knowledge that occasional marijuana use has harmful effects. I don’t know of any scientific evidence of that. I don’t think it has been evaluated. We need to test it,” said Nora Volkow, who as director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse leads federal research on illicit substances. There have been many studies trying to establish a link between marijuana consumption and negative effects on the human body or psyche. The most serious potential consequence is to develop a cannabis use disorder—it is not addiction, as marijuana is completely non-addictive, but it is the habit of using marijuana as a mental crutch to the point that a person feels unable to function without it. If marijuana is consumed daily and in large doses, it can impair a person’s social habits. While the user will not suffer physical consequences for getting high instead of going out with friends, for instance, they might slowly drift away from their social network and feel under the weather, potentially leading to more marijuana use to dampen the negative feelings.
WHAT WE KNOW There are a few things that we do know. Marijuana should not be consumed by minors. It causes temporary impairment similar to alcohol and therefore shouldn’t be allowed while driving or operating dangerous machinery. There have been studies establishing correlations between pancreas issues and smoking marijuana, other studies finding that smokers are more likely to 66 | SHEPHERD EXPRESS
have bronchitis. There have been correlations between marijuana and schizophrenia, marijuana and cancer, marijuana and many other ills—perhaps because Reefer Madness culture led people to assume that, surely, there ought to be something nefarious just waiting to be discovered. But these few accusations are the only negative effects that have ever been associated with marijuana use and these correlations are not firmly established due to the lack of proper research on the topic. “Those studies are poor and crappy—they’re correlation studies. What they’re calling strong correlations are about the same correlations as when you look at cat ownership in childhood and likelihood to go on and have a psychiatric illness,” said Carl Hart, neuroscientist at Columbia University. One of the reasons why the only available research is so poor and unreliable is because the U.S. government has spent the past 50 years actively smothering all research on marijuana by making it practically impossible for scientists to get authorization to study it and by limiting what cannabis plants are available for study. Indeed, researchers need approval from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Food and Drug Administration and National Institute on Drug Abuse before being allowed clinical trials, which is an exceedingly slow process, and they can only study cannabis from one source, the only federally approved supplier, the University of Mississippi. Tests have proven time and time again that the University of Mississippi produces cannabis that is much weaker and chemically distinct from the products that most Americans consume, making it closer to non-psychoactive hemp than marijuana. “While most states in the U.S. recognize that cannabis has medical value, the DEA says otherwise, pointing to the absence of clinical research,” said Sue Sisley, researcher for the Scottsdale Research Institute (SRI), which sued the DEA to be allowed to
