Contrary to what you may have heard in \u201cHalf Baked,\u201d made in the 1990s when people who can today purchase cannabis legally were not yet born, marijuana\u00a0is<\/i>\u00a0a drug. And one need not scrape the littoral bottom of personal and public humiliation in order to qualify as an addict.<\/p>\n
And the bar for when substance use morphs into abuse \u2014 that is, a bona fide, clinical \u201cproblem\u201d \u2014 is much lower (or higher, if your perspective is from the position of this mythical rock-bottom). If you miss work or school, if your relationships become strained, or if your \u201cnormal\u201d day-to-day is otherwise impacted thanks to your substance abuse \u2014or, if at any time, you decide you want to stop and find that you cannot \u2014 you, friend, have a problem.<\/p>\n
But it is possible to acknowledge marijuana addiction or dependence as real while simultaneously placing these issues in their proper context. That is not what\u00a0The Atlantic did on Monday, when it published a lengthy article titled \u201cAmerica\u2019s Invisible Pot Addicts.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Among cannabis advocates, The Atlanticis already playing from behind, despite its left-of-center reputation, having in recent years published articles \u201casking\u201d \u201cIs Marijuana More Addictive Than Alcohol?\u201d and declaring\u00a0\u201cThe Failed Promise of Legal Pot<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n This is not an improvement \u2014 and, in fact, fits neatly in this milieu of overblown concern-trolling.<\/p>\n While the article is much more nuanced than the headline \u2014 as some of the subjects in the story themselves point out \u2014 and is a mostly-decent read, it\u2019s a fundamentally bad take.<\/p>\n Worse, thanks to some\u00a0maybe well-intentioned<\/a>\u00a0signal-boosting\u00a0from media influencers,<\/a>\u00a0it\u2019s bound to be employed by bad-faith actors in their quest to keep marijuana prohibition alive at all costs.<\/p>\n @AnnieLowrey<\/a>\u2018s story is very good. \u2014 Mark A.R. Kleiman (@MarkARKleiman) August 20, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n The Atlantic says: Marijuana addiction is real, the long-term effects of today\u2019s high-potency pot are largely unknown, claims that marijuana is a benign substance that\u2019s \u201charmless\u201d and \u201cnatural\u201d are lies \u2014 and a \u201cloosely regulated\u201d marijuana industry is being \u201creckless[ly]\u201d unleashed on a credulous, unsuspecting public.<\/p>\n Most of this is true. The studies we have telling us what cannabis does to the brain and body are mostly old. The test subjects used different, weaker cannabis than what we can buy and have brought to us using our smartphones. And while the stakes are much, much lower, as is the chance of misadventure, marijuana is not harmless.<\/p>\n There are absolutely bad actors who spray their plants with banned fungicides, use ill-trained, poorly paid budtenders to make all kinds of grandiose promises, and otherwise subordinate their customers\u2019 well-being to the pursuit of profit.<\/p>\n But an America where marijuana legalization is not regulated is being recklessly foisted upon us without second thought exists only in fantasy. The rollout of legalization and medical marijuana both has happened only with delay after delay. Marijuana was legalized almost two years ago in\u00a0Massachusetts<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Maine<\/a>, and in both states, recreational consumers have yet to buy a single joint from retailers.\u00a0California\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0quest to legalize cannabis was completed only after some of the state\u2019s most reactionary forces were satisfied that the drug would not become available to children (when, in fact, every state that has legalized the drug has seen a drop in youth use).<\/p>\n Claims like these would be laughable if they weren\u2019t misinformation used to pursue an agenda. The story\u2019s subtext seems clear: marijuana legalization is dangerous and bad and creating a new crop of (how big? We don\u2019t know!) hopelessly dependent dopeheads.<\/p>\n These are the same arguments made time and again by anti-legalization advocates \u2014one of whom is quoted in the story \u2014 who have made them despite a dearth of data propping up their claims.<\/p>\n One data not present in the article is 72,000. That\u2019s the number of Americans who died from drug overdoses in 2017. Another is 88,000 \u2014 the number of Americans who die from alcohol-related causes every year. Here\u2019s one more: 480,000 \u2014 the Americans who die prematurely because of tobacco use. And, finally, the most famous ace in the hole, zero: The number of deaths attributable to marijuana use.<\/p>\n Some will claim that providing the context above is cherry-picking stats to downplay the true danger cannabis presents. If that\u2019s true, The Atlantic is also guilty of downplaying these pertinent facts: The vast majority of cannabis users do not move onto more dangerous drugs. The vast majority of cannabis users do not develop a substance-abuse problem.<\/p>\n Those that do should absolutely seek help, and be given the resources and support necessary to do so \u2014 and the marijuana industry should be encouraged to act in a socially responsible manner, be regulated to ensure that it does, and be punished or publicly shamed when it does not.<\/p>\n Hard to find a better illustration of the cynical dishonesty of the potrepreneurs \u2014 Mark A.R. Kleiman (@MarkARKleiman) August 20, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Hucksters exist in America wherever any commodity is bought or sold. Unscrupulous merchants are not peculiar to weed. That\u2019s obvious.<\/p>\n It\u2019s possible to walk and chew gum at the same time. We can be honest about marijuana\u2019s good and its bad in the same breath. Doing that would be much easier if the government and law enforcement would stop being so transparently dishonest about marijuana.<\/p>\n But an article saying all that would be boring. It would not be shared. It would not generate clicks. Suggesting that cannabis legalization is creating a class of helpless, \u201cinvisible addicts\u201d \u2013\u00a0that<\/i>\u00a0is internet gold.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/b>,\u00a0do you agree that The Atlantic article examined marijuana addition out of context?<\/p>\n The post \u2018Marijuana Addiction\u2019 Is Among the Least of America\u2019s Problems<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Contrary to what you may have heard in \u201cHalf Baked,\u201d made in the 1990s when people who can today purchase cannabis legally were not yet born, marijuana\u00a0is\u00a0a drug. And one need not scrape the littoral bottom of personal and public humiliation in order to qualify as an addict. And theContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[148,50,119,687,4552,717,5521,901,25,362],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28746"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28746"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28747,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28746\/revisions\/28747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\nThe hed and subhed, not so good:
\nDaily\/near-daily use =\/= \u201cnear-constant use\u201d;
\nonly about half of D\/ND users have cannabis use disorder;
\nand fewer than one-third of those
\nhave the chronic, relapsing CUD
\nthat justifies the label \u201caddiction.\u201d https:\/\/t.co\/aJMD7NKPWS<\/a><\/p>\n\n
\nthan the way it makes medical claims.
\n\u201cUses\u201d listed without evidence of efficacy.
\nNo statement of active ingredients. No warnings.
\nNo list of side effects.
\nPharma isn\u2019t allowed to do this. https:\/\/t.co\/ld17YBzyDH<\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\nRead More: \u2018Marijuana Addiction\u2019 Is Among the Least of America\u2019s Problems<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"