Of all the choices available to today\u2019s young people, those walking, talking bad-decision machines dripping with excess hormones, smoking marijuana definitely isn\u2019t the best one.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s probably wiser than sexting, playing the knock-out game or cyberbullying \u2014 though maybe less trendy. According to the most recent government\u00a0survey<\/a>, roughly the same amount of\u00a0high school students<\/a>\u00a0smoke marijuana as do cigarettes, and teen marijuana use has remained remarkably steady over the past five years. This suggests legalization (and its hefty prices) hasn\u2019t changed youth habits much.<\/p>\n That\u2019s good and bad. If you were to ask an honest health professional, they would probably say that of the two smokable plants, cannabis is the safer choice. This would be largely due to the fact that marijuana use is not connected to long-term lung damage and, according to the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, has proven\u00a0medical benefits<\/a>.<\/p>\n But you would not know any this based off of a \u201cpublic awareness campaign\u201d\u00a0launched<\/a>\u00a0by the\u00a0San Francisco\u00a0Department of Public Health in October.<\/p>\n Truth or Nah?!: Are edibles safer than smoking or vaping weed? \u2014 SFDPH (@SF_DPH) November 28, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Aimed squarely at the snapback-wearing, skateboard-toting, multicultural kids of stock art fame, SFDPH\u2019s \u201cTruth (or Nah?!)\u201d campaign is on buses and on the internet, and seeks to provide teens with \u201cfactual information\u201d and \u201cright answers,\u201d as Nicole Elliott, the director of the city\u2019s Office of Cannabis,\u00a0tweeted<\/a><\/u>.<\/p>\n \u201cMyths about weed passed around in schools and online can make getting real, honest answers difficult for teens,\u201d the campaign\u2019s website says. \u201cThe information included here is shared with the intent to reduce the negative consequences associated with cannabis consumption for young people.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not clear what negative consequences the website is referring to, but the problem, according to local cannabis activists, is that \u201cTruth (or nah?!)\u201d does not do that. Instead, it spreads prohibition-style misinformation, including a bizarre claim that cannabis is as damaging to lung health as tobacco and can \u201cpoison\u201d people.<\/p>\n In an e-mailed statement, Veronica Vien, an SFDPH spokeswoman, said that the $150,000 campaign was developed by \u201cour maternal and child experts, substance use experts, our health officer, and expert consultants.\u201d<\/p>\n While Vien did not identify these experts or disclose whether they were paid or volunteers, she did point to the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine\u2019s landmark 2017 literature review as source material. Interestingly enough, that review was considered a watershed moment at the time of its release because of its embrace of marijuana as a valid medical treatment.<\/p>\n What it wasn\u2019t associated with was the conclusion that marijuana legalization has been problematic for young people.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take a look at few examples raised by the SFDPH\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n \u201cAre edibles safer than smoking or vaping weed?\u201d one ad asks. \u201cNaaaaah!\u201d it answers itself. \u201cPeople sometimes eat enough to get poisoned before they feel any effects.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Merriam-Webster, \u201cpoison\u201d is \u201ca substance that through its chemical action usually kills, injures, or impairs an organism.\u201d While cannabis can certainly impair, it has never been known to kill, and its ability to injure is debatable at best.<\/p>\n In the ad\u2019s defense, Vien seemed to take a softer and more nuanced stance than the ads. \u201cWe worked directly with youth,\u201d she wrote in her e-mail. \u201cWe understand that edibles are a big risk. If not used with care, it can be easy to over-ingest cannabis.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough the technical term of poison may not be commonly used, the over-ingestion of cannabis can potentially lead to negative effects such as impaired coordination, extreme anxiety, or illness.\u201d<\/p>\n That did not satisfy marijuana activists, who said the use of \u201cpoison\u201d is a deliberate and inherent falsehood.\u00a0\u201cThat is a total lie,\u201d said David Goldman, a San Francisco-based marijuana activist and president of the city\u2019s Brownie Mary Democratic Club, a pro-cannabis registered political group. \u201cIt\u2019s factually wrong. That is not supported by any evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLike\u00a0cigarettes<\/a>, smoking cannabis can damage your lungs,\u201d another ad says. \u201cIf consumed by teens and those in their early 20s, cannabis can also affect brain development. Potential for accidental poisoning via cannabis edibles is high, and weed has an even more negative effect when mixed with other substances such as alcohol or tobacco.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s a lot to unpack here for anyone, much less an impressionable teen, but we\u2019ll try. First, there are the long-term studies, including\u00a0one<\/a>\u00a0conducted by the University of California San Francisco, that have found marijuana is less damaging to lungs than tobacco. This raises the question as to why the SF Department of Public Health felt the need to make such a comparison.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also not clear that cannabis affects brain development or, if it does, by how much. While it\u2019s true that young cannabis users often score lower outcomes on health or cognitive-ability studies, as Scientific American\u00a0points out<\/a>,<\/u>\u00a0it\u2019s very difficult to control for other factors like poverty, abuse, neglect and trauma. To say outright that it affects brain development is probably true, but in what way? And to what degree? Those are questions neither scientists nor \u201cTruth (or Nah?!)\u201d can yet answer.<\/p>\n In her e-mail, Vien again seemed to soft-pedal. She brought up heavy marijuana use\u2019s connection to chronic bronchitis, but also noted there is \u201cno evidence of permanent damage or lung cancer from smoking cannabis.\u201d Was that very important detail included in the ad campaign? Well, nah.<\/p>\n Goldman outlined these and other problems with the taxpayer-funded ad campaign in a letter to SFDPH but has yet to hear back.<\/p>\n The central issue here may not be that SFPDH is stretching the truth in order to demonize marijuana, but that they are stretching the truth to a skeptical population whose bullsh*t sensors are already set on high.<\/p>\n As Scientific American wrote, \u201cexaggerating the perils of cannabis \u2014 the risks of brain damage, addiction, psychosis \u2014 has not helped. Any whiff of\u00a0Reefer Madness-<\/i>hyperbole is perfectly calibrated to trigger an adolescent\u2019s instinctive skepticism for whatever an adult suggests.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a good idea to present teens with clear and concise facts, without embellishment, dumbing-down, or trying oh-so-hard to be cool and relevant, right? True, very true.<\/p>\n Is this San Francisco-bred marijuana scare campaign hitting the mark? No, it is not \u2014 no matter how many extra A\u2019s you want to put in Nah.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/b>, how do you talk to the teens in your life about cannabis?<\/p>\n The post San Francisco\u2019s \u2018Marijuana Awareness\u2019 Campaign Has a Truthiness Problem<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Of all the choices available to today\u2019s young people, those walking, talking bad-decision machines dripping with excess hormones, smoking marijuana definitely isn\u2019t the best one. But it\u2019s probably wiser than sexting, playing the knock-out game or cyberbullying \u2014 though maybe less trendy. According to the most recent government\u00a0survey, roughly 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":[6820,6821,148,50,119,6822,5214,1570,5720,724],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31507"}],"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=31507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31508,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31507\/revisions\/31508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\nFind the right answer here: https:\/\/t.co\/SyQSkLPFQp<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/OCyvTx8q2l<\/a><\/p>\n
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\nRead More: San Francisco\u2019s \u2018Marijuana Awareness\u2019 Campaign Has a Truthiness Problem<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"