The following taken from article by UK Daily Mail By Ben Spencer, Science Reporter for the Daily Mail
\”Cannabis is highly addictive, causes mental health problems and opens the door to hard drugs, the study found.
The paper by Professor Wayne Hall, a drugs adviser to the World Health Organisation, builds a compelling case against those who deny the devastation cannabis wreaks on the brain. Professor Hall found:
Lasting effects: One in six teenagers who regularly smoke the drug become dependent on it and cannabis users do worse at school. Heavy use in adolescence appears to impair intellectual development. (File image)
- One in six teenagers who regularly smoke the drug become dependent on it,
- Cannabis doubles the risk of developing psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia,
- Cannabis users do worse at school. Heavy use in adolescence appears to impair intellectual development
- One in ten adults who regularly smoke the drug become dependent on it and those who use it are more likely to go on to use harder drugs,
- Driving after smoking cannabis doubles the risk of a car crash, a risk which increases substantially if the driver has also had a drink,
- Smoking it while pregnant reduces the baby’s birth weight.\”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2782906/The-terrible-truth-cannabis-British-expert-s-devastating-20-year-study-finally-demolishes-claims-smoking-pot-harmless.html#ixzz3FiQNVP1g (Copyright Daily Mail UK )
To access the research paper by Wayne Hall PDF can be found here
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.12703/pdf
NEW YORK (MainStreet) – Even as a marijuana legalization gains traction around the U.S. and the world, the anti-pot contingent soldiers on to promote its own agenda. These advocates are on a mission to keep marijuana illegal where it is, make it illegal where it is not and to inform the public of the dangers of marijuana legalization as they see it.
So who are these anti-marijuana legalization crusaders?
They come from different backgrounds. Some come from the business world. Two are former White House cabinet members. Another is an academic. Two are former ambassadors. One is the scion of a famous political family. Many are psychiatrists or psychologists. Others are former addicts. Still others are in the field of communications. Oh – one is a Pope.
Read more here… http://www.mainstreet.com/article/top-20-anti-marijuana-crusaders-fighting-against-pot-legalization/page/7
From Australia: State of Victoria Regional Court Judge talks about ICE addiction and children addicted as young as 11 trapped on ICE.
https://m.soundcloud.com/774-abc-melbourne/magistrate-stella-stuthridge-on-shepparton-ice-crisis
To summarize WFAD supports the following principles to serve as a platform for the drug policy debate:
ï‚· Drug policies should prevent initiation of drug use.
ï‚· Drug policies must respect human rights (for users and non-users alike)as well as the principle of proportionality.
ï‚· Drug policies should strike a balance of efforts to reduce the use of drugs and the supply of drugs.
ï‚· Drug policies should protect children from drug use.
ï‚· Drug policies should ensure access to medical help, treatment and recovery services.
ï‚· Drug policies should ensure access to controlled drugs for legitimate scientific and medical purposes.
ï‚· Drug policies should ensure that medical and judicial responses are coordinated with the goal of reducing drug use and drug-related consequences.8
For Complete response read here…
Statement from WFAD on the Global Commission on Drug Policy\’s report Sept14
What’s Reefer Madness? New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd came to Colorado to write about marijuana. Dowd was in a Denver hotel room when she tried a “caramel-chocolate flavored candy bar” that she bought at a local marijuana dispensary. …….After an hour, Dowd felt nothing. Then the marijuana kicked in as Dowd “felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours. ……..I was panting and paranoid, sure that when the room-service waiter knocked and I didn’t answer, he’d call the police and have me arrested…..” “…… As my paranoia deepened, I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me.”
ABC 7 News reported that Kristine Kirk called 911, stating that her husband, Richard, ate marijuana muffins and that he was hallucinating and scaring their three children. She stated that Richard said the world was coming to an end and asked her to shoot him. ……..The call ended with Kristine’s scream and a gunshot. Kristine was dead. ….When Richard was taken into custody, he admitted to killing his wife.
Can we Canadians learn from Colorado? Colorado in 2000 allowed a medical patient to possess 2 ounces of marijuana. In 2012, Colorado legalized recreational marijuana.
Here are some Colorado numbers, thanks to the Rocky Mountain Drug Trafficking reports:
In 2012, about one-third of the high school students were under the influence during school hours. Related to this is the fact that if an individual is a regular user of two to three years of marijuana, they lose an average of 6 to 8 points in their IQ says Dr. M.H. Meier of NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse), reducing his/her ability “to get an education or find or hold a good job”.
In 2012, about 27% of students aged 18 to 25 were regular marijuana users, compared to 19% for the national average.
There was a 57% increase in marijuana-related emergency room visits from 2011 to 2013 (about 13,000 visits). Marijuana-related hospitalizations almost doubled from 2008 to 2013.
Traffic fatalities increased 100% from 2007 to 2012 involving people testing positive for marijuana. (Overall traffic fatalities decreased by 15%).
About 9% of users became truly addicted, with withdrawal symptoms when trying to stop. From personal experience, Lady Gaga says “You can get addicted to pot”.
The delusions and paranoia of Ms. Dowd and Mr. Kirk were acute reactions to marijuana. However, a major life-long effect of marijuana is psychosis or schizophrenia. T.H. Moore concludes that there is “sufficient evidence to warn young people that using cannabis could increase their risk of developing a psychotic illness later in life.” For example, cannabis use in the UK increased four-fold between 1970 and 2002. As feared, it was later found that new cases of schizophrenia increased by 58% over three years.
In Zurich, Switzerland, when cannabis use in 15-16-year old boys went up three-fold between 1990 and 2002, it was followed by a doubling of first hospital admissions for psychosis in those aged 15 to 24.
Future increases in cannabis-related cases of schizophrenia would add to the already high psychosis rate in Canada. M.-J. Dealberto at Queen’s University in Ontario found that the rate of new cases of schizophrenia in Canada is about 26 per 100,000 per year, which is twice that in other countries.
While marijuana legalization would provide tax money to Canadian governments, it would not make up for the high personal, medical, and life-long costs to Canadians.
Philip Seeman, O.C., M.D., Ph.D., is Emeritus Professor of Pharmacology and Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, and discovered the human brain’s dopamine receptor for psychosis.
Teenagers who smoke marijuana daily are over 60 percent less likely to complete high school than those who never use. They\’re also 60 percent less likely to graduate college and seven times more likely to attempt suicide. Those are the startling conclusions of a new study of adolescent cannabis use out today in The Lancet Psychiatry, a British journal of health research.
The loftily entitled Global Commission on Drugs has just released a new report, “Taking Control: Drug Policies that Work”, which has garnered disproportionate media coverage. For those who are unaware, the Commission is a collection of ex-political leaders and the entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, all of whom are promoting the legalisation of all currently illegal drugs.
This is a policy that they push on the basis, so they claim, of massive evidence of the failure of the “ war on drugs”- evidence that somehow eluded them when they occupied high office and that equally strangely manages to elude those who currently occupy those positions.
This is a Global Commission name only. It has no representatives from Africa, China, Russia, India or the Islamic world. Its advice on drugs policy is that drugs should be regulated by governments across the world irrespective of their political, ethical, religious, philosophical, and moral colour or the nature of the drug problem they are dealing with, or the drugs treatment infrastructure they have in place.
Read More… http://conservativewoman.co.uk/neil-mckeganey-called-global-drugs-commission-front-legalisation/
These findings reinforce the accumulating evidence that earlier age of initiation of marijuana abuse is associated with worse outcomes…
Read more here.
In Washington and Colorado, where marijuana has been legalized, marijuana use is even more widespread: Evergreen State College in Olympia ranked No. 3, the University of Colorado at Boulder came in No. 4 (UC was previously No. 1 in 2012), and Colorado College took the No. 13 slot.
http://www.opb.org/news/blog/newsblog/3-oregon-colleges-among-top-20-campuses-for-marijuana-use/
​Full details of the survey can be found at http://www.princetonreview.com/SchoolList.aspx?id=743​
