Pubdate: Thu, 01 May 2014
Source: Boulder Weekly (CO)
Column: Weed Between the Lines
Copyright: 2014 Boulder Weekly
Contact:  http://www.boulderweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/57
Author: Leland Rucker

IT'S LIKE REEFER MADNESS ALL OVER AGAIN

Denver police suspect a man used cannabis before murdering his wife. 
A young man leaps off a balcony to his death and authorities say a 
marijuana edible was a factor. Headlines trumpet studies that say 
young users are susceptible to brain damage and IQ loss by even 
casually using cannabis.

It's like Reefer Madness all over again. I recently finished Martin 
Booth's excellent Cannabis: A History, and seeing all these headlines 
in the wake of legalization efforts here and in Washington reminds me 
of the days when Harry Anslinger, and later Richard Nixon and Ronald 
Reagan-era Justice Departments, used deception, headlines and lies to 
demonize cannabis use throughout much of the 20th century.

This time, though, the backlash comes not just from government 
agencies, but from some medical professionals, law enforcement groups 
and prohibitionist lobbyists. Their means of communication are the 
same: sensational headlines delivered by a complacent media with 
neither intention nor the means to actually read or question the 
studies that arrive weekly on one aspect of cannabis or another.

Saturday morning I awoke to a wealth of headlines about cannabis and 
heart attacks. CBS News wrote that "Marijuana Use May Lead to Cardiac 
Arrest and Other Heart Problems." Fox News was even more frightening: 
"Marijuana Use May Lead to Heart Complications, Death, Study Says."

That isn't really what the study indicated, and we'll get back to 
those screamer headlines in a moment.

It's been long known that cannabis use can increase heart rates. My 
doctor mentioned this to me a decade-and-a-half ago. So that's not 
exactly news.

And it doesn't indicate that cannabis causes heart problems.

For this study, published in the Journal of the American Heart 
Association, French researchers looked at data compiled by that 
country's Addictovigilance Network between 2006 and 2010. In five 
years of statistics, they found 35 cases among 2,000 admitted 
marijuana users with known medical conditions linked to the heart and 
arteries in the brain or limbs. Of the 35, 20 suffered a heart 
attack. Nine died from cardiovascular complications.

That's about it.

There's no information about what other drugs patients might have 
been using or what else might have contributed to the heart attacks. 
The authors suggest that the actual numbers are probably higher, but 
since many people in a country where it's illegal might not tell a 
doctor about their cannabis use, the numbers could be a lot lower, too.

I have no reason to believe the doctors are trying to mislead, but 
today, with cannabis in the news, it pays to come up with a 
conclusion that will get you headlines, and they certainly went with 
the most provocative suggestion they could find in their data. It's a 
secondary study, based on someone else's research, and the authors 
admit that the conclusions might show a need for an actual clinical 
study that could isolate more factors and come to better conclusions.

But let's return to the headlines for a moment. In an age when the 
cheap, misleading headline - i.e. This video will break your heart 
and make you want to change the world, but only if you click on it 
and watch the entire thing!! - has been elevated to high art, we're 
being fed heds designed not to tell us what the story actually says, 
but just to try and make us click on it.

And, quite frankly, too many so-called online media outlets these 
days don't actually read stories or studies or question individuals. 
In a 24/7 news world, items like this get boiled down to essentials, 
a couple of outrageous tweets and a clever headline. On to the next meme.

After a while, the headlines blend together, with advocates naming 
their favorite study to prove their point and prohibitionists 
promoting their own in a weird case of 
my-study-is-bigger-and-better-than-your-study. Readers, especially on 
the web, with its blaring heds and hyperlinks, are left with a 
bewildering array of deliberately misleading headlines and pithy 
analyses of subjects that surely deserve better.

Some of the television coverage could easily give someone the 
impression that legalization is creating some kind of gigantic, 
entirely new market. Certainly there are going to be people who, for 
whatever reason, haven't used cannabis but are curious now that it's legal.

But make no mistake: The market is already there. It's been 
functioning, despite 70 years of prohibition, and is now one of the 
largest crops in the United States. It's a market that in Colorado 
involves thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people, and it's 
been effective. Until enough shops open and the market and prices 
settle down, don't expect that black market to end for a while.

Interestingly, despite this wave of negativity, when I asked District 
Attorney Stan Garnett whether his office had experienced any 
particular problems in connection with legalization since Jan. 1, he 
said, "Boulder County has a lot of problems. This is not one of them."

Wish that could make the headlines. But Reefer Madness apparently still rules.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom