NialScorva

I have heard that the primary danger of marijuana is in the emotional development rather than the intellectual development of teenagers. Something about it "freezing" their maturity at the level that heavy usage began. Any truth to that?

Godless Dave

Pot may not cause cancer but inhaling smoke into your lungs can't be good for them. Just like at all that resin lining your pipe, and think about how it got there.

ps418

There could be, particularly for adolescents. If you spend a significant portion of your waking hours during adolescence under the acute effects of any drug, its bound to have some kind of retarding impact on development. However, I have seen no compelling evidence for this. And it would not do simply to show an association between chronic cannabis use and emotional problems in adolescents, since that association could easily be accounted for by personality (i.e. those with emotional problems for whatever reason are more likely to become drug abusers).

As far as my own personal observations go, I see no relationship between emotional development and cannabis use in adults. If anything, the cannabis users (again my own anecdotal experience) may be slightly more empathic, have more social contacts (albeit mostly with other users), and have at least average self-esteem. I was a daily smoker from 18 to 28 (I'm 29 now), and certainly my own emotional development was not 'frozen.'

Patrick

NialScorva

Actually where I hear it is on Loveline, Dr Drew Pensky talks about it from his addiction medicine practice. They seem very consistent in saying that unless you're borderline stupid to start with or have a predisposition towards addiction, it doesn't matter if you smoke or not. They also warn teens not to smoke it for the reasons I mentioned earlier.

Of course, I wonder whether the majority of their callers are close enough to being non-functional that mild dehydration could put them over the edge, so they have to warn against the possible effects.

Free Thinkr

Actually, if you think about it, resin is mostly THC. THC absorbs into your bloodstream, unlike your pipe.

ps418

Ok, I said I was going to let the thread die, but there are two more very significant articles that have just been published. In the july issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation, Croxford and Miller (2003) show that the synthetic cannbinoid R(+)WIN55,212, a CB1 agonist like THC, effectively halts the progression of disease symptoms in a mouse model of multiple sclerosis. The mouse model is known as TMEV-IDD, which stands for Theiler murine encephalomyelitis virus–induced demyelinating disease. This is potentially very significant, as there are few if any effective treatments for progressive MS in humans, and the effect in this study was profound.

Croxford and Miller, 2003. Immunoregulation of a viral model of multiple sclerosis using the synthetic cannabinoid R(+)WIN55,212. J. Clin. Invest. 111, 1231–1240.

The other interesting paper is one showing the neuroprotective properties of cannabidiol, a nonpsychoactive cannabinoid present in cannabis, against cerebral ischemia experimentally-induced by occlusion of the carotid arteries.

Braida et al, 2003. Post-ischemic treatment with cannabidiol prevents electroencephalographic flattening, hyperlocomotion and neuronal injury in gerbils. Neuroscience Letters 346, 61-64.

Patrick

Nuno Figueira

"I have heard that the primary danger of marijuana is in the emotional development rather than the intellectual development of teenagers. Something about it "freezing" their maturity at the level that heavy usage began. Any truth to that?"


I think there might be some truth to that. I can certainly notice it in me. When you're a teenager that learns how to deal with all the angers and frustations by getting high on any mood altering chemical you end up not developing so well the regular mechanisms people usually develop to deal with adversity. Of course, this would also hold true concerning any other drug, including alcohol so I don't think you could say it's the pot that does it.

godfry n. glad

Correction: It absolutely cannot help you with your weight-loss diet.

Now, if you wish to gain weight, it might be helpful, as I understand it acts as an appetite stimulant for a large number of users. Which is another reason those on chemotherapy find its use agreeable. However, this effect is not consistant across all users, from my anecdotal sources.

godfry

godfry n. glad

Patrick...

First, thanks for all the great tidbits of information and the sources that go with them.

Second, your comments about cooking it with butter or oil brings to mind claims by acquaintances that they had to give up smoking cannabis due to asthma and took to warming their cannabis in cooking oil. The stated that the psychoactive ingredient was then released into the cooking oil and they could then cook their breakfast eggs (or whatnot) in the said oil and enjoy their high.
Do you know if this is a "more efficient" method than the cooking of the herbal form into brownies?

Then... It is my understanding that in testing for intoxicants in the system, cannaboids can be detected for up to six weeks in some individuals and usually for as long as two to three weeks in most users. This is reputedly because it is stored in the fats of the body. This does NOT occur with opiods, cocaine or amphetimines, which are metabolized within hours, or a couple of days at most. Is this correct? (If true, this would make the intoxicant with the least adverse effects upon body and behavior the easiest to track and penalize users for. Doesn't that indicate that one possible effect of heavy anti-cannabis enforcement would be to push a certain percentage of users into other, more dangerous, recreational drugs?)

godfry

ps418

No, its not more efficient. When you make brownies, you do something similar, which is to mix the cannabis with vegetable oil, and the mix the oil with the brownie mix. The big problem with eating in general is that the plasma concentration of THC increases very slowly and stays elevated for much longer, so if you want to get a plasma THC concentration comparable to smoking, you have to take much more. Tinctures may be more efficient, but I couldn't tell you for sure. Tinctures are made by dissolving the THC in alcohol. Then you can administer the tincture sublingually, under the tongue. This has the benefit of faster absorption, like smoking.

You mean, like alcohol? Sure. It also spawns a market for devices and substances to fool the tests. The big problem with tests for cannabis is that they can't tell you when the last use was, weeks versus hours. IMHO, no one should be able to deny you a job simply because you took a few puffs of cannabis at a party last friday. Yet, as things stand now, the binge-drinker and part-time crackhead can get jobs that are denied to responsible, occasional smokers.

Patrick