Two recent news stories concerning marijuana jumped out at us today.
The New York Times reports that " One in five adults in Europe have used marijuana or related drugs like hashish, the European Union’s drug agency said." Having lived in Europe for almost two decades, I can tell you that the ratio of hashish use to marijuana use is about the inverse of what you'll find in the US -- that is about 4 to 1. In the US, because of the rather developed hydroponic growing industry and distance from hashish-producing regions, most of those who smoke are buying very strong grass grown indoors. As per their usual ignorant fear-mongering, recent reports from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy warning of the new, stronger strains of marijuana being produced get things not just wrong, but 180-degrees wrong. Claiming that this new, higher-potency marijuana increases the risks of respiratory problems, as the report does, is back-asswards, as they say. When people have access to stronger grass, they smoke less of it, and therefore have lower exposure to the toxins released by combustion. So, as far as lung damage goes, stronger pot is actually healthier pot. All concerns with lung damage can be obviated simply by not smoking it, but eating it instead -- another point rarely mentioned publicly.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it!
Which brings us to the second story we noted today: the medical student section of the AMA (American Medical Association) has overwhelmingly endorsed a resolution calling for support of legislation allowing marijuana to be used freely in medicine. Now, to any dispassionate observer, the disallowal of marijuana and other psychoactive substances in medical/psycho-therapeutic settings would be incomprehensible. One researcher, commenting on LSD, noted that prohibiting psychiatrists and neurologists from research into how minute quantities of LSD have such dramatic effects on the brain's function (with no detectable toxicity, by the way) is like prohibiting astronomers from using telescopes. Purely political nonsense -- with serious consequences for the general public.
But the main point we wanted to make, for any researchers who might read this, is that the current methodologies for research into marijuana use are -- with a few notable exceptions -- very poor. Because researchers tend not to be people with much personal knowledge of these substances outside the lab, as it were, they are unaware of things like the following:
-- There are two distinct strains of marijuana (indica and sativa) which have very different effects upon the brain and mind/body. So, to speak only of the effects of "marijuana," as most researchers do, is both naive and inaccurate.
-- In Europe, the vast majority of the hashish used comes from Morocco and contains additives (often pine pitch or wax) that could have seriously confounding effects upon any research that doesn't take this into account.
-- Almost everyone who smokes hashish in Europe mixes it with tobacco, normally taken from commercial cigarettes. We know that commercial cigarettes contain all sorts of additives to enhance flavor, adjust the combustion speed, stop the cigarette from going out, etc. As the manufacturers are not the sorts to share their research data (to put it mildly), virtually nothing is known about the effects of these additives when smoked without the cigarette's filter. It's quite possible that the manufacturers have added substances that are designed to be caught by the filter. When the tobacco is smoked without this filter, we have no idea what substances may be passing directly to the throat and lung tissue.
We hope the US government will relax its medieval obstruction of rational drug policy and that this will result in more, better-designed research and treatments (MDMA shows promise in the treatment of PTSD, for example). If you'd like more information about serious scientists who are pursuing this research, we highly recommend MAPS as a place to start.
Update: The BBC is reporting that a new regulation will soon prohibit the smoking of marijuana together with tobacco in coffee shops. Dutch doctors are united in banning tobacco in public places, while still allowing the use of marijuana.
Update #2: The New York Times is reporting today that over a year after receiving a single dose of psilicybin in a study at Johns Hopkins, more than 6 out of 10 participants report lasting benefits in terms of sense of well-being and improved behavior. As UCLA professor of public policy, Mark Kleiman notes "making what is undoubtedly a religious experience unavailable by law does not seem to fit well with either the Free Exercise Clause or the international human-rights treaties."
