National Cannabis Pest Intelligence Centre

[mull]

Hi all.

Thought we could do with a thread to help protect cannabis information.

 

Personally don't condone young kids using anything, but we were all young once and did experiment. Some, no doubt have trouble with some substances.

 

Biting tongue as much as I can, toward our caring friends at NDARC with their National Cannabis Propaganda Invention Centre (NCPIC) they showed a tiny display of balance here and there in this month's bulletin.

 

Find it here

 

http://ndarc.med.unsw.edu.au/NDARCWeb.nsf/...ANUARY+2008.pdf

 

 

"Key points

• Young people are most likely to present to residential substance use treatment in Australia with cannabis as their principal drug of concern

• Those who present with cannabis use problems are younger and more likely to be male

• They are also more likely to seek treatment in rural settings than are their primarily

psychostimulant or opioid-using peers

• The mental health of young people presenting with cannabis problems is as poor as that of

primary psychostimulant users, and poorer than that of primary alcohol or opioid users

• Cannabis-using young people presenting to residential treatment are less criminally involved

• Young people with cannabis as a principal drug of concern were retained longer than

other groups"

 

Look at the key points with some scrutiny. This is all that most people will read of the bulletin

 

First bullet is true. Not relevant to cannabis though, show you why. While doing so, consider why a centre would want to purposely mislead people reading this document and have the reader believe it to be authentic medical evidence and not what it really is.. a biased look at strangely collected bunch of numbers and stats.

 

We're looking at data combined from the Ted Noffs Foundation centres, Program for Adolescent Life Management (PALM) for referred young people 14-18. Information taken from 4 different centres, Dubbo, ACT, Sydney, and Coffs.

Between them all they have 42 beds, for the 3 month residential part of PALM.

This data coming from a 'participant sample' of 1245 PALM admissions, from Jan 2001 to Jun 2007 = 6.5 years.

 

The figures show

 

"Among the remaining sample of 1245 admissions, cannabis was the most common substance

of principal concern (553, or 44.4% of, admissions)"

 

 

"Also, it is noted that some

admissions with cannabis as the primary substance of concern also had a psychostimulant,

alcohol, and/or an opioid as a secondary substance of concern (40.5%, 49.3%, and 5.1%,

respectively)."

 

Ok... so...

 

40.5% + 49.3% + 5.1% = 94.9% who had secondary substance of concern problems, with highly addictive and possibly highly toxic substances; completely unlike cannabis.

 

That leaves 5.1% of 553 admissions, over 6.5 years, treated for cannabis alone.

How many is that..

 

5.1% of 553 = 28.203 .. 28

 

28 / 6.5 years = 4.3 round up to 5

 

5 kids presented for treatment to PALM every year for cannabis alone, over 4 centres.

 

So ricochet the first bullet

 

• Young people are most likely to present to residential substance use treatment in Australia with cannabis as their principal drug of concern

 

 

With

 

• Young people are significantly less likely to need any treatment at all, when they use cannabis by itself.

 

 

Next bullet

 

• Those who present with cannabis use problems are younger and more likely to be male

 

 

Stated in table 1 average ages of - 16.6 for cannabis

- 16.9 psycho stimulant

- 16.8 alcohol

- 17 opioid

and average of 82.1% cannabis users treated were male

 

82.1% of 5 per year = 4.105 so 4

 

That bullet could have read

 

• Sorry to waste your time with this, but an insignificant number of young people present with cannabis problems per year, only around 5. Of those around 4 were male. They were on average slightly younger, at 0.225 of a year, when compared to other substance problems treated.

 

 

Next

 

• They are also more likely to seek treatment in rural settings than are their primarily

psychostimulant or opioid-using peers

 

 

With

 

• The anti cannabis propaganda is working slightly better in the country than the city. Acknowledging however, that drug demographics are completely different from city to country, this comparison is irrelevant in our 5 cannabis relevant cases per year.

 

Next

 

• The mental health of young people presenting with cannabis problems is as poor as that of

primary psychostimulant users, and poorer than that of primary alcohol or opioid users

 

With

 

•A tiny percentage of young people, showed cannabis effected their mental health as poorly as that of primary psychostimulant users, and poorer than that of primary alcohol or opioid users

 

 

Last 2 seem fair.

 

 

• Cannabis-using young people presenting to residential treatment are less criminally involved

• Young people with cannabis as a principal drug of concern were retained longer than

other groups

[pipeman]

nice work mullaway keep it up. I'm gonna save a copy of this and send it to the next moron who asks me if I've heard of the latest research that "proves" cannabis causes mental illness.

[BlackBeauty]

Good one mullaway - always handy to dig a little bit deeper into these bold statements and so-called statistics.

 

Many of the statistics provided in studies on cannabis tend to be composed of other flawed studies and incomplete statistics - garbage in, garbage out...like a compilation of various bull shit to make a bigger pile of bull shit.

 

Just like those stats on drug driving and the actual amount of drivers caught for cannabis alone is much smaller than the figures they are publishing which incorporate other drugs but they conveniently won't mention that bit!

[Frazz]

Excellent piece of investigative journalisim on your part mulla ...

also lets keep in mind this report was put together by National Cannabis Prevention And Information Centre , another legacy of Herr Howards' Dis-information war on drugs campagain ... what a shameful appropriation of taxpayers money going to stuffed-shirt academics in ivory towers who tailor-make results to suit requirements ..

 

though, on face value this half-baked 'report' only enumerates my contention that Cannabis is indeed a relatively harmless Adults Only recreational drug

 

sorry junior but some things are best experienced and enjoyed when the human mind is psychologically mature ...

and yes, i know ima silly old coot too

 

[iamnotacop]

I agree, well done and excellent work mullaway. This is the exact type of thing that we need to be doing, with every paper released. Then when it hits the newspapers we can write in and inform them of the truth (the public I mean through LTE's)

If this comes up in my local paper, I will be sure to plagurise<sp?> your work, I hope you don't mind. But the only thing in my paper about Cannabis in the last couple of days was titled "Cannabis has more benefits", and is talking about the benefits to cancer sufferers, and it's anti cancer properties, from a German study. I intend on writing a letter asking for more research to be undertaken in my own backyard in relation to this article.

[entheofarm]

Anthony a

and

Sally r

 

Should have done a search

 

and seen that the NCPIC are known as Anslinger wannabees here