Heavy cannabis use 'damages gums'

[Al B. Fuct]

Will One Joint Really Make You Schizoid?

Maia Szalavitz, July 30, 2007

 

Just what did a new study on marijuana and schizophrenia actually say – and what did the media leave out?

 

Watching the media cover marijuana is fascinating, offering deep insight into conventional wisdom, bias and failure to properly place science in context. The coverage of a new study claiming that marijuana increases the risk of later psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia by 40% displays many of these flaws.

 

What are the key questions reporters writing about such a study needs to ask? First, can the research prove causality? Most of the reporting here, to its credit, establishes at some point that it cannot,though you have to read pretty far down in some of it to understand this.

 

Second – and this is where virtually all of the coverage falls flat –, if marijuana produces what seems like such a large jump in risk for schizophrenia, have schizophrenia rates increased in line with marijuana use rates? A quick search of Medline shows that this is not the case-- in fact, as I noted here earlier, some experts think they may actually have fallen. Around the world, roughly 1% of the population has schizophrenia (and another 2% or so have other psychotic disorders), and this proportion doesn't seem to change much. It is not correlated with population use rates of marijuana.

 

Since marijuana use rates have skyrocketed since the 1940's and 50's, going from single digit percentages of the population trying it to a peak of some 60% of high school seniors trying it in 1979 (stabilizing thereafter at roughly 50% of each high school class), we would expect to see this trend have some visible effect on the prevalence of schizophrenia and other psychoses.

 

When cigarette smoking barreled through the population, lung cancer rose in parallel; when smoking rates fell, lung cancer rates fell. This is not the case with marijuana and psychotic disorders; if it were, we'd be seeing an epidemic of psychosis.

 

But readers of the AP, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, and Reuters were not presented with this information. While CBS/WebMD mentioned the absence of a surge in schizophrenia, it did so by quoting an advocate of marijuana policy reform, rather than citing a study or quoting a doctor. This slants the story by pitting an advocate with an agenda against a presumably neutral medical authority.

 

Furthermore, very little of the coverage put the risk in context. A 40% increase in risk sounds scary, and this was the risk linked to trying marijuana once, not to heavy use. To epidemiologists a 40% increase is not especially noteworthy-- they usually don't find risk factors worth worrying about until the number hits at least 200% and some major journals won't publish studies unless the risk is 300 or even 400%. The marijuana paper did find that heavy use increased risk by 200-300%, but that's hardly as sexy as try marijuana once, increase your risk of schizophrenia by nearly half!

 

By contrast, one study found that alcohol has been found to increase the risk of psychosis by 800% for men and 300% for women. Although this study was not a meta-analysis (which looks at multiple studies, as the marijuana research did), it certainly is worth citing to help readers get a sense of the magnitude of the risk in comparison with other drugs linked to psychosis.

 

Of course, if journalists wanted to do that, they would also cite researchers who disagree with the notion that marijuana poses a large risk of inducing psychosis at all, such as Oxford's Leslie Iversen, author of one of the key texts on psychopharmacology, who told the Times of London that

 

"Despite a thorough review the authors admit that there is no conclusive evidence that cannabis use causes psychotic illness. Their prediction that 14 per cent of psychotic outcomes in young adults in the UK may be due to cannabis use is not supported by the fact that the incidence of schizophrenia has not shown any significant change in the past 30 years."

 

Such comments don't help the media stir up reefer madness, which they've been doing, quite successfully, for the last few decades. Perhaps covering the marijuana beat makes you crazy.

[RobbieGanjaSeed]

Well if it's so bad for the gums, I'll plant palm trees. I know, they're not native and all, but never let it be said I didn't try to avoid gum problems.

 

Struth, this is just typical. They make us eat and drink all kinds of shit that have never been subjected to this kind of stringent testing for possible health problems. Things we buy regularly as staples for food, things pre-packaged for our children's food...let alone other injestibles of Choice.

 

Like what about studies that have followed smokers for 30 years and found they're greater at risk of miserable lives because of victimisation. Or I wonde what chance of depression, paranoia or skitsophrenia I might be greater in risk of due to unessesary pressure from every time I see the cops drive past the house?

 

Studying grass from every perceptable angle to find something wrong when the loudest conclusions are in ya face and never said, like never a death, pascifying, the health benifits..

 

Hell, imagine what they'd come up with if they put our food through this much testing. Like the way we cure bacon and ham in Austrlaia has been banned in USA for decades as it's known to cause cancer for example. Or the pesticide levels we eat in our meat would never be acceptable if it were in say an orange or apple. Usa regulalry rejected our meat exports for years becuase it was so high in pesticides. What did the univerities in australia do, along with CSIRO I suppose? They raised the known level of pesticide we can accept, instead of fixing ther pesticse problem.

 

Incidently, the pesticide problem is a colex one where food that's been drenched in it is fed to the beef, which is shat onto the ground, which is raised in the grass that shoots forth, carrying every increasing intense levels of poispon. This problem of course exists were poison is used on cerials too, where the stalk is allowed to break downin the paddock, returnibng the poison to the ground, which the new cerial plant will take up in it's roots to further condesne the wretched stuff in itslef, and of course each generation becomes more and more condesned.

 

What have they dont to combat this?

nothing.

In fact I saw Defender npow have poison DESIGNED to be taken up by the roots and spread throughout the plant to "better" protect the plant.

 

If it was happening before, what now?

 

But don't worry about that, worry about ya gums,in spite of I don't know anyone who jhas ever had such a problem ,and as I've noted enough to be well noted, I grew up in the pot culture and until I was say in my 20s, genuinely belived everyone in the world (bar maybe a few?) smoked dope, they just kept it quieter. So that includes m y whole world of freinds smoking, and never seen this gum problem.

 

What about seeing kids spaz out on food colourings, people contracting more and more rashes and nerve destroying conditions every year they can't seem to work out where is coming from. (btw research has shown THC to help the nerves by preserving the sheath thatgrows over them to protect them from deteriation)..

 

 

oh I can't go on, sorry.

 

rob