PRESS RELEASE - 14th FEBRUARY, 2008

Edition42.

Cannabis News Items From Around the World

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.

Latest Misleading Pot "Science"

Posted by CN Staff on February 09, 2008 at 05:42:42 PT
By Bruce Mirken, AlterNet
Source: AlterNet

cannabis USA -- Recent weeks have seen a rash of new studies of marijuana hitting the mass media, generating scary headlines like "Smoking Pot Rots Your Gums," "Cannabis Bigger Cancer Risk Than Cigarettes," and "Pot Withdrawal Similar to Quitting Cigarettes". Most of this coverage can be boiled down to a fairly simple equation:

Flawed science + uncritical reporting = misinformation.

Mercifully, the U.S. mass media were so distracted by Super Tuesday, Heath Ledger's autopsy and the latest Britney Spears trauma that reports of these studies didn't get as much play as they might have. That's good, because the research had significant gaps, and the reporting ranged from slapdash to flat wretched.

Lung Cancer: A Joint = 20 Cigarettes

The lung cancer study was the scariest. Since cigarettes are a known lung cancer risk, it seems plausible that marijuana might carry similar risks. In fact, most of the scientific evidence tends in the opposite direction -- though one would never know it from reading either the study or the Reuters wire story that got the heaviest circulation.

Conducted in New Zealand, this was what is called a "case-control" study, in which researchers looked at a group of patients who had lung cancer and compared them to a group without cancer -- the controls -- matched for age and other demographics. All were asked about various factors that might increase their lung cancer risk, including smoking cigarettes or marijuana. After running the data on 79 cancer cases and 324 controls through myriad equations and mathematical analyses, the researchers proclaimed that one joint packed a cancer risk roughly equal to 20 cigarettes -- an assertion that became Reuters' lead.

What was downplayed in the study, published in the European Respiratory Journal, and missing entirely from most media reports was context -- context that strongly suggests that its alarming conclusion is wrong.

For one thing, the new conflicts with other, much larger studies. In a study published in 1997, Kaiser-Permanente researchers followed 65,000 patients for 10 years and saw no sign of marijuana use increasing the risk of lung cancer or other smoking-related cancers. And a UCLA study similar in design to this one, published in 2006, found a trend toward lower lung cancer rates among marijuana smokers. Instead of 79 cancer cases, the UCLA team looked at 1,212. The result was so striking that they speculated that it "may reflect a protective effect of marijuana."

That's right: Marijuana might protect from cancer. Piles of published studies going back to the mid-1970s document the cancer-fighting properties of marijuana's active components, THC and other chemicals called cannabinoids. Anticancer activity has been shown in many types of malignant cells, including lung cancer cells. So even though marijuana smoke contains tars and other potentially carcinogenic compounds, it is entirely plausible that cannabinoids counter any harmful effects.

But even without such context, a closer look at the New Zealand data raises questions that should have been asked by reporters. For example, most marijuana smokers in the study actually didn't show an increased risk of cancer. The only group that did was those whose marijuana use equaled at least 10.5 "joint-years" (one joint-year equals smoking a joint every day for one year). That group constituted a whopping 14 people. All those complicated mathematical models leading to the "20 times the risk" assertion, and contradicting reams of published research, rest on exactly 14 people.

Does Marijuana Rot Your Gums?

The gum disease study was even more tenuous, but again you would never know it from most of the coverage. Researchers -- also in New Zealand -- followed 903 participants from birth through age 32. At ages 18, 21, 26, and 32, they were asked whether they had used marijuana in the past year, and how often. The heaviest marijuana users had a 60 percent increased risk for gum disease after controlling for several factors that might affect their risk, including cigarette use and professional dental care.

The researchers were careful to say they hadn't proved cause-and-effect, but simply what scientists called an "association." But that didn't stop one U.S. reporter from writing that marijuana "could ... destroy gum tissue," and an Australian headline writer from declaring that marijuana "makes teeth fall out."

Reading the actual study -- something one suspects most reporters never did -- raises questions the media never asked. Why is there no indication that participants were questioned about use of alcohol or other illicit drugs, both of which are known risk factors for dental and gum problems? Why were they not asked about brushing and flossing habits?

Given the relatively small effect -- the statistical margin of error meant that the increased risk could be as low as 16 percent -- confounding by alcohol/drug use or poor dental hygiene could easily explain the whole difference. In other words, there is a very good chance this study found nothing real at all.

I raised this issue with an editor at one news organization, whose story had been particularly hysterical and lacking in context, asking why they hadn't noted these potential doubts. The rather snippy reply: "As for the rest of your concerns, we are dealing with a peer-reviewed journal study, and I don't feel at all comfortable going beyond what they are publishing. That is not our role."

Memo to editors: Journal peer-reviewers are human. They sometimes miss stuff. When did it stop being a reporter's job to ask questions?

Marijuana As Addictive As Tobacco?

If you haven't lost your teeth or died of lung cancer yet, another set of grim headlines warned that marijuana is as addictive as tobacco -- again, a conclusion that went beyond the study's findings and which was almost certainly wrong.

In this U.S. study, researchers took 12 people who regularly smoked both marijuana and cigarettes and had them stop using one, the other, and both, in varying orders. Physiological tests and responses to questionnaires were used to assess withdrawal symptoms such as irritability and difficulty sleeping. The withdrawal symptoms reported were roughly comparable.

But the limitations of this research are obvious. In fairness, most were acknowledged in the study, published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

For one, the study looked only at regular users of both substances, so it tells nothing about marijuana users who do not use tobacco -- a considerable number, by most accounts. Second, the researchers did not publish the results for individual participants. In a sample of 12, one or two extreme responses can skew the averages enough to make them meaningless.

The researchers also did not note any changes in participants' use of caffeine or alcohol, which could easily have affected their findings. Volunteers were asked not to change their use of these substances, but we have no clue whether they followed these instructions.

And though the overall withdrawal symptom ratings were similar, ratings of anger and craving were higher for tobacco than for marijuana. And even in areas where the two substances were statistically comparable, there was often a trend toward the tobacco withdrawals being stronger. Had this been a larger study, those trends might have reached statistical significance.

Also, the 5-day abstinence period may not have been enough to fully gauge withdrawal effects. For longtime cigarette smokers, tobacco cravings can continue for years.

Finally, a reality check: It is an established fact that about 32 percent of those who ever touch a cigarette become dependent on tobacco. For marijuana, the figure is nine percent. In the real world, it's clear that marijuana is nowhere near as addictive as tobacco -- but again, you'd never know it from the coverage of this study.

In fact, you wouldn't learn much from the coverage of any of these studies.

Bruce Mirken is communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project.

'Man traps' hidden among SA cannabis crop

By Colin James

February 13, 2008 12:00am
Article from: The Advertiser

* More than 430 cannabis plants seized in two days
* Sharpened steel rods 'hidden among some plants'
* Police say they've disrupted cannabis supply

DRUG busts of major cultivations – which included "man traps" – near Port Lincoln have disrupted the distribution of cannabis around South Australia, police say.

More than 430 mature cannabis plants, some up to 2m high and worth more than $500,000, have been seized over the past two days from several sites in national parks, scrubland and private farms near Port Lincoln.

On Monday, 132 plants were located in national parks and 300 mature plants were seized yesterday from a private farm, found hidden in a plantation of bamboo about 20m high. Several smaller cannabis crops were discovered on the property.

A witness said the main plantation also had about a dozen sharpened steel rods about 1m high stuck in the ground and pointing upwards and spread among the cannabis plants, apparently as potential trap for unwanted visitors.

The bamboo crop had been cleared in the centre to allow the cannabis to grow. It was topped with straw and hay in an attempt to camouflage the plants.

The crop of 1m high cannabis plants were discovered about 40m behind two farm houses on a property near Coulta, north of Coffin Bay, on Eyre Peninsula.

Neither house was occupied when police arrived.

The drug raids came as part of a successful strategy by Port Lincoln police to prevent the harvesting of cannabis crops grown in remote locations, officer-in-charge of West Coast local service area Chief Inspector Brad Flaherty said.

"This is a prime example of (a) disruption to the drug trade," he said. "While there have been some reports and arrests the objective was to disrupt the cultivation and eventual trade of cannabis within the state.

"In this case, the operation has been successful."
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Anti-drug bill passes South Australia's Upper House

ABC News

Thursday 14 Feb 2008
---
State Parliament's Upper House has passed legislation that would ban the sale of pipes and bongs used to smoke cannabis.

The private member's bill was put by independent MP Ann Bressington and supported by the major parties and Family First.

It now goes to the Lower House.

Ms Bressington believes it is a step toward reducing young people's exposure to drugs.

"Before the police had the burden of proof to, they had to prove the equipment was being bought specifically to use drugs," she said.

"This bill will now make it understood that this is drug-using paraphernalia and it's illegal to sell.

"It's about reducing, I guess, the availability of these products so our kids may be a little less inclined to experiment, mainly because it's not in their face when they come into the city or when they go into the local shopping centres."

Marijuana Vending Machines in Los Angeles are Contrary to International Drug Control Treaties, says INCB

VIENNA, 8 February (UN Information Service) -- "The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) is deeply concerned about reports that computerized vending machines to dispense cannabis (marijuana) have been put into operation in Los Angeles," said Dr. Philip O. Emafo, President of the Board. The Board concludes its 91st session today in Vienna. "We know that the use of cannabis is illegal under federal law of the United States and we trust the authorities will stop such activities, which contravene the international drug control treaties," he added.

California is one of 11 states of the United States of America which allows medical use of cannabis, though such use continues to be illegal under federal law. In June 2005, the US Supreme Court confirmed the right of the Government to enforce the prohibition on the use of cannabis in a state that removed state-level criminal penalties on the use, possession and cultivation of cannabis for medical purposes.

Cannabis is included in Schedules I and IV of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, as amended by the 1972 Protocol (1961 Convention). Substances in Schedule IV are those considered particularly liable to abuse.

For some years there have been various claims about the therapeutic usefulness of cannabis or cannabis extracts. Scientific research concerning this question is in progress in several countries. So far, the results of research regarding the potential therapeutic usefulness have been limited.

INCB has confirmed in its annual reports that it welcomes sound scientific research on the therapeutic usefulness of cannabis. The Board requested governments concerned to share the results of such research, when available, with the Board, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the international community.

The Board has repeatedly expressed its concern that, without having reported conclusive research results to WHO, the Governments of Canada and the Netherlands authorized the use of cannabis for medical purposes. The Board is also concerned that cannabis is used for medical purposes in some jurisdictions of the United States without having definitive proof of its efficacy.

The control measures applied in California for the cultivation, production and use of cannabis do not meet the control standards set in the 1961 Convention to prevent diversion of narcotic drugs for illicit use. Such standards require, inter alia, the control of cultivation and production of cannabis by a national cannabis agency, and detailed record keeping and reporting on the activities with cannabis, including reporting to INCB.

The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) is an independent control organ, established by the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, as amended by the 1972 Protocol, for monitoring the implementation of the international drug control treaties by Governments and for providing assistance to Governments in this regard.

Heavy cannabis use 'damages gums'
Heavy cannabis smoking is a major cause of gum disease, research suggests.

An international team tracked the dental health of 1,000 people born in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1972 and 1973.

They found heavy cannabis smoking was responsible for more than one-third of the new cases of gum disease among the group by the age of 32.

The Journal of the American Medical Association study follows work linking cannabis use to mental health problems, and lung disease.

"In the mouth, there is a fine balance between tissue destruction and tissue healing and the various toxins in the smoke disrupt that."
Professor Murray Thomson
University of Otago

Gum disease, one of the most common diseases of adulthood, is the second most common cause of tooth loss, after tooth decay.

It has long been linked to cigarette smoking, but this is the first study to look specifically at cannabis.

The researchers accepted that cannabis users also tended to smoke tobacco.

However, they said that even after allowing for this, heavy cannabis smokers had three times the risk of having established gum disease by the age of 32.

Even cannabis users who did not smoke tobacco developed gum disease.

Overall, 29% of the sample showed some signs of gum disease.

Bloodstream toxins

Lead researcher Professor Murray Thomson, of the University of Otago, said the effect was unlikely to be due to the direct impact of smoke on the gums as it was inhaled.

Instead, it was likely that toxins in the cannabis were absorbed into the bloodstream via the lungs, and then affected the body's ability to heal inflammation in the gums caused by the build up of bacteria on the teeth.

He said: "The problem is not the smoke itself - it's what is in the smoke.

"In the mouth, there is a fine balance between tissue destruction and tissue healing and the various toxins in the smoke disrupt that."

The fact that cannabis users tend to inhale more deeply than tobacco users might also exacerbate problems.

For the study heavy cannabis users were defined as those who used the drug for an average of at least 41 occasions a year between the ages of 18 and 32.

Susie Sanderson, of the British Dental Association, said: "It has long been recognised that smoking tobacco is a cause of gum disease.

"This study underlines the fact that gum disease can be caused not only by smoking tobacco, but also by smoking cannabis."

The research team also included scientists from King's College London, Duke University and the University of North Carolina.

Research published earlier this year found people who smoked one cannabis joint a day had a higher risk of lung cancer than those who smoked 20 cigarettes a day.

A separate study found that bullous disease - a form of emphysema - occurs 20 years earlier in cannabis smokers than in tobacco smokers.

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