Marijuana is better for you than alcohol

The major impetus for medical, community, and legal acceptance of brain death is the need for organ donation from “beating heart” donors. A declaration of brain death is only used for this purpose, and is not a prerequisite for treatment withdrawal for other reasons. As Professor Lovell, a pioneer of renal transplantation in Australia, remarked: “The law did enter in a specific way . . . as the transplantation programme developed, because of the desire for a legal definition of death that was relevant to obtaining kidneys from cadavers”.10 In 1968 a Japanese surgeon conducted the first heart transplant operation in that country and was charged with unlawfully killing both the donor and the recipient. Since that time clinicians and policy makers have responded to the possibility of such events by insisting that donors of vital organs first be declared dead. This became known as the “dead donor rule”.

The dead donor rule solved the problem that organ donation appeared to involve a form of murder, and the redefinition of death as “brain death” allowed organ transplantation to continue.

Contention 1: It is legally worse for you and this is psychologically worse for you.

Contention 2: It is morally worse for your Karmic-Debt / Guilt-Free Mind / Spiritual Quality to damage your brain and/or lungs in the long run.

Jesus drank wine and alcohol is alright but Marijuana is a big no-no with the only Religion encouraging it (Rastafari) being completely illegal even in its founding nations of Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago.

Marijuana both affect you badly but what is true is that no matter what quantity of Marijuana you have, it damages the developing brain permanently in a way that alcohol won't do to you even if you have it while younger than the legal age.

Contention 3: If you're with a cunning person who wants to date-rape you (or who ends up date-raping you, whether or not they planned it ahead of time) it's much easier on you, psychologically and psychosomatically, to both know it was rape and prove it was rape if you were drunk as opposed to high.

If you're date-raped and were high, you firstly must think of my first contention. Aside from needing to plead guilty to having Marijuana recreationally,

it is also very hard to explain in court (and an extreme grey area, legally, in all places where Marijuana is legal even when it's medical) that you being high reduced your brain's self control and ability to analyse the situation and stop the rape happening. 

You also will struggle to even know within yourself if you really wanted it or not as Marijuana makes you open to new experiences automatically. It forces optimism onto you and reduces your capacity to think ahead or focus on anything but the immediate.

The additional thing is that the effect on your body of being high while being raped and what that does to your brain chemistry afterwards is you begin to associate severe terror and being trapped with the feeling of being relaxed; meaning you begin to crave high-risk adrenaline rush as your only way to feel any pleasure at all. This is beyond PTSD, this is a trap you set for yourself by being high while being raped. Being high in any high-risk scenario is terrible for your brain's subconscious because it begins to completely ignore worry and you forget that fear is a good thing when it keeps you alive and/or safe from terror and being raped.

Indeed, a number of studies have found evidence of brain changes in teens and young adults who smoke marijuana. In 2013, Rocío Martín-Santos, MD, PhD, at the University of Barcelona, and colleagues reviewed 43 studies of chronic cannabis use and the brain. They found consistent evidence of both structural brain abnormalities and altered neural activity in marijuana users. Only eight of those studies focused on adolescents, but the findings from those studies suggested that both structural and functional brain changes emerge soon after adolescents start using the drug. Those changes may still be evident after a month of abstaining from the drug, the researchers reported (PLOS ONE, 2013).

Some of those brain abnormalities have been linked to cognitive differences. Gruber found that regular, heavy marijuana users — those who reported smoking five of the last seven days, and more than 2,500 times in their lives — had damage to their brains' white matter, which helps enable communication among neurons. Those white matter changes were correlated with higher impulsivity, she found, particularly in people who began smoking before age 16 (Psychopharmacology, 2013).

Much of Gruber's work compares heavy, regular marijuana users who began before and after age 16. Her results suggest there's greater risk in starting young. Compared with users who began after 16, early-onset smokers made twice as many mistakes on tests of executive function, which included planning, flexibility, abstract thinking and inhibition of inappropriate responses. As adults, those who started using before 16 reported smoking nearly 25 times per week, while those who started later smoked half as often, about 12 times per week. The early-onset smokers also reported smoking an average of nearly 15 grams each week, versus about 6 grams for their late-onset counterparts (Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 2012).

Gruber's participants had reported using marijuana at least five times in the past week. But other labs have found structural differences in the brains of less frequent users. Jodi Gilman, PhD, at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Center for Addiction Medicine, and colleagues used MRI to look for brain changes in 18- to 25-year-olds who smoked marijuana at least once per week, but were not dependent on the drug.

Compared with nonusers, the smokers had changes in the shape, volume and gray matter density of two brain regions associated with addiction: the nucleus accumbens (which plays a role in motivation, pleasure and reward processing) and the amygdala (a region involved in memory, emotion and decision-making). Participants who smoked more often had more significant differences (Journal of Neuroscience, 2014).

Conrod said her team took a “big data” approach to the study. They looked at 3,826 teens starting from seventh grade from 31 Montreal-area schools over the course of four years. The students who participated sent back annual reports that documented their level of alcohol and marijuana use. The researchers also gave the teens cognitive tests to gauge the teens’ working memory, perceptual reasoning, recall memory, and inhibition.

To make sure they got the most honest responses from the students, these reports were confidential. Parents and teachers, not allowed.

The study authors reported that teens who used cannabis more often than others had cognitive function changes that appeared “to be more pronounced than those observed for alcohol.”

Conrod said the results should be a cautionary tale to teens as they contemplate marijuana use at a young age.

“Our findings suggest young people should do everything they can to delay the onset of their cannabis use, if not avoid it entirely,” she added. “I do not recommend it; clearly there are health risks associated with cannabis.”

It’s certainly not the first study to look at what cannabis could do to cognitive development. In June, JAMA Psychiatry published a review that looked at 69 past studies on cannabis use among young people. The authors found that some past studies might have actually overstated “the magnitude and persistence of cognitive deficits” tied to cannabis use. They found in their review that abstaining from cannabis for 72 hours or longer could also diminish some of the negative impact of cannabis on a young person’s brain.

This new research is larger than a lot of these older studies. Danielle Ramo, PhD, associate professor in residence and licensed psychologist in the department of psychiatry and the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), told Healthline that making a direct comparison between alcohol and cannabis use made this study unique. She said most studies of this kind usually just look at one substance.

“This study presents stronger evidence that alcohol and cannabis both affect the teen brain by impacting memory and executive functioning,” said Ramo. “However, it went further to suggest that if cannabis use persists throughout adolescence, the impacts on cognitive functioning are greater over time, and this effect was stronger among those who started using earlier.”

Ramos explained that teens who start to use these substances earlier in life may face greater consequences as they age.

“Earlier use that persists throughout adolescence is associated with greater burden on teens’ ability to process new information and to ‘stop and think’ in the face of complex stimuli,” Ramo said. “These effects may even be greater than the effects of alcohol on the teen brain.”

She said the study’s findings are particularly timely as marijuana enters more of the mainstream.

“In an era in which cannabis laws are becoming more permissive, the message to teens should still be that cannabis use is detrimental to the teen brain, and use should be avoided to ensure healthy brain development,” Ramo added.

Substantial evidence from animal research and a growing number of studies in humans indicate that marijuana exposure during development can cause long-term or possibly permanent adverse changes in the brain. Rats exposed to THC before birth, soon after birth, or during adolescence show notable problems with specific learning and memory tasks later in life.32–34 Cognitive impairments in adult rats exposed to THC during adolescence are associated with structural and functional changes in the hippocampus.35–37 Studies in rats also show that adolescent exposure to THC is associated with an altered reward system, increasing the likelihood that an animal will self-administer other drugs (e.g., heroin) when given an opportunity.

Imaging studies of marijuana’s impact on brain structure in humans have shown conflicting results. Some studies suggest regular marijuana use in adolescence is associated with altered connectivity and reduced volume of specific brain regions involved in a broad range of executive functions such as memory, learning, and impulse control compared to people who do not use.38,39 Other studies have not found significant structural differences between the brains of people who do and do not use the drug.40

Several studies, including two large longitudinal studies, suggest that marijuana use can cause functional impairment in cognitive abilities but that the degree and/or duration of the impairment depends on the age when a person began using and how much and how long he or she used.41

Among nearly 4,000 young adults in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults study tracked over a 25-year period until mid-adulthood, cumulative lifetime exposure to marijuana was associated with lower scores on a test of verbal memory but did not affect other cognitive abilities such as processing speed or executive function. The effect was sizeable and significant even after eliminating those involved with current use and after adjusting for confounding factors such as demographic factors, other drug and alcohol use, and other psychiatric conditions such as depression.42

A large longitudinal study in New Zealand found that persistent marijuana use disorder with frequent use starting in adolescence was associated with a loss of an average of 6 or up to 8 IQ points measured in mid-adulthood.43 Significantly, in that study, those who used marijuana heavily as teenagers and quit using as adults did not recover the lost IQ points. People who only began using marijuana heavily in adulthood did not lose IQ points. These results suggest that marijuana has its strongest long-term impact on young people whose brains are still busy building new connections and maturing in other ways. The endocannabinoid system is known to play an important role in the proper formation of synapses (the connections between neurons) during early brain development, and a similar role has been proposed for the refinement of neural connections during adolescence. If the long-term effects of marijuana use on cognitive functioning or IQ are upheld by future research, this may be one avenue by which marijuana use during adolescence produces its long-term effects.44

Smoking Marijuana

When marijuana is traditionally consumed through smoking, it spreads at least 33 known carcinogens, 300 additional chemicals, and deposits 4 times as much tar into the lungs as cigarette smoke. Due to the method in which marijuana is smoked–typically deeper than cigarettes with a tendency to hold the smoke in the lungs longer– these variations only contribute to making the inherent negative effects of smoking worse.

Due to the mixed legality of medical marijuana, there are few studies available showing or disproving the effectiveness of medical marijuana as a form of treatment. As the topic of medical marijuana is explored further as a form of treatment for lung disease, the question remains: how does marijuana affect someone who struggles with chronic bronchitis? Some tests indicate the positive effects of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) on opening the airways, while others point to negative outcomes from marijuana smoke inhalation.

Chronic bronchitis flare-ups can occur whether instigated or not.  Adding smoke of any kind can cause symptoms of chronic bronchitis to become severe, especially coughing, sputum (phlegm), wheezing and shortness of breath. Although studies have shown that a low rate of marijuana use (1-2 joints a month) can be beneficial for those with chronic lung disease, while habitual marijuana use (25 joints a month) can weaken immunostimulatory cytokines and in turn, weaken the immune system. Smoking marijuana, coupled with chronic bronchitis, can lead to a higher probability of developing a lung infection as well.

THC and Chronic Bronchitis

There have been some conflicting studies that have produced results that THC, the main psychoactive component of marijuana, is actually good for your lungs. The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) has approved THC as a drug, which means that THC’s benefits outweigh its risks. Studies have also shown that THC can act as a bronchodilator, increasing airflow to the lungs. In turn, this could increase lung functioning and efficiency. However, although THC is an approved drug and has some beneficial attributes to lung disease symptoms, consuming THC products does not necessarily constitute a safe form of treatment for people diagnosed with chronic bronchitis.

Although the use of medical marijuana can serve as a temporary method of treatment, the inability to avoid the side effects (being ‘high’) and its mixed legality leaves its use as a future form of medication uncertain. Although COPD currently has no cure, new discoveries are being made every day in the field of cellular research. As the scientific community continues to put their best minds to the task of solving the problems and complications of the human body, the Lung Institute will continue to bring these advancements to the public with the hope of bettering quality of life for those who need it most.

The Lung Institute has helped hundreds of people seeking an alternative treatment for COPD by using the cells in their own body to promote healing. If you’re looking to make a profound change in your life or the life of someone you love, the time is now. If you or a loved one suffers from COPD, or another lung disease, the Lung Institute may be able to help with a variety of cellular treatment options. Contact us at 888-745-6697 today to find out if you qualify for cellular therapy.

Don’t Let Medicine in Missouri Go to Pot: Oppose Sham Medical Marijuana Referenda on November 2018 Ballot

Docs, listen up. Keep Missouri voters from passing legal but ‘sham’ non-needed, medical marijuana laws. Vigorously oppose all three referenda1 on the Missouri November general election ballot that would legalize medical marijuana (‘pot, weed, cannabis’) in the Show Me state.

We don’t need more social/medical nightmares like tobacco and opioids, both of which physicians initially aided and abetted. (Figure 1) Physician colleagues and medical professionals, “Show Me’ some responsibility this time! Commit to educating your patients, contributing your time, your money, and your vote to defeating sham medical pot. Every state, notably well documented in Colorado,2 that has enacted medical cannabis has created a tsunami of medical, social, educational, judicial, law enforcement, and business crises. Medical marijuana cards are available to practically anyone and diversion to recreational use and under-aged youth is the inevitable default setting. We don’t need these problems in Missouri.

Physicians, dentists and nurses were used to promote and sell cigarettes. Many prescribed smoking for throat irritation, nervousness and anxiety. Physician and medical professionals must avoid these mistakes and oppose sham medical marijuana in Missouri.

“Big Weed” is the termed coined for the coalition of businesses, corporations, individuals that is profiting enormously from state by state passing ‘medical’ and/or ‘recreational’ marijuana into law by referenda. Millions of Big Weed dollars are flowing into Missouri to open a new market of cannabis dependent customers, much the same as Big Tobacco abetted habituating millions to their nicotine laced, health destroying products. Big Weed is contemptuously, but effectively, emulating the marketing plan of “Big Tobacco.” Big Weed’s resources far surpass the responsible ‘weed-killing’ opposition. Big Weed’s high-power advocates have cleverly ‘sweetened’ their noxious products by allocating a tiny 2-15% tax to be used for the likes of military veterans, cancer research, childhood education, and drug addiction. What, not widows, orphans, and homeless animals? Clever? Yes. But this is the equivalent of ‘hiding behind hostages.” There are no limits on the greed, duplicity and ‘total war’ tactics of Big Tobacco, Big Opioids and now Big Weed, the latest member of the Health Apocalypse Henchmen.

In Canada, which has virtually anything goes cannabis, several large brewing companies are spooling up to sell cannabis infused drinks3 to offset the fall in beer sales. Idiotically, their industry refers to this as “the logical fourth leg” of commercialization: beer, wine, liquor and cannabis. Obviously, they imbibe a lot of their own products. I have unsolicited received about a half dozen offers to invest in limited partnerships that will profit from distributing sham medical marijuana of unknown composition. Medical weed is not even remotely a proper medicine of known composition, known quantity, and approved by FDA testing/approval process. Substantial monies are promised to investors and a growing, eventually nation-wide pot market. Medical marijuana laws are Big Weed’s Trojan Horse to create astronomical profit from dependent non-medical customers and pave the way for eventual recreational ‘anything goes’ cannabis.

Much to their regret and shame, Colorado physicians and medical groups did not actively oppose medical and later recreational cannabis. The Colorado Medical Society4 is urging other state medical organizations not to make the same mistake: “Other states facing legislative efforts to legalize marijuana should consider Colorado’s experience as a cautionary tale. Approving medical treatments by ballot initiatives sets a dangerous precedent for public health. This will be one of the great social experiments of the century.” (emphasis added)

Responsible Missouri physician organizations are officially on board opposing the three sham medical marijuana referenda include: Missouri State Medical Association, AMA, Kansas City Medical Society, Greene County Medical Society, St. Louis Metropolitan Medical Society, Missouri Society of Eye Physicians & Surgeons (we ophthalmologists don’t need marijuana to treat glaucoma, makes treatment worse). Missouri Medicine regular readers will note many articles outlining scientifically the case against using true medical problems of patients as a straw man/woman for passing medical marijuana. 5 Many of these cannabis articles are from a writing group from Colorado coordinated by Ken P. Finn, MD, a widely known and respected pain-management specialist. This issue of Missouri Medicine presents other vital information for physicians beginning on the next page.

Many patients, and some physicians, believe that legitimate FDA approved medical research is not being done and would be facilitated by passing these sham medical marijuana referenda. Not so! The FDA has approved cannabis-based medicines via legitimate pure drug pathway: canabidiol (Epidolex) for the treatment for certain rare seizure disorders but with potential to help other more common types of childhood seizures; dronabinol (Marinol) for nausea and vomiting of chemotherapy and weight loss/poor appetite in HIV patients; and nabilone (Cesamet) for nausea and vomiting of chemotherapy when other drugs fail. Some restrictions on legitimate research on pure cannabis chemicals as real drugs might certainly be considered at the FDA level. Nor should we confuse this vote with the issue of decriminalization of small amounts of pot for personal use. Twenty-four states and over 50 large municipalities have passed decriminalization law more are in the process. This is not the issue we are voting on, nor is alcohol caused social/medical/judicial problems. Conflating tobacco, alcohol, and opioid problems to make cannabis appear a minor vice is a debating trope used by Big Weed to misdirect and misinform voters. This issue is sham medical marijuana.

It is worth stating again that all state legalization of cannabis for sham medical and recreational use is in violation of Federal Law, a fact all Presidents to date have chosen not to enforce and whom two, Clinton and Obama, have admitted to recreational pot use.

Most physicians look back with incredulity and disgust on some of our forebears: physicians, dentists, nurses in the 1940s and 50s who recommended and were used in commercial advertisements (Figure 1) for tobacco products; late 1990s to mid 2000s opioid industry compensated physicians like Russell Portenoy, MD,6 and the Kansas City Center for Practical Bioethics/Myra Christopher, RN, who shilled for the pain pill industry7 We must not make the same mistakes. We physicians, and hopefully a broad coalition of healthcare professionals, institutions, educators, law enforcement, children and public welfare advocates and all informed citizens must band together and defeat the three harmful sham medical marijuana referenda on the Missouri November General Election Ballot (Figure 2).

Using cannabis triggers mental health problems in people who seemed to be well before, or it can worsen any mental health problems you already have.

Research has shown that people who are already at risk of developing mental health problems are more likely to start showing symptoms of mental illness if they use cannabis regularly. For example if someone in your family has depression or schizophrenia, you are at higher risk of getting these illness when you use cannabis.

The younger you are when you start using it, the more you may be at risk. This is because your brain is still developing and can be more easily damaged by the active chemicals in cannabis.

If you stop using cannabis once you have started to show symptoms of mental illness, such as depression, paranoia or hearing voices, these symptoms may go away. However, not everyone will get better just by stopping smoking.

If you go on using cannabis, the symptoms can get worse. It can also make any treatment that your doctor might prescribe for you, work less well. Your illness may come back more quickly, and more often if you continue to use cannabis once you get well again.

Some people with mental health problems find that using cannabis makes them feel a bit better for a while. Unfortunately this does not last, and it does nothing to treat the illness. In fact, it may delay you from getting help you need and the illness may get worse in the longer term.

Adverse Consequences of Marijuana Use

Acute (present during intoxication)

• Impaired short-term memory
  
• Impaired attention, judgment, and other cognitive functions
  
• Impaired coordination and balance
  
• Increased heart rate
  
• Anxiety, paranoia
  
• Psychosis (uncommon)
  

Persistent (lasting longer than intoxication, but may not be permanent)

• Impaired learning and coordination
  
• Sleep problems
  

Long-term (cumulative effects of repeated use)

• Potential for marijuana addiction
  
• Impairments in learning and memory with potential loss of IQ*
  
• Increased risk of chronic cough, bronchitis
  
• Increased risk of other drug and alcohol use disorders
  
• Increased risk of schizophrenia in people with genetic vulnerability**
  

*Loss of IQ among individuals with persistent marijuana use disorder who began using heavily during adolescence

**These are often reported co-occurring symptoms/disorders with chronic marijuana use. However, research has not yet determined whether marijuana is causal or just associated with these mental problems.

What we know:

• Sexual assault is underreported, and substance use during sexual assault is further underreported.

• Marijuana is the most common drug reported (other than alcohol) when drugs are present in sexual assault.

• Marijuana is often used together with alcohol in sexual assault.

• Marijuana and alcohol combined may have a greater effect on cognitive functioning than either substance

alone. Cognitive functioning includes a person’s ability to recognize and react to risky situations.

Where there are gaps in research knowledge:

• College students have been well studied in large surveys, but sexual assault among other groups has much

less evidence.

• Many studies combine marijuana with other drugs which makes the impact of marijuana alone unclear.

• Studies that do include data on marijuana use tend to describe past use history of use, but often exclude

recent use, or use at the time of the sexual assault.

• Research using objective methods, like blood testing, have been inconsistent in the way the tests are

conducted and do not always test for the presence of marijuana in the time period, making it difficult to tell

the difference between past use and current use.

• Research related to marijuana’s potency and the effect on cognitive function needs to be updated in light of

the higher potency products now available in states with legalized marijuana.

I'm going to make this very clear; I can't highlight how Marijuana has been gradually depleting your brain inside of a formal debate because it will lose me the conduct mark. Let's just say there's a reason that your stats are what they are and my stats are what they are. There's a reason you structure your debates like you have in this debate and I structure both my attack angles and representation of my debates as I do. 

The very fact it's illegal or that you have to hide your usage of it if you go over the legal quantity makes Marijuana automatically have 2 aspects to it that are detrimental which alcohol does not. The other aspect was compounding with the date-rape scenario.

A new study from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration finds that drivers who use marijuana are at a significantly lower risk for a crash than drivers who use alcohol. And after adjusting for age, gender, race and alcohol use, drivers who tested positive for marijuana  were no more likely to crash than who had not used any drugs or alcohol prior to driving.