{"id":17376,"date":"2024-05-14T18:27:57","date_gmt":"2024-05-14T17:27:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=17376"},"modified":"2024-09-22T17:48:46","modified_gmt":"2024-09-22T16:48:46","slug":"what-you-arent-hearing-about-marijuanas-health-effects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2024\/05\/what-you-arent-hearing-about-marijuanas-health-effects\/","title":{"rendered":"What You Aren\u2019t Hearing About Marijuana\u2019s Health Effects"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/h2>\n

Bertha Madras, a leading expert on weed, outlines the science linking it to psychiatric disorders, permanent brain damage, and other serious harms.<\/span><\/h2>\n

Young people who smoked marijuana in the 1960s were seen as part of the counterculture. Now the cannabis culture is mainstream. A 2022 survey sponsored by the National Institutes of Health found that 28.8% of Americans age 19 to 30 had used marijuana in the preceding 30 days\u2014more than three times as many as smoked cigarettes. Among those 35 to 50, 17.3% had used weed in the previous month, versus 12.2% for cigarettes.<\/span><\/p>\n

While marijuana use remains a federal crime, 24 states have legalized it and another 14 permit it for medical purposes. Last week media outlets reported that the Biden administration is moving to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous Schedule III drug\u2014on par with anabolic steroids and Tylenol with codeine\u2014 which would provide tax benefits and a financial boon to the pot industry.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nBertha Madras thinks this would be a colossal mistake. Ms. Madras, 81, is a psychobiology professor at Harvard Medical School and one of the foremost experts on marijuana. \u201cIt\u2019s a political decision, not a scientific one,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd it\u2019s a tragic one.\u201d In 2024, that is a countercultural view.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms. Madras has spent 60 years studying drugs, starting with LSD when she was a graduate student at Allan Memorial Institute of Psychiatry, an affiliate of Montreal\u2019s McGill University, in the 1960s. \u201cI was interested in psychoactive drugs because I thought they could not only give us some insight into how the brain works, but also on how the brain undergoes dysfunction and disease states,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2015 the World Health Organization asked her to do a detailed review of cannabis and its medical uses. The 41-page report documented scant evidence of marijuana\u2019s medicinal benefits and reams of research on its harms, from\u00a0 cognitive impairment and psychosis to car accidents.<\/span><\/p>\n

She continued to study marijuana, including at the addiction neurobiology lab she directs at Mass General Brigham McLean Hospital. In a phone interview this week, she walked me through the scientific literature on marijuana, which runs counter to much of what Americans hear in the media.<\/span><\/p>\n

For starters, she says, the \u201caddiction potential of marijuana is as high or higher than some other drug,\u201d especially for young people. About 30% of those who use cannabis have some degree of a use disorder. By comparison, only 13.5% of drinkers are estimated to be dependent on alcohol. Sure, alcohol can also cause harm if consumed in excess. But Ms. Madras sees several other distinctions.<\/span><\/p>\n

One or two drinks will cause only mild inebriation, while \u201cmost people who use marijuana are using it to become intoxicated and to get high.\u201d Academic outcomes and college completion rates for young people are much worse for those who use marijuana than for those who drink, though there\u2019s a caveat: \u201cIt\u2019s still a chicken and egg whether or not these kids are more susceptible to the effects of marijuana or they\u2019re using marijuana for self medication or what have you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Marijuana and alcohol both interfere with driving, but with the former there are no medical \u201ccutoff points\u201d to determine whether it\u2019s safe to get behind the wheel. As a result, prohibitions against driving under the influence are less likely to be enforced for people who are high. States where marijuana is legal have seen increases in car accidents.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the biggest differences between the two substances is how the body metabolizes them. A drink will clear your system within a couple of hours. \u201cYou may wake up after binge drinking in the morning with a headache, but the alcohol is gone.\u201d By contrast, \u201cmarijuana just sits there and sits there and promotes brain adaptation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s worse than it sounds. \u201cWe always think of the brain as gray matter,\u201d Ms. Madras says. \u201cBut the brain uses fat to insulate its electrical activity, so it has a massive amount of fat called white matter, which is fatty. And that\u2019s where marijuana gets soaked up. . . . My lab showed unequivocally that blood levels and brain levels don\u2019t correspond at all\u2014that brain levels are much higher than blood levels. They\u2019re two to three times higher, and they persist once blood levels go way down.\u201d Even if people quit using pot, \u201cit can persist in their brain for a while.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus marijuana does more lasting damage to the brain than alcohol, especially at the high potencies being consumed today. Levels of THC\u2014the main psychoactive ingredient in pot\u2014are four or more times as high as they were 30 years ago. That heightens the risks, which range from anxiety and depression to impaired memory and cannabis hyperemesis syndrome\u2014cycles of severe vomiting caused by long-term use.<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s mounting evidence that cannabis can cause schizophrenia. A large-scale study last year that examined health histories of some 6.9 million Danes between 1972 and 2021 estimated that up to 30% of young men\u2019s schizophrenia diagnoses could have been prevented had they not become dependent on pot. Marijuana is\u00a0 worse in this regard than many drugs usually perceived as more dangerous.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUsers of other potent recreational drugs develop chronic psychosis at much lower rates,\u201d Ms. Madras says. When healthy volunteers in research experiments are given THC\u2014as has been done in 15 studies\u2014they develop transient symptoms of psychosis. \u201cAnd if you treat them with an antipsychotic drug such as haloperidol, those symptoms will go away.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Marijuana has also been associated with violent behavior, including in a study published this week in the International Journal of Drug Policy. Data from observational studies are inadequate to demonstrate causal relationships, but Ms. Madras says that the link between marijuana and schizophrenia fits all six criteria that scientists use to determine causality, including the strength of the association and its consistency.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms. Madras says at the beginning of the interview that she was operating on three hours of sleep after crashing on scientific projects. Yet she is impressively lucid and energized. She peppers her explanations with citations of studies and is generous in crediting other researchers\u2019 work.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another cause for concern, she notes, is that more pregnant women are using pot, which has been linked to increased preterm deliveries, admissions of newborns into neonatal intensive care units, lower birth weights and smaller head circumferences. THC crosses the placenta and mimics molecules that our bodies naturally produce that regulate brain development.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happens when you examine kids who have been exposed during that critical period?\u201d Ms. Madras asks. During adolescence, she answers, they show an increased incidence of aggressive behavior, cognitive dysfunction, and symptoms of ADHD and obsessive-compulsive disorders. They have reduced white and gray matter.<\/span><\/p>\n

A drug that carries so many serious side effects would be required by the Food and Drug Administration to carry a black-box warning, the highest-level alert for drugs with severe safety risks. Marijuana doesn\u2019t\u2014but only because the FDA hasn\u2019t cleared it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The agency has selectively approved cannabis compounds for the treatment of seizures associated with Lennox-Gastaut or Dravet syndrome, nausea associated with chemotherapy for cancer, and anorexia associated with weight loss in AIDS patients. But these approved products are prescribed at significantly less potent doses than the pot being sold in dispensaries that are legal under state law.<\/span><\/p>\n

What about medicinal benefits? Ms. Madras says she has reviewed \u201cevery single case of therapeutic indication for marijuana\u2014and there are over 100 now that people have claimed\u2014and I frankly found that the only one that came close to having some evidence from randomized controlled trials was the neuropathic pain studies.\u201d That\u2019s \u201ca very specific type of pain, which involves damage to nerve endings like in diabetes or where there\u2019s poor blood supply,\u201d she explains.<\/span><\/p>\n

For other types of pain, and for all other conditions, there is no strong evidence from high-quality randomized trials to support its use. When researchers did a \u201cchallenge test on normal people where they induce pain and tried to see whether or not marijuana reduces the pain, it was ineffective.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms. Madras sees parallels between the marketing of pot now and of opioids a few decades ago. \u201cThe benefits have been exaggerated, the risks have been minimized, and skeptics in the scientific community have been ignored,\u201d she says. \u201cThe playbook is always to say it\u2019s safe and effective and nonaddictive in people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Advocates of legalization assert that cannabis can\u2019t be properly studied unless the federal government removes it from Schedule I. Bunk, Ms. Madras says: \u201cI have been able to study THC in my research program.\u201d It requires more paperwork, but \u201cI did all the paperwork. . . . It\u2019s not too difficult.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead of bankrolling ballot initiatives to legalize pot, she says, George Soros and other wealthy donors who \u201ccatalyzed this whole movement\u201d should be funding rigorous research: \u201cIf these folks, these billionaires, had just taken that money and put it into clinical trials, I would have been at peace.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a travesty, Ms. Madras adds, that the \u201cFDA has decided that they\u2019re going to listen to that movement rather than to what the science says.\u201d While the reclassification wouldn\u2019t make recreational marijuana legal under federal law, dispensaries and growers would be able to deduct their business expenses on their taxes. The rescheduling would also send a cultural signal that marijuana use is normal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms. Madras worries that \u201cit sets a precedent for the future.\u201d She points to the movement in states to legalize psychedelic substances, for whose medicinal benefits there also isn\u2019t strong scientific evidence. Meantime, she says it makes no sense that politicians continuously urge more spending on addiction treatment and harm reduction while weakening laws that prevent people from becoming addicted in the first place.<\/span>
\nHer rejoinder to critics who say the war on drugs was a failure? \u201cThis is not a war on drugs. It\u2019s a defense of the human brain at every possible age from in utero to old age.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms. Finley is a member of the Journal\u2019s editorial board.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source: https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/what-you-arent-reading-about-marijuana-permanent-brain-damage-biden-schedule-iii-9660395e<\/a> May 2024<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bertha Madras, a leading expert on weed, outlines the science linking it to psychiatric disorders, permanent brain damage, and other serious harms. Young people who smoked marijuana in the 1960s were seen as part of the counterculture. Now the cannabis culture is mainstream. A 2022 survey sponsored by the National Institutes of Health found that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,29,63,30,41,90,64,60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-addiction","category-alcohol","category-brain-and-behaviour","category-cannabis-marijuana","category-drug-use-effects-on-foetus","category-global-drug-legalisation-efforts","category-health","category-marijuana-and-medicine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}