05-09-2008
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#20 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by njqt466  | Quote:
Originally Posted by njqt466 Self-Medication, Especially for Depression, Raises Risk of Mental Problems, Study Says By Lori Aratani-Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, May 9, 2008; B04
Teenagers who smoke marijuana put themselves at risk for future mental illness and higher rates of depression, according to a report to be released today by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy...... ......So apparently, smoking pot for depression, is like eating gummy bears for a toothache.  | I'm in no position to dispute the claim that marijuana increases chances of depression and other mental illnesses... but I can comment on how absolutely idiotic, laughable and completely misinformed the following line is and was to read: "but far more teens are in treatment for dependency on marijuana than alcohol."
Lets get something straight. There has never been a recorded case of a marijuana overdose...nor has there been a recorded case of a marijuana addiction. Wanna know the reason? Because a.) it is impossible to overdose on marijuana and b.) there is no chemical inside marijuana that bonds with human DNA. Period.
According to an interview with Dr. Allen Battle, a UTMG clinical psychologist, "marijuana is not addictive. It isn't addictive because the active ingredient in it, Delta 9 tetrahydrocannabinol, does not become a part of the body's chemistry." Gambling, food, sex... are all psychological. One may become obsessed with these vices, but never addicted. According to Dr. Battle, "to use the word addiction with these activities is to pervert the meaning of the word addiction. These things can become obsessions, that is to say, thoughts that repeat and repeat in spite of the individual not desiring to have them." Where it is true that the smoke is harmful to the lungs and respiratory tract (as any inhaled foreign object will be), marijuana smokers just smoke the bud of the plant, which contains only 33% as much tar as tobacco. On top of this, one on average would not smoke 20 marijuana cigarettes per day due to the psychoactive properties of the plant. Also, marijuana, unlike tobacco, does not cause narrowing of the small air passageways in the lungs. This starkly disproves the idea that marijuana smoke is 5 times as dangerous to your lungs as cigarette smoke is. In fact, marijuana has been proven to be an expectorant, and actually dilates the air channels it comes into contact with. This is not what the public is led to believe, unfortunately. People tend to think that marijuana is a gateway drug. Where this is a sound theory, it is totally false. The gateway drug theory is the theory that using marijuana leads people to use harder drugs like heroin or cocaine. While it does make sense since weed is the most easily obtainable drug in the world, "there is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are casually linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs." This according to the Institute of Medicine. Nicotine and alcohol are actually, on average, abused far before and more than marijuana is.
I earlier touched on the subject of a marijuana overdose. Marijuana is unlike any other drug. Other drugs have a relatively low toxicity level. Cocaine's being as little as 20 mg to a mean of 500 mg ingested orally, alcohol's lethal dose being .40% blood alcohol content, and heroin's being 200 to 500mg for a 150 pound human. This being said, marijuana's lethal dose would be comparable to a 154-pound human smoking at one time almost three pounds (or 250,000 times the usual smoked dose and over a million times the minimal effective dose assuming 50% of the THC is ingested by smoking, according to the U.S. Government's past tests on marijuana.) This means that an overdose on marijuana is virtually impossible to achieve.
So basically... the proposed theory that marijuana affects your mental health is plausible at best. There are no concrete fact that marijuana causes increased mental illness or increased potential thereof.
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