Marijuana May Not Be Good For You. Big Money Might Be.

Originally Posted Thursday, October 30, 2014

This from an article in today's New York Times:

"A study released in 2012 showed that teenagers who were found to be dependent on pot before age 18 and who continued using it into adulthood lost an average of eight I.Q. points by age 38."

The tide is turning against marijuana again.  The drug, it turns out, may be bad for you.  Who knew that anything that could provide pleasure would have a long-term effect?  I guess all those claims that daily usage would increase your I.Q. were just plain wrong.  

I went to college with a lot of stoners, wake and bake sorts.  Most of them didn't make it to medical school.  A lot of them didn't graduate at all.  Dude.  I think I realized the negative effects of drugs when I was in jr. high school, but maybe before.  The only things that ever made me try drugs were the constant warnings that it would turn me into a pumpkin.  I didn't like the people in the anti-drug campaigns at all.  By the time I was in college, I was working for an anti-drug program run by college students most of whom had been or were drug users/abusers.  I was the anomaly.  We'd go to the middle schools and high schools and talk about how drugs worked.  We weren't necessarily anti-drugs and we made fun of the cops, but we certainly talked about the consequences in nonjudgmental terms.  I had hair that fell to the middle of my back and a longish beard.  I know, I know.  Different times.  One of the fellows on the panel had been a junky.  He was a very good student as long as he had heroin.  It was when he didn't that things went to shit.  He talked about not being able to get the same high from the drug as time went on and about getting sick if he couldn't get it.  He was on methadone at the time, the legal substitute.  I was given an award by the city for my contribution to civic life and went to an awards banquet to receive my acclaim along with a bunch of people who looked nothing like me.  I had to borrow shoes and a tie from one of my professors to go.  When I sat down, I bumped the table at which I had been placed and spilled coffee over the white table cloth.  I watched with dread as it was quickly soaked up by the cotton and spread, a brown, wet stain.  Everyone at the table looked at me with an "of course" expression of disdain spread across their faces.  

I haven't been given an award since.  

I didn't set out to tell that story, but it is early and I am not yet in control of myself.  What I meant to say is that they don't do the same sort of studies about the long term effects of sugar on the pleasure centers of the brain.  Scientists who are funded by the sugar giants and candy companies conduct studies that conclude there is no evidence of causality between sugar consumption and obesity.  Perhaps if some of the Mexican drug lords would back some scientific studies. . . . 

If you are relying on studies to determine how to live your life, I think you need an intervention of some sort.  Big money rules.  It always has.  

Did I predict success for the Hong Kong protestors?  

I'll give you a few more seconds.

A woman walks down the street behind a man with a camera in his backpack.  Why a man, I don't know.  For ten hours, she reports, she walked in silence.  She was dressed in a tight t-shirt and jeans.  Afterwards the footage of her walking around town was compressed to a few minutes.   In the edited video, we see and hear men telling her what a fox she is, asking her for her digits, a date. . . . See what women are subjected to on a daily basis, she says.  It is awful.  That's as far as the analysis goes from what I've seen so far.  I think there could be more, but it wouldn't be on the right side of what she is wanting to point out.  It would not be prudent.  It would no be. . . what is that worn out, useless old term. . . p.c.  Oh, my analysis is so horrible that I won't even say it here.  

But I'll say this.  Had she walked up and down the Boulevard in my home town for ten hours, the tape wouldn't be the same at all.  

I don't think her experiment was very scientific or objective.  I'm not saying that men aren't dogs and that some cultures allow more canine behavior than others.  Watch the video and tell me what you see.  

Bias.  Everything is about swaying opinion.  It is about power.  We are afraid of Big Power.  We want to be part of it.  Movie stars and rock stars and models and rich athletes aren't giving up their piece of the pie, not even Ben Affleck or Angelina Jolie or Mr. Beautiful. . . what's his name. . . that boy who was on E.R. who is always voted the most beautiful man on the planet.  Not even my boy Bill Murray. And I would take a heaping share myself.  Oh, you know, I'd do the right thing if I had a ton of money.  I wouldn't be like those Koch Bros.  Uh-uh, not me.  I mean in public.  My private life, though. . . oh, the pleasures I would reap. . . !

I'd go to Colorado and get me some marijuana candy, a double dose of badness.  

Seriously, though, there are just some people even major governments don't want to fuck with (link).  These are the people who won't get ebola.  They will never have to touch any damp strange thing.  Won't have to.  Maybe they will for some sick fun in the weirdness of the night, but they won't have to and if they do, they will be cured.  

And so I wonder where the Tea Party stands on government regulation when it comes to people from other planets or those from our own who have chosen to go to Africa to work with the sick and dying? Do they want government regulation or not?  I can't get a consistent answer.  It is problematic.  I think they want what they want when they want it.  It is just common sense.  Like the world is flat or the that the sun orbits the earth.  You know.  

Wow, that was a rant.  Maybe I shouldn't have smoked pot when I was young.  And so, a final quote from the Times to get me out of this.  

“If I were to design a substance that is bad for college students, it would be marijuana.”