Marijuana: A Few Thoughts

Nancy Reagan implored us to “just say no” to drugs. A series of advertisements were aired in the 1980s that showed young people being offered drugs. Is that how drug dealers operate? They offer you samples, à la the Charleys employee offering samples of their delicious grilled subs in a ploy to get you to purchase a foot-long sandwich?

No, I’ve never been very popular, and I grew up in a small town; maybe that goes some way towards explaining why I was almost never offered drugs. Actually, probably not — there are well-known druggies in my little town, and they’re not upper-class folks.

I was offered marijuana once. One of my friends had a drug problem. She snorted cocaine through the tubes that hold ink in a pen (with the ink removed, of course); she used narcotics; and she smoked marijuana.

I went to her place one day, just to hang out. But then she asked me for one of my Xanax tablets. She wanted to crush it at snort it, which I’m not so sure is the most efficient way of administering Xanax, because it has to be absorbed through the nose’s capillaries, and some of it is likely to just fall out of your nose.

Then she lit up a joint. She offered me some. I declined, but I can’t say I didn’t appreciate the offer! Which reminds me. . .

My uncle was enduring a silly legal mess brought on by “informants”, also known as snitches, who wanted to alleviate their own legal troubles by saying that they purchased marijuana from him.  The evidence is very weak — indeed, the evidence against my uncle is next to non-existent, and he is rightfully upset that it is going to the state’s supreme court.  I do not object to his disagreements with the legal proceedings, which are truly an abominable connivance born of small-town alliances and grudges, but I do object to his excessive defense of marijuana.

At the outset, it should be made clear that I am a defender of marijuana use; I don’t see that it’s any more dangerous, and in some cases it is less dangerous, than other drugs, drugs that are legal while marijuana is illegal in most states of the U.S.  However, just because a drug isn’t deleterious on the whole does not mean that it has no faults.  A little kid said to me, “Caffeine is kind of a drug, just not a bad one.”  Yet, even caffeine can have negative effects.

One of the scruples I have with marijuana over-defenders is their insistence that marijuana is not addictive; rather, they claim, marijuana is merely habit forming, that is, it lead to psychological dependency is.  The truth is that marijuana use can lead to physiological dependence, that is, addiction.  This happens because marijuana has physiological effects on the dopamine receptors in ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the brain, and on the amygdala, the amygdala being a seat of emotion in the brain.  

If a long-term user of marijuana discontinues use, he withdraws just as users of other addictive drugs have withdrawals upon discontinuation of using their drugs of choice; he may have trouble sleeping, become angry, irritable, or anxious.

Weed has no negative side effects, he proclaims.  But marijuana contains many toxic chemicals in common with tobacco, and like tobacco, marijuana is usually smoked.  Enough of these chemicals are present to incur lung damage in pot smokers.  

My uncle is also insistent that marijuana can cure cancer.  The immune system does indeed contain cannabinoid receptors, and marijuana can help with some symptoms of cancers and some side effects of chemotherapy.  The research, however, does not clearly show that marijuana use is an adequate treatment of tumors.  

He cites Rick Simpson.  Rick Simpson claims to have cured himself of skin cancer by using marijuana, and to have cured some 80% of his cancer “patients.”  Rick Simpson has been jailed for his possession and distribution of marijuana, but that does not mean that he is wrong.  After all, I started this discussion by complaining of legalities surrounding marijuana use.  But Rick Simpson’s “cure” has not been demonstrated in controlled studies.  Perhaps he will be vindicated, perhaps not, but you can’t know without strong experimental data.

More recently, I had a phone conversation with someone who shared a similar anecdote about someone who had cancer, grew cannabis for his illness, and was arrested on drug-related charges. The person I was speaking with thought that the jailing of the cancer patient was wrong, and perhaps it was. But perhaps it was also wrong of the person who was arrested to have knowingly violated the law to use a substance that, as far as I can tell, medical science hasn’t firmly established to be any more effective than other cancer treatments. As the Russian proverb goes, trust, but verify! Medical research is done for a reason, and it takes more than anecdotes to prove a drug, even marijuana, which has been used for centuries for a variety of ailments, to be an effective treatment for an illness such as cancer. And it takes a while.

Sometimes when upholding the things we cherish, we place them upon a pedestal of impeccability, upon which we see them as having no negative traits and all positive attributes.  But marijuana use does not need to be defended on attributes it does not possess.  Marijuana has many medical uses and THC has no clear terminal dose.  Defend its use for what it is.