research
Pot-Smoking Does Not Lead To Psychosis
Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 11:44am
by Anna Tomova
Previous studies have provided some evidence of a link between early and continued use of marijuana to an increased risk of psychosis and hallucinations, instigating researchers from Queensland, Australia to investigate further. Their investigations have now established a pretty strong connection between the length of marijuana use and the possibility of psychosis in young adults.
Young adults who smoke cannabis or marijuana for six years or more, seem twice as likely to experience psychotic episodes, hallucinations or delusions, than people who have never used the drug.
Checking out pot use and psychosis symptoms among siblings just to ensure no genetic or environmental factor had been missed out, the researchers found marijuana played a role in ‘psychosis-related outcomes’. However, in their conclusion, they write the nature of the relationship between psychosis and use of cannabis is not simple.
Cannabinoids reduce the spread of damage following spinal cord injuries.
Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Tue, 03/02/2010 - 5:07pmThree studies examine street youth, drug use, in Vancouver
Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Mon, 02/22/2010 - 1:42pm
By. Thomas Kerr and Evan WoodThree recently published studies on street-involved youth who use drugs in Vancouver from the Urban Health Research Initiative at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.
1) What brings youth to the streets of downtown Vancouver?
This qualitative study, involving 38 young drug users, sought to investigate the processes that bring youth to the streets in the first place, and then make it difficult for them to leave this environment. The interviews uncovered that a desire to leave difficult living situations, as well as the need to find affordable housing were some of the reasons youth move to downtown Vancouver, while subsequent heavy drug use, homelessness and involvement in illegal activities were some of the factors that create barriers to leaving street life. This article is published in the journal ‘Social Science and Medicine’ and is entitled: ‘Coming ‘down here’: young people’s reflections on becoming entrenched in a local drug scene’.
A summary of this study is available on our website at: click here.
The abstract for this study is also available on PubMed at: click here.
My Drug Policy – so much more useful than Your School
Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Tue, 02/09/2010 - 11:11am
What has Julia Gillard unleashed? The MySchool website is provoking some lateral suggestions that extend well beyond the education portfolio. One Croakey reader, responding to Gavin Mooney’s recent piece on MyHospital, suggested that we need someone to set up MyMP, to monitor our elected representatives’ productivity.
Now Dr Alex Wodak, President of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, has taken the notion of public reporting a step further. What difference might it make, he wonders, if governments had to account for their drug policies through a website, My Drug Policy?
He reports from the website’s “launch”:
“Tonight I am pleased to announce that a new web site, mydrugpolicy, has just gone live.
Marijuana Effectiveness as an Alzheimer's Treatment Questioned
Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Mon, 02/08/2010 - 11:43am
By. ScienceDaily
The benefits of marijuana in tempering or reversing the effects of Alzheimer's disease have been challenged in a new study by researchers at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute.
The findings, published in the current issue of the journal Current Alzheimer Research, could lower expectations about the benefits of medical marijuana in combating various cognitive diseases and help redirect future research to more promising therapeutics.
Australian Authorities 'hold back research'
Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Mon, 02/08/2010 - 11:30am
By. Dominic Feain
CANNABIS may be a viable cure for chronic pain, but convincing the authorities is proving to be a political minefield for one pioneer.
Tony Bower, founder of Mullaway’s Medical Cannabis, has developed a way to access the healing qualities of cannabis without the infamous ‘side effects’, and his weekly Nimbin dispensary is fast gaining popularity.
It’s Saturday morning at Nimbin’s Hemp Embassy and its president, Michael Balderstone, is making us (conventional) tea while we wait for Mr Bower, the most popular man in town. Mr Balderstone says we’ll just have to wait.
Researchers Find Study of Medical Marijuana Discouraged
Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Tue, 01/19/2010 - 11:17am
By GARDINER HARRIS, New York TimesLyle E. Craker, a professor of plant sciences at the University of Massachusetts, has been trying to get permission from federal authorities for nearly nine years to grow a supply of the plant that he could study and provide to researchers for clinical trials.
But the Drug Enforcement Administration — more concerned about abuse than potential benefits — has refused, even after the agency’s own administrative law judge ruled in 2007 that Dr. Craker’s application should be approved, and even after Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in March ended the Bush administration’s policy of raiding dispensers of medical marijuana that comply with state laws.
Sewage as a Measure of Society's Drug Use
Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Fri, 01/15/2010 - 3:25pmTesting municipal wastewater for drugs may be the next big thing in public health research. The methodology will likely confirm the universality of drug use.
All kinds of people use illegal drugs, all over the country -- in urban, suburban, ex-urban, and rural areas. Yet our imperfect methods for gauging community drug use disproportionately represent cities and often leave out the highest-risk populations, giving a skewed picture of who uses what types of drugs where.
The answer, oddly enough, may reside in shit. After all, everything that comes in must come out, so using human waste as a measure of society's health makes sense.
Marijuana use unlikely to boost suicide risk
Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Fri, 01/15/2010 - 2:15pm
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Smoking marijuana (also called cannabis) is unlikely to increase a person's risk of killing themselves later on, an analysis of more than three decades worth of death records on more than 50,000 Swedish military recruits suggests.
"I don't think this can be interpreted as saying, 'Well, there are no risks of using cannabis,'" Dr. Stanley Zammit of the department of psychological medicine at Cardiff University School of Medicine in the UK told Reuters Health.
Nevertheless, "we can pretty much rule out a strong effect of cannabis on long-term risk of suicide whether it's through depression or whatever," he added.
Marijuana ingredient may reduce tumours: Study
Submitted by Ellis Worthington on Sat, 12/19/2009 - 5:40amLONDON (Reuters) - The active ingredient in marijuana appears to reduce tumour growth, according to a Spanish study published on Wednesday.
The researchers showed giving THC to mice with cancer decreased tumour growth and killed cells off in a process called autophagy.
"Our findings support that safe, therapeutically efficacious doses of THC may be reached in cancer patients," Guillermo Velasco of Complutense University in Madrid and colleagues reported in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
By
by
Free Marc Emery

