The Jolly Roger: Clearing the Smoke on Marijuana Myths

At The Jolly Roger Corner, you get a glimpse into Drake's oldest high school newspaper The Jolly Roger. Check out more articles, photos, reviews and insight into our local school at drakejr.com.

By STEPHEN LEVECKIS

It’s no secret that many of our county’s youth enjoy a weekend joint or daily smoke session. It’s safe to assume that marijuana is incorporated into many teens’ daily or weekly routines, especially in Fairfax and San Anselmo, where the history of narcotics usage is almost legendary.

With misinformation and assumptions permeating the topic of marijuana, it’s time to clear the smoke. Marijuana’s public perception of it as a dangerous drug may not be completely accurate, but with its widespread use, parents may be at a loss at what stance to take with this drug.  

It’s prudent to first define addiction and determine under what conditions it would be necessary for parental intervention. Marijuana addiction is difficult to diagnose, as it’s not clinically addictive (frequent users have no physical need for it) like alcohol or harder drugs. A more politically correct term is Cannabis Abuse (according to The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) but even here we have a somewhat ambiguous label.

According to PhD Jann Gumbiner writing in Psychology Today’s online The Teenage Mind section, “'Too much pot' will vary from individual to individual. Ryan can light up and study physics every night. Sarah gets the munchies, over eats, and falls asleep. The amount and type of pot will affect different people differently.”

As Gumbiner states, marijuana abuse varies from person to person. One anonymous Drake student shows up to class high every time, functions completely normally (suspending disbelief for conservative readers), and receives stellar grades. Another student is high every day as well, but has chosen fun over schoolwork, neglecting to do homework or frequently scoring abnormally low on tests. In both cases, the student is high every day, meriting marijuana abuse, but obviously the drug affects each student differently.

In dealing with such marijuana use, the majority of parents lean towards the conservative side; a no-tolerance, any-use-equates-punishment type of system. While this expresses the parents’ wishes well, one must take into consideration that teenagers will usually do what they want regardless what punishment is hung over their heads. “I know it’s not really dangerous for me when I don’t use it that much,” says an anonymous Drake freshman. “I like doing it because it’s fun, even if I could get in trouble at home.”

On the other end of the spectrum, some parents accept, or even embrace their child’s appreciation of the drug. “I was 15 or 16 when I smoked a J with my dad,” says an anonymous source I’ll call Mitch. “The first time I smoked was with my dad.” Mitch’s case is not even a rare one; many parents who at least tolerate feel that being present when their child enters the universe of drugs is preferable to being kept out of the loop. Mitch said he also feels he has a closer relationship with his father due to their bonding over marijuana.

In the moderate middle, we have the parents who do not condone, but simply accept that their child is a user of marijuana. As long as the use doesn’t interfere with school grades, these parents see no reason why the use of the drug is harmful. However, when common sense tells us that encouraging the use of an illicit substance is bad parenting, what stance should parents really take?

Clara MacNamee, a teacher at Phoenix Academy in San Rafael (a school for chemically-dependent students to develop a drug and alcohol-free lifestyle) recommends that parents “absolutely stop it.” MacNamee believes that marijuana impacts the development of the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that she says doesn’t develop fully until age 25 in men, and at age 22 in women.

Possible health detriments aside, some individuals use marijuana for their own medical use. Many patients in Marin and across the California (one of the 17 states where marijuana is legal for medical purposes) use marijuana to combat cancer, as THC (a compound in marijuana) fights the growth of cancer cells. It’s also used for other ailments, such as in Mitch’s case, where his use of hash oil helps him with diabetes.

Mitch’s use of hash oil stems from marijuana’s properties as an immunosuppressor (a name for a compound that slows down an individual’s immune system). When smoked, marijuana is not concentrated enough in solely THC to severely impact a person’s immune system functionality, but when taken in the concentrated levels represented in hash oil, the THC effectively slows down a person’s immune system due to “inducing apoptosis in T cells and dendritic cells through ligation of CB2 receptors”, according to a study done by the University of South Carolina School of Medicine.

Since Type I Diabetes is an auto-immune disorder, the negative effects of the disease were allegedly negated. Mitch reported taking hash oil every day for two months, during which, he did not need to take his otherwise-mandatory insulin shots once.

In fact, once we disregard the illegality of marijuana, and simply look at it from a substance-to-substance view with other drugs (namely alcohol and cigarettes), a pattern emerges that’s quite different from how marijuana is classified in terms of legality.  A study published in the medical journal The Lancet illustrates how marijuana’s danger is blown out of proportion. The table below includes 16 drugs, with the values given to each category based on the following points system: 0 being no risk, 1 some risk, 2 moderate risk, and 3 extreme risk. These values were given by numerous specialists in the fields of addition, pharmacology, and chemistry, according to the research.

According to the chart, marijuana scores significantly lower in all fields than tobacco, alcohol, and actually every other drug on this list save for one. Marijuana has been classified by our own government’s federal drug policy as a Schedule I drug: the category for the drugs with highest potential for abuse, no known medical benefit, and no known accepted safety of use. However, methamphetamine, a clinically addictive, physically destroying drug, is only class II. Marijuana is grouped together with heroin, while chemically powerful barbiturates, steroids, and amphetamines, all supposedly merit a less dangerous ranking.

An assumption that compounds marijuana’s public perception as a dangerous drug is that smoking it will give you lung cancer. While it’s more or less known that it is realistically impossible to overdose on marijuana (you would have to smoke 1,500 pounds in fifteen minutes), many people assume that marijuana puts you at as much risk for lung cancer as cigarettes do.

However, a study done at the University of California at Los Angeles, the largest study if its kind, depicts the difference between myth and fact. 1,200 Los Angeles residents with head, neck, or lung cancer, along with an additional 1,040 residents without cancer, were given a survey asking about marijuana usage. The results showed no correlation between marijuana use and cancer risk; even the heaviest marijuana smokers, who averaged at over 22,000 joints in their current lifetime, showed no increased risk to any of the three types of cancer marijuana would supposedly give. The results surprised even the head researcher, whose previous work in his 30 years of marijuana studies proved that marijuana contained carcinogens similar to those in cigarettes.     

The answer is in THC: in addition to its properties that heal auto-immune disorders, THC fights the growth of cancer cells by inducing autophagy (essentially self-digestion of a cell) in aging and cancer-infected cells, according to the research of Guillermo Velasco and colleagues at Complutense University in Spain. While helping reduce tumor growth with victims already diagnosed with cancer, THC also reduces the likelihood of contracting cancer by eating aged cells susceptible to the cancer infection.

Marijuana is not the dangerous motivation-sucking drug that it’s cracked up to be. Between what many consider an improper legality classification and misunderstanding of its medicinal properties, marijuana has received an unfair reputation from the public at large. However, it’s important to acknowledge the possible health detriments, and keep in mind that marijuana is still an illegal substance that should be treated with at least some caution.  As Gumbiner summarizes in her Psychology Today article, “Simply put, when marijuana is interfering with daily life, it is too much.”