Showing posts with label pot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pot. Show all posts
Thursday, December 24, 2015
Wednesday, December 24, 2014
The Unexpected Outcomes Are Always The Ones That Hurt Government Programs. Colorado's Legal Pot Is A Great Example.
SHELTERS CITE LEGAL POT AS PART OF DENVER’S RISE IN HOMELESS
DENVER (AP) — Chris Easterling was sick of relying on drug dealers in Minneapolis when he needed marijuana to help ease the pain of multiple sclerosis. They were flaky, often leaving the homeless man without the drug when he needed relief the most.
So he moved to Denver, where legal pot dispensaries are plentiful and accessible.
Easterling is among a growing number of homeless people who have recently come to Colorado seeking its legal marijuana, and who now remain in the state and occupy beds in shelters, according to service providers.
While no state agency records how many homeless people were drawn by legal weed, officials at homeless centers say the influx they are seeing is straining their ability to meet the needs of the increasing population.
“The older ones are coming for medical (marijuana), the younger ones are coming just because it’s legal,” said Brett Van Sickle, director of Denver’s Salvation Army Crossroads Shelter, which has more than doubled its staff to accommodate the increase.
The shelter did an informal survey of the roughly 500 new out-of-towners who stayed there between July and September and found as many as 30 percent had relocated for pot, he said.
Shelters in some other parts of the state said they haven’t noticed the problem or haven’t surveyed their residents about it.
Colorado’s homeless population and its marijuana dispensaries are both concentrated in Denver, which could be why centers say they are experiencing a more noticeable rise.
Other factors could be driving the rising homeless rates. Colorado’s economy is thriving, but the number of affordable homes and apartments is shrinking.
Julie Smith of Denver’s Road Home, a city plan that aims to end homelessness, said the city’s rising overall population could be a reason for an increase in the number homeless people.
She said the agency has heard anecdotal reports about homeless people moving to the state for the marijuana, but officials don’t have any numbers to support that assertion.
The city is eager to see the results of a study by Metropolitan State University of Denver’s Criminal Justice and Criminology Department of issues related to legal marijuana, including any correlation between legal marijuana and rates of homelessness.
Assistant professor Rebecca Trammell said the researchers did interviews with shelter employees and volunteers after hearing anecdotes about the problem but have no preliminary findings.
Many of those staying in shelters come to Denver with big plans and find they can’t make ends meet, said Tom Luehrs, executive director of capital city’s Saint Francis Center.
The shelter has seen an increase from 730 people a day in 2013 to 780 people this year, and as many as 300 new faces a month. Not all of them are pot-smokers, Luehrs said, but many have said they were drawn to the state because of legal marijuana.
Shelters in Washington state haven’t experienced a noticeable influx since that state’s legal recreational sales started in July. Capt. Dana Libby, Seattle Social Services director for the Salvation Army, said the economy is largely to blame for the high rates of homelessness there.
In Colorado, some out-of-town homeless are seeking jobs in the marijuana industry, but learn only after arriving that they lack the two-year residency requirement needed to work in a dispensary. Others have felony records that make them ineligible, Van Sickle said.
Van Sickle’s shelter prohibits weed and other drugs, which means those who stay there have to leave the property to smoke. Van Sickle said he has been confiscating more pot and paraphernalia, though he doesn’t keep track of how much.
Arnold Kelley got lucky. The 60-year-old retired plumber, tired of risking arrest for pot-smoking, moved from Memphis, Tennessee, and got a job fixing pipes at a Denver dispensary.
The dispensary helped him get a license to use medical marijuana and paid him in pot for his work. He said pot improved his appetite and lessened his anxiety. “Once I got here, the industry was good to me,” he said.
But it didn’t pay the bills, and Kelley finds himself staying often at Crossroads.
The Denver area is seeing younger homeless people, too.
Urban Peak, which provides services for those ages 15 to 25, says it saw 829 people between May and July at its drop-in center, up from 328 during the same time period a year earlier.
About a third of this year’s newcomers cited legal weed as a factor in moving to Colorado, said Kim Easton, the director.
Many of the older men, like Easterling, live exclusively on disability benefits and use them to buy pot, since there’s nothing to stop someone from using welfare benefits to obtain cash to use at pot shops.
“I’m staying here,” he said, between puffs on an electronic smoking device filled with pot oil. “This is my home.”
Thursday, April 24, 2014
With Legalization Of Pot, Expect To See More Heart Attacks. Several Studies Show This Trend.
Pot Smoking Linked to Heart Attacks
Wednesday, 23 Apr 2014 05:33 PM
The number of heart complications attributed to marijuana use increased slightly inFrance between 2006 and 2010, according to a new study.
The number of heart attacks and other cardiovascular problems blamed on marijuana increased from five events in 2006 to 11 events in 2010.
"It is true that we don't have a lot of cases, but it is important to keep in mind that cannabis use may be harmful," said Emilie Jouanjus, the study's lead author from Universite Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France.
While using tobacco, not exercising and being overweight or obese are known risk factors for heart disease, Jouanjus and her colleagues write in the Journal of the American Heart Association that past studies have also pointed to pot use.
The way pot may trigger cardiovascular problems like heart attacks and diseased arteries is still unknown, however.
While the drug is legal in many U.S. states for medical purposes, it remains illegal to use recreationally in all states except Washington and Colorado.
There has also been concern over a possible link between pot use and schizophrenia. Researchers can't say pot causes mental illness, though.
For the new study, the researchers used information from centers around France that collect data on the impact of drugs on public health. The centers collect reports from doctors who are legally obligated to report serious medical events that are related to drug use.
From 2006 through 2010, there were about 10,000 reports of medical events related to drug use in France. Of those, about one-fifth were attributed to pot use.
Thirty-five were cardiovascular events related to pot use, nine of which ended with the person's death.
Jouanjus emphasized that the reports do not just mean the person was smoking pot at the time of the heart complication. It would also be reported if a drug was one of the only factors that could have caused the problem, for instance.
In 2006, 1.1 percent of medical events thought to be caused by pot were cardiovascular events. That increased to 3.6 percent in 2010.
Most of the heart-related events were heart attacks, and most of the cases were among men and younger people.
"The central message of this publication is that cannabis use is not harmless," Jouanjus said. "It can be harmful and can lead to serious complications among patients who are young."
She added that the results may be an under-representation of the actual number of heart events related to pot use, because doctors may not report some cases and patients may be reluctant to admit that they use pot.
The researchers can't say exactly why there was an increase in marijuana-linked heart problems.
Dr. Shereif Rezkalla, who co-wrote an editorial accompanying the new study, told Reuters Health that patients should be forthcoming about any substances they are using. Doctors shouldn't be afraid to ask their patients about drug use either, he said. Rezkalla is a cardiologist at the Marshfield Clinic in Marshfield, Wis.
"We all know that legalizing marijuana is a controversial subject," he said. "We know when it's used as medicinal marijuana there is no problem with that with anybody. It helps some people with some conditions. The concern is for recreational use."
He said the U.S. should adopt a similar system as France to collect information on medical events related to pot - especially since it is now legal for recreational use in two states.
"We are not against people having fun, but I'd like them to have fun and live," Rezkalla said.
© 2014 Thomson/Reuters. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Should Pot Be Legalized? A Study Shows Dramatic Brain Changes That Correlate With Usage. Not Definitive, But Definitely Worth Consideration
What Does Marijuana Do to a User’s Brain? New Study Reveals Potentially Troubling Results
A small study of marijuana users yielded some potentially troubling results, with researchers claiming that marijuana consumption might have a profound impact on the parts of the brain that process decision-making, emotional assessment, addiction and the processing of rewards.
This means — at least based on this particular study’s findings — that weed holds the potential to alter the volume, shape and density of essential structures in the brain.
“Just casual use appears to create changes in the brain in areas you don’t want to change,” said study co-author Dr. Hans Breiter, a psychiatrist mathematician at Northwestern University.
AP Photo/Matilde Campodonico, File
Researchers examined the brains of 20 recreational pot smokers as well as the brains of 20 non-users, using MRI images to compare similarities and differences, NBC News reported.
These individuals, who were all college students in the Boston area, shared comparable educational levels, personalities, level of alcohol use and anxiety — and they were all between the ages of 18 and 25.
The results, which will be published in the Journal of Neuroscience Wednesday, point to key differences in two areas of the brain — the nucleus accumbens, which deals with addiction and the processing of rewards, and the amygdalas, which is responsible for emotional processing.
The density of grey matter in these areas increased among marijuana users, indicating abnormal neuron growth. Additionally, the brain regions took on abnormal shapes.
It appears the changes were directly related to how much marijuana was consumed.
It’s essential to note that a definitive cause-effect link has not been proven, though the study did find an association between brain anatomy and weed consumption, HealthDay reported.
The outlet added, “These changes show that pot users’ brains adapt to even low-level marijuana exposure, potentially making a person more vulnerable to drug addiction or changing their thought processes and emotions in unknown ways, the researchers said.”
Considering that the human brain continues to develop into a person’s 20s and 30s, Breiter expressed concern over the findings.
“When we saw that there was a consistent abnormality and that it was directly related to the amount of cannabis one took in, it gave us some significant pause,” he said. “Seeing these differences raises a cautionary flag that we need to do more research.”
AP Photo/Ed Andrieski
The study’s findings are important, as there is little information on the true benefits and negatives of lighter recreational marijuana usage, according to USA Today.
While the results will lead some to claim that marijuana should not be legalized, others, like Paul Armentano, deputy director of NORML, a pro-pot group, believe otherwise.
“A pragmatic regulatory framework that allows for the legal, licensed commercial production and retail adult sale of marijuana but restricts its use among young people — coupled with a legal environment that fosters open, honest dialogue between parents and children about cannabis’ potential harms — best reduces the risks associated with the plant’s consumption or abuse,” he told HealthDay.
It is important to note that the study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Northwestern Medicine’s Warren Wright Adolescent Center.
Funding coming from government agencies which are generally opposed to marijuana consumption might lead to some skepticism surrounding the study’s results.
(H/T: NBC News)
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