Last week marked the fifth anniversary of Colorado's decision to sanction the world's first anything-goes commercial pot trade.
Five years later, we remain an embarrassing cautionary tale.
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Blowing Smoke: The Real Facts About Marijuana
/The pot industry has many lies and half truths that are recycled again and again. It is time to take them on point by point.
Read MoreMy Dad Will Never Stop Smoking Pot→
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Marijuana makes him carefree and happy. But years of using the drug had a ruinous effect on my family.
Read MoreSmoking cannabis DOES make people more violent→
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Cannabis users are more likely to commit violent crime, pioneering research has shown. It warned those who smoke the drug regularly run an increased risk of using violence against others. The project is the first to demonstrate that cannabis is not only linked with violent crime but is the cause.
Read MoreSmoking cannabis DOES make people more violent: Project confirms for the first time that using the drug is the cause of crimes→
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Cannabis users more likely to commit violent crimes, research has shown
Study found there was a ‘more constant relationship’ between cannabis and violence than between alcohol or cocaine use and violence
More than 20 US states have legalised cannabis for medical purposes
Marijuana use is associated with an increased risk of prescription opioid misuse and use disorders→
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New research suggests that marijuana users may be more likely than nonusers to misuse prescription opioids and develop prescription opioid use disorder. The study was conducted by researchers at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, and Columbia University.
Read MoreGet Out Your Checkbook: What Legalized Marijuana is Going to Cost→
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With such overwhelming support, one could assume that legalization has clear benefits for everyone. That assumption is not only costly, it could prove to be dead wrong.
Read MoreHow marijuana promoters bypass the law — and the public good
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When I graduated from pharmacy school, I voluntarily pledged to use my knowledge, experience, and skills to the best of my ability to ensure optimal drug therapy outcomes for the patients I serve, and to consider the welfare of humanity with the full realization of the responsibility entrusted by the public.
To me this means that we, as pharmacists, must step up and speak the truth when it comes to claims about “medical” marijuana.
Read MoreNational Survey Shows Soaring Marijuana Use Among All Americans 12 and Older; Heavy Use Also on the Rise→
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The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) also found the number of daily or near-daily users of marijuana in 2016 doubled compared to the number of heavy users about a decade ago. Use rose significantly among age groups 12 and up, 18 and up, and 26 and up. Almost twice as many 12-17-year-olds are using pot as compared to cigarettes on a past-month basis. And among those 18 and over, there has been a significant jump in the percent of marijuana users who are unemployed as compared to 2015.
Read MoreBig profits, extra pot fuel illegal butane hash oil labs→
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The midday explosion that convulsed a quiet North Portland neighborhood last month showered the street with glass and debris and hurled a 150-pound door into nearby Peninsula Park.
It blasted a 91-year-old home to pieces, scattering glass and scraps of the roof. The two men inside died. The sheer force of the blast suggested someone, maybe a contractor, nicked a natural gas line.
Read MoreMarijuana devastated Colorado, don’t legalize it nationally→
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Our country is facing a drug epidemic. Legalizing recreational marijuana will do nothing that Senator Booker expects. We heard many of these same promises in 2012 when Colorado legalized recreational marijuana.
In the years since, Colorado has seen an increase in marijuana related traffic deaths, poison control calls, and emergency room visits. The marijuana black market has increased in Colorado, not decreased. And, numerous Colorado marijuana regulators have been indicted for corruption.
In 2012, we were promised funds from marijuana taxes would benefit our communities, particularly schools. Dr. Harry Bull, the Superintendent of Cherry Creek Schools, one of the largest school districts in the state, said, "So far, the only thing that the legalization of marijuana has brought to our schools has been marijuana."
Read MoreToxic waste from U.S. pot farms alarms experts→
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WEAVERVILLE, Calif. (Reuters) - Pollution from illegal marijuana farms deep in California's national forests is far worse than previously thought, and has turned thousands of acres into waste dumps so toxic that simply touching plants has landed law enforcement officers in the hospital.
Read MoreWhat Does it Take to Admit the Failures of Legalizing Pot?→
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Marijuana labs — sometimes called hash oil labs or BHO labs — were exploding before legalization, but the problem grew bigger after marijuana possession became legal in July 2015. The number of burn victims rose from 7 to 30 within a year. Today marijuana users can buy“wax” or “dabs” from licensed dispensaries, but it is cheaper to make at home using butane. Unlicensed chemists who run the marijuana labs may be trying to sell their own supply to undercut the legal market. Or they be so addicted that risking death is not enough to stop them.
Read MoreLegal weed isn't living up to all of its promises. We need to shut it down→
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Today, a growing class of well-heeled lobbyists intent on commercializing marijuana are doing everything they can to sell legal weed as a panacea for every contemporary challenge we face in America. Over the past several years we've been barraged by claims that legal pot can cure the opioid crisis, cure cancer, eliminate international drug cartels, and even solve climate change.
Read MoreThese college students lost access to legal pot — and started getting better grades→
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The most rigorous study yet of the effects of marijuana legalization has identified a disturbing result: College students with access to recreational cannabis on average earn worse grades and fail classes at a higher rate.
Read MoreI Can Stay Sober Amidst A Mountain Of Marijuana→
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Society, in general, was encouraging to people trying to get and stay sober. At least — back then — it was considered self-destructive to use drugs, smoke marijuana, drink alcohol and take pills. Today we live in a different country that has fallen prey to the lobbying of Big Marijuana.
Read MoreThe Clinical Conundrum of Medical Marijuana→
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In Colorado, patients have a tremendous variety of products at their disposal for pain conditions. These products are not highly regulated or controlled, and potentially contain contaminants such as pesticides, fungicides and rodenticides.
There is no limit on dosing or potency. For example, there is no limit to the amount of residual butane in butane hash oil that patients can inhale, and there are no studies as to the benefits of inhaled butane. The available products in Colorado can push the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content to nearly 100%.
Read MoreIs Marijuana Use for Pain Driving Negative Societal Effects?→
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The problem of increased marijuana use has origin in its purported use for pain, but the medical literature is completely void of evidence for the treatment of common pain conditions with cannabinoids or cannabis. Current medical literature suggests benefit in less common pain conditions, with products not commercially available in the United States, or with synthetic THC, not with dispensary cannabis. The variability of available products changes regularly and their use in medicine, particularly pain, is unproven. The end game is in the court of law enforcement, mental health providers, the medical community, and our educational systems, at unknown societal costs, which are only now becoming apparent.
Read MoreA Teenager’s Lament→
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There is no limit to the genre of students which teen drug use has effected- the popular and the unpopular, the athletes as well as members of the robotics club, the dancers, the singers, the freshmen and the seniors– everyone is doing it. Ironically, even the leaders of my school’s ‘Students Against Destructive Decisions’ (SADD) are getting “turnt” on the weekends. While I would consider this to be a major form of hypocrisy, perhaps the bigger problem is that they don’t realize how destructive some of their decisions are…
Read MoreDangers of Marijuana Experienced Firsthand→
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I recently finished my residency in emergency medicine and began to practice in Pueblo, Colorado. I grew up there, and I was excited to return home. However, when I returned home, the Pueblo I once knew had drastically changed. Where there were once hardware stores, animal feed shops, and homes along dotted farms, I now found marijuana shops—and lots of them. As of January 2016, there were 424 retail marijuana stores in Colorado compared with 202 McDonald’s restaurants.1
These stores are not selling the marijuana I had seen in high school. Multiple different types of patients are coming into the emergency department with a variety of unexpected problems such as marijuana-induced psychosis, dependence, burn injuries, increased abuse of other drugs, increased homelessness and its associated problems, and self-medication with marijuana to treat their medical problems instead of seeking appropriate medical care.
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