There is a startling study out that shows that teenagers who smoke marijuana daily are over 60 percent less likely to complete high school and 60 percent less likely to graduate college. Even more startling is that these students are seven times more likely to attempt suicide. The study is published in the respected medical journal, The Lancet Psychiatry.
The study looked at 3,725 students from Australian and New Zealand until they reached the age of 30. They found “clear and consistent associations between frequency of cannabis use during adolescence and most young adult outcomes investigated, even after controlling for 53 potential confounding factors including age, sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, use of other drugs, and mental illness.”
While I expect this study will be cited in the ongoing debate over legalization, it is worth noting that this involves student who use marijuana daily, which is an extremely high rate of use for most students. That level of drug use seems to me to reflect other problems that likely preexisted in the lives of the students or an environment that is not optimal. The data suggests that if a student uses cannabis less than monthly, he or she would have slightly lower odds of graduating high school or getting a college degree, compared to a person who doesn’t use at all. Other aspects are entirely unsurprising like the fact that even a monthly user has a four time greater likelihood of developing addiction to cannabis than someone who does not use it at all.
Then there is the interesting aspect of the drug being illegal. Since it is illegal, the authors of the study suggest that kids who use the drug are cross critical lines in violating the law — and associating with others who do so.
Source: Washington Post
If EFT cards can purchase over the counter medication it is a curious situation if EFT cards cannot in Medical Marijuana dispensaries.
I think this study is a bit biased despite the control efforts presented.
Smoking weed everyday is an extraordinary sample group and then to present conclusions or the second generation of those interpreting the data could apply it to marijuana users generally.
I agree that marijuana should be kept out of teenage hands for various reasons including health factors for their physiological need but it does not help matters if statistics can be questioned or even disproved by overreach to arrive at a particular conclusion.
Squeeky anecdotes are nothing more then anecdotes. Especially when the ones you cite affirm your ignorant bias (ignorant not a name but lack of information)
http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/29/report-chronic-undertreated-pain-affects-116-million-americans/
http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2011/Relieving-Pain-in-America-A-Blueprint-for-Transforming-Prevention-Care-Education-Research/Report-Brief.aspx
Chronic pain affects about 100 million American adults—more than the total affected by heart disease, cancer, and diabetes combined. Pain also costs the nation up to $635 billion each year in medical treatment and lost productivity.
(Yes the numbers are different but we are still talking millions upon millions, MS, Lupus, Trigeminal and other neuralgias, RSD or CRPS (chronic regional pain syndrome) rheumatoid arthritis,as just the beginning of the list. We are not talking oh I hurt my finger. We are talking about debilitating and often disabling pain.)
leejcaroll – I am standing with you, Nick and maxcat on this one. There will always be prescription abuse, but that is no reason not to recognize the chronic pain of those who have it. I have had chronic pain from an injury since I was 20 (kept my out of the military) and most times the pain is manageable without medication, however there are times when it is so bad that I have some heavy duty drugs that I save just for the occasion.
Maxcat Nick is a standup guy. I am amazed that the fellow I met, a sweet really nice person, ias the same guy who writes what he does here ((*_*)) (except when it comes to the medical issues.) Maxcat I am sorry you are going thru what Nick and I, and I would bet some of the other commenters here, experience. I am glad that it is manageable for you
Maxcat, be very careful.
Hydrocodone – Vicodin NOT Thomas Jefferson???
Were he to have prevailed, public school would be consolidated, completely local and end after elementary school. He did not recommend marijuana.
Let’s focus on the fundamentals.
GOD SAVE THE TAXPAYER!!!
@leej
There ain’t no 116 million Americans in chronic pain. That’s a BS number. I personally know a couple of them who say they are in chronic pain, to get pain pills, which they then turn around and sell to junkies. It’s a booming business! You can make about $1,000 off a 180 count bottle of hydrocodones. More, if you get the right junkie at the right time.
My BFF, Fabia Sheen, Esq., an attorney, has defended some of these people, and junkies, too.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
@leej
My brush may paint a few people undeservedly, but I am pretty confident that most of the people who get splattered, deserve it. People with medical problems are just an excuse for the potheads to try to make it legal sooo that they can smoke. Just like the pregnant 15 year old who was raped by her evil step uncle was a poster child for abortion.
People are such cowards. They can’t just come right out and admit that they are dope smokers and want the stuff legal so that they can smoke dope legally. Sooo, they hide behind all the BS excuses. Frankly, if 10,000 kids committed suicide because of pot each year, they wouldn’t care. Just pass the joint, please!
Let the good times roll!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
leej, That’s maxcat
maxcat, I understand concerns for the law, particularly down south. I’m just a resource if you need it.
maxcat, leej can tell you that I’m a standup guy. My email is ndspinelli@hotmail.com. I have counseled her extensively and we actually met not long ago. I consider it an honor to educate and counsel people in pain. I have lived w/ pain for decades, not as severe as leej, but pretty bad. Reach out to leej, she’s a woman. She’ll vouch for my integrity and motivation. When I’m in San Diego I’m part of a network making cannabis dispensary trips for people so infirmed they can’t drive. The new inroads have been w/ people w/ neuromuscular diseases like MS, Parkinson’s and the WORST..ALS. Myself and others help those folks along w/ cancer and AID’s patients who are sometimes just to sick to drive.
You and leej are kindred spirits politically. I’m an outlier! But, we all share the challenge of pain. leej and I butt heads here but we have affection and respect for each other. Politics is just politics. Pain and suffering are much more important.
@Nick Spinelli
Again, I thank you, truly. I have copied your email address, and will seriously consider what you have said. I just don’t think that right now I’m willing to test the laws of Georgia, and as I said, my pain is manageable. I do agree. Living itself transcends politics. Sometimes we can get too caught up in it. Pain and suffering are real. I feel for you and leej. I feel lucky in that, to this date, my pain is not as bad as some, horrible after surgeries, bearable with the illness.
Chronic pain is not for the weak, but many have it worse than I.
Thomas Jefferson made no mention of the appropriateness of students using marijuana.
He terminated taxpayer funding of “public school” after “elementary school,” at the level where it was no longer assimilated, practical and useful for the “general welfare.” “Elementary” school would have been so efficient, accelerated and condensed as to include contemporary middle and high school. College and grad school would not be “gratis” or funded by the taxpayer and would be exclusively private.
Thomas Jefferson on “gratis” or publicly funded “elementary” school. Elementary included middle and high, was to be “gratis,” include the poor and be conducted locally (i.e. county), not from a national level or national administration.
_____________________________________
Thomas Jefferson
–Elementary Schools
“At [the elementary] school shall be received and instructed gratis, every infant of competent age who has not already had three years’ schooling. And it is declared and enacted, that no person unborn or under the age of twelve years at the passing of this act, and who is compos mentis, shall, after the age of fifteen years, be a citizen of this commonwealth until he or she can read readily in some tongue, native or acquired.” –Thomas Jefferson: Elementary School Act, 1817. ME 17:424
“The expense of the elementary schools for every county is proposed to be levied on the wealth of the county, and all children rich and poor to be educated at these three years gratis.” –Thomas Jefferson to M. Correa de Serra, 1817. ME 15:156
“If twelve or fifteen hundred schools are to be placed under one general administration, an attention so divided will amount to a dereliction of them to themselves. It is surely better, then, to place each school at once under the care of those most interested in its conduct.” –Thomas Jefferson: Plan for Elementary Schools, 1817. ME 17:417
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P.S. Jefferson paraphrased said that school shall be private and privately funded after about the 10th grade or the age between 12 and 15, what he referred to as “elementary” school. He made no mention of “minority studies,” athletics, art other non-functional courses in taxpayer funded public schools as he focused on students learning to “readily read” which assumes writing and arithmetic to negotiate numbered pages, if nothing else.
P.P.S. Jefferson NEVER approved of teacher strikes or teachers unions or associations for the purposes of job actions and setting policy, hiring, firing or setting wages.
maxcart, Cannaboid receptors in out nervous system are identical to opiate receptors. Opiates work on pain for almost everyone, but not all. The %’s for cannabis being effective on pain is much lower. I’m fortunate, cannabis does work for me. I’ve been mocked here and called a pot head by one person we both know, but most people are receptive. If you have any questions I will do whatever I can to help. Living in Georgia, you are in a bad state, as you well know, for any out of the box thinking. But, there are networks that can help those even in backward states.
@Nick Spinelli
I truly thank you, and I will consider it, especially if my pain level becomes less tolerable. I know that the medical cannabis would be far better than a friend’s suggestion, that he could “get me some joints”!
maxcat, The DEA has gone psycho. They have rescheduled opiates, to Schedule 2, up from Schedule 3.. Legit pain patients are getting shit on by the govt. because of people who abuse it. You can now only get a 90 day supply. It is a sin. Our friend leej is a fellow pain sufferer. I can help you w/ info on cannabis for pain. It works for some folks, not others. And, out govt. still has cannabis as a Schedule 1 drug, like crystal meth and heroin. Insane, incompetent, and stupid. That’s govt.
@Nick Spinelli
Psycho is a good word for it. I’ve been in pain in one form or another since my 20s, due to 10 orthopedic surgeries, and now the Fibromyalgia. As I said, right now, I actually cope with taking Lyrica. I currently live in Georgia and I’ve heard that there’s some faint conversation going on about medical cannibis legalization, but I’ll believe it when I see it. To have it as a Schedule 1 drug has always been insane, and using the fact that teenagers fare badly on it is even more foolish. If that is the criteria, make Budweiser a Schedule 1 drug.
maxcat06 – I can tell you that the Phoenix area is good for people with fibromyalgia. Not perfect, but good. Generally warm year round. Except for yesterday, infrequent rain. 350 sunny days a year or something ridiculous.
In all the debate over medical/recreational use, I read an article the other day, not about marijuana, but about the oxycodone drugs that are prescribed in one form or another by hundreds of thousands of doctors in varying strengths for pain. This was only one article, and if I’m incorrect, someone with medical knowledge please correct me. However, what it stated was that doctors will no longer be able to have just anyone in their office approve refills for patients, and will have to do so themselves, as the government is reclassifying this type of drug, due to the number of drug related overdoses and deaths.
It would seem that, at least when it comes to pain, one is as bad as another.
I have Fibromyalgia, and so far have been able to cope without major pain medication, but if the day came when I needed some, I believe I’d rather have the marijuana. If nothing else, I could relive my long ago college years.
hydrocodone goes from a Schedule III drug to a Schedule II. Instead of being permitted a 180 day prescription as they are now, patients will only be able to get an initial 90 day supply. Refills cannot be called into the pharmacy and patients will have to be seen by their doctor for each new prescription. (This is only for hydrocodone with acetaminophen or aspirin, hydrocodone alone is already schedule II.) from my article at http://americannewsreport.com/nationalpainreport/a-pained-life-is-rescheduling-in-lieu-of-better-pain-meds-8824623.html
(sry to use mine but fastest one for me to find link address)
leejcaroll – I do not know where you guys are getting 90 days. My dr. will only write 30 days at a time.
@Squeeky
Well, I was just going to say………..huh, what??
STOP enabling bad behavior.
Enabling the pot heads (wasn’t Obama their protégé?).
Affirmative action, welfare, food stamps, utility subsidy, rent control, housing anti-discrimination, free “no-merit”public school, union no-termination rules,
The welfare state enables the marijuana users and promotes marijuana use.
Eliminate the welfare state, impose self-reliance.
Legalize all drugs and enforce laws against bad behavior.
John – I think Obama is the literal poster boy for pot heads.
@ Squeeky
Because New Zealand and Australia are capitals of reasonable drug policy.
Also, the article linked points out the exact same thing as I did, black markets, stigma, and criminalization were not controlled for, and are valid responses. I missed a detail. Mea Culpa. You missed a point.
@NickS
No, the SCOTUS stopped us from executing them.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I would like to see the complete study. Especially information regarding the socio-economic status of those who comprise this ‘study’. As with any ‘governing body’ that may realise benefits from the pharmaceutical industry, at best most studies when completely investigated are biased towards preconceived ideas/beliefs. I’d hazard a guess that the majority of the individuals are indigenous peoples of the regions, still reeling from the lingering effects of ‘colonization’.