Tuesday, December 19, 2006

"Research", The reality of the world of "drugs"

Long-term marijuana use may fog the brain

Well, another thing that bothers me now a days, is these medical "researchers".

Don't get me wrong, medical research is great. We should have studies on the effects of "illegal" narcotics.

However, this is not a serious study, and most aren't for things like pot. Why? The government, especially the US government, wants to keep all illegal drugs illegal, and their "researchers" must support said status quo.

The problems with this study, where the memory of the user's were tested:
- a few long term pot smokers were sampled
- a few people who used pot heavily for only a few years were sampled.
- some people who never or rarely used pot were sampled.

The few people who used pot long term were found to have "slightly worse memory".

now, I understand basic statistics and inferring on a larger set from a smaller set, but come on, any intelligent person knows the statement

"Although the study is retrospective – that is, the subjects were not tested on their cognitive abilities before they took up marijuana – the researchers are confident that the long-term users’ abilities were not significantly different from the other groups from the beginning"

is bullshit. 100's of other things could have effected these people's memories besides pot -- alcohol, other drugs, what they did for a living, how often they "exercised" their memory, etc etc. This is an extremely uncontrolled study, yet they make some big conclusions.

I'm not saying pot doesn't affect your memory - any drug that's chemical ingredient zaps to your brain could. I'm saying that studies should be done by independent researchers, one without government funding, pharmaceutical funding, or other organizations with agendas. No funding for that, I guess ;)


If I was a politician, I'd vote to decriminalize all drugs. The fact that they are illegal is what creates most drug related crime in the first place. I wonder how long it will take the governments to realize this (a few governments around the world have already.)

The reason is, you might say, "cocaine" is bad for you, so it "should" be illegal. Sure, it's not good for you. However, cocaine was a legal drug for medicinal purposes for many years. There are legally available drugs that will fuck you up much,much quicker than cocaine ever would.

So why is cocaine illegal, besides the fact that 80 years ago, the "drug experts" decided it should be? Remember, these are the same people who decided booze should be illegal, then it got legalized, and then decided pot should be illegal instead because of all those damm mexican pot heads causing trouble. ;)

My ideas here are supported by the condition of North American society: although many people are addicted to illegal drugs, far more people are addicted to legal drugs.
Education will help people, not throwing them in jail for taking a drug that only affects their body.

Let's keep the jails for real criminals.

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