The Science of Marijuana
by Leslie L. Iversen
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Book Summary Information
Author: Leslie L. IversenEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-12-15
ISBN: 0195151100
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
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Book Reviews of The Science of Marijuana
Book Review: Good but far from perfect
Summary: 4 Stars
One should start by putting things in perspective. There are about 400,000 yearly USA deaths due to tobacco, 100,000 each to alcohol and prescription drugs and about 7600 to aspirin and other OTC painkillers. Worldwide we can expect that the figures will be about 10 million for tobacco, 2.5 million each for others and about 200,000 for aspirin and OTC painkillers. If you calculated the lifetime risks of death or injury from using marijiana, it is probably comparable to that of driving ten km and significantly less than that of putting on a pair of skis.
In addition, the young people who comprise the majority of the users are heavy risk takers, a very high percentage of whom have personality disorders. There are about 60 million schizophrenics and the same number of manic depressives in the world. When you add the depressives, schizotypal disorders, anorexics, alcoholics etc it is clear that perhaps a billion people have major mental problems, nearly half of all those are in the prime drug taking ages. In addition nearly all of us have periodic mood swings, medical problems and personal crises. A large percentage of the population will likely show memory deficits and other problems. Nevertheless, if any such effects appear in marijuana users they will almost certainly be ascribed to the drug. In reality, is not clear that anyone has ever had serious permanent mental problems due to marijuana and its potential medical benefits are enormous. It has a long and remarkable history as a highly effective and safe medicine in many societies. Nevertheless, the federal government has chosen to ignore medical advice and legal opinion and classify it as a dangerous drug with norecognized medical value and the governments of many other countries have followed along like trained dogs.
On the whole this is an excellent book as Iverson has done his homework and tries to be impartial. Nevertheless some of the biases nearly universal in scientific and government circles are still evident. For example, on page 174 he states that the use of cannabis for mood disorders and sleep is obsolete because of the availability of Prozac, Valium and sleeping pills. However the very well known downsides to the medical drugs(days to weeks before they act, inability of patient to titrate the dose, common major and often fatal side effects, serious and frequent bad interactions with other drugs and alcohol, often addictive, high cost, patients commonly verdose, frequent failure to be fully effective, suicides, accidental poisoning of children, mental clouding, etc.) are not mentioned. Cannabinoids in contrast act immediately, are almost nontoxic, easily titratable, have few known interactions, often produce pain reduction,should be very low cost, are usually effective, have noserious or fatal side effects, essentially nonaddictive, overdose unlikely, almost impossible to commit suicide with, and highly unlikely to be lifethreatening if they get into children's hands). Also with some experience, a large percentage of patients will come to enjoy the usually moderate but often useful, side effects(stimulation of appetite and sociability, increased enjoyment of music, facilitation of sex, pain reduction, boredom reduction, etc).
All of these facts have been known for a long time and it is primarily the lunatic opposition of the US government(and its imitators) that has prevented cannabinoids from becoming major medicinals. However the fact that marijuana had to be either smoked or taken as pills, which took a long time to act, were absorbed irregularly, and could not be easily titrated by doctor or patient, was alsoa major impediment. Since this book was written, GW Pharmaceuticals(which spent some $42 million in a few years just for marketing) and others have introduced throat sprays, inhalers and high tech sublingual metering devices(that can even keep track of doses and times and send the data to remote medical centers) that largely overcome these problems. These advances, coupled with the vast amount of research on the brain's natural(endogenous) cannabinoid agonists and antagonists and receptors is rapidly revolutionizing the science of cannabinoids and will almost certainly lead to the introduction of many into mainstream medicine(much to the chagrin of the government and other antidrug groups which have long insisted cannabis has no medical use). In addition, the opposition to the cultivation and use of cannabis varieties used for hemp(which has little or no THC) should gradually cease. This is critical as hemp is a very environmentally friendly plant which can replace much of the nonfriendly wood, paper, cotton, and synthetics industries and is useful for food and oil as well.
The eagerness of the US and European governments to fund research showing the bad effects of marijuana has led to a major industry employing hundreds of scientists and their assistants and resulting in dozens of books and reports and several thousand articles over the last 40 years. Almost all this work is irrelevant to the issue of whether marijuana, as used by most persons, has any substantive negative effects. Iverson is mostly objective but errs sometimes-- eg, in citing the book of Solowij as showing negative effects of marijuana smoking on memory. Solowij, like virtually all such studies on bad effects of cannabinoids and psychedelics on humans, has major flaws(eg, no good controls) which render the conclusions useless. There are also other studies which show little or no negative memory effects from above-normal levels of chronic use. Of course, most people do not have a high chronic intake, nor do they take large amounts of alcohol and a very wide variety of legal and illegal drugs(often intravenously)over long periods. The subjects in such studies are preselected for long term heavy use and are essentially uncontrolled for abuse of other drugs and alcohol and there are no real control groups(eg persons who are identical in their drug and medical history and long term mental stability--or lack thereof--whose only difference is that they have not smoked marijuana every day for many years). Making such careful investigations of the subjects and finding a good control group would be difficult, but without this such studies are useless.
Iverson follows the normal course when discussing the sociology of psychoactive drug use indicating that alcohol introduces most persons to drugs, but he ignores coffee, tea, and other caffeine beverages which are, incidentally, immensely more destructive than marijuana and probably exceed tobacco and alcohol. In the case of caffeine drinks the damage is not to health but from the destruction of vast areas of forest for growing, the chemicals used for growing, the huge loss of topsoil annually, the use of energy and pollution generated to manufacture and distribute them and their containers etc. Of course the similar costs apply for tobacco and alcohol and should be added to their health effects when asessing social costs.
All things considered, the damage caused by marijuana(and other psychedelics) is so trivial in comparison that is not worth mentioning. Like many, he does not see that it is the government's policy and not the drugs that are the danger to society. The huge amounts of money spent to suppress marijuana and the approx. 500,000 arrests a year in the US alone are a total waste of time and socially counterproductive. Of course the retards in the government are only there because they are put into office by the retards who vote for them. Let us get down to the basics of monkey psychology here--any kind of significant activity which is not currently regulated activates the control (and perhaps the contamination) templates in the brain and leads to the compulsion to suppress it. Bush and the DEA, and billions of others, feel that it's only right and just to manipulate and abuse anyone as this is what their inference engines tell them to do. Unfortunately, these engines were evolved about a million years ago and are completely self destructive in the 21st century. This is standard cognitive psychology so if it seems odd to explain things this way please read up a little.
He notes that there are more than 100,000 deaths each year in Britain alone due to tobacco and alcohol each but does not then note that this means they do more damage in Britain alone every day than marijuana and all the psychedelics have done in the entire world since the beginning of recorded history. Tens of thousands die and millions suffer serious effects every year from aspirin and other OTC painkillers, antibiotics, NSAIDS etc. Anyone who doubts can easily find the statistics on the net. In contrast, one has to look hard and be very noncritical to find a handful of possible yearly deaths and injuries due to cannabinoids and psychedelics.
Not only are cannabinoids amazingly nontoxic but government supported studies of rats and mice given heavy daily doses of THC for two years showed a dramatic drop in various kinds of cancer! In addition, a study of heavy daily marijuana users who smoked it for average 19 years showed decreased asthma and emphysema relative to controls! Of course it is only recently and with great reluctance that the government has started to sponsor research that may show desireable effects. He cites one study that claimed to show an increase in injuries in smokers but it lacked any good controls and so is useless.
Likewise, his preoccupation(reflecting the official views of course) with the modest psychological dependency of some smokers seems totally absurd in comparison with the massive addiction and habituation to alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and hundreds of medical drugs which have a high incidence of major side effects, morbidity and mortality almost totally lacking with marijuana.
A cynic might say that the US government concentrates on suppressing marijuana because 200 years of eroding the constitution and the bill of rights has led to such total fascist control that there are few other things left to suppress.
He also makes the statement that LSD has no medical use. He does not mention that doctors and therapists have been forbidden to use psychedelics by the police states for some 40 years in spite of a vast and clear literature showing they have unique medical applications.
A large and rapidly expanding number of analogs and derivatives of both marijuana-derived and endogenous(eg anandamide) cannabinoids are proving to be even more effective than the THC which is the major active constituent of natural cannabis. One can expect to see cannabinoids that act faster and more effectively, with fewer side effects and also antagonists to them that will rapidly terminate their action(though there has been limited research and Iverson does not discuss this).
Overall, the book is much saner than most from the medical establishment but it is already out of date and needs to be rewritten to address the criticisms above.
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Summary of The Science of Marijuana
After alcohol and nicotine, marijuana is the most commonly used "recreational" drug in Western countries. There has already been a growing debate about the medical applications of marijuana and other cannabis-based preparations and increasing pressure to legalize such use; voters in several States in the US in the 1996 and 1998 elections approved prosals to implement such measures. In The Science of Marijuana the author explains the remarkable advances that have been made in scientific research on cannabis with the discovery of specific receptors and the existence of naturally occurring cannabis-like substances in the brain. The book also gives an objective and up to date assessment of the scientific basis for the medical use of cannabis and what risks this may entail. The recreational use of the drug and how it affects users is described along with some predictions about how attitudes to cannabis use may change in the future. Leslie Iversen is a scientist who has worked both in academia and in the pharmaceutical industry and has specialized in the study of drug actions on the brain. The book is written with a minimum of scientific jargon or technical language for readers who want to know more about the science that underlies the current cannabis debate.Alternative Medicine Books
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