Stupid Media Tricks

Michael Savage on marijuana. [Obligatory keep-things-that-can-break-away-from-you warning]

I got about halfway through it.

Kay Lazar of the Boston Globe does a strange and incomprehensible hit piece on marijuana: As Pot-Smoking, Pill-Popping Baby Boomers Age, New Health Problems May Arise.

It’s an entire feature article with absolutely no facts. A lot of random unfocused speculation that pot and “other drugs” (I love the way they lump them together to make wild speculations) will cause some heretofore unknown dangerous effect on an entire generation, that tons of old people will overwhelm treatment centers because of their pot addictions, and that doctors will misdiagnose pot’s short term memory effects as dementia. Complete with “experts” saying absolutely nothing.

“We need to help [patients] to either cut down or stop use earlier,” Delany said, “so we will have fewer problems when they’re older and it is more expensive to treat them.”

Treat what? The munchies?

Check out this headline in the Vancouver Sun: Marijuana Does Nothing To Help Memory In Alzheimer’s: Study

And the lede re-emphasizes the point:

Marijuana does not appear to improve memory or reverse effects of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a University of B.C. study…

That’s too bad. When there had been some preliminary evidence that marijuana might have some potential in treating Alzheimer’s, it sounded pretty exciting, and I was hoping there would be some more research to determine if it was true. But I guess this is just one of those things that doesn’t pan out. They obviously did a thorough study that proved that marijuana doesn’t have any value to human Alzheimer patients.

Let’s check it out. How many Alzheimer’s patients were involved in the study?

Six researchers affiliated with the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute used a synthetic derivative of cannabis called HU210, which is 100 to 800 times more potent than marijuana consumed by humans. In experiments, mice were initially taught how to get to a desired location in a maze. The mice that got high dose HU210 did no better than control subject mice, which got no drug, or those that got a low dose. The study was done on a total of nearly 100 mice — a third that got a high-dose drug injection, a third that got a lower dose and a control group that didn’t get the drug but still had a sham injection to produce the same conditions. […] After the experiments, mice were killed and their brains were examined. Post-mortems showed mice that got the highest dose of the drug had fewer brain cells, pointing to a detrimental effect of marijuana. [emphasis added]

Well, that certainly cleared that up. If you’re a mouse attempting to navigate a maze, don’t bother injecting yourself with a massive dose of HU210. It’s probably not going to help you.

And they’ll still remove your brain.