Marijuana:
Myths vs. Facts
Myth #1: Marijuana skews the users perception and memory!
Rather, this claim is skewed. It is true that while under the influence a user experiences difficulties with memory and perception. However, after the initial high, the user no longer experiences those effects. Interestingly, while under the immediate influence of cannabis, users showed more widespread use of other areas of the brain. The study determined that this was caused by the brain working to make up for the memory and preceptive impairment while under the immediate influence of cannabis.
Myth #2: Marijuana is damaging!
Thousands of studies have been conducted, though none have revealed anything dramatically different than the others. The overall conclusion? Marijuana is not dangerous to the user. According to the National Commission on Drug abuse, created by public law 91-513 to study marijuana, concluded that it, while not entirely safe, had very few, minimal dangers, all of which "had been grossly overstated." An article in the Lancet, a British medical journal, also concluded that "the smoking of cannabis, even longterm, is not harmful to health."
Myth #3: Marijuana causes amotivational syndrome!
Research has been conducted on this area specifically for over 25 years, and evidence has not turned up to suggest that marijuana explicitly causes people to lose their drive and ambition. Rather, those constantly intoxicated, regardless of the drug, are unlikely to be productive members of society. Those who suffer amotivational syndrome and are marijuana users often have the "syndrome" as a displacement before hand, and suffer other contributing factors such as family issues, issues with self esteem, and general, overall deviance.
On the other hand, college students using marijuana show grades of the same level as non users. Adults who smoke marijuana actually tend to earn higher wages than non-users.
Myth #4: Marijuana is addictive!
This claim is severely distorted. It has been tested and shown time and time again that marijuana absolutely does not cause a physical dependence. Less that 1 percent of Americans smoke marijuana every day, which is known as chronic use. Of the less than 1 percent, only 1 and 10 ever become dependent during chronic use. Once again, you can not become physically dependent. The state of dependence is a psychological dependence. So, the risk of any dependence what so ever is reduced to psychological dependence, and further reduced to those who become heavy, chronic users, which constitutes only one tenth of the 1 percent portion of the population.
Myth #5: Marijuana is a gateway drug!
The Lancet and the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse could probably, though, debate over the Gateway Drug Theory. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, marijuana �could� be a gateway drug in that:
Long-term studies of high school students and their patterns of drug use show that very few use other illegal drugs with out first trying marijuana. For example, the risk of using cocaine is much greater for those who have tried marijuana than those who have never tried it. Using marijuana puts children and teens in contact with other users and sellers of drugs. So there is more of a risk that a marijuana user will be exposed to and urged to try more drugs.
On the other hand, �studies upon which the theory is based have been carried out mainly using school surveys. The majority of users in a typical school are probably occasional users rather than heavy or �hard-core� users, particularly if the focus is on illicit drugs other than marijuana.�
Additionally, it may be the case that �most cocaine users tried marijuana first.� Doing no more than illustrating this pattern is �far from proving the marijuana use somehow caused the individual to progress to cocaine, particularly since most adolescent marijuana users do not progress to more-addictive substances.� This sort of logical pattern is referred to as post hoc fallacy. The pattern indicating the use of marijuana before cocaine, for example, shows only that marijuana happened to be used before cocaine, not that the use of marijuana cause or led to the use of cocaine, as the gateway theory implies. Almost all people who have used cocaine have used marijuana first, yet more research must be completed in regards to how many marijuana users go on to use cocaine before any conclusions can be drawn, or any debates can be conducted with real results on the gateway theory. The book Psychopharmacology also points out that �there is a casual connection involved in the progression of drug use,� however, this begins most often with cigarettes and alcohol, not marijuana.
Data from a sample of 1108 12th graders in public or private schools in New York showed strong data support for the progression of alcohol and cigarettes, then marijuana, then hard drugs. 70.8% of marijuana users from this study used cigarettes before marijuana, and 80.3% used alcohol before marijuana, illustrating that as hard drug users often use marijuana first, alcohol and/or cigarettes are commonly used before marijuana. As marijuana is called a gateway drug to harder, more illicit drugs, so must alcohol and cigarettes be classified as a gateway drug to marijuana, and consequently to hard drugs.