Negative Effects of Marijuana: Scientific Research Shows Pot is Harmful
See our news items and research list below. And, imagine the national suffering that could have been averted if these people hadn't been potheads:
- Ferguson's suicide-by-cop Michael Brown - Aurora theater murderer James Holmes
- Islamic Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
- Miami cannibal Rudy Eugene
- Trayvon Martin - Baltimore's Freddie Gray
- Vegas Strip murderer Lakeisha Holloway
- Planned Parenthood shooter Robert Lewis Dear
- Infamous murderer Jodi Arias
- Devin Kelley murdered 26 at church massacre
- Chattanooga's Islamic terrorist Muhammad Abdulazeez
- Tucson massacre mass murderer Jared Lee Loughner, and many more including:
- Japan's pothead legalization activist Satoshi Uematsu killed 19 handicapped people
- England's Manchester jihadist Salman Abedi killed 22
- France's Bastille Day jihadist killed 86 at the beach.
But first, see just below our list of peer-reviewed scientific papers helping to explain why potheads tend to be slow, depressed, and often, worse, as we discuss also in this Real Science Radio YouTube video...
Research Showing the Harmful Effects of Marijuana Use
2019 study: A large study finds pot use "strongly linked" to developing schizophrenia and paranoia with 20% of new psychosis cases associated with daily marijuana use; that percent skyrockets to 30% and 50% in London and Amsterdam with their higher average THC content, reports the journal Lancet.
2019 study: Five years of recreational legalization has tripled Colorado's already high emergency room pot visits, per the journal Annals of Internal Medicine for heart trouble, uncontrollable vomiting, and psychotic episodes.
2019 study: After the studies (below) showing how pot mutates DNA to potentially harm even offspring, now the Journal of Urology reports that marijuana significantly harms sperm production.
2018 study: Half of all first-time patients admitted for drug treatment worldwide are for cannabis, which therefore is even more than for heroin and cocaine combined, according to Psychological Medicine.
2017 study: Bristol University researchers peer-reviewed study of 5,000 youths found that teens who regularly smoke pot are 26 TIMES more likely to begin using other drugs by age 21, and they're 37 TIMES more likely to be addicted to nicotine and 3 TIMES more likely to have an alcohol problem, all as compared to teens who don't smoke marijuana.
2017 study: The Journal of Neuroscience is identifying at the cellular neuron level how pot causes addiction and strongly interferes with the brain's sophisticated physiological reward system, which could be why Miley Cyrus and Woody Harrelson recently quit smoking dope.
Source: Quest Diagnostics & WSJ 2017 study: Pot smokers are four times more likely to get a heart attack, etc., says a Case Western Reserve study of 210,000 cannabis smokers compared to ten million non-users.
2017 study: Colorado's Children's Hospital, in a post-legalization study, saw teens with marijuana intoxication or who tested positive for pot increase from 146 in 2005 to 639 in 2014. Unlike teens answering surveys, blood tests don't lie.
2017 study: Quest Diagnostics, mega workplace-testing lab, reports 2016 drug use up nationwide and single-year increases in the "legalization" states Washington, up 9 percent, and Colorado, up 11 percent.
HLDI & CBS News2017 study: Highway Loss Data Institute reports that from 2012 to 2016 car crashes are up in decriminalization states. Oregon 4%; Washington 6%; Colorado 14%, as compared to neighboring states, including as THC-involved crashes soar... and soar, fatally.
Focus on the Family has a knack for skewing virtually every public policy matter that they address. Their otherwise fabulous brief anti-pot video for example, screams "Say No To Big Marijuana". Unavoidably therefore, as words have meaning, Focus thus inherently whispers, "but as for little marijuana, that's a different matter." So here at RSR, we clearly warn you, "Say No To Pot!" And here's what happens in a state that doesn't:
2016 study: ALL 1,000 U.S. pot smokers studied in a Journal of Alzheimer's Disease paper had "low blood flow" throughout the brain and, tragically, restricted blood flow in the brain's memory/dementia region
2016 study: The UK's Daily Mail headlines their article on a paper in the journal Clinical Psychological Science, "The more cannabis you smoke, the more likely you are to be a loser"
2016 study: Science News reports "Marijuana use weakens heart" from a paper in an American Heart Association peer-reviewed science journal and were about twice as likely as non-users to suffer depression, psychosis, anxiety disorder, etc.
2015 study: 100 varieties of pot appear to "damage nerve fibres that handle the flow of messages across the two halves of the brain" per a study in Psychological Medicine
2015 study: JAMA Psychiatry reports that over the last decade, pot use in the U.S. more than doubled to nearly 10%, or 22 million people, with the huge study finding obvious signs of dysfunction from marijuana use in more than 7 million people
2015 study: Pot harms brain imaging shows regarding learning and memory, presented at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Annual Meeting
2014 study: 20 years of research reported on by WHO advisor Prof. Wayne Hall shows pot doubles mental impairment, psychosis; increases drop out, tobacco smoking, car crash, and rates of other illicit drug use.
2009 study: JAMA finds one in four substance-abusing schizophrenics become violent as the U.S. Secret Service reports that half of "mass attacks" involved pot and other substance abuse
2008 study: Marijuana smoker faces rapid lung destruction, 20 years ahead of tobacco smokers
2007 study: British medical journal Lancet reverses its editorial position and finds "sufficient evidence to warn young people that using cannabis could increase their risk of developing a psychotic illness"
By 2013 the Denver Post still hasn't come out of their stupor but at least they've noticed the fog. Sad but important insights on the long lasting harm from smoking pot as described by Dr. Kari Franson, professor from the University of Colorado's School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. (Notice the Post uncritically quoting a pot dealer who speaks of his customers as his "patients".)
Marijuana News Updates: Hear all this discussed on this Real Science Radio program with Bob Enyart and Doug McBurney including the potheads like Trayvon Martin, Ferguson's Michael Brown, Chattanooga terrorist Muhammad Abdulazeez, the Tsarnaev Boston Bomber, the theater shooter James Holmes, Baltimore's Freddie Gray, Colorado Springs clinic shooter Robert Dear, and Manchester Muslim terrorist Salman Abedi.
2019 News: In the WSJ Alex Berenson lists in Weeding Out Dubious Marijuana Science the common ways that pot "researchers" fake the science. Brandon Dorfman reports the same phenomenon in, of all places, the Pot Network. He quotes advocate Steve DeAngelo reporting on a poplular recent "study": "Cannabis is the most effective medicine for most Elder health complaints. And most other health complaints for every age group. One natural medicine more effective than all the pharmaceuticals combined without horrific side effects."
* UW Study Harming Babies: Canadian Pamela McColl, fresh off testifying at the the U.S. FDA against smoking pot, has gone to war against a University of Washington study, reported by Fox News Channel, on pot-smoking pregnant mothers to see its effect on the baby's brain. (RSR guess: low blood flow.) See related excerpts from JAMA at rsr.org/mccoll and Pamela's book, On Marijuana.
* Dr. Drum Interview on BEL: Leading marijiuana opponent and former California pharmacist turned patient safety expert with a sister killed by a pothead, Dr. Phillip Drum asks everyone to contact Heidi King 888-327-4236 at the U.S. Department of Transportation to urge her to immediately launch the national use of oral swabs so that roadside law enforcement officers will know what kind of drug influence a driver is under.
* Heidi Swan Stopped. K Anderson Continued: As part of our meta-series at kgov.com/pot Bob Enyart interviewed Heidi Swan about growing up with her brother, the two smoking pot until Heidi experienced cannabis-induced psychosis and quit whereas her brother continued from age 14 through grad school, crack, homelessness, and, eighteen times, to jail. The two of them eventually coauthored the novella A Night In Jail. Brother and sister warn everyone they can about the growing acceptance of pot and the attendant increase in mental ilness and homelessness. Their book on Amazon has been doing well and the reading in LA with actors from a leading Hollywood production received a standing ovation with her brother saying that it was the proudest day of his life. Wow. What a sister!
* Enyart Debate Opponent Now Psychotic: At the Huffington Post in 2012, Bob Enyart debated Robert Corry, Colorado's lead activist and co-author of legalization Amendment 64. By 2019, Corry went nuts claiming Arabs in a helicopter were chasing him which was apparently why he kidnapped and threatened to kill his former girlfriend and was also charged with auto theft, etc., all at Denver Int'l Airport. A month later the predictably paranoid pothead was arrested again after saber rattling, literally, while threatening people with a sword near downtown Denver. (See above on how pot harms mental health and please pray for Corry.)
2018 News: A California dispensary director and suspected pothead Barbara Blaser tells even strangers that they shouldn't smoke because her parents died of lung cancer, and then "admits she thinks a lot about secondhand smoke from cigarettes, but not pot." Go figure. And see the dangers, above.
2017 News: From the Law of Unintended Consequences file:
- The New York Times, though pro-pot, nonetheless compiled the data to show U.S. drug overdose deaths (which have exploded in the pro-pot era from 2000 to current). See the cost in lives destroyed (graph, left) of this one particular immoral policy advocated by Libertarians and the NY Times. For teens and adults intuit that if it's okay to smoke pot then it's okay to get high.
- 57% of high school students after Colorado's decriminalization test positive for THC, according to the Daily Mail.
- Since decriminalization, Colorado traffic fatalities soar, as does the THC-related fatalities.
- The Atlantic reports, that pot, long claimed to "reduce nausea", ironically, is highly correlated to Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome in Colorado, California, etc. - Bob Enyart debates pot with Tom Tancredo former presidential candidate.
2013 News: From the Pot Never Killed Anybody file:
- Pothead crane operator kills six in Philadelphia.
- Pothead decapitates self on his own booby-trapped farm as another pot grower murders stepdaughter for necrophilia.
- Just before a guilty verdict was delivered in the Travis Alexander murder case, CNN posted a police video interview with Jodi Arias' father who said that after they caught her growing marijuana at 14 years of age she became permanently paranoid that her parents were out to get her. - Pothead terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the younger Boston Bomber brother, a "stoner... really into marijuana", had "a permanent stench of marijuana in his room."
- By the end of 2013 the Denver Post is still in a stupor but at least they've noticed the fog. Sad but important insights on the long lasting harm from smoking pot as described by a professor from the University of Colorado's School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. (On RSR we discuss the Post uncritically quoting a pot dealer who speaks of his customers as "patients".)
2014 News: With today's stronger pot:
- Another person in England has died of cannabis poisoning.
- Since potheads have slower reactions, they therefore are far more likely to suffer premature death.
- Famous pot advocate George Michael quits smoking dope after falling out of a car at 70 mph.
- A 19-year-old Congo exchange student jumped to his death in Denver after eating pot cookie "legally" bought by a friend. Coroner tests for a hundred different drugs, but finds only marijuana in this man's system. - Ferguson, Missouri's Michael Brown had been smoking marijuana shortly before his strong-arm robbery and suicide by cop. - Which of these two criminals arrested in October smoke pot? The guy in his 30s who stole an ambulance and drove it home, or the guy in his 20s who stole a train and crashed it? Neither of the initial reports mention marijuana, but the chances are nil that neither of these dimwits smoke pot.
2015 News: From the Pot Never Killed Anybody file, Boulder tubing smoker goes missing. - Freddie Gray, the latest celebrity-by-death marijuana smoker following Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin, reportedly tested positive, and the Baltimore Sun reports, "In the first three months of this year, Gray was accused of marijuana possession, fourth-degree burglary, second-degree assault, malicious destruction of property and trespassing." - Lakeisha Holloway, the woman who intentionally drove onto a crowded Las Vegas Strip sidewalk and killed one and injured dozens tested positive for marijuana with her toxicology examination showing high levels of marijuana.
- 60,000 Brits live with hallucinations and paranoid episodes from smoking the stronger cannabis varieties, as England's biggest-of-its-kind pot study indicates that 25% of reports of schizophrenia and other psychotic conditions may be the direct result of smoking the popular extra-strong cannabis.
- Post-suicide autopsy of traffic-stop tantrum-throwing Sandra Bland "found high levels of marijuana in Bland's system". - Another tragic suicide in Colorado attributed to marijuana edibles followed by a teen's attempted suicide.. - Celebrating pot day, Chattanooga terrorist Muhammad Abdulazeez (right) was arrested on April 20th shortly after extinguishing a marijuana joint in his car.
- The pot smokers over at LiveScience should know that potheads aren't good at math. So when they reported on the recent doubling of pot use by U.S. adults to nearly 10% (or more than 22 million people), instead of leaving their statistic of evident "disorder" in terms of the overall population, at "3 percent", it would have been good for LS to do the math for their readers and explain that this 3% represents 7 million U.S. adults with each and every one of them representing a life hanging in the balance between well-being and ruin, who is having a negative impact on their own circle of family and friends.
* Either or Both: Here at Bob Enyart Live when the news broke we announced that we would follow the reports to see if either or both of these criminals, the clinic murderer Robert Lewis Dear, and the California Muslim murderer Syed Rizwan Farook, were also potheads.
Update: The Planned Parenthood clinic shooter Robert Lewis Dear was one of the thousands of potheads who have moved to Colorado because we decriminalized marijuana. Our governor John Hickenlooper and the mindless voters who decriminalized pot (see the horrific effects of weed, just below) have attracted Robert Dear to Colorado, along with many other drug addicts, drug dealers, schizophrenics, criminals, and all around losers. On December 7th, the Denver Post has finally gotten around to reporting what we've been reporting all along, that the lure of getting high with impunity brought Robert Lewis Dear to our state. (And of course, as reported, the hero police officer was a pro-life supporter and signer of Colorado RTL's personhood petition.)
Pothead terrorist Abedi
Since 9/11, two of America's more notorious terrorists have been potheads, Muslim Boston BomberDzhokhar Tsarnaev and Chattanooga's Islamic Muhammad Abdulazeez. June 2017 Update: Here at BEL we've filed repeated Public Records Act requests with the San Bernardino County Coroner's Office which, 19 months after the attack and counting, has still not released the Farook autopsy. We will continue to try to discover whether or not California's Muslim terrorist, like other Jihadis, was using drugs to help him commit his atrocities.
2017 News: Another Muslim pothead terrorist, Salman Abedi, was a university dropout loser. Why was he called Dumbo? Well, why do you think they call it dope? On May 22, Abedi bombed kids in Manchester, England.
For half a century now, marijuana has been overwhelmingly politically correct among the faculty and students on college campuses. Thus as with many controversial research topics, the inherent bias for and against marijuana can easily produce false study results.
Of course there are many studies showing that marijuana is harmless and endlessly beneficial. And there are decades of studies that show that:
* Abortion does not increase breast cancer [recently refuted]
* Spanking should not be part of child discipline [recently refuted]
* The death penalty is not a deterrent [long refuted]
Marijuana is intensely politically correct on college campuses where many of the pro-marijuana studies originate. Thus bias, problematic on both sides, is especially expected both to counteract the studies showing that marijuana is harmful, and as an expression of the rampant rebellion against God in the relentless effort to overturn beneficial Christian norms. By producing millions of graduates, overtly anti-Christian universities have succeeded even in turning entire professions, like law, medicine, and education, against Christ. This is one reason why conflicting studies abound on many important and moral issues. So the Christian must think outside of the box, and have the broader perspective to judge between studies, and to discern the truth from the bias.
Millions of Observers
Millions of people believe that smoking pot makes you stupid. Yet, while long-term cigarette smoking is bad for your lungs, there are not millions of people whose observations led them to believe that tobacco lowers your IQ and makes you slow and stupid. Why the distinction? These millions of people believe this not because they've read the scientific studies showing lower IQ, mental health, learning, and memory impairments from using pot, but because they've seen the results first hand. Studies conflict, of course, but extensive research shows what millions have directly perceived, that long-term routine pot use leads to serious mental health issues. On the other hand, even a nightly glass of red wine has the opposite reputation, of decreasing the likelihood of dementia, sustaining mental health, and certainly not of making anyone slow or stupid.
Applying the principles in God's Word as best we can at Denver Bible Church (which we know does not prove that we are right), we conclude:
- that the studies that show the dangers of marijuana are telling the truth and
- that those who accept the reports that there are no serious harmful side effects to marijuana are deceived, and not all but many of those, willfully so.
Marijuana, by its harmful effects on the brain, eventually owns its users by making them think that they are more insightful than others. They think they become more creative, and smart. In reality millions of people can testify from firsthand use and from firsthand observations that regular pot use makes you stupid. Drinking a glass of red wine nightly has no similar effect.
Smoking pot makes people think they are alert and smart but it puts their minds in a fog. Potheads for example will point to websites like drugwarfacts.org and claim that marijuana is responsible for ZERO deaths per year. Only those with extreme bias or dull minds would believe such a thing. Just from the few notes we're jotted down over the years for reporting on our radio program, we recall the "accident" in which a Mr. Bedell's “use of marijuana hours before the Mother’s Day crash in New Orleans that killed 22 people was the main cause of the wreck,” reported USA Today.
Pot and Mental Health
Those who defend pot tell us that reports claim there is no evidence of long-term harmful mental health effects. But just from our notes for the radio program, here are examples to the contrary. The London Telegraph wrote that a Dr. Turner, England's most senior coroner, estimates that marijuana is "a significant contributing factor" in 10% of the deaths he's worked, notably including suicides. In one British study of 853 drug-related deaths, whereas cocaine was a principal factor in 147, pot was used as the principle drug or in a cocktail in another 51 of those deaths. The Royal College of Psychiatrists reviewed research with similar results from Sweden, Holland and New Zealand. A study of 50,000 Swedish Army conscripts found that those who admitted at age 18 to having taken cannabis on more than 50 occasions were six times more likely to develop schizophrenia (paranoia, delusions, disorganized thinking, social dysfunction, etc.) in the following 15 years. A Dutch study of 4,000 people in the general population showed that those taking large amounts of cannabis were almost seven times more likely to have psychotic symptoms three years later. Such findings are largely ignored. And as I write this the Colorado State police have just announced that with the new "medical marijuana" regulations, Colorado now has a lot more people driving under the influence of marijuana than before. Even one of our own Denver Bible Church members observes that about 90% of the many mental health patients he works with for severe depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, etc., have pot use in their profiles. And another medical professional friend of DBC who works for a government health care program reports from her own experience that pot smoking appears to retard emotional maturity and that many of her patients suffer from psychosis seemingly related to their marijuana use.
You can also listen to Real Science Radio
discuss this rsr.org/pot article in 2015.
Help RSR reach page one of Google search results
for: negative effects of marijuana. To accomplish this
extremely difficult task (hopefully by the end of 2016)
please share this link kgov.com/negative-effects-of-marijuana.
Available by Prescription
Not only marijuana (including its THC component) but even the most mind-altering drugs, like opiates, should be available as strictly controlled substances very judiciously prescribed for medical conditions. What Denver Bible Church warns against is the denial that the normal use of marijuana, even from a single drag on a joint, easily produces a quick high. And so we disagree with advocacy of mainstreaming marijuana and making it available as a standard treatment for all kinds of aches and pains. It's one thing for a doctor to write a prescription for a controlled substance, but begining with Colorado's "medical marijuana" law, even that wasn't required for THC. So-called "patients" of dispensaries ended up deciding for themselves how much pot they're going to smoke (or otherwise injest) and they even get to grow their own. Smoking your medicine, producing it at home, deciding your own dose, always had far less to do with genuine medical care than with normalizing potheads.
Churches quickly began seeing members becoming addicted to pot procured "legally". These Christians began diagnosing ailments, prescribing treatment, and even distributing to others. Churches can list in their directories who to contact to get hooked up. Alcohol has been legal almost always, but to our knowledge, pastors do not routinely advise friends with various aches and pains to drink rum and coke until the pain goes away. But pot seems to be the drug that's beneficial for every ailment.
As for other cannabidiods (THC itself is a cannabidiol, tetrahydrocannabinol) as of late 2019 there is a single FDA approved non-THC CBD-based drug (for seizures from a rare childhood epilepsy). CBD is promoted mostly as of way of further normalizing pot and distracting from the harm marijuana inflicts on millions of people. So avoiding CBD is a way of showing your love and concern for others. And beware too the unsubstantiated claims that CBD helps with ailements other than rare epilepsies in children under age three.
Kids Around Pot
Christian parents who smoke pot for aches and pains (or even for much more serious ailments) will end up with kids who smoke to relax or for whatever excuse strikes them. But parents who smoke pot will think that, just as it makes them more creative and intelligent, it'll make their children smarter too.
Immature Christians including parents who are already vulnerable to long-term recreational drug use will have a special weakness toward "medical marijuana." Extensive past drug use of course can affect their ability to think clearly. For example, some long-term marijuana users demonstrate paranoia and can fall victim to paranoid conspiracy theories. Cannabis can lead someone to believe that airplane contrails will control your mind but that smoking pot clears your head.
Kids growing up with parents who drink beer and wine virtually guarantees that they will drink alcohol also. Likewise, the pot user's child will likely grow up to smoke pot, and will be attracted to a boyfriend or girl friend who smokes pot. And those kids will very predictably exploit mom and dad's pot smoking to their own harm. And it is from that harmful influence that the pastor and elders of Denver Bible Church want to protect the adults and the children of Colorado.
Parents on Pot
In addition to the studies showing pot as destructive to to our DNA genetic code, as more destructive to the lungs than tobacco, as negatively affecting neurons, as an impediment to learning and memory, and as especially dangerous to people with weakened immune systems, aside from all that, millions of people intuitively question the ability of long-term marijuana users to think straight, but users themselves think it keeps them sharp.
Researchers who either smoke themselves, or who are politically correct, will bias their studies to undermine this common knowledge. Users say they drive well after smoking. But we doubt that most potheads would let their own young son or daughter get into a car with someone who had just taken a couple hits. And it's sad that that those who use pot at home will, at unexpected times including in emergencies, end up driving their own children to the hospital after they've smoked half a joint.
In addition to making people slow and stupid, pot also makes it harder to control anger and makes users paranoid. The normal use of pot puts a man at greater risk of harming his own family. Self control becomes more elusive, and pot's quick intoxicating effect will weaken a man's moral compass and then, exactly as the Bible warns of drunkenness, increase his lust.
Leftist parents are far more likely than others to give pot even to their own kids (note Portland's BLM Antifa murderer trading his teenage son a quarter pound of weed for a gun). Then there are immoral and ignorant conservative and even "Christian" parents who misapply the teaching in Genesis that all of God's original creation was safe (except for kgov.com/that-one-tree of course). But shortly after the creation, the rebellion and curse have brought about changes that lead to disease and death. So aside from avoiding marijuana, it's also wise to avoid hemlock, nightshade, snakeroot, castor bean, rosary pea, oleander, even tobacco, etc.
Professors on Pot
While no end of the harm caused by pot professing professors could be presented, instead we will highlight one (occasionally lucid) MIT physics professor for whom we have no evidence whatsoever that he's a pothead, other than for this quote:
You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant. - Jeremy England
So, exactly what kind of plant were you imaging there Jeremy?
Marijuana and Alcohol
To the argument that pot is like alcohol and so should not be regulated differently, Denver Bible Church judges that reasoning as wrong and believes that pot should be illegal because:
1. It should be illegal to be high (intoxicated)
2. Any substance should be controlled if its normal use makes one high
Billions of people cannot get drunk on a sip of wine. Hundreds of millions cannot get drunk even on a glass of wine or a can of beer. Conversely, there are countless millions of people who would (and do) get high even with a single drag or two on a joint (normal use). That single hit or two makes someone mentally negligent, affects their moral compass, and as with drunkenness, even increases lust. And the potent pot sold today at dispensaries worsens this consequence.
The reason that God prohibits drunkenness is because a drunk is an unacceptable risk to society and to himself. Yet decades ago the federal government bribed the states to decriminalize even public drunkenness. Now, Christians being seduced by the grotesquely immoral libertarian party platform of states right (to decriminalize child killing and legalize homosexual marriage), are going far beyond marijuana to even advocate for the decriminalization of cocaine too. But when the normal use of a substance gets someone intoxicated, it should not be decriminalized.
Pot as Prescription
Any intoxicating herb, the normal use of which makes one high like typical recreational drugs, should not be available easily either grown at home or as an over-the-counter product. In Colorado, a Google search and self-diagnosis along with a lightly rehearsed complaint easily leads to a doctor's recommendation, followed by ongoing self-prescribing, self-medicating, and self-production of the drug. Then once on pot the user, who is very smart, concludes that he makes better decisions and even drives better. But in reality, over months and years, he lives in a deepening fog which puts others, including his children, neighbors, and first-responders, at the kind of increased risk that God does not require society to tolerate.
Proponents seem to think that prescription drug abuse somehow argues in favor of decriminalizing pot. Yet drugs from Ativan to Valium and Xanax took time to garner their reputation as significantly abused medications (years or decades). Whereas medical marijuana, which Colorado law now permits by a doctor's "recommendation" and "without a prescription," clearly has an immediate out-of-the-gate abuse track record.
So THC and other cannabis-based drugs should be available as strictly controlled substances, like other drugs, and prescribed carefully to treat specific medical conditions, and not generally advocated and made easily available to the general public so that they can self-medicate whenever they feel the urge. And the medical community should pursue the 2012 breakthrough designed to "help those smoking marijuana for medical purposes" in which "scientistshave cultivated a cannabis plant that doesn't get people stoned." Yet a popular marijuana site asks, Why? That is, exposing their own concern for hurting people as just a ploy to normalize getting high, they ask, Why would anyone want to provide medical marijuana that doesn't get you high? So don't look for this brand stocked on your local dispensary's shelves. Still though, regardless of disinterest from the pro-pot lobby, the medical community should aggressively pursue such developments.
Neighbors and Gross Negligence
Gross negligence has legal consequences. If the government tolerated gross negligence by, for example, allowing drunk driving, and someone is thereby injured, the governing officials (with all of America) would be guilty before God for the harm done. Thus God does not require society to put up with gross negligence. Therefore the government should ban recreational drugs and outlaw drunkenness from alcohol. (The federal government strong-armed the states to decriminalize drunkenness during the mid twentieth century so that today, unwisely, in the U.S., and in Australia and Britain, etc., it is no longer a crime to be drunk.)
The guy claiming a right to shoot a gun in a city park because he's a good shot and hasn't (yet) hit anyone is rightly overruled. Examples of the predictable consequences of the grossly negligent behavior of getting high or drunk include: - stoned drivers who actually think they drive better when smoking pot
- people who've smoked a joint who then end up driving a car after they thought they were home for the night
- a stoner who laughs that his cigarette fell behind the couch which then starts a fire that kills a baby upstairs
- the pot mom who drives away with her baby on the roof of her car
- pornography consumed even by many who may not otherwise have viewed it
- crimes and sexual immorality committed (like Ted Bundy who couldn't violate his conscience to murder unless he was intoxicated)
- the dollars spent on emergency room services, etc., for domestic violence and other victims hurt by stoners
- the cost of treating the user for injuries and illnesses resulting from drug abuse and alcoholism.
So when the normal use of any substance makes a person intoxicated, then the government correctly outlaws and classifies that drug as a controlled substance. Thus while THC and related medications should be available on a prescription basis from a pharmacy, pot use should not be normalized and the marijuana drug should be illegal.
See our news items and research list below. And, imagine the national suffering that could have been averted if these people hadn't been potheads:
Research Showing the Harmful Effects of Marijuana Use 
Marijuana News Updates: Hear all this discussed on this Real Science Radio program with Bob Enyart and Doug McBurney including the potheads like Trayvon Martin, Ferguson's Michael Brown, Chattanooga terrorist Muhammad Abdulazeez, the Tsarnaev Boston Bomber, the theater shooter James Holmes, Baltimore's Freddie Gray, Colorado Springs clinic shooter Robert Dear, and Manchester Muslim terrorist Salman Abedi.
2019 News: In the WSJ Alex Berenson lists in Weeding Out Dubious Marijuana Science the common ways that pot "researchers" fake the science. Brandon Dorfman reports the same phenomenon in, of all places, the Pot Network. He quotes advocate Steve DeAngelo reporting on a poplular recent "study": "Cannabis is the most effective medicine for most Elder health complaints. And most other health complaints for every age group. One natural medicine more effective than all the pharmaceuticals combined without horrific side effects."
* Heidi Swan Stopped. K Anderson Continued: As part of our meta-series at kgov.com/pot Bob Enyart interviewed Heidi Swan about growing up with her brother, the two smoking pot until Heidi experienced cannabis-induced psychosis and quit whereas her brother continued from age 14 through grad school, crack, homelessness, and, eighteen times, to jail. The two of them eventually coauthored the novella A Night In Jail. Brother and sister warn everyone they can about the growing acceptance of pot and the attendant increase in mental ilness and homelessness. Their book on Amazon has been doing well and the reading in LA with actors from a leading Hollywood production received a standing ovation with her brother saying that it was the proudest day of his life. Wow. What a sister!
2018 News: 
A California dispensary director and suspected pothead Barbara Blaser tells even strangers that they shouldn't smoke because her parents died of lung cancer, and then "admits she thinks a lot about secondhand smoke from cigarettes, but not pot." Go figure. And see the dangers, above.
- The New York Times, though pro-pot, nonetheless compiled the data to show U.S. drug overdose deaths (which have exploded in the pro-pot era from 2000 to current). See the cost in lives destroyed (graph, left) of this one particular immoral policy advocated by Libertarians and the NY Times. For teens and adults intuit that if it's okay to smoke pot then it's okay to get high.
2012 News: From the You Can't Make this Stuff Up file:
- Miami cannibal cannabis smoker Rudy Eugene shocked the world by eating another man's face off and his autopsy shocked liberals when he tested positive only for marijuana and not the rumored bath salts.
James Holmes's Colorado neighbor would see him, "smoking weed behind the apartment." This pothead injured 90 and murdered not 12 but 13 of his innocent victims.
- Pothead terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the younger Boston Bomber brother, a "stoner... really into marijuana", had "a permanent stench of marijuana in his room."
- Ferguson, Missouri's Michael Brown had been smoking marijuana shortly before his strong-arm robbery and suicide by cop.
- Lakeisha Holloway, the woman who intentionally drove onto a crowded Las Vegas Strip sidewalk and killed one and injured dozens tested positive for marijuana with her toxicology examination showing high levels of marijuana.
- Celebrating pot day, Chattanooga terrorist Muhammad Abdulazeez (right) was arrested on April 20th shortly after extinguishing a marijuana joint in his car.
* Either or Both: Here at Bob Enyart Live when the news broke we announced that we would follow the reports to see if either or both of these criminals, the clinic murderer Robert Lewis Dear, and the California Muslim murderer Syed Rizwan Farook, were also potheads.
For half a century now, marijuana has been overwhelmingly politically correct among the faculty and students on college campuses. Thus as with many controversial research topics, the inherent bias for and against marijuana can easily produce false study results.
Millions of Observers
Applying the principles in God's Word as best we can at Denver Bible Church (which we know does not prove that we are right), we conclude:
Those who defend pot tell us that reports claim there is no evidence of long-term harmful mental health effects. But just from our notes for the radio program, here are examples to the contrary. The London Telegraph wrote that a Dr. Turner, England's most senior coroner, estimates that marijuana is "a significant contributing factor" in 10% of the deaths he's worked, notably including suicides. In one British study of 853 drug-related deaths, whereas cocaine was a principal factor in 147, pot was used as the principle drug or in a cocktail in another 51 of those deaths. The Royal College of Psychiatrists reviewed research with similar results from Sweden, Holland and New Zealand. A study of 50,000 Swedish Army conscripts found that those who admitted at age 18 to having taken cannabis on more than 50 occasions were six times more likely to develop schizophrenia (paranoia, delusions, disorganized thinking, social dysfunction, etc.) in the following 15 years. A Dutch study of 4,000 people in the general population showed that those taking large amounts of cannabis were almost seven times more likely to have psychotic symptoms three years later. Such findings are largely ignored. And as I write this the Colorado State police have just announced that with the new "medical marijuana" regulations, Colorado now has a lot more people driving under the influence of marijuana than before. Even one of our own Denver Bible Church members observes that about 90% of the many mental health patients he works with for severe depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, etc., have pot use in their profiles. And another medical professional friend of DBC who works for a government health care program reports from her own experience that pot smoking appears to retard emotional maturity and that many of her patients suffer from psychosis seemingly related to their marijuana use.
Christian parents who smoke pot for aches and pains (or even for much more serious ailments) will end up with kids who smoke to relax or for whatever excuse strikes them. But parents who smoke pot will think that, just as it makes them more creative and intelligent, it'll make their children smarter too.
Researchers who either smoke themselves, or who are politically correct, will bias their studies to undermine this common knowledge. Users say they drive well after smoking. But we doubt that most potheads would let their own young son or daughter get into a car with someone who had just taken a couple hits. And it's sad that that those who use pot at home will, at unexpected times including in emergencies, end up driving their own children to the hospital after they've smoked half a joint.
To the argument that pot is like alcohol and so should not be regulated differently, Denver Bible Church judges that reasoning as wrong and believes that pot should be illegal because:
Proponents seem to think that prescription drug abuse somehow argues in favor of decriminalizing pot. Yet drugs from Ativan to Valium and Xanax took time to garner their reputation as significantly abused medications (years or decades). Whereas medical marijuana, which Colorado law now permits by a doctor's "recommendation" and "without a prescription," clearly has an immediate out-of-the-gate abuse track record.
Gross negligence has legal consequences. If the government tolerated gross negligence by, for example, allowing drunk driving, and someone is thereby injured, the governing officials (with all of America) would be guilty before God for the harm done. Thus God does not require society to put up with gross negligence. Therefore the government should ban recreational drugs and outlaw drunkenness from alcohol. (The federal government strong-armed the states to decriminalize drunkenness during the mid twentieth century so that today, unwisely, in the U.S., and in Australia and Britain, etc., it is no longer a crime to be drunk.)
- stoned drivers who actually think they drive better when smoking pot