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Tag: smoking marijuana

  • Kamala Harris Reveals She Smoked Pot In College

    Kamala Harris Reveals She Smoked Pot In College

    Harris discussed her stance on marijuana legalization and revealed a bit about her past use in a recent radio interview.

    Citing her Jamaican roots and past inhalation of pot, Kamala Harris firmly stated her support for the legalization of marijuana on a New York-based radio show, “The Breakfast Club.”

    While the bill S.420 to legalize marijuana was submitted to Congress just last week, the issue of marijuana’s legality is bigger than ever.  Harris, a former California attorney general and 2020 presidential contender, was speaking with the radio show’s co-host Charlamagne Tha God about the social issue of legalizing pot.

    When Charlamagne asked Harris if she’d ever smoked pot, Harris laughed and said yes, she had inhaled from a joint, and now was probably breaking news with the admission.

    Harris’ views on the legalization of marijuana have slowly altered since her vocal opposition in 2010. Five years and many studies and nationwide discussions later, Harris changed her position to one of support for medical use.

    CNN reports that in her interview with “The Breakfast Club,” she intimated support for recreational use of pot, citing “”that it gives a lot of people joy and we need more joy.”

    In Kamala Harris’ book The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, she moves beyond just legalization of the drug and calls for prison reform. “We need to legalize marijuana and regulate it, and we need to expunge nonviolent marijuana-related offenses from the records of millions of people who have been arrested and incarcerated so they can get on with their lives.”

    Answering the radio hosts about her position on the legalization of marijuana and if she opposes it, Harris was clear: “That’s not true. And look I joke about it, half joking—half my family’s from Jamaica, are you kidding me,” Harris laughed along with the radio hosts.

    “No, I do not—no, no,” Harris continued. “I have had concerns, the full record, I have had concerns, which I think—first of all, let me just make this statement very clear, I believe we need to legalize marijuana,” she said. “Now, that being said—and this is not a ‘but,’ it is an ‘and’—and we need to research, which is one of the reasons we need to legalize it. We need to move it on the schedule so that we can research the impact of weed on a developing brain. You know, that part of the brain that develops judgment, actually begins its growth at age 18 through age 24.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Can Cannabis Alter The Teenage Brain?

    Can Cannabis Alter The Teenage Brain?

    A recent study examined how marijuana use impacts the gray matter in the teenage brain.

    A recent study consisting of brain scans of 46 teens in Europe found that smoking just one or two joints seemed to produce changes in the gray matter of their brains.

    The teens appeared to have a greater amount of this tissue, which is a major component of the central nervous system and is responsible for information processing. However, this does not necessarily mean that more gray matter is better.

    According to a 2006 article in the Postgraduate Medical Journal, the brain naturally shrinks as people age. This process is called “pruning” and is part of the normal development process at all ages.

    This new study, titled “Grey Matter Volume Differences Associated with Extremely Low Levels of Cannabis Use in Adolescence,” notes that gray matter volume (GMV) in the temporal regions of the brain is “associated with contemporaneous performance on the Perceptual Reasoning Index and with future generalized anxiety symptoms in the cannabis users.”

    While there has been little research on the effects of cannabis on the brain compared to substances like alcohol, it is generally considered true that permanent changes and damage to the young, developing brain are more significant due to the compounding issues that development disruption causes over time. However, it’s difficult to determine whether the increased gray matter observed in the studied teens is a bad thing, a good thing or a little of both.

    “At the age at which we studied these kids (age 14), cortical regions are going through a process of thinning,” said Hugh Garavan, lead author of the study and a professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont School of Medicine, to NBC News. “So, one possibility is that the cannabis use has disrupted this pruning process, resulting in larger volumes (i.e., a disruption of typical maturation) in the cannabis users. Another possibility is that the cannabis use has led to a growth in neurons and in the connections between them.”

    Gray matter can also be altered by a number of common activities other than drug use. Studies have found that meditation can result in changes to this part of the brain. Others have found that habitual interaction with action video games reduces gray matter in the hippocampus while playing 3D platformer video games increases it. Even becoming pregnant has shown to create significant changes in gray matter structure that last for two years after birth.

    In this latest study, the 46 teens self-reported smoking very small amounts of cannabis in their lifetimes, equivalent to one or two joints, and reported that they had not consumed any other illicit substances.

    Not only did the study find greater GMV levels around the amygdala, hippocampus and other areas of the brain, follow-ups found higher levels of “sensation seeking” and anxiety symptoms among the cannabis-using teens compared to controls. However, the authors of the study specifically stated that these behavioral differences were unrelated to the amount of gray matter.

    “Of the behavioral variables tested, only sensation seeking and agoraphobia differed between the cannabis users and controls and these factors were not related to GMV differences,” the study reads.

    The authors also noted that behavioral differences should be “interpreted with caution” due to the low sample size, but they are notable as “panic and anxiety symptoms are frequently reported side effects by naïve and occasional cannabis users.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Is Vaping Pot More Powerful Than Smoking It?

    Is Vaping Pot More Powerful Than Smoking It?

    Researchers explored whether vaping marijuana produced a stronger high than smoking it in a recent study.

    Researchers have published a new study that suggests inhaling vaporized marijuana will result in a stronger high than smoking it. Their conclusion was drawn from six, eight-and-a-half-hour double-blind sessions in which participants consumed marijuana, via smoking or vaping, in one of three possible dosages – between 0 and 25 mg of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis – and then reported their reactions while scientists conducted physical and cognitive tests.

    The results suggested that vaping produced more significant physical and mental effects, as well as higher blood concentrations of THC, than the same doses ingested via smoking.

    The study, conducted by scientists at the Johns Hopkins Pharmacology Research Unit in Baltimore, Maryland, utilized 17 healthy adult participants – eight women and nine men – all of whom had smoked marijuana at least once in the previous year but not in the 30 days before the first day of the study.

    Over the course of the six outpatient sessions, each lasting 8.5 hours and conducted between June 2016 and January 2017, patients smoked or vaped a dose of marijuana containing either 0, 10 or 25 milligrams of THC.

    Dosage order was randomized within each session, and while each participant smoked or vaped all three possible dosages over the course of the six sessions, they were unaware of how much THC they were consuming during each test.

    After ingesting a dose, participants then filled out a drug-impairment questionnaire and underwent physical and cognitive tests, including heart rate and blood pressure; they were also asked to complete tasks on a computer, such as simple addition and replicating shapes on a screen. 

    What the researchers found was that vaping marijuana resulted in more significant impairment than marijuana ingested via smoking. Both the high and low doses produced greater concentrations of THC in the test subjects’ blood and at least twice as many errors on the cognitive tests. 

    Vaping and smoking did produce similar results in regard to the highest dosage – two participants reportedly vomited after ingesting the 25mg dosage, and one experienced hallucinations – and both methods produced side effects commonly associated with cannabis use, including dry mouth, increased hunger and feelings of paranoia, though participants who vaped reported greater levels of these effects than those who smoked.

    Most significantly, the researchers also noted that the dosage with the highest level of THC – 25mg of THC, or 13.4%  — was “substantially smaller and has a lower THC concentration that what is typically contained in pre-rolled cannabis cigarettes available for purchase in cannabis dispensaries.” According to the study, these typically contain THC concentrations that exceed 18%.

    View the original article at thefix.com