Chronic Pot Smoking Affects Brain Chemistry, Scans Show

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If it came from the NIDA it must be true! Would a Govt agency ever lie?

MJP of NY 9:04AM June 08, 2011

"The language of deceit is used in this study. Read carefully. First they report a decrease in receptors that influence a range of functions, then we learn that the CB1 receptors are simply over saturated and decrease their activity (normal), and then we learn those same receptors begin functioning normally after the pot smoker stops.
Yep, that is the way the brain works all right. Not just pot. Anything that over stimulates will respond to that over stimulation. Not news."
Exactly. If this wasn't the case that would be news!
It's great they did a study to prove it, just not the way it's presented here.

Jim 6:12AM June 08, 2011

Some simple facts:
* A rather large majority of people will always feel the need to use drugs, such as heroin, opium, nicotine, amphetamines, alcohol, sugar, or caffeine.
* Due to Prohibition, the availability of mind-altering drugs has become so universal and unfettered, that in any city of the civilized world, any one of us would be able to procure practically any drug we wish within an hour.
* The massive majority of people who use drugs do so recreationally - getting high at the weekend then up for work on a Monday morning.
* A small minority of people will always experience drug use as problematic.
* Throughout history, the prohibition of any mind-altering substance has always exploded usage rates, overcrowded jails, fueled organized crime, created rampant corruption of law-enforcement, even whole governments, and induced an incalculable amount of suffering and death.
* It's not even possible to keep drugs out of prisons, but prohibitionists wish to waste hundreds of billions of our money in an utterly futile attempt to keep them off our streets.
* Prohibition kills more people and ruins more lives than the prohibited drugs have ever done.
* The United States jails a larger percentage of it's own citizens than any other country in the world, including those run by the worst totalitarian regimes.
* In 'the land formally known as free', all citizens have been stripped of their 4th amendment rights and are now totally subordinate to a corporatized, despotic government with a heavily armed and corrupt, militarized police force whose often deadly intrusions into their homes and lives are condoned by an equally corrupt and spineless judiciary.
* As with torture, prohibition is a grievous crime against humanity. If you support it, or even simply tolerate it by looking the other way while others commit it, you are an accessory to a very serious moral transgression against humanity.
* America re-legalized certain drug use in 1933. The drug was alcohol, and the 21st amendment re-legalized its production, distribution and sale. Both alcohol consumption and violent crime dropped immediately as a result, and, very soon after, the American economy climbed out of that same prohibition engendered abyss into which it had previously been pushed.

malcolm kyle of NY 5:14AM June 08, 2011

Too small a of study to take seriously less than 100 is not even journal material.

Gil K. of AZ 2:45AM June 08, 2011

The language of deceit is used in this study. Read carefully. First they report a decrease in receptors that influence a range of functions, then we learn that the CB1 receptors are simply over saturated and decrease their activity (normal), and then we learn those same receptors begin functioning normally after the pot smoker stops.
Yep, that is the way the brain works all right. Not just pot. Anything that over stimulates will respond to that over stimulation. Not news.

Dani of AZ 11:41PM June 07, 2011

Is this article a joke? For real. Who paid for this to get on here?

The American People 11:23PM June 07, 2011

"Furthermore, this research shows that the decreased receptors in people who abuse cannabis return to normal when they stop smoking the drug"
It's a pity the same isn't true of alcohol induced psychosis, cirrhosis, and digestive tract cancers.
"Because this study was presented at a medical meeting, the data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal"
Oh, so it may not be true anyway!

phil stov, UK 11:13PM June 07, 2011

So lets get this straight. The worst thing that cannabis does is decrease the cannabis receptors. In other words, the more often you smoke the less high you getwhen you do it. Then, if you quit for two weeks, the receptors are back in full force and you can once again get just as high as the first time.
I am not sure a study was needed to learn this. Ask anyone who smokes pot.

Steve of CA 9:52PM June 07, 2011