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You wont see ISMOKE reposting articles from the likes of The Mirror, The Daily Mail or other tabloids – these are not trusted news sources.
We will, however, call them out on what we find to be clear propaganda. This has been the inspiration for today’s post.
Yesterday The Daily Mail published this article entitled: Cannabis leads to early death: New study finds teens who use drug heavily are more likely to die by 60. We hate to link to them from ISMOKE but this article is yet another example of a bad interpretation of a couple of studies alongside their own ignorant judgements listed as if they are scientific facts.
Let’s pick the article apart a bit shall we? Prepare for the blood to start boiling a bit…
Research published by the American Journal of Psychiatry found that the men who used marijuana heavily in their late teens were 40 per cent more likely to die by the age of 60 than those who never used it. Heavy use was defined as teens who used marijuana more than 50 times. It also found that the risk of death from suicide or an accident was directly proportional to the level of marijuana use the men had as teens. Addiction expert Scott Krakower told CBS News that cannabis users generally had poorer health, and other studies had found early heavy marijuana use was linked with lung cancer and heart problems.
But wait – we know that studies show that cannabis use does not contribute to lung cancer, with a study showing that (pure) cannabis users had the same/less instances of lung and neck cancer than non-smokers. Already doubting every word in this article. Who is Scott Krakower and why can’t The Daily Mail get their quote directly? Just what constitutes an addiction expert? How is the risk of death directly proportional to cannabis use? These are all questions that should be answered in the article.
To contrast, the cancer curing properties of cannabis are shown here by Rick Simpson in run from the cure:
https://youtu.be/khkEpKM93k8
Also while we are on the subject -Willie Nelson and Cheech and Chong have been smoking more than most of us for years and are still doing great.
Ready for some more propaganda? Here we go:
‘Marijuana users generally may have poorer diets and they might be tobacco smokers. There’s an increased linkage between weed and tobacco,’ said Krakower.
Dr. Kevin Hill said that heavy use of marijuana at a young age was linked to poor psychological health and cognitive problems – which may in turn lead to poor food and health choices.
Tobacco use in spliffs is often the result of not having a lot of cannabis available. I mean, we’d all love to smoke blunts, but it’s not the most economical way of smoking. Bongs cannot be taken out in public and pipes can be harsh on the lungs, leading spliffs to be the top consumption choice in the UK.
But as technology develops and smoking levels fall, more people are vaping cannabis – we have read growing reports on social media that people are making their own cannabis ecig juice and using that which is healthier than smoking.
The statement that ‘Marijuana at a young age…may lead to poor food and health choices’ is just insulting. Do people things stoners are incapable of being healthy? What about health-conscious, healthy living stoners? This statement is such a huge generalisation it makes me furious – cannabis users come from all walks of life. That’s the point. You can’t box us in with statements like we aren’t healthy, make poor life choices and are more likely to die by 60.
This is intentional propaganda to keep cannabis illegal in the UK. Fresh off the heels of 420 when 9000 people descended into Hyde Park to protest their right to use Cannabis, this article is released to millions of people in the UK to make the unsure doubt the safety of cannabis.
No respite in the next section of the article:
‘If you start using marijuana at an early age, you’re more likely to express a psychotic disorder.’
What the hell is this? More propaganda, that’s what. What psychiatric disorder? How is that measurable amongst the host of other factors in life including stress, alcohol or other drugs?
Starting to use marijuana before the age of 16 has been found to result in an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, scientists revealed. That’s the part of the brain responsible for judgment, reason and complex thinking.
Again, where are they getting this info and how is it validated? It sounds like somebody just made this all up.
And we’ll leave this right here as the stinky piece of propaganda that it so clearly is:
In contrast, people who start to use marijuana after the age of 16 experience accelerated brain aging.
But the article doens’t stop here, choosing instead to go further and talk about people’s social classes like we’re living in 1930’s Germany:
International research has also revealed that the more cannabis you smoke, the more likely you are to be lower paid and have relationship difficulties.
The study followed children from birth up to the age of 38 and found people who smoked cannabis four or more days a week over many years ended up in a lower social class than their parents.
It also found that regular and persistent users ended up with lower-paying, less skilled and less prestigious jobs than those who were not regular cannabis smokers.
More hot, steamy bull-shit here. Relationship difficulties? Lower social class? WE DON’T LIVE IN A DISTINCT CLASS SYSTEM ANYMORE, BRITAIN. Wake up and smell the coffee. Lower-paying, less skilled and less prestigious jobs than those who didn’t use cannabis? What the hell is this? Cannabis users have been shown to be fully functional members of society, so much so that in the UK where it is illegal to consume cannabis, people manage to hold down a full-time job, extercurricular activities and a family and hide their cannabis use from co-workers so as not to have to worry about being labeled like in the statement above.
Cannabis users may end up in less-skilled jobs if they are caught with cannabis and criminalised for it in younger life, but this is not a result of the drug – rather the authorities ruining the lives of drug users.
‘Our study found that regular cannabis users experienced downward social mobility and more financial problems such as troubles with debt and cash flow than those who did not report such persistent use.
‘Regular long-term users also had more antisocial behaviors at work, such as stealing money or lying to get a job, and experienced more relationship problems, such as intimate partner violence and controlling abuse.’
These factors included socioeconomic problems in childhood, lower IQ, antisocial behavior and depression in adolescence, higher levels of impulsive behavior, lower motivation to achieve, criminal conviction of cannabis users, and abuse of alcohol and hard drugs.
The quote above is completely untrue and reeks of 1930s propaganda by the likes of Harry J Anslinger. Lying to get a job? Antisocial behaviours? I met a lot of my friends through cannabis and have never struggled with getting a job, and that can be said about the majority of my cannabis-using friends.
Stealing money is a moral situation and again, I don’t know any cannabis users that fall into that bracket in society. Reiterating from above – Cannabis users come from all walks of life and this article just boxes everybody into a tiny, negative box.
This article cites various cannabis studies to achieve it’s goals which are to attempt scare as many people as possible by sewing seeds of doubt into their minds as the rest of the world starts to relax cannabis laws. They want to turn the UK against cannabis and we can’t let them.
here is an advert from the 1930s that looks like the Daily Mail would probably re-print it in a heartbeat:
We can’t let the Tabloids have such a control over how cannabis is reported. How did this article make you feel as a Cannabis user? Please tweet us @ISMOKEMAG and use the hashtag #StopCannabisPropaganda
