Tag: gateway drugs

photo of a bowl with medical cannabis flowers and three well-rolled joints
, ,
Roberta King

What’s on Your Cannabis Christmas Wish List? Here’s Ours.

 

Dear Santa,

Here’s our cannabis Christmas wish list for this year.  We know it looks long. But seriously, we’re not bogarting—we’re asking for these things for the good of the world and all of humanity.

Thank you in advance for your kind consideration.

The (nice) Women of Canna Communication

Here’s what we want:
  • America to be more like Canada when it comes to marijuana. Imagine, a whole country (other than Uruguay at present) that doesn’t prohibit cannabis.
  • Just like Martha, Snoop and Anthony Bourdain, everyone should be able to be able to roll a good joint. It’s a skill anyone can master with a image of cannabis flowers and three jointslittle practice. 
  • People to stop calling cannabis a gateway drug. There’s no science to this myth, and truly, cannabis helps people get off of opioids.
  • Michigan citizens to come out in force in November 2018 and vote to end cannabis prohibition in our great state. We’ve been a medical marijuana state for nearly a decade, adult-use legalization is the natural next step.
  • The cannabis industry to stop objectifying women. Stop with the bikinis and boobs. Please. It doesn’t increase the seriousness of our cause.
  • Michigan to expand its criteria for medical marijuana qualification and include autism and PTSD. There’s research showing these conditions deserve inclusion.
  • All our clients to be successful in their endeavor to apply for a medical marijuana facility license.
  • More Michigan municipalities to be open to having marijuana businesses. Patients shouldn’t have to travel across the state for their medicine. There should be a provisioning center in every Michigan county.
  • All cities in Michigan decriminalize marijuana possession. There are far too many people in prison for marijuana charges, and more often than not, they’re people of color.
  • People to regard marijuana entrepreneurs as they do craft brewers. It wasn’t that long ago alcohol was prohibited and now it’s celebrated colorful beer bottle caps on a display boardand brewers are vital to economic growth in some communities.
  • Small cannabis businesses to find a place in Michigan’s new medical marijuana licensing structure, so caregivers can continue to do what they do best.
  • Jeff Sessions to get with the science about marijuana and the people who use it. We are good people.
  • All the puns about marijuana to stop, or at least be limited to one per conversation.
  • Cannabis to be removed from Schedule I classification. This classification dates to the 1970s and the Nixon administration and was created to disrupt the lives of people of color and anti-war protestors.
  • Everyone who uses marijuana or supports people who do, to speak up about the power of the plant and how it has helped improve their health and happiness.

PS: Thanks to everyone who has supported Canna Communication in 2017. We look forward to a great 2018 with you.

Roberta King

Marijuana is NOT a Gateway Drug. Period.

Cannabis isn’t a Gateway to Other Drugs.

Throughout the 60s, 70s, 80s and even now, people have used the phrase, “Marijuana is a gateway drug.” Meaning that using cannabis will lead to other drugs like cocaine, LSD and heroin. This is unsubstantiated and based on conjecture, anecdotal stories and myths, not facts.

While some people do go onto other drugs after using cannabis; so do people who abuse alcohol or use tobacco. The National Institute on Drug Abuse, a government agency concludes, “An alternative to the gateway drug hypothesis is that people who are more vulnerable to drug-taking are simply more likely to start with readily available substances such as marijuana, tobacco, or alcohol, and their subsequent social interactions with others who use drugs increases their chances of trying a collection of cannabis stickersother drugs.”

In the 1940s—there was a report from the La Guardia Committee and the New York Academy of Medicine, which questioned cannabis prohibition. The committee found marijuana not physically addictive, not a gateway drug and that it did not lead to crime. Further, The Shafer Commission, another government agency determined in 1972 that cannabis was as safe as alcohol, and suggested an end to prohibition.

These are Gateways.

There are a number of factors that we know lead to drug use and cannabis isn’t one of them. History and research tell us that poverty and poor social conditions; access to people who have hard drugs to sell; as well as some types of mental illness lead to drug use. Cannabis prohibition and its criminalization lead to more other addictive substances than does marijuana use alone.

This is an Exit.

Research recently conducted at the University of British Columbia suggests that marijuana is one medicine that can help people ease off of opioids and other highly addictive substances. There are other studies that indicate this as well, including one in June 2017 at the University of California at Berkley, where 2,897 patients were surveyed and of the sample, 97 percent “strongly agreed/agreed” that they are able to decrease the amount of opioids they consume when they also use cannabis. With opioid overdose deaths on the increase (59,000 in 2016), it only makes sense for patients to manage their pain with medical marijuana, which according to the DEA and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime hasn’t been used to the point of death.

Perhaps, it is prudent to think of cannabis as an exit, not an entry point.