While pro-warming political pundits like to demonize climate skeptic research by comparing it to that of tobacco company research and marketing, it seems there is a parallel between the story of global warming and marijuana demonization. This story is about the parallels in research, and does not represent any position on drug use by WUWT – Anthony
Guest Essay by Dr. Robert G. Brown, Duke University (elevated from a comment)
Judith Curry’s remarks [Scientists and motivated reasoning], as usual, are dead on the money.
Here’s an almost perfectly analogous problem: CNN recently completely reversed its editorial policy and now calls for the legalization of Marijuana. Sanjay Gupta, its “resident physician editorialist”, who had previously somewhat vigorously led this opposition from the scientific point of view completely reversed his own position, and explained why in considerable detail both in text and in online video.
Historically, marijuana was both legal and considered to be a useful medicine all the way up through the beginning of the twentieth century. At that point, William Randolph Hearst had invested heavily in pine forests in Mexico, intending to sell them to his own newspapers to make newsprint. The Dupont family were discovering petrochemicals including plastic and oil-derived pharmaceuticals. A machine was invented that was the equivalent of a “cotton gin” for hemp — it mechanically stripped down the hemp plant and turned it into useful fiber, oil, and vegetable waste that could be used as an animal fodder (yes, we can imagine some very happy cows, can’t we?:-). One of many uses for the now inexpensive hemp fiber was to make equally inexpensive newsprint paper that was clearly superior in quality and cost to wood pulp paper. Another was that the oils and fiber could be used to synthesize various chemical products. Both Dupont and Hearst were suddenly hundreds of millions of dollars at risk.
They turned to Harry Anslinger, who happened to be Hearst’s brother in law. Anslinger was a suddenly idle ex-prohibitionist working for the FBI, and he created a propaganda campaign that portrayed hemp as literally maddening those that actually smoked it, leading them to commit acts of rape and robbery and moral turpitude. At the same time, political revolutions in Mexico (funded and fought by a private army belonging to Hearst) and a negative portrayal of blacks and Mexicans as common users of hemp for recreation purposes added a useful racist hook. Between these, congress outlawed hemp.
So matters remained until the Viet Nam war and the 1960s and early 70s. As part of the quiet “revolution” against what many perceived as a military-industrial complex with a life of its own that was fighting a series of expensive and pointless wars, pot had become “the” recreational drug of choice among young hippies and freaks as well as the military draftees who fought the war. Its use was so prevalent that Texas dropped the question about cannabis use from its entrance exam to police academy, because “asking a vet of they had ever smoked pot was like asking them if they smoked Camels”. Suddenly a large fraction of an entire generation of U.S. citizens had smoked pot and discovered that no, it does not turn you into a crazed rapist, and usually does not make you insane unless you are most of the way there on your own already. They also discovered that it is neither physically addictive nor dangerous in the sense that it is literally impossible to overdose on marijuana — it is literally one of the safest compounds we know of, with no meaningful fatal dose.
However, Ronald Reagan took office in the 80′s, an immediately declared a “War on Drugs”. Marijuana was reclassified as a schedule 1 narcotic by the federal government [in 1970], trumping communities that had already begun to experiment with decriminalization or even legalization. This once again gave law enforcement agencies lots of useful work (helpful if you are trying to build a police state), gave cops everywhere the ability to selectively enforce drug laws and thereby control the populace, and caused us to rather suddenly need to build enormous numbers of prisons because it rapidly turned out that by making marijuana trafficking a felony and putting even mere users in jail (just like heroin, cocaine, and actually dangerous drugs) somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of all prison sentences were being handed down for low grade drug offenses. Our expenditure on controlling pot went from next to nothing to tens of billions of dollars a year. Obviously, many profited from this, including (as usual) the money launderers and organized criminals that made fortunes providing marijuana on the black market, and the politicians and bankers that provided well-paid-for top cover.
And now to the interesting bit (although I think all of the above is interesting:-). One of the reasons given for making marijuana a schedule 1 felony class drug [in 1970] was that we didn’t know about the harm it might cause, and there was no known medical benefit. Yes, it had been used as a medicine for centuries, the founding fathers literally “mandated” the growing of hemp on American farms because it was so useful a plant both industrially and medicinally, but we had entered the era of double blind placebo controlled drug trials, and there were now enormous pharmaceutical companies whose billion-dollar products were at risk, dwarfing even the Duponts’ complaint back in the 30′s. Its risks were similarly unstudied.
A period of research then ensued. If you wanted to study pot, you had to both get funded and get the experimental marijuana from a single, small farm in Mississippi that grew “legal” pot for this purpose. The government itself was in complete control, in other words of what research got conducted, because even if you could find outside funding, you couldn’t get legal pot to do the research with without approval.
Gupta initially opposed marijuana legalization because a review of the medical literature showed him that 96% of all published articles found some sort of negative effect of marijuana, and almost no articles showed a benefit, especially compared to existing approved medications. However, a couple of anecdotal cases coming out of the states that had legalized medicinal marijuana in SPITE of the federal governments laws caused him to go back and reexamine the funding model. In retrospect it shouldn’t have been surprising, but he learned that 96% of all funded research was to look for negative effects of marijuana, and that to get funded and permission to get government grown pot was so difficult that there simply weren’t all that many papers in the first place. In well over thirty years of intensive examination, all of the examination was literally preselected to find problems, almost none to find benefits, and one had to walk on water and push much paper to do either one (and relatively few scientists had bothered).
That caused him to examine the body of emerging, still anecdotal, evidence from the states that had legalized medical marijuana. They showed that — again unsurprisingly — marijuana is a rich pharmacopeia with multiple legitimate medical uses that could survived double blind placebo controlled investigation, while at the same time having minimal side effects and no known lethal dose. Perhaps he came to realize that its negative effects might, conceivably, have been a bit exaggerated or might arise from confounding uncontrolled elements. Confirmation bias is, after all, the bete noir of science.
This situation almost perfectly matches the evolution of “climate science”. Nobody cared about it for decades, but suddenly a group of individuals emerged that all benefited from the demonization of carbon. This included environmental groups, that hated civilization itself and the burning of anything (as long, of course, as their own lifestyle was preserved), energy producers that saw in this the opportunity to triple or quadruple their profits by creating artificial scarcity of a plentiful resource, politicians that saw in this the opportunity to raise taxes, get elected on a world-saving “issue”, and perhaps line their own pockets along the way, and a United Nations that saw an opportunity to transform it into a way to tax the rich nations and transfer money to developing nations (while again lining various pockets along the way). The role of Anslinger was admirably met by one James Hansen, a True Believer who never stinted and does not stint today in exaggerating the data and claims of disaster (five meter sea level rise! temperatures like that on Venus!). And suddenly, quite literally all funded research was on how burning carbon was bad for the climate.
Even completely ethical scientists have to eat, and if the only way they can eat is to get funded, and the only way they can get funded is to submit proposals that seek to prove that CO_2 is bad, guess what they will propose to study? And if they want to get funded AGAIN, guess what they will find? Climate science has been effectively corrupted beyond any hope of objectivity.
On the good side of things, scientists are actually usually pretty ethical. Also, in the end data talks, bullshit walks. The hypothesis of CAGW or CACC could, in fact, be true (across a wide spectrum of the meaning of “true”, in fact). However, recent data is not in good correspondence with the theories that have predicted it, and many good scientists are in the process of reassessing their conclusions. As is the almost simultaneous case with regard to marijuana, the confounding evidence is starting to overwhelm to narrowly funded and directed arguments to date. We will see where the future takes us, in both cases.
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Addendum by Anthony:
1. I have added links to historical references into the essay along with some small edits [in brackets] for clarity.
2. This paragraph:
A period of research then ensued. If you wanted to study pot, you had to both get funded and get the experimental marijuana from a single, small farm in Mississippi that grew “legal” pot for this purpose.
Has a parallel with source data for global warming research. If you want to study the surface temperature record, there is one source: NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) who is not only the administrator, collator and keeper of the surface temperature record for the United States, but also the world via their Global Historical Climatological Network (GHCN). All other surface temperature datasets, HadCRUT, GISS, and even the supposedly independent BEST, are derivatives and/or custom interpretations of this source data, which as we know, is custom blended with NCDC’s own set of adjustments.
Like with pot research, the government is again the only source for data to study the surface record.
And people wonder why I spend so much time and effort to examine weather stations and adjustments.
It should be noted that the comparison of those who shilled for tobacco with those who deny AGW isn’t a metaphor. There is meaningful overlap between the two sets of people and institutions.
But their analogy is false. See my guest thread here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/16/notes-from-skull-island-why-skeptics-arent-well-funded-and-well-organized/
So many great comments, but they break down into two sets.
1. Those who have “done” weed and
2. Those who haven’t.
It certainly isn’t for everyone. Some who don’t like weed prefer booze. Those who like neither are into abstinence. Everybody thinks they have the real answer but it is just subjective.
Personally I have never encountered crazy weed artists. I have known unstable, unpleasant, incapable folk who are made worse by weed. I have known good, solid achiever types who value family and community who enjoy weed at nights and weekends.
I don’t know any bad guys who have been made worse and plenty of good guys who have been made better by using weed. It really is what you make of it and it no more makes you less or more useful to society than reading or watching movies, let alone listening to music. I understand the disapproval of some but it doesn’t do much for anyone. Weed artists are all around and they are no less decent than everybody else. Try meditation if that’s what works for you but stop kicking those who have found a different way of understanding their milieu.
Smoking through a vaporizer removes the damaging tars from the smoke, similar to smoking an e-cig. If vaporizers are classified as drug paraphernalia, as I suspect they are, their use is inhibited.
Some or most of those cases of harm Bert Walker cites should be blood-tested for contamination with those chemicals. If contamination is found, and it is plausible that the harm came from them, then this downside could be chalked up to a negative externality of prohibition.
Gail says, “We waste a heck of a lot of resources on ‘Policing’ drugs, prostitution and gambling instead of concentrating on actual crimes like murder, assault, rape, theft and fraud.
The implication is we won’t have to spend as much money on controlling versus prohibiting it. History says otherwise, Cigarette smuggling is either the #1 or #2 source of income for the mob in illegally selling bootlegged cigarettes. The States and ATF spend lots of money to stop them. Why? The taxation on cigarettes is such that selling them untaxed is incredibly lucrative, meaning the States minimally collect their taxes. Legalization of pot smoking is a panacea and will simply increase the numbers of people abusing themselves and what we will end up with is Idiocracy.
In that vein of logic, since the police have failed miserably to stop murder from occurring and have spent billions over the last two centuries trying to stop it, we should legalize it by selling hunting licenses. Absurd? Legalization of any controlled substance is just as absurd and for the same reason. Heck, the police since the foundation of the Republic have failed to stop crime in general, just disband the police, save billions a year and let everyone fend for themselves. Tax and regulate everyone who steals, rapes and murders … the same argument made for legalization of smoking pot.
George E Smith:
“As for pot, I can’t stand the stench of it; nor cigarettes either. Only problem I have with cigarettes is they simply don’t kill people quickly enough, to spare us future generations of people with no common sense.”
I think that says rather more about you than it does about any smoker.
dscott says:
Your comparison between violent crimes which involve real victims, and pot smoking and other victimless crimes is absurd. Think much?
please grasp reality, dscott, there is NO “cost” in terms of dollars with alcohol being legal and controlled, government at all levels gain revenue……the present war on drugs costs billions and brings in NOTHING in fact it lessens revenue by incarcerating non violent taxpayers.
and what you mentioned about cigarettes, you fail to grasp the government CAUSES that bootlegging with ridiculous tax rates…….they are buying of stealing cigarettes in one state or indian reservation and selling them cheaper even after buying them retail elsewhere….your claim of UNtaxed cigarettes is simply false….no tobacco company or individuals are bootlegging home made cigarettes.
seeing your claim that using marijuana is abusing ones self shows i am wasting my time.
Gail Combs says:
August 23, 2013 at 11:06 am
___
Heard on WPR awhile back about a guy who had done a comparison study of the problem of over diagnosis of ADHD and medicating of American children.
But the point was European children don’t seem to have the same rate of ADHD that American children do. There was a considerable difference is why I noted it to begin with.
Ya know if I was a paranoid schitzo who moked some.. I might be inclined to think that the pharmaceutical companies were preparing a next generation of heroin users by getting them started early on drugs, using ADHD medication, as the catalyst
“A Puritan is someone who lives in fear that somewhere someone is having fun.”-H.L.Menken
Carla says:
August 23, 2013 at 3:49 pm
….Ya know if I was a paranoid schitzo who moked some.. I might be inclined to think that the pharmaceutical companies were preparing a next generation of heroin users by getting them started early on drugs, using ADHD medication, as the catalyst
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It is worse.
It is the gifted child bored out of his skull by the USA’s dumbed down education system that is the target. Fifty years ago the kid would be put in an ‘accelerated class’ and challenged to use his brain and/or disciplined but that is now ‘Politically Incorrect’ so the kid is medicated and has his brain cells fried instead. (Note it is WHITE BOYS as young as seven who are the target.)
Using this conservative method of assessing ADHD treatment among nearly 30,000 students in grades two through five, 8% to 10% of the students were treated with stimulants for ADHD. … the rate of ADHD medication use was highest among white males and lowest among black females; 17% of white males and 3% of black females received ADHD medication in school.
And when the parents protest medicating the kid, the schools threaten them with charges of Child Abuse. link
i was wrong is claiming the war on drugs brings in nothing, asset forfeiture indeed is a growing source of revenue.
Here is more on the problems caused by Ritalin and such:
And people are worried about a little pot?
I erred. In composing my previous comment, I neglected to address it to Chuck Nolan
Yah, Gail, I know that Ritalin is one of your “issues”. I only wish that it had been around for MY use while I was growing up. I don’t want to minimize the problems of overdiagnosis and flagrant overprescription of that and much more dangerous and potentially addictive drugs, but I do think of the HELL that was my childhood and adolescence, with a Mensa IQ and a total inability to concentrate, memorize, participate etc. Now, at 72, my life has been different for the past 15-20 years, with a teensy dose of slow release stuff in the morning, I’m way more productive and my wife and other family members find me pleasant to be with. It wasn’t always so. Please accept that perhaps 5-10 percent of the population have “hunter” brains, following the trail of potential food, while staying alert to the tiger in the tree. Schoolteachers hate us. Please don’t despise us or condemn us to our inevitable, if unmedicated, hells.
I’m late to this thread, and have not read every comment. My apology if this has been said already.
The common characteristics of the research on CAGW, and on marijuana effects, are shared by another industry: commercial nuclear power plants.
A small group of reactor suppliers and plant owners benefit from a vast but tightly controlled set of information, which, when it is disseminated at all is spun with lie after lie after lie. Blame for cost overruns and late completions is cast upon any and all: the government for changing regulations, ill-informed anti-nuclear “shills”, evil attorneys, stupid environmental groups, and others.
Now that the truth of very high costs to build plants is known, disasters occurred when people were promised disasters cannot occur, and the long-term costs and environmental poisoning of cleaning up the meltdown disasters are becoming public, the game is up.
“Gail Combs says:
August 23, 2013 at 9:02 am
HUH? Aspirin is from willow bark. It was originally made into a tea.”
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/1578/
Someone has mentioned that cannabis gives a user a delusion of insight. That is absolutly wrong it is not a delusion. He also links insight and enlightment – the two are very much different.
The problem here like I mentioned above is when people who never used the substance talk about the experiences as if they have, or those whose experiences were different to others’ believe they have true insight on the substance. Truth is everyone is different and so are their subjective experiences on the substance.
I would not dare to assume what heroin is like as I have never taken it. I can look up others’ experiences online to have some kind of idea, but what I wouldn’t do is listen to myths, and especially “official advice” which only reason for its existance is to put people off the substance.
Reading through comments here I see a lot of misinformed people out there. Just like saying Cannabis is completly harmless, or that SMOKING it stops lung cancer, saying you can overdose from it, or that it CAUSES schizophrenia is a complete fallacy. Stoners do not ‘stumble about like drunks do’, that’s not what it’s about. What Cannabis is or should be about (“dude, where’s my car”, cheech and chong and other idiots turned it into a whoaaa dude experience) can be a tool for self insight, it also opens up the mind to states very similar to meditive states. Astetics use it exactly for that reason – years, even decades of meditation may not bring someone to such a state of mind that a nice reefer can bring.
And please don’t ever compare cannabis to nicotine or alcohol, ritalin or aspirin. It’s like comparing potatos and oranges.
@Wu . . well said. Many people who know nothing of pot have a picture in their mind and attack pot on the basis of that picture which is not anchored in reality ironically.
pro-warming political pundits like to demonize climate skeptic research by comparing it to that of tobacco company research and marketit
–
Exactly back-to-front, of course. Government climate research and marketing is what resembles what the tobacco companies did and do – funding “science” that supports the case for getting themselves more power and money.
Should have written “ascetics” instead of astetics… slow in the mornings sorry.
Could add that cannabis, like other mind-altering “psychodelic” drugs been used and are still used spirtually all over the world, and Rastafari still use cannabis to this day, and are given permission to do so.
I’m not saying cannabis can’t be used to relax, or have a giggle with, but to me it’s a waste of a substance. I’m a deep thinker and a musician, who tends to deeply meditate from time – to me cannabis is the ideal ‘lubrication’ for those things.
Chad Wozniak asked: “A glass of wine or a mug of beer now and again, for the taste and not the buzz, is reasonable enough, but why do people feel the need to bend their minds around so totally? It’s hard enough to get by in this world without mentally (and physically) crippling oneself.”
The entire point of consuming recreational drugs is to alter the brain function to what the user regards regard as ‘pleasurable’. Someone with a high IQ and a restless brain that constantly thinks is more likely to want a ‘downer’ (alcohol/pot/valium) and then there are people who find thinking comes easier when snorting cocaine or amphetamines. It all depends on what the user regards as a desirable enhancement!
And, some unfortunate, very sick people who have to constantly take mind-bending drugs for survival would regards being sober as a desirable high, this is why many mental patients forever attempt to stop taking their meds.
If I offered you a magic pill that would enhance your IQ and problemsolving abilty to a point where your world no longer is a hard and crippling place, would you take it? Of course you would, and you would think of this drug as a wholesome supplement whilst being high on the extra IQ points. And, the moment you decide that it’s ‘good stuff’ you would try to buy it, even it if was illegal.
Like the climate hoax, the drug war tries sell you ‘one solution to solve every problem’ — and as always, if it sounds too good to be true… it is!
“Hemp as Paper
Hemp fabric was smashed down into thin sheets to make the world’s first paper. 75-90% of all paper in the world was made with hemp fiber until 1883. The Gutenberg Bible, Thomas Paine’s pamphlets, and the novels of Mark Twain were all printed on hemp paper. Both the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were drafted on hemp, and then copied onto parchment.
Both the long bast fiber and the short bast fiber (hurd or pulp) can be used to make paper. Fiber paper is thin, tough, brittle, and rough. Pulp paper is not as strong, but is easier to make, softer, thicker, and preferable for most everyday purposes.
In the next 20-30 years the paper demand is supposed to at least double due to the economic emergence of third world countries, and the ever-expanding worldwide population. There is no way to meet this demand without clear-cutting every tree in the entire world. Paper is big business, and 93% of the world’s paper is made of wood. Think about how much of a difference it would make if commercial industries like San Francisco hotels and Miami hotels were to adopt hemp toilet paper. That alone could make an enormous difference in the way the war on global warming is fought.
Hemp Pulp vs. Tree Pulp for Paper
Making paper from trees is kind of a joke, because trees are made up of only 30% cellulose. The other 70% of the tree must be removed using toxic chemicals, until the cellulose can be formed into paper. The higher the percentage of cellulose in a plant, the better, because fewer chemicals need to be used, and less work needs to be done before the paper can be made. Almost any plant in nature with a strong stalk is better suited to make paper than trees, especially hemp because it can be 85% cellulose.
Hemp makes paper stronger and which lasts centuries longer than wood paper, which could be very valuable for people who want to keep records aside from on computers. Hemp paper does not yellow, crack, or otherwise deteriorate like tree paper does now. The acids which are needed for wood paper eventually eat away at the pulp and cause it to turn yellow and fall apart. Because of this publishers, libraries, and archives have to order specially processed acid free paper, but they could just buy hemp paper which already meets their quality standards.
Hemp paper also does not require any bleaching, and so does not poison the water with dioxins or chlorine like tree paper mills do. The chemicals involved in making hemp paper are much less toxic, in fact, both paper made from hemp hurd, and from the long bast fiber can be made without any chemicals at all, but it takes longer to separate the fiber from the lignin. Making paper from hemp could also eliminate erosion due to logging, reduces topsoil loss, and water pollution caused by soil runoff.
One acre of hemp can produce as much paper as 4 to 10 acres of trees over a 20-year cycle, but hemp stalks only take four months to mature, whereas trees take 20 to 80 years. This information was known in 1916, according to a USDA report. Hemp paper can also be recycled more often, though this fact is not of much value, since hemp is a reusable resource.”
http://www.hemphasis.net/Paper/paper.htm.
“””””……Patrick says:
August 24, 2013 at 12:49 am
“Gail Combs says:
August 23, 2013 at 9:02 am
HUH? Aspirin is from willow bark. It was originally made into a tea.”…….”””””””
Well Aspirin has a specific chemical formula, so you can make it in a factory, and not bother any trees.
Despite the advertising of Bayer , about 85% of the world’s Aspirin is manufactured by Monsanto Corp (well it used to be 45 years ago). As is common in the chemical business, a product introduced or invented by one company (usually patented), if found to be a profitable useful product, will end up being made by other companies, who found ways to do it, without infringing the patents. Often that means starting with different raw material feedstocks, that require following different process steps. That can result in a cheaper manufacturing process, or a better product, or both. That’s exactly how Monsanto ended up being big in Aspirin. I once had a Monsanto Aspirin in my desk, that was three inches in diameter, like a swimming pool chlorine tablet. It was just a way to “package” it. They sold it by the rail car load. I did sometimes scrape a chip off it with an exacto knife; but it was easier just to get a bottle of the regular ones, (only “headache” fix I will use).
Monsanto, also developed a better cheaper process for making Nylon, that was originally a Dupont invention. As a result, Monsanto got to be a big player in Nylon as well.
Monsanto’s first ever product, was Sacharin, which is still the only plastic sugar substitute, that has never been implicated after more than 100 years, in any negative health issues; well unless you would call its bitter aftertaste, a health issue.
But if you go into Ubergreen Starbucks, you will find every color of plastic sugar substitute, known to man, as their alternative to using the horrendous “high fructose” corn syrup.
By “high fructose”, they mean it is 55% fructose, and 45% glucose, whereas good real table sugar is 50% fructose and 50% glucose. Users are evidently too stupid to cut back the corn syrup amount by 10% to get to the good 50% level of fructose from the 55% “high” value.
Actually, they have it exactly backwards. It is the glucose than gives you the sugar “high” followed by the sugar “funk” ; fructose doesn’t give either the high or the funk.
The principle bad feature of high fructose corn syrup, is that it does not come out of a mutilated tree in Vermont; but is made by the rail car load, in the plains States of the Midwest, for a fraction of the cost.
I know this is a bit off the subject of why everyone needs to be a pot head, and wear hemp clothing, to get enlightenment; but it still in the category of chemistry gone amuck.
Poems of Our Climate,
How much do you know about the endocannabinoid system in your body?