Stop Bogarting That Thalidomide

I went to the local big-box pet store yesterday afternoon. There was a black guy standing near the sliding doors, puffing on a joint. He even asked my wife if she wanted a hit!

This seems to be happening more frequently, in my experience. People smoking grass on the street corner, out here in suburbia. If they were vaping, then nobody would even know.

America's love affair with marijuana seems to be nourished by the natural fallacy. Since marijuana is natural, it must be good. And they keep coming up with studies conducted on animals to fortify their arguments.

Marijuana Kills Cancer Cells https://t.co/MOvZzdhU6A pic.twitter.com/OYKd4mPiFG

— MME (@THEMMEXCHANGE) May 29, 2016

Wow if true. But it's not. The study by the National Cancer Institute found that, in the lab, and using animals, cannabidiol (CBD) "may lessen the growth, number, and spread of tumors."

Cannabidiol is just one of hundreds of compounds in marijuana. Studying it as an isolated extract on mice isn't perfectly analogous to its effect on humans. And high CBD content isn't why people use cannabis recreationally. Only a small amount of medical marijuana users use marijuana for legitimate medical reasons. The rest of them go to a doctor willing to write them a prescription to use pot for anxiety or depression or back pain.

Yet state governments are practically rushing to legalize weed, and tax the revenues. Their logic seems to be that it isn't as bad as opioids or alcohol. That is damning with faint praise!

Especially in light of new research that shows marijuana damages your DNA. The summary of the paper, "Chromothripsis and epigenomics complete causality criteria for cannabis- and addiction-connected carcinogenicity, congenital toxicity and heritable genotoxicity," indicates that marijuana, as an addictive substance, can shatter chromosomes. That is chromothripsis. That is when a "chromosome becomes dislodged from the mitotic spindle, isolated in micronuclei and chaotically re-connected."

Chromosomes being "chaotically re-connected" doesn't sound desirable. And "carcinogenicity" is a fancy way of saying it causes cancer.

"Cannabis has been linked epidemiologically with major foetal malformations and cancer induction in children." Smoking dope will give your children birth defects and raise their cancer risk, perhaps years or decades before they are conceived.

"Epigenetic damage from cannabis forms major pathways to oncogenesis, fetotoxicity and ageing in humans and their offspring." We tell pregnant women not to drink. Why don't we tell all people who plan to have children to never smoke pot? Because what this study says is that the toxicity of marijuana is passed on to your children.

The most chilling sentence in the abstract? "THC shows a non-linear sigmoidal dose-response relationship in multiple pertinent in vitro and preclinical genotoxicity assays, and in this respect is similar to the serious major human mutagen thalidomide."

Governments think they've found this spigot of tax money that will magically balance the budget. They never ask themselves whether that tax dollar today is going to be enough to cover the generational effects of addiction, tomorrow.

Perhaps you can't put a number on a docile populace. Maybe it's worth it to have that guy toking out on the corner instead of busting my wife over the head and taking her purse.