Ridiculous Government Reports on Marijuana

Marijuana plant, and distinctive leaves.

Check this government page out: http://www.drugabuse.gov/

publications/infofacts/
marijuana

This government report tries to use unbiased, neutral language to portray an apparent disdain for marijuana usage. They do this by incorrectly paraphrasing sources to make it seem like the studies found issue with smoking marijuana, when in fact many studies have not. The author of this page then ignores the sources and neglects to quote them when the findings are in favor of marijuana usage.

Even the references to "marijuana usage" is often replaced with "marijuana abuse," as if anything you use frequently is an abuse. Read this quote from the page.

"It is also smoked in blunts, which are cigars that have been emptied of tobacco and refilled with a mixture of marijuana and tobacco. This mode of delivery combines marijuana's active ingredients with nicotine and other harmful chemicals."  

Yeah, because cigars and cigarettes have nicotine and other harmful chemicals in them, and they're both legal substances. If marijuana were legal and tobacco were illegal instead, the marijuana blunt wraps would have no nicotine or "other harmful chemicals" found in tobacco at all. 

"In one study, heavy marijuana abusers reported that the drug impaired several important measures of life achievement, including physical and mental health, cognitive abilities, social life, and career status. Several studies associate workers' marijuana smoking with increased absences, tardiness, accidents, workers' compensation claims, and job turnover."

Some heavy marijuana "abusers" (who abuse marijuana less frequently than most people "abuse" soda, junk food, cigarettes, or alcohol) would also report that Jah watches over them and wants them to smoke more weed, but we don't put that in government studies. Why is it that they only quoted the marijuana "abusers" when it fit their argument?

Hearst would be proud.

"A study of 450 individuals found that people who smoke marijuana frequently but do not smoke tobacco have more health problems and miss more days of work than nonsmokers."

The study that they sourced for that states right off the bat in their abstract: "Frequent marijuana smokers had small increased risks of outpatient visits for respiratory illnesses... injuries... and other types of illnesses... compared with nonsmokers; their risk of being admitted to a hospital was elevated but not statistically significant.  

The list of issues with this page goes on. It would appear the government is still stuck in the very early 1900s with William Randolph Hearst, fearing hemp and cannabis because of the smear campaign Hearst started a century ago.