Feds Drag Feet on Cannabis Studies While States Legalize It and Comics Joke About It

I just caught a 2006 Saturday Night Live episode in which Seth Myers reads a story about a study finding cell phones don't cause cancer.

"Yee haw!" shouts a giggling Amy Poehler, who proceeds to put her cell phone in her mouth, attempting to light it with a cigarette lighter.

In case there was any question about which non-cancer-causing substance Poehler was celebrating, the story that followed was about a 125-year-old Indian woman named Fulla Nayak, who claimed that smoking cannabis every day was her secret to long life.

A headline on the latest NORML press release might have been, "Yet Another Study Shows Marijuana Smoking Not Associated With Increased Risk Of Lung Cancer." NORML 's Paul Armentano reports that an international team of investigators from Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States recently analyzed data from six case-control studies involving over 5,000 subjects from around the world. Authors concluded, “Results from our pooled analyses provide little evidence for an increased risk of lung cancer among habitual or long-term cannabis smokers.”

Brooke Baldwin of CNN, who so fully exposed Nancy Grace's mania about marijuana, has posted another good interview, this time with Sanjay Gupta focusing on why research isn't being done on medical cannabis in the US. The issue came to the forefront on Friday when NIDA chief Nora Volkow admitted to a congressional committee that it was easier to study heroin in this country than it is to get an approved protocol for marijuana. However headlines that the FDA is considering rescheduling cannabis at the behest of the DEA are rather overblown, since they are only doing so as required by yet another rescheduling lawsuit.

Now that 23 states have legalized medical marijuana, and Washington state is about to follow Colorado with legal recreational pot stores on July 8, few seem to be waiting for more government studies before they indulge. Case in point: Actress Aubrey Plaza from Poehler's new show Parks and Recreation appeared on Getting Doug with High in March. The show, in which comic Doug Benson brings people on to get high with him, held a special live event at Largo in LA last night with Tokin Woman Sarah Silverman, Ngaio Bealum and others. Benson's 2007 film Super High Me rather proved the point that marijuana's purported harms are overblown.

Meanwhile, it's no laughing matter that Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn of the San Diego Padres has died at the age of 54 from salivary gland cancer, brought on by chewing tobacco (a legal substance).

My Interview with Courtney Love about Kurt Cobain

In January 2004 I got an email from a crew member at Kansas City's 965thebuzz.com telling me that Courtney Love, who hosted a show at the station, wanted to interview me on air about my Very Important Potheads website.

I agreed (of course!) and got up at 7 AM to appear by phone on the morning drive-time show, answering "no" to her party-boy cohosts' questions about whether or not I'd waked and baked (too early for me). Love demanded to know why she wasn't represented on the site. "I'm Courtney Love, damnit!" was the compelling reason she gave. (It was hard to argue with that.) I found myself calling her "girl" or "sister" and she asked me how old I was: it seemed she needed connection with an older female in her life. We left the jocks behind and started chatting, woman to woman.

Kurt Cobain's diaries had recently been published in Rolling Stone leading up to the 10th anniversary of his death, and I asked Love about what I'd read there: that Cobain twice went back to using heroin to quell the severe stomach pain he suffered from. Love said, "Yes, that was true and I used to say, 'Kurt let's just smoke instead.'" Apparently Cobain was one of the millions of Americans undermedicated for pain, and he turned to street drugs for relief. He even used Strawberry Quick to coat his stomach on the road.

We now know that cannabis can be helpful during withdrawal from opiate addiction, and that it works synergistically with opiates to alleviate pain and the tolerance that builds up over time, rendering prescription opiates less useful. A state-sponsored study in California found that even low-dose, vaporized cannabis is helpful with intractable neuropathic pain. Nonetheless, California NORML still hears regularly from patients whose doctors threaten to take off their pain medications because they're using medical marijuana.

We may never understand the psychic and physical pain that lead Cobain to end his life, or come to grips with what drives us to use drugs. But on a recent trip to LA I saw this angelic poster of Cobain in a cannabis club. Twenty years after his death, Kurt's music, and his image, lives on.

Studies and Connections

Celebrating Women's History Month, I checked out the Women's Marijuana Movement website, which has lots of good info and links, notably their facts page on marijuana vs. alcohol, their testimonials and links.

On the NORML Women's Alliance site, I found articles and reports on marijuana and pregnancy, breast cancer, and teens. On the "Women and Their Role in Cannabis Culture" page I found this interesting anthropologcial study from Marlene Dobkin de Rios. Both sites have email sign-up lists you can join.

More on the marijuana/running connection raised by Alanis Morisette in an earlier post: Time magazine reports that those who exercise more may crave marijuana less, which fits with recent findings that the runners "high" may be produced by cannabinoids.

A fascinating article in Time interviews researcher Mitch Earlywine, who thinks male pot smokers act dumb because they're told they are, while women want to prove the stereotype wrong.

I'm for that!