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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Fear the Reefer

posted by on May 14 at 12:40 PM

The federal government wants you to know that smoking pot is linked to health problems.

Heavy marijuana use can boost blood levels of a particular protein, perhaps raising a person’s risk of a heart attack or stroke, U.S. government researchers said on Tuesday.

[Dr. Jean Lud Cadet of the National Institute on Drug Abuse] said a lot of previous research has focused on the effects of marijuana on the brain. His team looked elsewhere in the body, measuring blood protein levels in 18 long-term, heavy marijuana users and 24 other people who did not use the drug.

Levels of a protein called apolipoprotein C-III were found to be 30 percent higher in the marijuana users compared to the others. This protein is involved in the body’s metabolism of triglycerides — a type of fat found in the blood — and higher levels cause increased levels of triglycerides, Cadet added. High levels of triglycerides can contribute to hardening of the arteries or thickening of the artery walls, raising the risk of stroke, heart attack and heart disease.

Be still my heart. How much pot constitutes heavy marijuana use? How much is too much?

The marijuana users in the study averaged smoking 78 to 350 marijuana cigarettes per week, based on self-reported drug history, the researchers said.

So if you’re smoking 350 joints a week—that’s 50 joints a day—you’ve really got to cut down. You should really cut down even if you’re only smoking a measly 11 joints a day. Please make a note of it.

Via the NORML Blog.

RSS icon Comments

1

"Self-reported" tells you everything you need to know about the validity of this study. I think some stoners are having a laugh at the government's expense.

Posted by Greg | May 14, 2008 12:46 PM
2

Yeah, no shit. One time I smoked 5 joints in one day and I thought my lungs were going to fall off. Methinks the self-reported stoners pulled a fast one on the Man.

Posted by Hernandez | May 14, 2008 1:02 PM
3

Yeah, 50 a day, that's 2.5 packs if we were talking cigarettes. No shit that's harmful. I bet they have arthritis from rolling Js so often, too.

Posted by NaFun | May 14, 2008 1:06 PM
4

78 a week? that's a ton.

Stupid, these tests suck.

How about a more realistic study?

Posted by sir jorge | May 14, 2008 1:11 PM
5

A more realistic study will never happen, because in order to do that, the researchers would have to dispense the dope. Probably over a fairly long period of time.

Posted by Fifty-Two-Eighty | May 14, 2008 1:22 PM
6

The most hard-core stoner burnouts I know don't smoke "350 marijuana cigarettes" a week. You'd be fucking chain-smoking. Even total wastoids sometimes have to go out in public places where getting high is frowned upon.

Posted by Geni | May 14, 2008 1:26 PM
7

i was just walking down past the waterfront park on alaskan & someone was getting high by the statue of columbus.

it smelled nice.

Posted by max solomon | May 14, 2008 1:58 PM
8

Those study participants need a much better hook up if they are sucking down 5 jays a day. Thats some pretty crap weed.

Posted by Westside forever | May 14, 2008 2:07 PM
9

Another absurd government study designed to create fear and without ANY merit.

Posted by Vince | May 14, 2008 2:25 PM
10


This makes the heaviest pot smokers I know look like a bunch of freakin' preschoolers.

I really wonder what would happen to me if I smoked 50 joints per day for a week. That'd be roughly 3/4 lbs of bud. I'd have to work hard at it...it takes about 2-3 minutes to roll a joint and about 5 minutes to smoke it. Assuming that I could stay conscious for 18 hours per day, I'd have to smoke about one giant fatty every 20 minutes for each and every one of those hours, leaving an average of just 12 minutes between joints to get snacks, queue up more psychedelic downtempo on the old MacBook and engage on a telepathic level with my chihuahua.

Would I be able to function? Could I actually get through more than, say, an hour at this pace before becoming so amotivational I'd just quit smoking pot all together? Would it be against the rules if the chihuahua helped me smoke it?

Jesus. What kind of idiots wrote this study? And who paid for it?

Posted by Michael Holden | May 14, 2008 2:57 PM
11

My question is: where do people sign up?

Posted by Will in Seattle | May 14, 2008 3:17 PM
12

So at 3/4 lbs a week, that means you'd need to buy 3 pounds of bud a month to sustain a 50-joints-a-day habit.

So how much does that cost? What does a pound of weed go for? Someone here probably knows, but I'll have to do some math.

Let's see...I just spent $40 on an eighth of an ounce. So with a bulk discount, maybe I get an ounce for...$300? Let's be really conservative and say $250. There are 16 ounces in a pound, so that's roughly $4000 for a pound. Maybe you get another bulk deal there, and only pay $3000 for a pound.

So $3000 a pound, times 3 pounds a month, means these guys are laying out around 10 grand a month. That's 120K a year. And all they do is sit around rolling joints and getting inhumanly ripped all day long. They wouldn't even have time to grow or sell any...they're too busy toking up.

You'd have to be smoking 50 joints a day to think that scenario is remotely possible.

Posted by Matthew | May 14, 2008 4:41 PM
13

If it's even physically possible to smoke 350 joints in a week, you're talking some spectacularly shitty skunky weed. You'd lose basic motor control after a fifth that much of even the crap I smoked in high school.

Posted by Fnarf | May 14, 2008 4:53 PM
14

Maybe they're growing their pot themselves and that would cut down the cost but I don't believe for a second that anyone can consistently smoke 350 joints a week. I don't know too many people who could handle 350 cigarettes a week. You could smoke 350 joints of dried basil and it wouldn't be healthy for you. This is just stupid.

Posted by Colin | May 15, 2008 10:40 AM

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