Ted Rall for April 23, 2014

That’s the study with the sample size of 20, right? Fail.

AND heavily reported on Fox News. Shame on you Ted Rall.

Yeah, that explains why Carl Sagan had such poor memory and lacked motivation.

It always amazes me that people will get all excited about consuming an artificial sweetener or a genetically modified ear of corn which have been studied to death but will happily ingest a drug grown and distributed by some unknown source without concern.

Ted,

That study got completely debunked and the media isn’t bothering to correct their mistake. You are part of the mistake now.

Link1, Link2.

The Reefer Madness Crowd will point to this study ad nauseum and tell us that “We must jail pot smokers for 20 years for their own good.”

I think it should be legalized.1) I have seen no evidence to indicate it is worse then many other drugs on the market i.e. Caffeine, Nicotine, Alcohol, etc.2) I’m tired of being asked to fund the Cops, Courts and Prisons it takes to remove these harmless naer-do-wells from the streets.3) This is a free country. The Nanny state should be abolished and the aholes that think they know what is best for everyone else should be the ones put in jail. If the only harm is to yourself we should leave you to pursue your happiness in the way that best suits you.

I would like to see a serious study funded to show the cost benefit analysis for society of criminalizing marijuana. And if the numbers are no worse then Alcohol then it should be legalized.

I am personally disappointed in you, Mr. Rall. Your work has always had the hallmark of someone who looks past the headline and gets to the heart of a story before reacting. This is one more of the “shocking” science headlines that lazy journalists generate out of press releases on subjects they do not understand. I respectfully request you read this analysis of the study you describe.http://io9.com/does-researching-casual-marijuana-use-cause-brain-abnor-1565519493

“That’s the study with the sample size of 20, right? Fail.”#Said the guy sucking on a bong!

However, the authors repeatedly and explicitly state a causative relationship between the cannabis use and the anatomic changes throughout the article, only to state in the second-to-last paragraph that no causative relationship can be concluded due to the cross-sectional design of this study. Even more, the press release from the Society for Neuroscience 1 and the narrative in news stories resulting from this manuscript [2,3] do not explicitly state this very obvious caveat. While the correlative relationship reported here is statistically strong, a longitudinal study design is necessary to make the causative claims throughout the first 29 paragraphs and abstract of this manuscript. Again, this very critical distinction in study design is not noted until the end of the manuscript. A plausible alternative interpretation of this data is that the neuroanatomical abnormalities predate the drug use and make the individuals more likely to use cannabis. By reversing the causative relationship here, we would suppose that greater anatomical changes would cause increased consumption. With that said, there is abundant evidence showing an empirical link between tetrahydrocannabinol administration and neuroanatomical changes in rodents. However, the repeated claims of a causative relationship in this manuscript and related press articles are not warranted based solely on the results reported here.

I know at least dozens, possibly hundreds of people who are regular pot smokers, lead normal lives, and have been doing so for years. I have noticed no harmful effects to their lives. On the other hand, I also know people who began drinking alcohol on about the same schedule and time in life as the pot smokers. Most of them quit because they saw the danger ( a lot of them now smoke pot). Those who did not have seen a lot of damage to their lives caused by the drinking. DUIs, lost jobs, lost marriages and families are a pretty normal result of regularly getting drunk. And, people who want to quit smoking pot just do it. Getting off liquor is a nightmare. I know of no one who has been harmed by smoking grass. However, Willie Nelson says that he does have a friend who was injured by grass- a bale of it fell on him.

Actually, this is one of the few cartoons where Rall is not on the extreme.

I am pro pot legalization, but I am not pro addiction. I still think it does less damage (socially and biologically) than alcohol but I’m not saying any of them is harmless. In both cases, you get a high which means that you are messing with your brain’s activity.

And no matter if you got that high from pot or booze, you only have one brain.

I am not telling non pot smokers to start smoking. I’m just saying that if the government won’t forbid one, why is the other forbidden?

It should be a matter of personnal, individual discipline. Not law.

Does his replacement smoke pot?