OVERDOSE AT BERKELEY

There was a pot bust Sept. 6 at Cloyne Court, a UC Berkeley
residential co-op, where some 30 students reported feeling unwell
after eating marijuana-laced cookies at a meeting. A concerned
resident phoned the Berkeley city police who then went door-to-door
asking if anyone was experiencing adverse reactions. Those who
responded affirmatively were taken to local ERs. Most decided not to
enter the hospitals and returned to Cloyne; 12 received medical
attention. Two students and a recent grad were arrested as the
alleged suppliers of the cookies.

A trustworthy source with friends at Cloyne says, "The cookies were
potent but they were labeled 'don't take more than one' -a warning
some people chose to ignore. It's the second week of school, there
are many people at Cloyne who have not experimented with food
containing pot and who knew nothing about what happens when you eat too much."

An overdose of mariuana produces an unpleasant torpor that starts
coming on about 40 minutes after ingestion and can last six to eight
hours. There is also a feeling akin to nausea but not nausea,
exactly. A sophisticated user advises, "If you realize
you've ingested too much, try to sleep it off. The alternative is to
stew impotently about the things you should be doing if only you could move."

Calmer types at Cloyne reportedly tried to reassure people that what
they were experiencing was a transient state. "But a resident who was
not affected by the cookies decided to call for help," according to
our source. "The mass anxiety started after people knew the police
and medics were on their way and after they started arriving."

The debilitating overdose is the reason bottles of cannabis tincture
manufactured by Eli Lilly, Merck, Squibb, Parke, Davis et al in the
early decades of the 20th century bore the skull and crossbones.
"Poison" is not synonymous with "fatal," however. Veterinarians
frequently get called by panicked dog owners whose pets are comatose
after having eaten the owner's stash. Most vets know enough to advise
that the dogs will awaken good as new.

The paranoia supposedly caused by marijuana is not an inherent effect
of the drug; it's brought on by the context of illegality, the very
real prospect of stigma and punishment. Imagine being a Berkeley
student with your family savings and hopes riding on you and you've
eaten these stupid cookies and now the cops are knocking on
everyone's door and escorting those who admit that they "feel funny"
to the Emergency Room. Should you go? If you give your name, will
your student loans, grants, scholarships be jeopardized? (Possibly,
for a pot-related infraction. But not for a rape.) Will your family
be notified? A "feeling of doom," indeed.

Tom O'Connell, MD, a California cannabis specialist who has taken
detailed histories from more than 3,000 patients, says "Pot doesn't
have as much user control as most users require/need/would like
unless it's smoked, which for most people is a paradox. Smoking
almost completely avoids the 'first pass' effect in which everything
absorbed by the gut and scrutinized by hepatocytes [enzymes in the
liver] and a significant fraction may be metabolized into something
entirely different. Since the major site of pot's action on the
emotions is the brain, the first pass frustrates the titration
smokers have become used to in two ways. First, they have to wait for
digestion and then they have to do without the familiar anxiolytic
[anti-anxiety] benefit that induced most of them to become chronic
users to begin with.

"Add the fact that the duration of action of the liver's variant
product is tripled and you'll understand why most chronic users
either give edibles a wide berth or reserve them for week-end use at
picnics, rock concerts, or ball games."

Is "Medical" Image Turning Teens Off Pot?

Every year the federal Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services
Administration (SAMHSA) conducts a survey on Drug Use and Health
(DUH) and reports on perceived trends. Marijuana is, by far, the
American people's illicit drug of choice. If the survey finds that
drug use is down, government officials say "Our approach is working,
give us more funding." If drug use is up, they say "We're in an
epidemic, we need more funding." This year they get to make both
pitches because marijuana use was found to be up in the oldest age
bracket (50-59) and down in the lowest (12-17).

SAMHSA released an "initial report" Sept. 7 based on the 2005 DUH
Survey. "Youth Drug Use Continues Downward Slide, Older Adult Rates
of Use Increase" was the headline. In the 12-to-17 age group, current
marijuana users (those who acknowledged using within the past month)
declined to 6.8 percent in 2005 from 8.2 percent in 2002. Among
adults aged 50 to 59, however, "the rate of current illicit drug use
increased from 2.7 percent to 4.4 percent between 2003 and 2005,
reflecting the aging into this age group of the baby boom cohort."

In 2005, the average age of first-time marijuana users was 17.4 years
- - a five-month increase since 2003. Drug Czar John Walter commented,
"Something important is happening with American teens. They are
getting the message that using drugs limits their futures." Or maybe
they're becoming more afraid to level with government survey takers.
The DUH Survey has some 67,500 respondents nationwide. There were
14.6 million past-month marijuana users in 2005, supposedly. If one
trusted the data, one could conclude that the increasingly prevalent
image of marijuana as medicine encourages older people to use it
while making it less appealing to kids.

For everything spin, spin, spin

There is some research spin spin spin

And a line for every purpose under heaven

"Today's illegal market didn't really begin until large numbers of
American teens born during the post-World-War-Two baby boom began
smoking pot in the mid-1960s," says Dr. O'Connell. "The market has
grown steadily ever since, despite all attempts of the federal
government to eradicate it... Adolescence is precisely when chronic
pot use began for the great majority of current users. My data show
the opposite of a 'gateway' effect -pot use in adolescence is
associated with diminished initiation of more problematic drugs and
diminished use of alcohol and tobacco."