A new report published in perhaps the most widely cited and influential specialty medical journal in the world, Annals of Internal Medicine, reveals data from a recent nationwide survey on adult cannabis use that shows the number of Americans getting high …is getting higher.
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Of the nearly 17,000 adults surveyed, 14.6% (or roughly 1 in 7) fessed up to having used marijuana at some point in 2017. When the stats focus solely on respondents from states where recreational cannabis use has been legalized, that number jumps to 20%.
Nearly 9% proudly reported cannabis use within the past 30 days.
Further, even as methods and options for ingesting and enjoying cannabis are constantly evolving, good ol’ fashioned weed smoking is still the most popular approach. 55% of reported use was by simply lighting it on fire – though edibles, dabs, vape pens, and topical salves and ointments also made the list.
The fact that as many as 1 out of every 5 adults in a room might actually like the multitude of effects that cannabis delivers should ease your anxiety if you are ever stoned in public.
One too many tokes before that mandatory PTA meeting?
No problem! The odds are in your favor that the woman across the table wearing too much perfume and the militant dude in the back that never takes off his sunglasses are just as lit as you are!
But this growing acceptance of cannabis and its many uses is apparently not good news for everyone.
Dr. Michael Lynch, an emergency physician & toxicologist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center warns that there may be no safe use for the cannabis plant as we know it.
“Historically the downsides of marijuana have been minimized,” says Lynch. “Its use has been considered to be safe and without risks and that is not necessarily the case.”
Hold on a second, doc.
Maybe, if by ‘historically’ you mean the past 5 years, but for the century or so before that the plant has been quite literally demonized and the ‘downsides’ have included an untold number of people having their lives ruined by a biased criminal justice system that has used the plant as a punching bag while actual crime thrives.
The ill-informed M.D. goes on to warn about the negative effects of cannabis use by …wait for it… the kids.
This lame-ass fallback talking point needs to die for good
Every state that legalizes and regulates the adult use and sale of marijuana sees teen use drop and opiate abuse drop.
We scoured the world wide web for Dr. Lynch’s comments and concerns about a story out just today that between 2012 – 2017 Big Pharma behemoth Walgreens was busted 1,296 times selling tobacco products to undercover agents posing as minors. That’s just one chain and just the times they actually got caught, but of course, we have not found anything from the doc yet on that issue.
It isn’t just Walgreens.
Rite Aid, CVS, they all do it all the time.
They get busted doing it all the time…
The consequence?
Federal and local law enforcement dressed like they stumbled out of a Call of Duty lootbox shattering every door on their way in with fully automatic weapons locked and loaded?
Not quite…they get a warning letter from the FDA.
Where are these anti-weed crybabies in these cases?
As long as cannabis remains a Schedule I drug on the Controlled Substances Act, one out of every seven American adults – teachers, lawyers, doctors, tradesmen, you, us, you name it – will continue to break the highest laws of the land simply by sparking up.
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