Homeless in Arizona

Arizona Republic does a hit piece on marijuana.

This sounds like it came straight out of "Reefer Madness". I wonder is Sheila Polk a secret co-author of this article??

Marijuana is addictive??? What rubbish!!!!

Heroin is addictive, tobacco is addictive, caffeine is addictive, but marijuana is NOT addictive.

The article claims Scotty who's last name isn't given, would smoke a pound of marijuana on a week end with a friend. Again what rubbish.

"He remembers weekends when he and a friend would smoke a pound of the drug"

So with 640 joints between them, each of them would smoke 320 marijuana cigarettes in two days, or 160 marijuana cigarettes a day.

If they were up 16 hours a day and slept the other 8 hours that means each of they were smoking 10 marijuana cigarettes every hour, or 1 marijuana cigarette every 6 minutes.

Come on folks, smoking one marijuana cigarette every 6 minutes is laughable.

I know, some of you people roll fat joints and only get 20 cigarettes out of an ounce. Still, smoking one fat joint every 12 minutes is ridiculous.

Source

Some warn marijuana legalization could bring more addiction

Madeleine Winer, The Republic | azcentral.com 8:06 p.m. MST August 21, 2015

Elisabeth Davies smoked marijuana to escape. To ease anxiety. To decompress and forget about life’s responsibilities.

Davies started as a social smoker at 17. Years would go by, and she wouldn’t smoke pot.

“It made me feel better,” said Davies, a life coach, counselor and author in Peoria. “It took away my anxiety and stress. It made my emotions more tolerable.”

But when her father died 10 years ago, her casual use became an addiction. She smoked every day after work to escape the grief.

“They (my family) could see changes in me... decreased memory, like I’m not appearing as intelligent under the influence,” she said. “My judgment is impaired. My clear thinking is impaired. My inhibitions are impaired. I’m more self-centered. I’m not thinking about how my abuse is affecting the people that love me.”

Medical marijuana has been legalized in Arizona since 2010, and voters likely will be asked to legalize the drug for recreational use in 2016. The legalization campaign has collected about a third of the 150,642 signatures needed to put the issue on the ballot.

Proponents of recreational marijuana tout pot as a safer alternative to other drugs and even alcohol. Indeed, no evidence suggests users can overdose and die from marijuana use.

But others predict about 9 percent of users — and about 17 percent of teenage users — will become addicted. Those figures come from a study endorsed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The addiction rates for alcohol or tobacco are about 15 percent. They reach up to 23 percent for youth. They warn that legalizing marijuana for recreational use will lead to wider use and increased addiction.

Former addicts, marijuana advocates, doctors and scientists agree that marijuana can be addictive. But they disagree on whether legalization will lead to more marijuana use and result in a spike in addiction.

Addicts: Pot is addictive

Every Wednesday, marijuana users, former addicts and those trying to kick the habit gather at a Marijuana Anonymous meeting at Crossroads West, a substance-abuse recovery center in west Phoenix.

Some seated in a circle in a cafeteria at the center cheerfully proclaim their sobriety, while others remain quiet hoping to find the strength to stop using the drug through the weekly meetings.

Members describe their meeting spot as holy ground — they understand each other’s logic and know one another by their first names. “There is no way to feel what we feel when we use. Everyone understands here. People freak out at why I did the s--t I did,” said one man, who used marijuana for 15 years.

Scotty, the group’s leader, started smoking his sophomore year of high school. He soon became known as the “stoner kid” and later as the guy at Greenway High School who could get you pot.

Eventually, he dropped out. He worked only long enough in the fast-food circuit to get money to buy weed, sell it and smoke it. He remembers weekends when he and a friend would smoke a pound of the drug.

Legalizing marijuana could raise $40 million for Arizona schools, backers say

“Stoned was my natural state,” said Scotty, now 38, who with other members of Marijuana Anonymous only use their first names.

“I missed a lot. A lot of memories aren’t there,” said an elderly woman who smoked for 44 years.

“Your maturity and education stops when you start using,” she said. “I isolated myself to a point where I had no contact with my husband. ... I raised a son, but I wasn’t there mentally at all.”

How addiction works

Addiction is “a form of learning,” according to Frances Jensen, who is chair of the Department of Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.

When someone repeats a task, it strengthens synapses, gaps at the end of nerve cells that allow communication between brain cells.

Each time a synapse fires, or each time a message is passed through the brain, people learn behaviors, Jensen said. Repetition strengthens those synapses, creating learned behaviors, such as playing an instrument or practicing a sport.

When someone smokes pot, the chemicals in marijuana attach to a receptor in the brain, slowing the firing of synapses. For adults, this effect lasts one to two hours. In the still-developing brains of teens, Jensen said, it can last two to three days.

Teens are most at risk for addiction since they have more developing brain receptors and synapses. Their frontal lobes, which control judgment and emotions, aren’t fully developed.

Jensen, author of the bestseller “The Teenage Brain,” said because of this, teens “have more of this ability to change and respond to anything ... even a drug.”

“You do a drug multiple times, and it builds the synapses stronger for that drug so you end up ... becoming addicted,” she said. “Unfortunately, there’s all real science in it.”

Davies, author of the self-help book “Good Things Emotional Healing Journal,” said some people have an addictive personality or resort to addiction because of circumstances.

Some turn to alcohol, and others turn to exercise to de-stress. Davies relied on addictions to food, cocaine and other substances throughout her life.

“I would have school or work and your reward at end of the day would be to escape with marijuana,” she said. “Somehow my mind confused that as a reward. Just like someone saying having a piece of chocolate cake at the end of the day is my reward. No, it’s not. It’s not healthy.”

Will legalization increase addiction?

So would legalizing marijuana increase addiction?

The answer: We’ll see.

With states legalizing marijuana for recreational use, scientists have started to investigate if legalizing the drug increases the rate of addiction.

Those who claim it will lead to increased addiction say it’s inevitable because more people will use the drug.

“Clearly, the more people use an addictive substance, the more people become addicted to it,” said Sheila Polk, Yavapai county attorney and an opponent of marijuana legalization in Arizona. “Science clearly tells us that marijuana is addictive. ... Do you want to experiment on your own brain and experiment on the brains of kids on the off chance that science is wrong?”

Polk also worries that if the drug is legalized for recreational use the perception of the drug as not addictive will increase.

J.P. Holyoak, chair of the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol, disagrees. Marijuana has always been available for people who want to use it, he said.

The campaign cites research to counter other studies on the issue. Holyoak points to a study published in The Lancet Psychiatry that found no evidence legalizing medical marijuana led to increased use among teenagers. He also cited the National Institute on Drug Abuse statistics that alcohol and tobacco, both legal substances, have a higher addiction rate than marijuana.

However, he said, the campaign agrees some people will get addicted to the drug.

“There are people who shouldn’t use marijuana,” he said. “Marijuana can be addictive. But it’s less addictive than alcohol. There’s a minority of people who abuse and are addicted to it. ...You can be addicted to anything. ...You can be addicted to shopping...but we don’t ban shopping.”

Because states have only recently legalized pot, no data show increased addiction rates related to legalizing it for recreational use.

State officials in Colorado and Washington say it’s too early to determine the effects of legalization since both states started selling the drug for recreational use in January 2014.

“But marijuana is not anything new,” said Trooper Josh Lewis, spokesperson for the Colorado State Patrol.

Jensen of the University of Pennsylvania and others in the medical field said more research is needed to fully understand the drug’s dangers and potential benefits.

The American Academy of Pediatrics said in a January study that limited research has been conducted on medical marijuana for adults and no studies have been published that involve children.

“We have not done due diligence on this,” Jensen said.

In June, the Obama administration responded to more states legalizing the drug by speeding up the process for researchers to submit pot studies to the government.

But Davies, the woman who became addicted, isn’t sure if legalizing marijuana will increase use by people who don’t use it already.

“I am so torn. I think when something is really easily and readily accessible, its easier if you have a vulnerability to it to use it,” she said. “But do I think legalizing marijuana, (use) will change in any way? No, I don’t.”

Addiction resources

SMART Recovery: A self-empowering addiction support group offering a variety of recovery services. Local meeting times can be found on www.smartrecovery.org.

Marijuana Anonymous: A 12-step program that aims to help recovering addicts believe in a higher power to overcome addiction. Find local meeting times at https://www.marijuana-anonymous.org/meetings.

To find the nearest residential marijuana recovery center near you, call 1-844-545-1270 or visit recovery.org.