With all due respect, although pot is admittedly benign (more so than alcohol, unless used in combination with it) and cigarettes (far less addictive, as evidenced by the number of people who give it up easily after youth, contrast that with tobacco) there are many good reasons to avoid using methamphetamine - which make this news really not very meaningful.
Does the small cognitive boost justify the other extremely bad things that the drug does to those who use it? Not sure about that. Methamphetmine abuse and addiction have consequences that far outweigh this significance of this small beneficial effect. It's good that we keep the research honest and free of political taint, as much as possible, but those who see drug use as completely without consequence for society can be equally guilty of spinning results to push an agenda. PS. I am in favor of legalizing all drugs and finding non-punitive ways to control and discourage. I am not pro-drug war. I am pro-health. Nancy Melucci Long Beach City College Long Beach CA -----Original Message----- From: sblack <[email protected]> To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) <[email protected]> Sent: Sat, Jan 14, 2012 6:51 am Subject: [tips] Good news for illegal drug users I wrote: > It's been a good week for those who favour certain recreational drugs which the law forbids. And Paul Brandon's unimpressed response was: >This is news? Well, yes. Perhaps not to astute members of this list, but certainly o the war-on-drugs establishment, including the readers of the merican Medical Association, in whose journal the finding of arijuana not causing lung damage was published (although perhaps hat same readership is less likely to stray as far as Neuropsychopharmacology_ where the results on improved cognition fter meth were published). And guess who makes policy? To quote from the meth review (Hart et l, 2012, 37, 586-608): "Hopefully, more caution will be exercised when interpreting these indings than was exercised when results were interpreted from tudies of infants prenatally exposed to cocaine, who were rroneously and too readily condemned to a life of learng isabilities, psychological disturbances, and crime...It has been uggested that cognitive impairment seen in methamphetamine users ave the potential to compromise their ability to engage in, and enefit from, cognitive-behavioral therapy, arguably the most ffective treatment. Findings from this review argue that such oncerns are not warranted. Finally...several governments have taken rastic measures...to limit the use of methamphetamine, in part, ecause of the perceived pernicious effects the drug has on cognitive unctioning. In Thailand...In the United States, methamphetamine iolations are punished more harshly than those related to other llicit drugs, with the exception of crack cocaine." So if it's not news it's still information that bears repeating. isinformation as the basis of policy unfortunately has serious onsequences. Stephen ------------------------------------------- tephen L. Black, Ph.D. rofessor of Psychology, Emeritus ishop's University herbrooke, Quebec, Canada -mail: sblack at ubishops.ca -------------------------------------------- -- ou are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. o unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=12993.aba36cc3760e0b1c6a655f019a68b878&n=T&l=tips&o=15304 r send a blank email to leave-15304-12993.aba36cc3760e0b1c6a655f019a68b...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=15306 or send a blank email to leave-15306-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
