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(11/19/14 12:40am)
Marijuana use, medical and recreational, legal and illegal, is deeply contested on two opposite spectrums. In one camp, advocates for marijuana use highlight the history of marijuana and apparent lack of adverse effects compared to alcohol and tobacco consumption. Proponents of the other camp note the possible health effects of marijuana use and its potential “gateway drug” effect.However, legalization and other arguments aside, there has been a lack of substantial research to provide a consensus of literature on regular, recreational use of marijuana. What is even more concerning is that a large number of users and regular users are young, and the brain is still developing during the early 20s. With this young population’s regular recreational use, there is a mantra being naïvely sung: marijuana is natural and harmless.
While indeed marijuana derives from the Cannabis sativa hemp plant, its “naturalness” does not explain away the “psychoactive (mind-altering) chemical delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)” that alters the body’s natural endocannabinoid system.Many substances, including alcohol, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and mushrooms, derive from natural resources. Given the lack of consensus on the adverse effects of marijuana, the assumption that “natural” equals “harmless” is giving younger marijuana users a false sense of security in their recreational drug consumption.
Marijuana research studies are plastered on news headlines in an apparent face-off. Some articles say studies about marijuana use and IQ are limited and do not support their claims, while recent articles say IQ and marijuana use are linked in the age of onset and duration of use.With conflicting news articles cherry-picking from premature research studies, most cannot discern what the true health effects are, and some interpret this inconsistency as a lack of proof for adverse health effects. That interpretation leads to dangerous assumptions about the unknown long-term effects of recreational use.
What can be agreed upon concerning marijuana use is how it affects the brain short-term in a “high.” More recently, scientists have pinpointed the body’s natural cannabinoids, anadamide and 2AG (2-arachidonoyl glycerol), that attach to receptors within the body’s natural endocannabinoid (EC) system.Similar to the way most drugs and medicines affect the brain, the THC in marijuana binds with the receptors, which block the naturally occurring cannabinoids and overwhelm the EC system’s balanced system. Because there are receptors all around the brain, various things are affected, such as slowed reaction time from the basal ganglia, impaired coordination form the cerebellum, increased appetite from the hypothalamus, euphoria from the nucleus accumbens and many other aspects such as panic, anti-nausea, memory, judgment and thinking and decreased pain sensitivity.
Understanding this, more controversy around marijuana use ensues over the long-term effects of increased consumption and start of consumption at younger ages. Correlations between marijuana use and issues with mental health and cardiopulmonary health need to be further researched.Some literature does suggest that marijuana smoke acts as an irritant to lungs, but it is unclear if it links to lung cancer like tobacco does. Research on cardiovascular health suggests that the heightened heart rate and other aspects of marijuana can have serious ramifications such as stroke and heart attack.Alongside those, the psychotic reaction of hallucinations and paranoia can trigger or worsen schizophrenia. Rather, the effects of marijuana use on young users developing their brains need to be researched, and the correlations between genetic health predispositions must be assessed.
Unfortunately, gathering conclusive casual evidence for adverse effects of marijuana is more difficult than it seems. While most of the research community knows the limitations of finding strong correlative data among selection biases and inappropriate experiment designs, many people outside of this group do not fully understand the meaning of the studies.However, recent studies seem to be improving upon their designs and producing more consistent research while controlling for confounds, or other external sources. Before assuming that marijuana is harmless, or even responsible for lower IQ, more elaborate and controlled research must be found and interpreted for regular consumers to truly be informed on all of the potential short- and long-term health consequences. Reach the columnist at jessica.m.fletcher@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @jmf1193Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.Want to join the conversation? Send an email to opiniondesk.statepress@gmail.com. Keep letters under 300 words and be sure to include your university affiliation. Anonymity will not be granted.
(11/03/14 12:07am)
The Catholic Church and Pope Francis have made celebrity status — and true to usual tabloid misrepresentation and gossip, they are not unscathed by the bogus coverage.Almost all news agencies, aside from Time and Slate, have blown up, twisted and confused the story. They may include the same quotes, but each is writing its own, blurred version of the truth about the Catholic Church. Typical bad media coverage could be harmless, but people believe what they read, and then confusion leads to accusations — the Church is picking and choosing, dissent on Church doctrine, inconsistency, more inconsistency — and Pandora’s box is open. Miscommunication about the Church and Pope Francis is out of control, and the frenzy needs to stop.
It seems to be the same quotes from Pope Francis: he discusses the “risk of imagining God was a magician,” and says other things like, “He created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws.” He also says, “God is not a demiurge,” “evolution is not opposed to the notion of Creation, because evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve,” and finally, “The Big Bang, which nowadays is posited as the origin of the world, does not contradict the divine act of creating, but rather requires it.” While the same quotes circulated the news articles, each one was accompanied by a different radical title and biased dialogue tags.
Here are just a few of the crazy titles and tags:Washington Post posted “Pope Francis may believe in evolution, but 42 percent of Americans do not” and states that “(he put) himself at odds with a significant portion of Americans by saying he believed in evolution, not creationism.” MSNBC misled the public with “Pope Francis: God is not ‘a magician with a magic wand’” and tags “declaring that the theories of evolution and the Big Bang are real,” and “Breaking with his predecessor, Benedict XVI, who arguably encouraged creationism and intelligent design theory.” The most outlandish of them all — Salon: “God is not a magician, with a magic wand: Pope Francis schools creationists” with the teaser, “The pontiff admits he believes in evolution and the Big Bang.”
What a majority of these obscured titles and articles note are two false points: (1) that Pope Francis chooses evolution over creationism and that (2) he breaks from the Church’s longstanding tradition and his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. However, these incorrect assumptions are causing a hubbub of confusion about what it means to be a progressive Church.
Slate points out that the media says Pope Francis modernizes the conservative institution, but these things are not revolutionary or breaking from tradition. Many misunderstand the difference between empathy/understanding and wishy-washy inconsistencies. Most of these articles on Pope Francis dance around the controversial “hot-button Western political issues (that) can be tied to the Pope’s statements — evolution, death penalty, gay marriage,” Time notes. However, there is not the division people think there is. The death penalty has been discussed since Pope John Paul II and the “welcoming gays” synod over the relatio coverage was just a glance at the two-year-long dialogue.Evolution has been acknowledged and reviewed since Pope Pius XII’s Humani Generis in 1950. It was discussed with Pope John Paul II, and it was even elaborated on by Pope Benedict, the apparent “creationist opponent" to evolution. In fact, Benedict worked closely with Cardinal Schoenborn, who wrote “Finding Design in Nature,” the New York Times op-ed piece in 2005, which warns against belief in Neo-Darwinism where the evolutionary process is random and chaotic. Pope Francis reaffirms this by saying that God should not be seen as a magician or demigod that creates out of chaos, but a loving creator with a plan; this reasserts that evolution and creationism are not opposing forces. In fact, the “father of the Big Bang theory” was Georges Lemaître, Belgian cosmologist, Catholic Priest, and once President of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences — the very assembly that received Pope Francis’s speech.
While trying to stir emotions, the media has gotten the “apparent inconsistencies" and “breaks” from doctrine, predecessors, and tradition completely wrong. Some articles make weak attempts to put disclaimers that there are differences between the Catholic Church and “protestant sects,” yet they are so buried beneath the preceding click-bait biases. The Catholic Church and Pope Francis are sounding the same chorus they always have. If there is one thing to note about the Church, it is consistent.
The importance of this poor coverage and understanding of the Church has disastrous effects. People even believe satires shared on their news feed about the Pope recognizing gay marriage, possible woman pontificates and evolution trumping creation. The Church constantly meets, dialogues, reviews and agrees about discussing topics that can be approached with better understanding, love and empathy. It finds ways to bring the doctrine to the issues, rather than change the doctrine to reach a larger crowd. Before this gets out of hand anymore, people need to be educated on what the Church and Pope Francis really are saying.Reach the columnist at jessica.m.fletcher@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @jmf1193Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.Want to join the conversation? Send an email to opiniondesk.statepress@gmail.com. Keep letters under 300 words and be sure to include your university affiliation. Anonymity will not be granted.Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.
(10/20/14 10:00pm)
With today’s job market and constant competition, there has been a push — or a shove — to get the degree in order to start the career. This job competition doesn’t start after standing up in cap and gown at graduation; it pervades every aspect of education — arguably even before higher education begins.
(09/29/14 10:30pm)
(09/21/14 9:15pm)
Amid the usual acronyms being casually uttered by college students, there are a select few that seem to make many undergrads shudder: MCAT, LSAT, DAT, GRE, and PCAT. Whether it is freshmen preparing early or juniors and seniors just realizing the calamity of it all, students are worrying about graduate school, and more specifically, they are worrying about entrance exams.
(09/01/14 10:08pm)
“Barrett students have the unique advantage of experiencing a small, intellectually and socially vibrant environment while having access to the vast resources of the major research university at ASU” reads the opening line on the Barrett, the Honors College website. However, an increasing amount of Barrett upperclassmen are complaining, “Aren’t we getting just too big?”
(08/20/14 8:58pm)
My heart broke when I discovered David Foster Wallace had hanged himself. Although his death had shocked the contemporary literary community in 2008, I had only recently stumbled upon Infinite Jest and his other works of creative genius in the past year. Yet, his commencement speech, “This is Water,” was the real slap in the face. How could I juxtapose the professorial, enlightening speech about living everyday life with the depressed man who hung himself? I couldn’t.