Thursday, October 23rd, 2014
Stephan: It is fascinating to watch the prohibitionist disinformation campaign. I am sure the brighter ones -- the others are just tools who repeat the talking points they are given -- know they will be refuted based on the data. The game though is that not everyone will see the refutation, and if one lies over and over a certain number of people will not learn about the lie each time. It is so cynical and ethically compromised that it should be a national scandal. Instead it is just business as usual, and thousands of people -- mostly people of color -- continue to have their lives destroyed through marijuana arrests.
A woman uses a electronic vaporizers with cannabidiol (CBD)-rich hemp oil while attending the International Cannabis Association Convention in New York, October 12, 2014. Credit: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
A 2012 Duke University study made international headlines when it purported to find a link between heavy marijuana use and IQ decline among teenagers. Other researchers questioned the findings almost immediately: Columbia University’s Carl Hart noted the very small sample of heavy users (38) in the study, leading him to question how generalizable the results were.
Then, a follow-up study published 6 months later in the same journal found that the Duke paper failed to account for a number of confounding factors: “Although it would be too strong to say that the results have been discredited, the methodology is flawed and the causal inference drawn from the results premature,” it concluded.
Now, a new study out from the University College of […]