LEGAL OREGON WEED MAKES YOU STUPID?

“The Endocannabinoid System in Disease Pathology” via medicaljane.com

So How Do You Explain The Way Legal Oregon Weed Navigated The Legal System?

As a sixty year old baby boomer I like age limits high for alcohol, weed, and tobacco.

You could raise them even higher and who’d complain? Just as long as I’m not too young.

Dangers to youth are no joking matter. From my own back story:

During a family trip to El Paso-Juarez, also known as Juarez-El Paso, I wandered off and bought a switch blade knife. What twelve year old doesn’t need a blade?

My mom decided for me. I didn’t see my Mexican sticker until I was thirty years old. She was on the safe side. The first thing I did was cut myself.

While there’s no legal age limit for owning a Mexican switch blade, I wasn’t competent at any age.

Social substance carries some of the same danger.

We’ve seen the affect of alcohol, weed, and tobacco on youth. Alcohol gets you even before you’re born, starting you out with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

FAS is the most severe type of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, and is a life-long condition.

Babies with FAS:

• Can have abnormal facial features
• Often grow more slowly than other babies
• Can have central nervous system problems
• Can have mental disabilities

Cigarettes? Kids that smoke tobacco get shut down while they’re starting up.

Young lungs and tobacco are a bad mix.

Everybody knows this?

Long-term health consequences of youth smoking are reinforced by the fact that most young people who smoke regularly continue to smoke throughout adulthood.(1) Cigarette smokers have a lower level of lung function than those persons who have never smoked.(1) Smoking reduces the rate of lung growth.(1)

And finally, marijuana.

From drugabuse.gov:

THC quickly passes from the lungs into the bloodstream, which carries it to organs throughout the body, including the brain. As it enters the brain, THC attaches to cells, or neurons, with specific kinds of receptors called cannabinoid receptors. Normally, these receptors are activated by chemicals that occur naturally in the body. They are part of a communication network in the brain called the endocannabinoid system. This system is important in normal brain development and function.

Endocannabinoid system? Never heard of it, but when it’s mentioned on a site named drugabuse.gov it’s probably more science and less stoner talk? Probably.

From nih.gov:

The Endocannabinoid System as an Emerging Target of Pharmacotherapy

The recent identification of cannabinoid receptors and their endogenous lipid ligands has triggered an exponential growth of studies exploring the endocannabinoid system and its regulatory functions in health and disease. Such studies have been greatly facilitated by the introduction of selective cannabinoid receptor antagonists and inhibitors of endocannabinoid metabolism and transport, as well as mice deficient in cannabinoid receptors or the endocannabinoid-degrading enzyme fatty acid amidohydrolase.

Did you stop reading at ‘lipid ligands?’ I did, but the block of content shows the gravity of the endocannabinoid system. Hard reading comes from serious research. That’s how you know it’s real science and not some blogger smack.

Now, I could be behind the times on alcohol and tobacco and missed all the research showing their therapeutic uses, but the Oregonian newspaper along with their online presence with oregonlive.com has made sure we all know about legal Oregon weed.

From medical use to the casual toker to the hard core stoner, the Oregonian makes sure we’re weed informed.

Oregon weed is not legal at Oregon colleges, so don’t toss your dorm door towel just yet.

Few government agencies push the positive side of alcohol and tobacco, they just reap the financial rewards and clean up the mess. Legal marijuana comes with different baggage.

Legal Oregon weed may not be for everyone, but it helps some when nothing else has.