Reefer Madness Déjà vu
The Psychosis behind Recent Anti-Cannabis Scare Tactics
By Jade Kine
In March, 2005, a Christchurch School of Medicine and Health
Sciences study led by Professor David Fergusson proclaimed they
had found a causal link between cannabis and psychosis. Fergusson’s
findings sparked a wildfire of anti-cannabis propaganda that
has been escalating in Australia and across the world ever since.
Later in the year, an ABC Four Corners special entitled “Messing
with Heads” aired on July 3 and added fuel to the growing
hysteria by reinforcing the same claims of cannabis-induced
psychosis. Since then, Prime Minister Howard has used the generated
fear of this “silent epidemic” to justify a wave
of legal reform aimed at repealing the cannabis de-criminalization
of prior years. Much like the nonsensical claims that surrounded
the original marijuana prohibition movement, conservative political
leaders have resorted to sensationalist scare tactics using
flawed, biased studies in order to create the fear of Reefer
Madness all over again.
In the original Reefer Madness, we were shown a laughably ridiculous
portrayal of “pot-induced psychosis” where the pot-smoking
character giggles hysterically while screaming for the piano
player to play faster and faster music and today we can look
back and laugh at how preposterous such a notion really is.
But John Howard’s new surge of politically driven pseudo-science
propaganda has hypnotized the Australian people and the world
with a series of psychological trials and drama-saturated case
studies of schizophrenic young people. The emotionalism of these
case studies and their adamant correlation of pot to psychosis
are almost distracting enough to keep the public from realizing
that any drug when abused by a person with mental health issues
is likely to set off psychotic reactions. Indeed, the idea of
a pot-induced psychosis is so new and unfounded that the term
itself is unheard of in most medical literature.
By comparison, another legal drug causes psychotic reactions
so frequently that medical journals have a specific name for
the psychosis caused by it. Alcohol, in addition to its ability
to trigger psychotic reactions in susceptible persons while
the person is intoxicated, causes it’s most serious psychotic
reactions when use of the drug has stopped. It can happen to
anyone regardless of preexisting psychological conditions and
it’s called Delirium Tremens, frequently referred to as
the “DT’s” or the “Shakes”. Delirium
Tremens is a form of psychosis so serious the mortality rate
can be as high as 35% when untreated. It’s such a common
form of drug-induced psychosis that people have established
both latin and vernacular terminology to identify it. Yet somehow
in his campaign to improve Mental Health services, Prime Minister
Howard has overlooked this extremely common, extremely serious
and extremely preventable form of psychosis and instead has
chosen to focus on the hype surrounding a single flawed study
regarding cannabis.
Once again, policymakers have turned a blind eye to the most
widely available hard drug on the planet only to point the finger
at one of the most benign plants ever used by our species, and
yet it’s we the cannabis smokers that are being called
psychotic.
Before we delve into Professor Fergusson’s study to see
how psychosis was measured, I’m going to rewind just a
bit. In 1986, “Health Aspects of Marijuana”, a Pharmacological
Review, by Leo E. Hollister stated, “Evidence for a specific
type of psychosis associated with its use is still elusive.”
At that time in the U.S., the Regan administration’s “War
on Drugs” was gaining momentum like a steamroller going
down a ski-run. The U.S. government had spent countless dollars
on numerous studies intending to identify and expose the negative
clinical symptoms associated with cannabis use. Still, the studies
had an extremely difficult time trying to correlate cannabis
with anything harmful to those who used it. Mr. Hollister’s
quote happens to be a shining example of the bias behind these
studies. As he clearly states, the pot-psychosis correlation
is very “elusive” giving the impression that its
existence is a foregone conclusion already accepted as true
and it is simply up to the right researcher to “track
down” the hard evidence of this elusive target of social
debate. He very clearly admits that a portion of the scientific
community is looking for the clinical evidence to prove the
existence of a disease that has no initial evidence to point
to its existence in the first place. So, you see, if you look
for something long enough and have a large group of people urging
you to find it, the chances are good that you’ll turn
up something. Whether that something is the unbiased truth or
not is another matter.
Now, twenty years later into the search for the “elusive”
pot-psychosis, Professor Fergusson has found a something. In
the case of Professor Fergusson, however, it seems that he has
a very fair and reasonable perspective on his study and has
not embellished or over-extrapolated his findings. In his own
words as reported by the Christchurch Press, “the role
of cannabis in psychosis was not sufficient on its own to guide
legislation. ‘The results suggest heavy use can result
in adverse side-effects,' he said. 'That can occur with (heavy
use of) any substance. It can occur with milk.'
Hey …..Wait a minute….did he say milk? Milk!?
I don’t understand why Prime Minister Howard hasn’t
issued a warning about the potential dangers of our favorite
dairy beverage. How can he sleep at night knowing there are
still cows out there, waiting to be milked for the next compulsive
milk drinker and that this heavy use of milk could contribute
to psychotic episodes in predisposed persons? Why have there
been no Four Corners specials done about the correlation between
heavy milk drinking and psychosis? Apparently, “Messing
with Cattle” didn’t have the same “ring to
it” that “Messing with Heads” did. Or maybe
it just lacked sponsorship from the proper government agencies.
But wait, I’m digressing and taking credit away from Professor
Fergusson and his something. His conclusion that “the
results suggest heavy use can result in adverse side-effects”,
might be somewhat accurate. Even though every independent, non-government
funded study for the last 20 years has disagreed with the idea
that even regular use of cannabis causes noticeable adverse
side effects, he may be right and I want to give him credit
if he is. If he is the first person to show that heavy, chronic
use of marijuana can create some “adverse side effects”,
I’d like to congratulate him on finally managing to associate
pot with the same dangers as every other drug on earth.
Because while scientists can debate the possible side-effects
to cannabis; alcohol and nicotine have much more obvious, much
more serious, and extremely non-debatable “adverse side
effects” (you know, like death) especially when used heavily.
Nobody with common sense needs to see a psychological study
to prove the causation between these legal drugs and life threatening
side effects. Then again, perhaps pot smokers really should
look at Professor Fergusson’s data and see if there is
anything worth being concerned about in it. After all, he did
a controlled study and he found a pattern that must indicate
something. Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project and
psychology professor Mitch Earleywine have examined the study
in detail and explained a little more about what the findings
mean in the following passage from their alternet.org posting.
“Psychotic symptoms were measured using 10 items from
something called Symptom Checklist 90. Participants were asked
if they had certain ideas, feelings or beliefs that commonly
accompany psychotic states. The researchers did not look at
actual diagnoses, and the symptom checklist is not identical
to the formal diagnostic criteria listed in the DSM-IV manual.
Perhaps most important, they only used 10 "representative"
items from a much larger questionnaire. These 10 items focus
heavily on paranoid thoughts or feelings, such as "feeling
other people cannot be trusted," "feeling you are
being watched or talked about by others," "having
ideas or beliefs that others do not share." This presents
a big methodological problem, because it is well known that
paranoid feelings are a fairly common effect of being high on
marijuana.”
But the article gives no indication that respondents were asked
to distinguish between feelings experienced while high and feelings
experienced at other times. Thus, we are left with no indication
at all as to whether these supposed psychotic symptoms are long-term
effects or simply the normal, passing effects of marijuana intoxication.
While it's possible the researchers had these data and didn't
see a need to report them, the failure to do so is downright
bizarre. It's like reporting that people who go to bars are
more erratic drivers than people who don't, without bothering
to look at whether they'd been drinking at the time their driving
skills were assessed.
Even if these were long-term effects, the researchers seem
not to have considered that what might be an indication of psychosis
in other circumstances could be an entirely normal reaction
for people who use marijuana. Consider: Someone using a substance
that is both illegal and socially frowned-upon almost by definition
has "ideas or beliefs that others do not share." This
is not a sign of mental illness. It's a sign of a rational person
realistically assessing his or her situation.
The same goes for "feeling other people cannot be trusted."
Just ask Robin Prosser, the Montana medical marijuana patient
arrested last summer on possession charges by the cops who came
to save her life after she'd attempted suicide because she was
in unbearable pain after running out of medicine.
Fergusson reports very little raw data, so we don't know which
symptoms came up most often, or whether the differences in average
levels of symptoms between users and non-users came from a few
people having a lot of symptoms or a lot of people having a
couple symptoms. The heavy-user group, with the highest levels
of supposed psychosis, reported an average of less than two
symptoms each.”
Mirken and Earleywine’s analysis highlights the problem
that this study has been based on an interpretation of symptoms
and how valid those symptoms are for a given cannabis user.
In almost all of the other literature concerning the search
for pot-induced psychosis that I’ve come across, the few
case studies referenced in each all contain incredibly vague,
subjective symptoms that the doctors used to define the subjects.
The most commonly referenced “symptoms” of “pot-psychosis”
include such precise clinical terms as “Confusion”,
“Disorientation”, “Paranoia”, “Mental
Disturbances” and the all-inclusive “Behavioral
Changes”. I mean, come on, Confusion? Disorientation?
These can’t be real symptoms of psychosis when considered
in light of cannabis use. It sounds more like we’ve proven
that pot gets you stoned than pot makes you crazy. Then there’s
the obvious “Paranoia”. That’s the clinical
term that redefines a totally valid fear of going to jail for
smoking flowers into a symptom of psychosis. Mental disturbances
and behavioral changes are the worst, though. Think about that.
A psychologist sees that you’ve changed the way you think
and the way you act in the world following cannabis use and
you’ve chalked up two more symptoms of psychosis. Don’t
forget, the heavy-user group in the trial, with the highest
levels of supposed psychosis, reported an average of less than
two symptoms each. I just listed five commonly experienced facets
of the marijuana experience and all of them could be used against
you, the marijuana smoker, as “symptoms” if you
were evaluated for psychosis.
Without the ability to prove a consistent trend across a populous
larger than one case study at a time, government scare tactics
have resorted to the exploitation of these singular extreme
cases marred by hosts of variables other than cannabis use as
seen in the Four Corners special. In almost all of these case
studies, there is evidence of pre-existing psychological conditions
or other drug use, primarily methamphetamine use (which has
always been a major contributing factor to all sorts of mental
illnesses, especially schizophrenia). But this government supported,
pseudo-psychology’s misguided struggle to find cause-and-effect
explanations to complex human behaviors that encompass thousands
of simultaneous social and biochemical variables is a favorite
medium for anti-cannabis propaganda because interest groups
can take a simple, narrow minded claim that has no consistent,
viable data to back it up and portray it as the gospel truth
simply because a man in a lab coat is seen standing in front
of a pie-chart created by the correlation between confusion
and psychosis. The face of anti-cannabis scare tactics may have
changed substantially since the first time we saw the ridiculous
Reefer Madness addict laughing maniacally to the sound of that
piano in his “marihuana psychosis”, but the idea
of curbing cannabis use by inventing irrational fears for the
public has stayed virtually the same over the last 70 years.
I’d probably even call it Déjà vu for how
similar it all seems, but I’m afraid that along with my
unconventional beliefs and the occasional paranoia that someone
might put me in jail, the déjà vu would count
as some sort of “time distortion” on a survey and
put me over the symptoms limit that would clearly define me
as psychotic.
