General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Pregnant pot smokers can damage kids' brains [View all]RainDog
(28,784 posts)People are skeptical because of the knowledge of studies that, for instance, suffocated monkeys by denying them oxygen which were used to claim marijuana killed brain cells and were used to counter reform of marijuana laws.
People wanted to read the research for themselves but it was withheld. (This was during Reagan's presidency.)
In 1980, Playboy and NORML finally received for the first timeafter six years of requests and suing the governmentan accurate accounting of the research procedures used in the infamous report:
As reported in Playboy, the Heath Voodoo Research methodology involved strapping Rhesus monkeys into a chair and pumping them with equivalent of 63 Colombian strength joints in five minutes, through gas masks, losing no smoke. Playboy discovered that Heath had administered 63 joints in five minutes over just three months instead of administering 30 joints per day over a one-year period as he had first reported. Heath did this, it turned out, in order to avoid having to pay an assistants wages every day for a full year.
So, in that case, the researcher lied about methodology, in addition to performing substandard work.
As I mention, below, there have been long-term studies of children of mothers who both smoked and drank cannabis during pregnancy and those children did not show any negative effect. This study was within a culture that views cannabis as part of the culture in various ways.
This research could not get further funding in the U.S., as Dreher noted, because it didn't uphold the prejudices of the drug warriors.
So, if someone is making a judgment based upon prior knowledge of cannabis propaganda in the U.S., the rational response would be to question any research that the drug warriors tout.
If the U.S. govt. itself had not conspired to withhold information, across decades, such a response would not be warranted. But it did. Therefore, everyone should be initially skeptical because of this attempt to mislead the American public.