A Blog About Marijuana

Every time the topic of marijuana comes up, there will be one party that says, “Marijuana is so much better for you than alcohol!” whilst another party will say, “But there’s a reason why it’s illegal!” I always said the latter, and I always knew it was such a terrible point of argument mainly because I never even knew the reason.

So, I decided to do my own research instead of having close-minded notions based on what others tell me about marijuana.

Just remember, I am not trying to persuade anyone to do or do not do anything. I just wanted to research all this for myself so I have a better understanding, and I thought it would be cool to let others know too.

I did a lot of research (mainly just shallow Googling), and all my links and references are at the bottom of the blog. I hate reading long paragraphs of stuff so I did my best to try and summarise everything I read (but it’s still quite long sorry). Also, because it was shallow Googling, the reliability and stuff of the websites I guess aren’t very good, but I do have quite a lot of research from my Psych textbooks and stuff too.



SO HERE GOES:

The Innocent Days:

Marijuana has spent the majority of time being legal and even a critical resource

The hemp plant was used for food, cloth, rope and sometimes even as tax payment

The first American law related to marijuana was actually one requiring it to be grown by all farmers


Mexicans, Mormons and Musicians:

Crossing the border, cheap labour and The Depression caused Americans to hate the Mexicans

The Mexicans brought marijuana to smoke

Mormons were influence by the Mexicans and started smoking marijuana too

“In Texas, a senator said on the floor of the Senate: “All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff [marijuana] is what makes them crazy.””

Shortly after, “preparations of hemp” were prohibited in states with large Mexican-American populations

Marijuana was also popularised by Latin-America and black jazz musicians which led to weird and fearful rumours of kidnappings and assassinations carried out by these so-called drugged maniacs

“Newspapers in 1934 editorialized: “Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows and look at a white woman twice.””

Blatant Racism:
Some guy called Harry J. Anslinger manipulated the facts about marijuana in the attempt to boost his career. This quote pretty much sums up everything:

“There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others.”
This guy had a friend called William Randolf Hearst who owned a chain of newspapers and absolutely hated Mexicans, a convenient combination.


I’m a bit lazy so let’s skip to…
Marijuana in Australia:

Pretty much the same innocence as in America

Only known as ‘cannabis’, it became popular during the Victorian times, with Queen Victoria herself a noted user

THAT SAME GUY Harry J. Anslinger spread his campaign to Australia, resulting in the drug to be outlawed in 1938

“For this generation of Australians, cannabis was to be "the dreaded sex drug marihuana". It was an "Evil Sex Drug" which causes "it's victim's to behave like raving sex maniacs."”

Americans renaming it to ‘marijuana’ helped mask the fact that this “Evil Sex Drug” was the very same one they had been using their whole lives

Down the line in 1975, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam condemned this US policy and intended to legalise marijuana in Australia, yet was dismissed in one of the most controversial events of Australian history

After this, the Conservatives brought back the “War on drugs”


So that’s basically the history of it. There’s little to no scientific influence or legitimate health concerns that have resulted in the outlawing of marijuana, so here is a summation of the good and bad of marijuana:

Physical problems:

Smoking marijuana can damage your lungs in the same way smoking tobacco can, including respiratory diseases and maybe even lung cancer (but the data and results for lung cancer are quite inconsistent)

It is unclear whether marijuana reduces one’s immune response as marijuana smokers do not appear to get infectious diseases any more than non-users

Research suggests that there isn’t really any harm relating to male fertility or sexual functioning


Addiction:

Marijuana is second to alcohol when it comes to substance dependence in the U.S.

It shares some features of addictive drugs, including tolerance (needing to take more to get the same effect) and withdrawal symptoms in heavy users (and by heavy, I mean users that are pretty much taking it every day) that have similar levels of discomfort as tobacco withdrawal

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Mental Problems
(But there is more research needed in this area):

Regular use doubles the risk of developing a psychotic episode or long-term schizophrenia

Regular use increases the risk of depression, with daily users being five times more likely to develop depression and anxiety later in life

The earlier and more you use marijuana, the more likely you are to develop schizophrenia. This is particularly relevant in those under 15 years old and even continues on through teenage years because brain development and neural pruning still occurs

Those with family backgrounds of mental illnesses would have a genetic vulnerability and thus are more likely to develop mental health problems such as schizophrenia


Other Problems:

Drug-impaired driving can increase the chances of being involved in car accidents resulting in injuries or even deaths

Marijuana is used as an “entryway drug” which means that it could lead to testing of other more severe drugs which may be extremely dangerous

There is a very weak connection between marijuana use and poor school or work performance, but marijuana use does result in more mistakes at work

Generally the problems marijuana users get are only for those who are very heavy users and these problems include attention and memory impairments even when users are not high, however these problems are “modest and certainly not disabling, and one study found that the deficits vanished after a month of marijuana abstinence”

There’s some stuff about tax that I don’t really understand but seems interesting if you want to check it out yourself

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Medical Uses:

It can be used as medicine in a variety of ways other than smoking because of the tetrahydrocannabinol or THC present in it

It is effective in relieving chronic pains and symptoms of diseases such as cancer, glaucoma, AIDS, and HIV and is also good for treating nausea, migraines, appetite loss, and other illnesses


Comparison with Other Drugs:
Here is a lovely table from my Psych textbook:

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As you can see, marijuana is not as bad as alcohol and other drugs like cocaine (stimulant) and heroin (narcotic).

If we look at the drug-related deaths, we see that marijuana actually has the lowest percentage of deaths. Note that it does not actually cause fatal overdoses and that the 6% of deaths are mainly because of drug-impaired driving:

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Click picture to enlarge in new tab

Also, this table on drug-related harms shows that cannabis is in the middle, lower than legalised alcohol, tobacco and even some prescription drugs:

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Here are two unrelated images, but they do make you think a bit more about this stuff:

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Click picture to enlarge in new tab


In conclusion, I hope this has helped you understand a bit more about marijuana and its effects. I personally wouldn’t take marijuana because it’s illegal. But in saying that, piracy is illegal and I know a lot of people who pirate things and chewing gum is illegal in Singapore but obviously there’s not much that’s wrong with chewing gum. Sometimes things are illegal for good reasons and sometimes they’re not. I think we’ve established that marijuana falls into the latter. Even if it were legalised I don’t know what I would do, but even with all this newfound knowledge it’s really hard for me to change my mind about certain things. However, I am much more open-minded to this sort of thing, but I would still frown upon anyone who would want to take marijuana on a regular basis (because this actually does lead to negative health effects and such). I honestly have no idea where I stand with this and I just wanted to present all these facts to you guys so you can make your own informed opinions.

Hope you enjoyed this =]



Bibliography:
(Click on links to open in new tab)
A lot of research was obtained from my Psych textbook “Psychology Themes and Variations” pages 214 and 216 of the 9th edition for those who have it. The tables and diagrams came from the textbook, the CD that came with the textbook and my Neuroscience lecture notes.

Why is Marijuana Illegal?

The History of Cannabis in Australia

Why We Should Not Legalize Marijuana

Learn About the Advantages and Disadvantages of Marijuana Use

Medical Marijuana

Legal Marijuana’s Advantages and Disadvantages

Cannabis and Mental Health

First Uni Holidays!

YAY exams are finished! It wasn't as hectic as I thought it would be, having four exams in three days, with Psych and Business in the same day. It was acutally pretty good, I think I did alright. My biggest worry is Business - I'm not sure if I got enough to pass the course! But OH WELL what can I do?!

Anyway, so after exams were finished I finally cleaned my desk! Even the drawers, how exciting! And obviously I changed my blogskin as well! And in the process I got rid of my cbox, because it was filled with spam! I'm trying to get comments on the blogs, does anyone know how to do this?!

Also, I made new labels/tags for my blogs, including Artsy Fartsy, where all my drawings, paintings and even just simple non-serious artworks are, as well as Cooking Adventures, where all the stuff I have cooked is. Yay!



In my last blog post, I forgot to mention some cool things that happened during my blogging hiatus.

Most recently, I won a competition (again! Maybe next blog I'll tell you how to increase your chances of winning a competition!)to meet Justine Schofield from Masterchef Season One!! It was a private meet and greet before she did her cooking demonstration in North Rocks Westfield.

This is us two together!

She signed my cookbook I brought

As well as giving me one of her aprons that she signed herself!

And she was making crepes so she got me to help with her demonstration!

Here I am failing at flipping the crepe. I can't even flip a normal crepe or pancake in a light pan, let alone this heavy cast-iron non-crepe pan! =[

Another thing is for Diwan's 18th birthday I made him a mosaic!

This took so long!

I started early in January because I knew I was going to spend one month on holiday, and I obviously couldn't do it whilst on holiday!

His birthday was at the end of March so I thought I'd have plenty of time, I got all the easy bits out of the way before I went overseas and thought I could finish it easily in time for his birthday.

I was so wrong!

It was so hard to find the time to do it, because I knew that to do it properly, I had to be:
1) In the mood
2) Able to concentrate
3) Free for a few hours (at least two)

The last week of February I was still tired from returning to Australia, so I didn't do too much, then after that was uni! Even though we didn't have many assessments and all that I felt so mentally drained, this stuff was tiring work!

HERE'S HOW I DID IT (skip if you're not interested, it's kinda long):

I first got a picture of Diwan and used Photoshop to pixellate the different sections of the picture.
Then I got an A3 piece of cardboard and measured it and determined what the sizes of my squares were going to be.
I drew it all up, got myself some double-sided sticky tape and paint sample cards from Bunnings (I know, how cheap of me, but I tried it with coloured paper and I just couldn't get it right because I needed several different tones that were similar to each other!).

THEN THE HARD PART.

At first I did the mosaic section by section, so the large bits like the hair and the background were done first, then the medium-sized squares in the face. That was easy but super tedious: measuring, ruling lines, cutting squares, cutting sticky tape, arranging colours until it looks alright, peeling and sticking.

The ear was a bit trickier because squares were getting a bit smaller and even a millimeter of a difference was WAY TOO BIG.

The right eye (to us it's the left one) was crazy because the squares were so small! I started using tweezers to hold the cardboard so I could cut it, then because the squares were so small I had to put the sticky tape on the cardboard first and use the tweezers to place it down.

That eye and the edge of the face were about the same size but for some reason the edge of the face was SO HARD. I think it's because there were sooo many. I couldn't possibly divide it up by section because the colours were too similar and all over the place, so instead I divided it by colour! I got a lot of paper and drew out the section, numbered each square and grouped numbers according to similar colours. Then I coded the numbers to what colour of the paint samples I needed them to be. Some colours I first separated had to be joined again because of the limited amount of colours I had, even though I had quite a lot of different tones!

The lips were the hardest of that. It is so hard to get lips right! Even when drawing, one slightly darker shade and the guy just looks so stupid. One slightly smaller line and the guy looks too feminine. So when I was doing the lips, I did it once and it took me at least 3 hours. I looked at it from afar (the only good way to judge how something like this is going) and he looked like the biggest derp! The lips were too big and dark! I realised I didn't actually have the colours I needed so I went back to Bunnings and got more reddy-purply-pinky colours. To make sure I didn't have to come back again to get colours I was missing, I just went crazy and got all these colours in different tones, I picked out some pinkier, lighter colours than I thought was needed, and even some darker, more maroon-type colours than I thought was needed.

It turns out I needed some of them, because when you put a colour like bright pink next to a dull pink, it seems really really bright, but when you put it next to a brown or something, it might actually appear a bit duller than you hoped it would! Especially when the squares are so small and can't really make an impact!

So yeh I just ripped off all the stuff I did for the lips (ALL THREE HOURS BLOOD SWEAT AND TEARS GONE!) and I re-did it!

AND FINALLY IT WAS DONE!

I bought a frame for it and he really enjoyed it! He hung it up in his room (or so he says). I'm so glad! It took so long and at the end of each session I had a massive headache and my eyes were straining and my hands were so tired and my brain was gone.

If anyone would ask me to do it again, I wouldn't. But it was definitely worth it!



OKAY THAT'S THE END OF THAT SUPER BORING AND LONG PROCESS!

Coming up in the next few blogs:

-Reviews on lots of stuff including board games, tv, movies and more!
-The blog about weed I mentioned before (I shall start continuing my research soon!)
-Stories, drawings and songs (MAYBE!)



And ah, the beloved links!

30 Random Surprising Facts

Differences Between Art

How to Make a Baby

Top 75 Pictures of the Day for 2012
It's long but it's worth it!

16 Striking Gifs of Chemical Physical Reactions

LONG TIME NO BLOG!

Took it's time but I'm back to blogging! Yay!

At first I thought I could get away with just blogging as if nothing ever happened but alas, I feel like some explanation is needed.

WELL...

I wasn't really blogging that much after December. I even had a draft lined up that said:

"due date

hugo

wrath of the titans

limitless

tin tin

hobbit"
So as you can see I was going to blog about all these movies. Somehow I managed to write them all in as I wrote the draft but then maybe I just got uninterested and decided to do something else and I never got back to it!

In all honesty I WAS going to blog again after February the 24th because that was the day I came back from Malaysia!

I went over there for about a month and I had taken all these lovely pictures! My mum and I went over to visit family, and we also went to Singapore for 5 days where we stayed at the amazing Marina Bay Sands Hotel for 2 nights. It was beautiful. Singapore's architecture is simply astonishing and the infinity was pretty cool too! Except over the side you could see where all the water drained out and it kind of ruined it but oh well!

And then by the time we came back to Malaysia, my great-grandmother (my mother's mother's mother) was in hospital! It was so sad, eventually she passed away at the ripe age of 93. I remember visiting her in her nursing home just about the day before we left for Singapore and I cried because the conditions of Malaysian nursing homes are seriously shocking! The place smelt like urine, the so-called nurses were teasing the patients with food, pulling back their hands as it neared the mouths of the elderly, almost torturing them!

But yes after she passed away we cremated her and placed her urn right next to my great-grandfather who had died I think ten years ago. And then we realised it just happened to be Valentine's Day that day, so they were finally reunited ngawww <3 <3 ~~

And what else is there...

I wanted to blog after I came back from Malaysia but I just was too lazy to sift through all the photos we had taken! And then Uni life came up and I just totally forgot about blogging!

What has happened so far in Uni...Let's see...

Well for those who don't know, I'm doing Commerce (Liberal Studies) at USYD (GO USYD!) and yeah, what can I say...

For semester one I had a three day timetable which was exciting, except two days were 9am starts and I just HATED it because I had to wake up at 7am when it was freezing cold. I would layer up then by 10am it would start to get a bit warmer and I'd have to carry all my layers around. Also the traffic was terrible catching the bus around 8am! I also had a lecture that finished at 5:30pm and I had the same problems with traffic and eventually stopped going.

Imagine this: You catch the bus at 7:45am and you get to Railway Square at 8:20am or so (and I always walked to Uni so going early never was a problem), but if you caught the bus at 8am you would get to Railway Square at like 9am!!! The difference was crazy! Also once I finished at 5:30pm and I got home at like 7:30pm, then the next week I finished 15 minutes earlier and got home at 6:30pm instead! How crazy is that!

It's mainly because of the M2 construction though; the traffic in the city is annoying but the M2 traffic is MORE annoying. Good thing now that it's actually progressed quite a bit since the beginning of semester so the traffic doesn't affect the buses as much as it does now and I can get to the city even quicker!

But yeah, what else is there about uni I can tell you? I want to major in Marketing, Management (or maybe Human Resources Management because someone told me that they're pretty much the same except HR gets you more jobs) and Psychology!

Psychology is soooooooooooo interesting I cannot stress it enough but it's SO HARD! Studying for the exam oh my goodness! It's 100 multiple choice, but one of our Psych lecturers (we have six, for six different topics...yikes!) was like, "You may be thinking, 'Oh, multiple choice, that's easy!' But remember, we are PSYCHOLOGISTS.... WE INVENTED THE MULTIPLE CHOICE!"

*sigh*

Oh and no! I'm not procrastinating right now I've actually planned out my studies and I finished my studies for today quite early so I just went and watched Monsters, Inc. and now I'm blogging yay!

I also did Linguistics which is the study of language, at first it was super interesting but it got really boring at the end half because it was so repetitive and analytical. It's my Arts subject though, so I don't need to give my attention to it and the test is open-book and practical anyway so I can't really study for it.

The Business subjects are so dry; Understanding Business and Marketing Principles were terrible. I hope it's just because they are junior units =[

And exams are soon and I've studied quite a bit for them and even though I am quite stressed out I suppose I can't really do anything about it!

Oooh and I just got my timetable for next semester; gonna have three-day weeks again yay! Well, I have a lecture on Monday but I'm not gonna go to Uni just for that...

And my earliest class is at 10am and my latest is at 4:30pm so life is good!


Anyway apart from that, nothing exciting has really been going on in my life recently; or not that I can think of on the spot.

Sorry this is probably quite a boring blog, but coming up in the next few blogs:

-A change of blogskin (after exams) because it's so dark and small and the background picture isn't even working anymore
-Back to stumbleupon links (although admittedly I stopped stumbling as well, but maybe I'll get back into it in the holidays)
-Talking about board games I recently encountered
-The thing I'm looking forward to the most: A blog about weed! I started doing some research on marijuana, namely it's effects and why it was even illegalised in the first place. I'm compiling them up (actually I started in like February and yeah, once again I stopped doing that) and it'll be done in the holidays
-Hopefully I can finish the story I've been writing (once again, I stopped writing it after I got stuck on a little point, wow I'm the worst! I'm not even sure if I can find the pieces of paper I scribbled it on!)
-Drawings! I really want to draw some A Song of Ice and Fire (or A Game of Thrones for non-readers) characters!
-Lastly, maybe some songs. But this may not happen because, yes you guessed it, I stopped playing piano once Uni started and I stopped playing guitar once I realised it was really hard for me to hold down the notes, but maybe I can try again =]
-I think removing my chatbox would be a good idea, there are too many spammers there!


But in the meantime, happyhappy times ahead for studying and even more so for post-exam break!

Looking forward to it and good luck everybody!