I didn't sidestep alcohol. If a player is an alcoholic it can derail his career just as easily as drugs. But the reality is that one legal within the norm and the other is not. Weed proponents point to alcohol at as comparison and make silly statements like one is addictive while the other (weed) is not. Randy Gregory has an weed problem. It's not a stretch to assume he's addicted to the drug at this point since he can't stay clean with millions of dollars hanging in the balance. That's not normal.
Using anxiety to excuse his behavior is an insult to those folks who have anxiety and try to cope with it with medical treatment and carry on with their daily routines (work, family, etc.). Randy Gregory has more medical resources to help him cope with any health issues than most average Americans and he still can't stay off the drug. It has nothing to do with immaturity.
So maybe not such an easy dismissal on Medical Marijuana helping with Anxiety.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ing-pot-doesnt-make-you-anxious-or-depressed/
Study: Smoking pot doesn’t make you anxious or depressed
Christopher Ingraham February 17, 2016
seanbjack/Flickr
New research published today in the journal of JAMA Psychiatry found found that using marijuana as an adult is
not associated with a variety of mood and anxiety disorders, including depression and bipolar disorder.
This is a challenge to
some previous research which
has shown that marijuana use is associated with depression and anxiety.
The researchers examined the records of nearly 35,000 U.S. adults who participated in the
National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. They examined the prevalence of marijuana use among the study participants in 2001 and 2002, then checked on the participants' rates of mental-health problems three years later in 2004 and 2005.
After controlling for a variety of confounding factors, such as socio-demographic characteristics, family history and environment, and past and present psychiatric disorders, the study found that "cannabis use was not associated with increased risk for developing mood or anxiety disorders."
Don't break out the celebratory blunt just yet, though. The study
did find an association between marijuana use and later substance-use disorders, such as abuse of and dependence on alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and other drugs. But this isn't necessarily surprising: It's fairly obvious that if you use a substance, you're putting yourself at risk of a substance-use disorder.
People who use one drug often use others — think of the classic beer-and-cigarette combo. This is as true of marijuana as it is of, say, alcohol. "The findings concerning cannabis raise the question of whether alcohol use also contributes to the risk of subsequent substance use disorders," lead author Mark Olfson of Columbia University said in an email. But that issue is beyond the scope of the current study, he added.
The findings on mental health are more interesting, given the conflicting picture portrayed by previous research. But Olfson and his colleagues think some prior evidence of links between marijuana and psychiatric disorders could be due more to confounding factors than anything else.
Olfson's research is "a strike against the hypothesis that cannabis uses causes mood and anxiety disorders," said Keith Humphreys, an addiction and mental-health specialist at Stanford University, in an email. He notes, however, that the new study does not address a
previously observed linkbetween heavy marijuana use and schizophrenia. But, he added, the causality of that connection is far from clear. "I don't know if we will ever know because it's just hard to predict rare events, and schizophrenia is rare," he said.
The new study adds to
prior research discrediting the connection between marijuana and common mental-health disorders. And it's important, because much of the federal government's current literature on marijuana includes claims about links between marijuana and depression that are inaccurate in light of the latest findings.
For instance, the Drug Enforcement Administration makes these claims in
its official fact sheet on marijuana. And in its 2014 publication, "
The Dangers and Consequences of Marijuana Abuse," the DEA mentions "depression" no fewer than 14 times, claiming that pot is linked to depression among teens, adults and even dogs.
Given that these documents are used to inform policy at the federal level and below, it is crucial that they reflect the best, most accurate research. This is especially true given the rapidly changing marijuana-policy landscape today.
Christopher Ingraham writes about politics, drug policy and all things data. He previously worked at the Brookings Institution and the Pew Research Center.
