2010-03-07T20:27:20Z tag:www.doctortom.org,2010://1 Movable Type Copyright (c) 2010, tjeffo 2010-03-07T20:27:20Z 2010-03-07T18:21:32Z tag:www.doctortom.org,2010://1.659 2010-03-07T18:21:32Z

Despite the refusal of conventional media and spineless politicians (is there any other kind?) to face reality, I’ve been predicting that a sea change in public opinion on cannabis prohibition should begin rather abruptly in 2011 and become increasingly evident with each passing year. That forecast was based primarily on the demographics of the population of pot applicants I’ve been...

tjeffo http://doctortom.org/ tjeffo@comcast.net Dr. Tom's Blog
An additional (anecdotal) finding I haven’t tried to quantify statistically, but have found remarkably consistent, is that seniors of my own generation (the deluded "moral majority" that elected Nixon in 1968) who never tried pot themselves are extremely resistant to ever using it, even after incurring physical conditions it’s known to palliate. On the other hand, people who tried it during their teens are far more open to its medical use, whether they'd used it in the interim or not. In other words, getting high as an adolescent seems to confer lifetime permission for later medical use, should the need arise.

Quite by accident, I stumbled across a non-medical journal with a vested interest in the health of seniors and discovered that it had done an impressive survey in 2005 that tended to confirm the implications of my data even then. It’s thus even more clear to me that as pot-savvy seniors gradually replace their fathers and grandfathers in the electorate, the politicians they choose will have to reflect their views; that’s particularly true if the crazies now running the American asylum get their fondest wish and defeat Obama’s (not-so-great) health care initiative.

Entirely in keeping with the disconnect that seems to afflict those in authority, the forces of prohibition have looked at the same data and come up with an entirely different interpretation.

We shouldn't have long to wait for an answer; I predict that by 2016 (perhaps even before), there will be a viable cannabis legalization bill before Congress.

Doctor Tom]]> 2010-03-05T03:30:52Z 2010-03-03T16:43:40Z tag:www.doctortom.org,2010://1.657 2010-03-03T16:43:40Z

Just why Harry Anslinger selected a relatively obscure Mexican slang term for demonizing inhaled cannabis in 1937 remains just as uncertain as solid evidence of why he did so remains scarce; nevertheless, subsequent developments make it clear that whatever market for “reefer” might have existed in 1937 must have been small and remained that way until the mid-Sixties; when it...

tjeffo http://doctortom.org/ tjeffo@comcast.net Dr. Tom's Blog Harry Anslinger selected a relatively obscure Mexican slang term for demonizing inhaled cannabis in 1937 remains just as uncertain as solid evidence of why he did so remains scarce; nevertheless, subsequent developments make it clear that whatever market for “reefer” might have existed in 1937 must have been small and remained that way until the mid-Sixties; when it began growing to its present size, best described as enormous, but unmeasurable.

In any event, ignorance and carelessness are painfully obvious in the Marijuana Tax Act’s legislative history; not to mention the incoherence and adverse social impact of the Controlled Substances Act by which the Nixon Administration expanded the MTA in 1970. That such “thinking” remains at the heart of official policy in both the US and the UN is solid evidence that current world leadership is sadly lacking; even as our species struggles with unprecedented levels of pollution, overpopulation, climate change, and depletion of critical resources.

Most revealing of all may be the reluctance of those in authority to even acknowledge the obvious, a trait known as denial. Cartoonist Walt Kelly may have said it best when he observed through his character Pogo that “we have met the enemy and he is us.”

How these gloomy observations relate to my ongoing study of marijuana use is becoming clearer to me by the day; even as any hope they will provoke a degree of recognition in people with the power to influence policy fades. President Obama's victory inspired many to believe the "change" he claimed to represent would favor their particular issues; none more than myself. Indeed, he is a poster boy for my typical pot smoker: an academically gifted bi-racial outcast raised by a single mother whose only known contact with his biological father had been a two hour meeting at an airport. He'd also acknowledged he'd once been high on weed, and tried other illegal drugs. Finally, he's known to have an intractable cigarette habit. What better American President could I have hoped for?

Alas, that hope is running out; he seems far too nice a guy to do all the things I want him to do between now and 2012: find some advisers with balls, fire the entire DEA, and take on opposition yahoos directly for their obvious stupidity instead of acting like a bipartisan wuss.

Doctor Tom ]]> 2010-02-19T05:27:08Z 2010-02-19T03:28:58Z tag:www.doctortom.org,2010://1.655 2010-02-19T03:28:58Z

I was pleasantly surprised by a headline above the fold of this morning’s print edition of the SF Chronicle (how long can it survive? I’m always forced to wonder) reporting that “Clinical trials show medical benefits of pot.” That news wasn’t news to me, but the long-delayed recognition of pot’s efficacy in MS was gratifying, particularly because I have painful...

tjeffo http://doctortom.org/ tjeffo@comcast.net Dr. Tom's Blog reporting that “Clinical trials show medical benefits of pot.” That news wasn’t news to me, but the long-delayed recognition of pot’s efficacy in MS was gratifying, particularly because I have painful memories of sitting through two Larry King specials devoted to new developments in MS during which neither the words “marijuana” nor “cannabis” were even mentioned. I found the denial infuriating because I knew how rigorously the producers would have had to either screen or censor their not-quite celebrity guests to maintain such drug war purity.

So much for the good news; the bad news was that most of the money made available way back in 1999 has been spent and a program that is finally producing results is in danger of being starved financially.

Of course, it would never occur to the “bona fide” researchers in Academia or the wannabe scientific experts from ASA and NORML that a lot of non-criminals have been breaking America’s stupid drug laws for decades to treat not only multiple sclerosis, but a lot of other conditions as well. As a matter of fact, the people who have been applying for medical legitimacy under the provisions of California's Proposition 215 for over thirteen years are a valuable resource that's been shamefully neglected by self-appointed experts in both Academia and “reform” for far too long.

What might have opened their eyes a bit sooner could have been a few more pot docs willing to take decent medical histories and publish their results.

Doctor Tom

]]> 2010-02-15T23:20:55Z 2010-02-15T18:47:12Z tag:www.doctortom.org,2010://1.654 2010-02-15T18:47:12Z

That there are considerable differences between smoked and orally ingested cannabis is emphasized by use of the term “body high” to describe the effects of “edibles.” That federal policy makers still don’t understand either those differences or their physiologic bases is made clear from their failure to discuss them and from their subsidization of Marinol. Whatever its basis, the general...

tjeffo http://doctortom.org/ tjeffo@comcast.net Dr. Tom's Blog Marinol.

Whatever its basis, the general silence on those issues adds up to an indictment of both American drug policy and the intellectual honesty of our species as well as a suggestion that our tendency to deny unpleasant reality may be a serious human weakness.

To start with basic anatomy and physiology: taking "drugs" into the body (ingestion) is possible through a variety of mechanisms. When they can be volatilized by heating and then inhaled as vapor (“smoked”) the lung becomes an organ of ingestion. Since pulmonary venous blood drains directly into the heart, there's no faster way for cannabinoids to reach the brain. That’s also true of the nicotine in cigarettes and cocaine when it was processed into “crack” after ether extraction proved so unsafe.

Unlike drugs ingested by smoking, those we swallow must be digested in the gut and absorbed into the hepatic portal circulation thus delaying their arrival at the brain and exposing them to modification by the liver before they get there. It's slowest of all when the stomach is full and also explains why the effects of edible pot can’t be readily titrated.

There are other differences, all added by the liver, which not only receives the lion's share of pot’s pharmacologically active ingredients after an edible is consumed, but also adds three of its own, presumably by the same process of molecular deconstruction that characterizes its major function in other animals.

1) Pot’s duration of action is extended to three hours or longer after oral ingestion.

2) A degree of muscle relaxation that seems significantly greater than after smoking is noted by nearly all. Intense enough to interfere with most physical activity, it's the most common reason cited for avoiding edibles.

3) The nocioceptive (pain relieving) properties of smoked pot are intensified; an observation made most commonly by those with neuropathic pain (pain of nerve origin).

That these differences have not been addressed by either Big Pharma or Academia becomes readily understandable within the current setting of criminalization in which all “legal” cannabis intended for research must first be approved by the DEA and can then only be obtained from the federal marijuana farm in Mississippi.

Doctor Tom ]]> 2010-02-14T19:06:09Z 2010-02-14T18:03:09Z tag:www.doctortom.org,2010://1.653 2010-02-14T18:03:09Z

Because the population I’ve been studying since late 2001 consists entirely of Californians seeking a doctor’s approval to use pot under the terms of Proposition 215, all have experienced the marijuana “high;” itself a unique phenomenon erroneously considered by those who never experienced it as the equivalent of alcohol intoxication As every experienced pot smoker knows, nothing could be further...

tjeffo http://doctortom.org/ tjeffo@comcast.net About Dr. Tom's Blog
As every experienced pot smoker knows, nothing could be further from the truth; although getting high and getting drunk are the expected effects of both drugs, they are very different. Both are also very common events. With the single exception of seeking a “head rush from a cigarette, getting high on “weed” and drunk on “booze,” at well under the legal age- have been rites of passage for over half of all Americans since the University of Michigan (and later the federal government) began doing their surveys of youth in the Seventies. The cannabis applicants I’ve been studying do report trying all three at about the same average ages and well before trying any other illegal agents.

Their drug initiation patterns and other data also confirm that federal drug policy officials, their critics in "reform," and most academic drug policy experts have not developed an accurate picture of human marijuana use; initially because of imposed ignorance before 1997; more recently it seems to be denial. For over 13 years Proposition 215 has been allowing something the DEA and NIDA had successfully blocked from their beginnings in 1973 and 1975 respectively: unfettered medical access to a large population of illegal drug users. That the drug was marijuana, has been especially valuable because of the (unsuspected) role it has been playing in moderating the use of more problematic agents, literally since before Nixon’s election in 1968.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate still-prevalent ignorance is to discuss the marijuana high in terms of its clinical pharmacology, rather than in the obligatory rhetoric insisted upon ever since Nixon foreclosed unbiased clinical research by rejecting the Shafer Commission's plea in 1972.

The Inhaled High

Getting high begins when the first toke is almost immediately followed by a subjective feeling described by 80% of those surveyed as “relaxation.” The immediacy with which it is experienced confirms that whatever was in the smoke had an immediate effect on the brain, which is interesting, because at least half of all applicants report they failed to get high the first time they tried and many had to try several times before they were successful. Once successful however, a high is readily produced whenever one lights up.

More tokes are taken in relatively close succession until inevitably, one fails to enhance the high. This is important because it signals a refractory period during which additional tokes will simply be a waste of money. In essence the refractory period is also a signal the user is as high as it’s possible to get on that particular strain at that tme. Since both users and strains can vary considerably, it should not be surprising that one user may get high sooner than another, or that intensity vary. The dominant pharmacologic effect is anxiolytic; onset is rapid because the drug is smoked; dosage can be precisely titrated for the same reason. Finally, the high is evanescent; it’s over in about an hour. Another very important consideration is that the good feeling that came with the high can linger for another hour or more, depending on circumstances.

For some users, the termination of the high is an opportunity to light up again; but only if certain conditions exist: they must not be under hostile observation, they must be able to afford it, and they must be comfortable while high in the presence of “straights.” Since the normal response is the famous “paranoid’ reaction (an unpleasant feeling that straights know one is high and disapprove) how to overcome it to the point of being comfortable has to be learned. Thus some users are able to get high repeatedly throughout the day; however the refractory period guarantees that the effect is not cumulative, as it usually is with alcohol. Other than mild ataxia (a cerebellar effect) and a tendency to become hyperfocused on interesting phenomena, cognition is not impaired and is often enhanced.

As most pot users have discovered, the high produced by edibles is strikingly different than the one produced by inhalation. There are good reasons for that difference, but they haven’t been elucidated pharmacologically because “marijuana” is illegal. However 215 has allowed the differences to be recognized clinically and described in some detail. I’ll deal with the “body high” produced by edibles in another entry.

Doctor Tom ]]> 2010-02-28T03:44:13Z 2010-02-13T12:52:01Z tag:www.doctortom.org,2010://1.652 2010-02-13T12:52:01Z

In March, 1972, when President Richard Nixon summarily rejected the reasonable, but timid recommendation of the Shafer Commission to decriminalize marijuana add investigate its potential medical benefits, the federal government still lacked the agencies he would later create to carry out his “war on drugs.” Thus passed the last slim chance to restrain the wave of arrests already under way...

tjeffo http://doctortom.org/ tjeffo@comcast.net Dr. Tom's Blog Shafer Commission to decriminalize marijuana add investigate its potential medical benefits, the federal government still lacked the agencies he would later create to carry out his “war on drugs.” Thus passed the last slim chance to restrain the wave of arrests already under way as the nation’s police forces struggled to suppress the criminal market that had been created thirty-five years earlier by Harry Anslinger’s baseless Marijuana Tax Act.

Instead, that illegal market has continued growing steadily to its present enormous, but difficult-to-measure size, protected by the same ignorance and denial that has characterized “marijuana” law enforcement since 1937. Added to the current cost of the violence on our border with Mexico must be the lives destroyed by criminal prosecution of people for the “crime” of self-medicating with a safe, effective medicine; to say nothing of the mortality and morbidity incurred by those driven use its legal, but deadly alternatives: alcohol and tobacco. In retrospect, such costs are attributable to both Nixon’s rejection of the Shafer Commission’s plea and the compliant American media that allowed him to get away with it. Ironically, it would be the same media that would later drive Nixon from office for the relatively trivial Watergate affair, and is still in denial about both the size of the marijuana market and the enormous human cost of their own denial.

Indeed, the efforts of our species to implement a drug policy the UN adopted well before Nixon’s first term amply qualify as “insanity,” as defined by no less authority than Albert Einstein. In retrospect, what has been missed by those insisting on the necessity of marijuana suppression since the CSA became law has been any recognition of the sudden increase in the popularity of inhaled cannabis in the mid-Sixties, let alone questions about why "marijuana" became so popular when it did and is now the most sought-after illegal commodity on the planet.

Even more disturbing than the present grotesque failure of government, the media, or Academia to raise such questions is the world-wide denial that sustains our ignorance. When I first began blogging about what I've learned from the opportunity Proposition 215 offered for studying the behavior of pot smokers, I didn't realize the degree to which it would confirm the eminently sensible suspicions of Paul Maclean, which suggest there is an evolutionary basis for our paradoxical behavior as a species.

If he's right, our prognosis for a rational recovery is grave indeed, because it would have to be a first; our best hope may be that the non-violence of Ghandi, as encouraged by Einstein, might continue to find root as it did with MLK.

Doctor Tom ]]> 2010-02-12T06:03:03Z 2010-02-11T19:05:13Z tag:www.doctortom.org,2010://1.651 2010-02-11T19:05:13Z

In the last entry I referred to a temporal connection between Adolph Hitler’s consolidation of power in Germany and the passage of Harry Anslinger’s Marijuana Tax Act in 1937. Such connections were what talented science historian James Burke converted into books, a series of Scientific American columns and TV series on both sides of he Atlantic. With appropriate apologies to...

tjeffo http://doctortom.org/ tjeffo@comcast.net Dr. Tom's Blog James Burke converted into books, a series of Scientific American columns and TV series on both sides of he Atlantic. With appropriate apologies to him, the following will mention similar links between Hitler’s and Anslinger’s two permanent legacies: World War Two and the War on Drugs.

Neither war was the exclusive contribution of either culprit to world history. What they did share, other than being born just three years apart, was a rise from obscurity through combinations of luck, chutzpah, and intellectual dishonesty, plus the ability to seize unexpected opportunities to make a mark on history. Unfortunately for us, both succeeded.

Born in 1889, Hitler had an unhappy adversarial relationship with an elderly, strict father who died suddenly when he was ten. Orphaned four years later by his mother’s death from breast cancer, he was then a bohemian art student; also homeless for a while. Lucky to even survive daring service in World War One, his rhetorical gifts propelled him into a position of leadership in the Nazi party. Ten years after a hare-brained putsch in 1923, that he was also lucky to survive, he suddenly found himself positioned to assert complete control over a nation that shared his resentments and would follow his assertive leadership while also tolerating his virulent antisemitism.

Born on this side of the Atlantic just three years after Hitler, Harry Anslinger, had also learned fluent German (from Swiss-German immigrant parents). Towards the end of World War One, his language ability landed him a job with the Armistice Commission in Europe; he would not leave federal service until retiring on his seventieth birthday and then served as the First UN Commissioner of "Narcotics," a position from which he promoted America's drug policy into its global clone.

His big career break came in 1930 when his wife’s uncle, Andrew Mellon, then Secretary of the Treasury, elevated him from a mid level job in the Treasury's Prohibition unit (doomed to elimination following Reform) to serve as the first Director of the newly formed Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a position from which he quickly arrogated the same degree of control of American drug policy as Hitler had the seized over the German nation.

From 1937 on, the comparison becomes less immediate, primarily because Hitler’s 1939 gamble of World War Two entailed far greater personal risk than Anslinger’s Marijuana Tax Act. Thus the delayed metaphorical war Anslinger enabled required help from yet another insecure wannabe warrior named Richard Milhous Nixon. The biographers of both men make clear that they each shared Hitler’s instinct for racial prejudice, if not its virulence.

The Asnlinger-Nixon drug war is still being fought. Despite medical marijuana’s implicit threat to its existence, it shows no sign of ending soon. Often overlooked is that it's waged by the whole world through national police forces against “enemies” who are simply trying to self-medicate. Because illegal drugs are, by and large, safer and more effective than their legal alternatives, the damage being inflicted is both enormous and almost impossible to quantify.

Finally, what seems to render global drug policy most impervious to rational criticism is humanity’s amazing tolerance for its obvious stupidity and failures through the phenomenon of denial. A cognitive species unable to face reality would seem to have limited prospects of solving its most pressing problems.

The smoking gun that could ultimately challenge that denial is the enormous success of illegal marijuana over the forty years that the world has been attempting to suppress its use. I plan to outline that success, and the reasons behind it, in the next entry.

Doctor Tom]]> 2010-02-10T19:17:08Z 2010-02-10T17:00:52Z tag:www.doctortom.org,2010://1.650 2010-02-10T17:00:52Z

The Nazism that led Germany to almost destroy itself as a nation in twelve short years and the American drug war I compared it to in the last entry were both institutionalized repressions carried out by central governments. The speed at which they took place is the major difference between them; Hitler’s rapid acquisition of power between 1933 and 1935...

tjeffo http://doctortom.org/ tjeffo@comcast.net Dr. Tom's Blog lebensraum) of world conquest quickly enough to enable the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939.

Constitutional restraints keep any American President from consolidating power nearly that quickly; however the CSA, Nixon’s radical enhancement of the power of America’s poorly conceived drug policy, has commanded unquestioning support from all three branches of our federal government since 1970, despite its well recognized role in the expansion of our prison population during that same interval.

The drug war’s particular impossible dream was soon defined as a “drug free” society. In both Germany and the US, the pursuit of officially designated national dreams led to the identification and punishment of internal enemies as scape-goats that would justify the use of extraordinary powers, allegedly to protect ordinary citizens from contamination. The American counterparts of Germany’s, Jews have been “druggies,” a concept clearly recognized by Richard Lawrence Miller in Drug Warriors and their Prey (1996) and emphasized in Nazi Justiz, his companion study of Hitler’s astute consolidation of power through Germany's vulnerable courts.

Bogus science also played a key role in both repressions; Nazi theory relied on the discredited ideas of Eugenics. In America, fear of addiction was a seed planted by the Harrison Act of 1914, nurtured by Harry Anslnger in 1937, and brought to unholy fruition by Nixon’s CSA in 1970. Ironically, the concept of “addiction” has remained stubbornly elusive, even as a behavior, and never been defined by Pathology as disease, despite the claims of drug war bureaucrats.

Not only is American drug policy burdened by its questionable biological assumptions, it clings stubbornly to the erroneous economic beliefs of prohibition that should have been decisively repudiated by Repeal in 1933. In brief, Prohibition (the Eighteenth Amendment) relied on respect for the law to prevent the criminal arbitrage that doomed it as policy. Within the relatively rapid span of 14 years, the Eighteenth Amendment had taken its place on the scrap heap of history, a process undoubtedly accelerated by the Great Depression. Unfortunately, survival of its belief that prohibition is reasonable public policy had already been guaranteed in 1930 when the FBN was created and placed under the control of a medically ignorant bureaucrat firmly committed to the idea that addiction is a police problem

Given Anslinger’s family connections, bureaucratic skills, and and intellectual dishonesty, things could only have become worse from there. Worse they became, in remarkably close parallel with Hitler’s success, when the MTA became law in 1937.

Doctor Tom ]]> 2010-03-05T23:10:00Z 2010-02-08T15:46:05Z tag:www.doctortom.org,2010://1.649 2010-02-08T15:46:05Z

Both the American drug war and Nazism under Hitler between 1933 and 1945 are extreme examples of anomalous human thinking. What they also have in common is that they demonstrate what can happen when circumstances combine to empower an entire government, or in the case of the drug war, a large branch of government, with a dangerous degree of autonomy...

tjeffo http://doctortom.org/ tjeffo@comcast.net Dr. Tom's Blog
Actually, the combination of essential elements exhibited by both phenomena isn't all that rare. Once one is able to consider them as straightforward examples of human behavior, similar situations can be see toabound. A convenient one, also American, is the system of chattel slavery that ultimately evolved in the Antebellum South. Over less than 3 centuries, slavery had become an inhumane system that gave ignorant overseers and slave traders almost complete authority over a group of humans defined solely by the color of their skin. Slaves were not recognized by federal or state law as human; almost no legal penalties were imposed on an owner who allowed his slaves to be punished excessively; even murdered.

Another characteristic often shared by such repressive systems is tolerance by the rest of society, a process often facilitated by circumstances that keep victims out of sight within institutions such as prisons or mental hospitals where ordinary rules do not apply and budget constraints and overcrowding can encourage a degree of callousness in the staff. Again, the most convenient example I can think of is the systematized barbarity of the modern American Prison system.

As it happens, I think I’ve also discovered the “smoking gun” needed to convince a majority of rational people that the drug war is as big a mistake as I’m claiming. What gives me some hope is that there are numerous examples in human history of critical insights that, almost by themselves, made sense out of what had actually been a random hodgepodge of mistaken ideas. Darwin’s intuition of a rational order driving what we now call Evolution (he didn’t call it that immediately) remains the best example I can think of. A smaller one, but one leading to dramatic reversal in a destructive practice was Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.

I’m painfully aware of how much I’m asking of readers who haven’t been conditioned, as I have, by years of realizing just how insane our drug policy had become without being able to articulate that conviction convincingly. The missing element was a concrete example that could pull enough grotesque drug war elements together into a convincing package. I now think I have such an example which, like so many other such phenomena, has been hiding in plain sight all along. All that was required was a proper focus.

That's enough for one day; the unveiling will come later.

Doctor Tom]]> 2010-02-02T07:51:03Z 2010-02-02T07:50:07Z tag:www.doctortom.org,2010://1.647 2010-02-02T07:50:07Z

The first 'self-evident' truth asserted in America's revolutionary manifesto is that “all men are created equal;” yet when our founders, Jefferson among them, drafted a Constitution eleven years later in Philadelphia, that notion was cynically betrayed by their decision to embrace chattel slavery so seamlessly that neither word appeared in the document itself; nor was the institution of slavery addressed...

tjeffo http://doctortom.org/ tjeffo@comcast.net Dr. Tom's Blog chattel slavery so seamlessly that neither word appeared in the document itself; nor was the institution of slavery addressed by the Bill of Rights appended before ratification. Instead, the onus of being a black slave was expanded judicially in 1857 when the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court explained that because they had been permanently excluded from citizenship by the Constitution, slaves could not sue for rights they didn't possess.

That reasoning so enraged abolitionist John Brown that his attack on a federal arsenal became the proximate cause of a bloody Civil War, one of the results of which was emancipation of all slaves. However, even that benefit was soon reduced by another terrible Supreme Court decision, namely that "separate" is the equivalent of "equal;" a notion that would allow a policy of Segregation supported by domestic terrorism to endure in the postwar South for almost sixty years before a Court presided over by an unlikely "maverick" finally agreed to uphold both the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments.

In that context, I don't think it either unreasonable or impolite for a nominally black President to publicly rebuke the Court’s current 5-4 Catholic male majority for putting his Office on auction to American Corporations. He's certainly read enough history to know it's not that long since other Americans were bidding on his father's ancestors or hanging them from trees; both activities cleared at the federal level by this Court’s predecessors.

For any who think I also hold the Court responsible for their uninformed meddling in the practice of Medicine and subsequent foolish endorsement of the war on drugs, the answer is a resounding YES!

I see Justice Alito's response as remarkably uncool and revealing; I also doubt that any of his trial judge colleagues would allow it in their court rooms.

Doctor Tom]]> 2010-01-31T19:53:28Z 2010-01-31T19:45:44Z tag:www.doctortom.org,2010://1.646 2010-01-31T19:45:44Z

An article written by two experts on climate and atmospheric science in the January print edition of Scientific American revisited the idea of Nuclear Winter by warning that even a “limited” exchange between two recent nuclear powers like India and Pakistan has the potential of reducing the global food supply enough to threaten a sixth of the world’s humans with...

tjeffo http://doctortom.org/ tjeffo@comcast.net Dr. Tom's Blog Scientific American revisited the idea of Nuclear Winter by warning that even a “limited” exchange between two recent nuclear powers like India and Pakistan has the potential of reducing the global food supply enough to threaten a sixth of the world’s humans with starvation. I was suitably impressed after reading it, primarily because I’d already given considerable thought to the same issue; however, I was completely unprepared for (and disappointed by) the vacuous comments following the article in the on-line edition. If they are representative of the current readership of Scientific American, our species may in even more trouble than I'd feared.

Doctor Tom ]]> 2010-01-31T17:21:33Z 2010-01-28T18:01:33Z tag:www.doctortom.org,2010://1.644 2010-01-28T18:01:33Z

We humans are not only the most recently evolved mammals, we are also the most dependent on our brains for survival; not that there aren’t several other critical attributes; upright posture, for example. Recent fossil discoveries have provided evidence that considerable primate evolution must have preceded the eventual migration– first of Neanderthals, and later of our own ancestors- out of...

tjeffo http://doctortom.org/ tjeffo@comcast.net Dr. Tom's Blog
In many respects, the realization that we had evolved began with Charles Lyell, and other geologists, whose writings were well known to Darwin and without which, his critical observations could not have taken root. Indeed, so important has been the impact of Science on human behavior that, In many respects, the whole span of human history predating the Industrial Revolution can be seen as but a prelude to the present day, one in which record numbers of humans are locked in a struggle for mastery of the planet with weapons inventories that are deadlier than ever; made more so because a substantial fraction of one camp is so willing to commit suicide to deliver them.

Not only has the past been prologue, its cognitive errors and false assumptions have shaped the present in ways that were not- and probably could not could not have been- anticipated by our ancestors. Only recently have we acquired satisfactory descriptive terms for the responsible cognitive phenomena. Because they might not be understood as intended, I'll use capitals and italics: Cognitive Dissonance is a mental quirk allowing the simultaneous embrace of mutually contradictory ideas. Denial is our all-too-common refusal to recognize when a dangerous degree of Cognitive Dissonance has developed. Finally, Path Dependence postulates that to the degree any system undergoes directional change, substantial alteration becomes increasingly difficult. Thus the more profound a logical mistake and the longer it was believed within an organization (or body politic), the less likely its amicable correction.

The final realization needed for an understanding of the modern human dilemma is that our brains had been set up long ago for it by the separate evolution of the emotional and cognitive centers residing within each of us. However, It wasn’t until Science gave us the ability to reproduce to a dangerous degree while still continuing to compete in the same old ways that the situation became truly desperate.

For those still cherishing the myth of an all powerful creator, whatever happens becomes His Will, and thus nothing to get too excited about.

Doctor Tom]]> 2010-01-25T18:16:18Z 2010-01-24T19:43:35Z tag:www.doctortom.org,2010://1.643 2010-01-24T19:43:35Z

I must admit that even though I was perceptive enough to warn about a new curia after the Roberts Court first tipped its hand in the Bong Hits for Jesus case, I was also blindsided by the audacity of the “free speech” monstrosity just concocted by what is emerging as the fascist gang of five on our highest court. While...

tjeffo http://doctortom.org/ tjeffo@comcast.net Dr. Tom's Blog new curia after the Roberts Court first tipped its hand in the Bong Hits for Jesus case, I was also blindsided by the audacity of the “free speech” monstrosity just concocted by what is emerging as the fascist gang of five on our highest court. While all three branches of the government devised so hopefully by our sainted founders in 1787 have been hopelessly corrupted over two-plus centuries of national existence, the dubious honor of being the most grotesquely inappropriate should probably go to the Supreme Court, precisely because it usually receives the least attention; a circumstance that only highlights its clinkers and failures. Think Dred Scott and Plessey, followed by its failure to deal with the consequences of either for nearly a century after the Civil War. Hardly a vindication of Jefferson’s famous 1776 rhetoric, which can now be seen as just as hypocritical as his personal failings.

Typical of global media inattention to the foibles and anomalies of our species is the current lack of American interest in what is undoubtedly our Supreme Court’s most glaring current anomaly: its recent radical alteration in composition. Not only have those changes been both radical and swift, the idea that they wouldn't necessarily impact its decisions would be laughable were its implications not so tragic.

As if to prove every cloud has a silver lining, the recent unanimous Kelly decision by the California Supremes struck down the numerical plant limits slipped into SB 420 by the police lobby at the last minute; however true to its craven refusal to take on drug war lunacy, the Court left considerable wiggle room for local prosecutors to argue over “reasonable” limits.

What's more liable to prove an effective restraint on wasteful state prosecutions is a lack of tax revenues attending the "financial crisis" we are still reluctant to call a Depression.

Prozac anyone? Or would you prefer pot?

Doctor Tom ]]> 2010-01-24T02:16:43Z 2010-01-23T18:13:58Z tag:www.doctortom.org,2010://1.641 2010-01-23T18:13:58Z

One of human cognition's most neglected areas is our tendency to overlook a relatively simple concept: most progress in human knowledge can be seen as new information (partially) correcting widely believed errors of the past, some of which had achieved great credibility. The best known example may be when Galileo’s observations through a primitive telescope corrected the then-accepted notion of...

tjeffo http://doctortom.org/ tjeffo@comcast.net Dr. Tom's Blog
There are many reasons why; one is that our highly evolved brains can't keep pace with our rapidly evolving culture. In Darwinian terms, our need to compete still trumps our ability to cooperate for our own good; thus “success” becomes vanquishing contrary ideas, even when it means preferring the siren songs of a Hitler, a Pope, or an Ayatollah over hard-headed (but uncertain) scientific reality, a process greatly enhanced by scientific ignorance. Is there any better explanation for the gutting of that most sacrosanct of all Constitutional Amendments by a gaggle of Catholic jurists added to the court by Republican presidents intent on reversing Roe v Wade?

Another reason is our well-demonstrated preference for denial; a tendency facilitated by our relatively brief life-span compared to the almost impossible-to-grasp concepts of infinity with which modern cosmologists must wrestle. In that context, it’s easy to understand why our concepts of the "future" are so truncated.

As I’ve often been moved to explain in the past, these existential warnings were not on my radar in 2001; they are a natural consequence of having to understand how the American federal bureaucracy could have been led so far astray from a more readily understandable explanation of the juvenile pot use that caught our national attention in the Sixties. That realization eventually led to others: competition, greed, and denial play critical roles in most human interactions. In fact, without them, today’s huge, technology-dependent global economy could not have evolved into an engine capable of sustaining, however imperfectly, a human population of between six and seven billion.

A key interjection at this point is that the failure of Communism demonstrated the importance of consumer rewards in balancing the drudgery and repression intrinsic to planned economies; however Capitalism has its own problems. One is that population growth has been a continuing requirement for “success.” In other words, is prosperity even possible in a shrinking economy? We have yet to find out.

At the same time, the most troubling problem facing the world's economy may be its dependence, since the Industrial Revolution began, on population growth and competition, both of which were also greatly facilitated by scientific technology. Unfortunately, the most recent scientific discoveries now suggest that exploitation of the Earth’s resources may have been overdone to a point that forces us to conserve and recycle more efficiently even as we must also consider replacing major energy sources; all without any assurance that they could be accomplished soon enough or, as importantly, that political stability could be maintained during whatever interval proves necessary.

Given current levels of global strife, the track record of international decision making, and currently favored methods for conflict resolution, the smart money would have to bet against "success."

Doctor Tom ]]> 2010-01-20T21:15:53Z 2010-01-20T19:05:07Z tag:www.doctortom.org,2010://1.640 2010-01-20T19:05:07Z

Today’s NYT carries two stories that, to an uncanny degree, confirm two growing suspicions about our species: the first is that we are more easily misled than we realize; the second is that there are far too many of us for our own good. The first such item concerned Medical Marijuana; in its brief first paragraph, its author added two...

tjeffo http://doctortom.org/ tjeffo@comcast.net Dr. Tom's Blog
The first such item concerned Medical Marijuana; in its brief first paragraph, its author added two and two and proudly came up with five: “there is no good scientific evidence that legalizing marijuana’s use provides any benefits over current therapies.” In the course of the article, there's even more; two short paragraphs later he states, “Marijuana is the only major drug for which the federal government controls the only legal research supply and for which the government requires a special scientific review.” (Duh!)

The rest of the article compounds that fuzzy logic by zeroing in on the argument currently favored by marijuana opponents: that because it must be smoked, it simply can’t be "medicine."

Actually, “smoking” is a form of drug delivery that is both very complex and efficient; there's already abundant evidence that smoking herbal cannabis (“marijuana”) over prolonged intervals is safer than previously supposed; perhaps even safer than not smoking at all.

Harris further contradicts himself by describing Marinol a federally sponsored “edible” that results in significantly different effects than either smoking or ingestion of the still-illegal oral preparations sold in "dispensaries."

Finally; with respect to Mr. Harris’s misleading article, the failure of both federal experts and their counterparts in Academia to even notice such obvious discrepancies is powerful evidence that our clever species is so driven by greed and fear that it is easily intimidated by brazen fascists.

That’s my seque into the second Times article, documenting the not-so-surprising victory of a Massachusetts version of Joe the Plumber over the lackluster candidate for what was assumed to be a safe seat. There are so many familiar historical parallels, ranging from Hitler in 1933 to Dubya in 2000, that recounting even the best-known would be boring.

Color me discouraged; more on the key differences between eating and smoking pot as tme permits...

Doctor Tom ]]>