![\"Marijuana](\"http:\/\/www.suburra.com\/images%20-%20PD%20blog\/Drug%20War%20Myth%202%20Marijuana%20Caffeine%20909%20WEB.jpg\")
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In covering the marijuana legalization debate the mainstream media is prone to comparing marijuana addictiveness to alcohol, cocaine, and heroin. A much more appropriate comparison would be to caffeine. This would provide a better perspective to the media’s dramatic portrayals of marijuana “addicts.” (See New York Times<\/em> portrayal of “Joyce” here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n The health professional survey mentioned above that ranked the inherent addictive potential of numerous drugs on a 100-point scale (nicotine 99, alcohol 81, caffeine 70, and marijuana 22) was taken from Perrine. (p. 7)<\/p>\n The statement that marijuana withdrawal symptoms are as mild as caffeine’s and their occurrence is rarer is taken from Gahlinger. (pp. 180, 333)<\/p>\n Most marijuana users – even those with long-term, heavy use – experience no withdrawal when they stop. Some people have reported generally mild symptoms …. (Gahlinger, p. 333)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Thanks to Pete Guither at Drug WarRant<\/a> for the following posts which alerted me to this issue: “Times Article Buys into Marijuana Addiction Based on Anecdotal Evidence from Idiots”<\/a> and “ABC News Goes Reefer Madness.”<\/a><\/p>\n Sources:<\/p>\n 1. Paul Gahlinger, Illegal Drugs<\/em> (2001). In covering the marijuana legalization debate the mainstream media is prone to comparing marijuana addictiveness to alcohol, cocaine, and heroin. A much more appropriate comparison would be to caffeine. This would provide a better perspective to the media’s dramatic portrayals of marijuana “addicts.” (See New York Times portrayal of “Joyce” here.) The health professional survey […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[82,9,20],"tags":[54,179,158,178,349,403,190,583,575,566,180,181,576,112],"class_list":["post-349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drugs","category-marijuana","category-media-bias","tag-addiction","tag-addictiveness","tag-caffeine","tag-cannabis","tag-cartoon","tag-comic","tag-drug-policy","tag-drugs","tag-legalization","tag-marijuana","tag-marijuana-addictiveness","tag-marijuana-withdrawal","tag-media-bias","tag-pot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suburra.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n2. Daniel Perrine, Chemistry of Mind-Altering Drugs<\/em> (1996).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"