Reefer badness: don’t trust the labels

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Even as more people find it possible to buy edible medical marijuana products for what ails them, a problem remains: dosages.

A Johns Hopkins University survey found that various marketed marijuana-laced brownies, cookies, iced teas and sodas are mislabeled. Sometimes they contain more THC (the primary psychoactive ingredient). More often they contain less.

The researchers said their findings are significant for consumers who use marijuana to treat disease or control symptoms. Accurate labeling for medical marijuana is no less important than on other commercialized drugs.

“Caveat emptor,” or “let the buyer beware,” is “just not right” for the sale of medical marijuana, said experimental psychologist Ryan Vandrey, the study’s author.

Body of knowledge

Taking a single step involves up to 200 muscles.

Counts

75: percentage of American men age 25 or older who are overweight or obese.

67: percentage of American women age 25 or older who are overweight or obese.

Note: For the first time in a study, the number of obese people was greater than the number of merely overweight people.

Source: Yang et al., JAMA Internal Medicine, 2015

Stories for the waiting room

A University of Southern California study reports that women between the ages of 71 and 89 who lived in geographic locations with higher levels of fine particular matter in ambient air had significantly smaller white matter volumes across a wide range of brain areas.

White matter consists of nerve fibers (axons) that transmit signals. The scientists found no effect upon gray matter, which is primarily neuronal cell bodies, support cells and capillaries.

The research used MRI data from women participating in the Women’s Health Initiative Memory Study. The effect of fine particulate air pollution upon men’s brains remains unknown.

Mania of the week

Empleomania: an obsession with holding public office — more commonly known as incumbency.

Never say diet

The Major League Eating record for birthday cake is 14.5 pounds in eight minutes, held by Matthew “The Megatoad” Stonie. Aside: It is not known how many candles were consumed in the process.

Medical history

This week in 1957, U.S. Surgeon General Leroy Burney issued a report on a connection between smoking and lung cancer, becoming the first government official to publicly do so. “It is clear that there is an increasing and consistent body of evidence that excessive cigarette smoking is one of the causative factors in lung cancer,” said Burney, himself a smoker. This statement and a stronger one in 1959 set the stage for the monumentally influential 1964 report by the surgeon general on smoking and health.

Last words

“Tomorrow, at sunrise, I shall no longer be here.”

— French apothecary and reputed seer Nostradamus (1503-66). He made this particular prediction the night before he died — and he was right.

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