It is always a positive to see more conversations about cannabis taking place at USC’s campus. I appreciate our esteemed publication, the Daily Trojan, for granting the real estate on their platform for such discourse. However, a recently published article entitled, “Summer Is the Time to Abstain from Smoking Weed”, paints an unfair picture of Cannabis consumption for our university’s community.

First, I will reiterate that people should moderate their use of all drugs, cannabis especially, through the advisement of researchers in the pharmacology/endocannabinoid space or studied clinicians. Even among medical professionals, the education surrounding the endocannabinoid system (ECS) is lacking. Articles like these present broad generalizations that require continuous investigation even at the professional level. 

Granted, the recreational market is huge so not everyone is going to do their due diligence. However! As we pave the way for more normalized Cannabis use, we should aspire to be more mindful of our consumption just as we would with anything else in our diet.

Second, ECS research is inaccessible and ambiguous enough that Cannabis health debates cannot be settled with a simple Google search. Nothing can be stated definitively, yet there is sufficient research to make large inferences, though leaps of logic are more misleading than informative. (Fun fact: Government-funded research has been conducted on a single strain of Cannabis from the 1960s, not representative of the diverse market available today).

Lastly, if terminology such as “Cannabis abuse/dependence”, “long-term use”, or “recreational use”, aren’t defined in the patient population or methodologies of a paper that is a red flag. 

Looking deeper into the cited resources, — which merely address the institutions that conducted the research and not the studies themselves — you’ll find that the researchers want to combat SPECIFICALLY uninformed use as well as underage use.

Much of the Cannabis community would agree that there is a huge knowledge gap in consumer consumption habits.

The ease of obtaining a medical card without true clinical supervision and purchasing Cannabis can lead to a lot of misguided decisions and claimed “addictive behaviors”.

That said, it’s difficult to have a well-rounded education on Cannabis without stigmatization.

My biggest pain point about this article is that it misinterprets skewed science to perpetuate the stereotypes we are struggling to debunk.

The “lazy, depressed, unfit stoner” is an archetype that has been EXHAUSTED in favor of anti-Cannabis rhetoric.

Research is cherry-picked to embolden such attitudes that discriminate against patients who turn to cannabis to heal. 

Dopamine dysfunction is a tried-and-true health concern but not in those with a low risk of Cannabis use disorder.

The solution to Cannabis abuse is not abstinence, but education.

You cannot ignore the therapeutic benefit of the plant and narrowly focus on the results of a government that merely sees it as a source of tax revenue.

Until federal legalization, the people who are doing the work to rewrite cannabis’s reputation after the War on Drugs are also the people who are consistently rejected from proper research funding, ostracized from political conversations, and censored on digital platforms.

There are people who thrive on this plant and fight to get it in their hands. That means hunting down medical experts, experimenting with personal use, and paying tons of money to get quality-tested products.

I do not expect the Daily Trojan to be experts on this subject matter. But I do expect a certain rigor of journalism which was not demonstrated in this piece.

Thanks - Fight On.