The true cost of cannabis: Why don't its illnesses, deaths command media headlines?

What a coincidence. I saw this a few minutes after a segment in "Wait, wait, don't tell me", an NPR program which had an interview with a popular hip hop artist who got a big cheer from the audience when he said he smoked marijuana in high school, as if that were some wonderful thing to do. Unfortunate that so many adults, liberals and conservatives, are still stuck in that mind set of exulting in doing things not because they are rational, but because they will upset another group of people.

https://news.yahoo.com/true-cost-cannabis-why-dont-081503193.html

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2020/01/03/marijuana-pot-thc-vaping-psychosis-mental-illness-media-column/4299001002/

Jayne O'Donnell
Jan. 3, 2020

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We reporters covered the heck out of vaping lung illnesses starting in August. Once it became clear the culprit was THC and not nicotine, however, the news media seemed to lose interest, said former Food and Drug Administration chief Scott Gottlieb at a breakfast event I attended in early November.

Indeed, a search on the news archive Nexis shows that the number of stories mentioning "vaping" and "lung illness" went from 953 in September to 584 in the first 30 days of October, a nearly 40% drop.

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Former New York Times business reporter Alex Berenson says that the human cost of cannabis is too high — and that the press is too pro-pot. When his latest book, "Tell Your Children: The Truth about Marijuana, Mental Illness and Violence," came out early last year, Berenson knew marijuana proponents wouldn't like it. He just didn't think there would be what he calls a "media brownout." No major publications reviewed it.

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Reporters from major U.S. newspaper companies never contacted him for stories, although those in eight other countries — including Japan, Italy and Australia — did. (USA TODAY interviewed him for a March article.) Public radio and a suburban New York school system canceled appearances.

Berenson, a registered independent who didn't have strong feelings about marijuana legalization until he researched his book, has become an unlikely favorite of the conservative media and think tanks. He blames what he says is "a genuine misunderstanding of the strength of the science supporting the cannabis-psychosis link," which is worsened by "the endless industry/advocacy yelling about 'Reefer Madness.' "

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tags: drug abuse, drug use