by Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director
December 1, 2015
The enactment of statewide laws permitting the use of cannabis for therapeutic purposes is associated with an annual reduction in obesity-related medical costs, according to data published online ahead of print in the journal Health Economics.
Investigators at Cornell University in New York and San Diego State University in California reviewed twelve years of data from the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to examine the effects of medical marijuana laws on body weight, physical wellness, and exercise.
Researchers reported, “[T]he enforcement of MMLs (medical marijuana laws) is associated with a 2% to 6% decline in the probability of obesity. … Our estimates suggest that MMLs induce a $58 to $115 per-person annual reduction in obesity-related medical costs.”
For those age 35 or older, authors determined that the passage of medical cannabis laws is “associated with an increase in physical wellness and frequent exercise consistent with the hypothesis of some medicinal use of marijuana.” For younger adults, researchers theorized that obesity declines were the result of less alcohol use.
http://blog.norml.org/2015/12/01/study-medical-marijuana-laws-associated-with-decreased-obesity/
>>4631
They concluded, “These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that MMLs may be more likely to induce marijuana use for health-related reasons among older individuals, and cause substitution toward lower-calorie recreational ‘highs’ among younger individuals.”
The findings are similar to those of other recent observational studies, such as those here and here, concluding that cannabis use is associated with reduced body mass index and obesity.
The abstract of the study, “The Effect of Medical Marijuana Laws on Body Weight,” appears online here.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hec.3267/abstract
Makes sense. My anecdotal evidence isn't worth shit, but I know a lot of people who smoke every day (no medical reason, just stoners) and every one of them (including myself) is skinny.
>>4635
This is bullshit. You get the muchies. Wait til it catches up fool.
>>4638
I'm sure that after four years it won't be kicking in soon. Eating is just a chore.
before i smoked pot i was 250lbs I'm down to the healthy for my height 170 now, i didn't think it had anything to do with pot though.
>>4667
Notice how meth heads are skinny as fuck?
It fucks with your eating habits.
Smoking marijuana as not a healthy way to lose weight
When I was in HS I was taking an ADHD med and I lost 40 lbs in two months.
>>4784
>natural way of losing weight is bahd
>bruh pills are much better
Comment of the year people. 2015 was a good year.
>>5584
No.
I was using it as an example of how drugs are not a healthy way of losing weight.
Not that you should use either.
Stoner fags are absolute morons.
>>5593
You should have praised his godplant and shared Bob Marley youtube videos with him.
Now the sticky-haired buffoon is offended.
Try and imitate a stoner story about how you found a bunch of crystals in your grinder and how your dealer got you the best strain for your birthday.
>>5593
>>5626
oh wow, you really don't know what you're talking about, do you? if all it is doing is removing people's need for comfort eating to deal with stress and hardship, then the only unhealthy things about it are related to marijuana being an unregulated substance
there are more and better views out there than the extremes of "marijuana is meth cooked by satan" and "cannabis is the life-giving mother plant who teaches us the virtuous path in life". though i see the former extreme much more often than the latter
>>5631
I'm sorry I don't LOVE weed.
>>5637
i'm sorry you can't differentiate rational thought based on the actual facts from an extreme bias that's the opposite of yours. that sort of inability to tell the difference between rational thought & opposite extreme bias is a pretty obvious indicator of extremist black and white thinking.
>>5639
It's the godplant, and I'm sorry for not showing it in the best light, obviously that means I hate it, and I think it's comparable to meth.
>>5645
if you're not an extremist, why are you unable to recognize that i'm not one, and why are you siding with someone who compared weed to meth? this is /pol/-level stupidity; i was hoping that /news/ could be separate from /pol/ since i hadn't checked it out yet, but i'm starting to feel that /pol/ actively infiltrates the rest of 4chan enough that none of it is worth keeping around anymore. it might be time to start over somewhere else.
>>5647
Maybe touting weight loss as a positive symptom of using weed seems like an empty concession to using a recreational substance especially when there are plenty of other substances that can tout the same results.
>>5655
maybe research isn't so scarce that we should only publish the most important things and totally ignore the rest?
Does weed kill gains?
>>4638
After about a year of smoking or two yu stop getting the munchies.
>>4638
Overeating causes obesity, fool, not food. It's like you've never heard of CICO.
>>4631
>don't smoke
>pretty skinny, have dark lines under eyes, have flamboyant/humorous personality
>people think am a pot smoker
great now people are going to talk to me about this.
"Anon we support your practice now! It ends obesity"
>>4638
Meh. Sometimes you get the munchies but if you blaze it every day you might actually not eat for long periods of time.
My buddy loved to get high and eat candy and he was thin as fuck.
Weed has improved my palate and I play sports 4-5 times a week stoned.
Weed will never make me fat.
>>4638
You're a fool.
Most people eat themselves to fatass level because they are plain bored. A couple of puffs greatly substitutes shoveling sugar products into your ignorant face.
>>5701
and you worship your own fupa, we finished?
>>5701
Today I learned that autisitics with no friends or social life truly despise weed.
>>5827
>I need weed to be social
Pathetic.
>>5750
I used to smoke a lot and can confirm this. Plus when you're a chronic smoker you don't get hungry unless you're high and you don't get the munchies as bed. The vast majority of stoners I know are skinny
>>5853
your reading comprehension is terrible, dude. maybe if you socialized more you'd misinterpret others' posts less often.
>>5827
I just think you people fucking stick.
>>5899
>working out without slowing down on your stress-based binge eating
>effective
maybe in your fantasy world, but in real life it takes much more work to burn off the calories gained from excess eating than it is to redirect your stress relief into a healthier practice and stop gaining those calories to begin with. (use of medical marijuana, where the plant's cultivation is regulated and methods of consumption other than smoking are available, is guaranteed to be healthier than binge eating junk food.)
also, just because something isn't the healthiest possible solution doesn't mean it's somehow not healthier than no solution at all. pretending that there's some way out there to convince all binge eaters to convert to health nuts is, frankly, delusional.
>>5936
>Removing personal responsibility
Kek.
Next you'll say it's not addictive.
>>4635
>Fat as fuck
>Take up smoking
>Drop 40 kg (88 lbs) over the course of a year with only a minor increase in exercise
Again anecdotal evidence, but I could definitely believe it
>>5956
>thinking "personal responsibility" will convince binge eaters to become health nuts
while marijuana can be psychologically addictive, as almost anything can (including food), it has literally no physically addictive properties
>>5631
>removing people's need for comfort eating to deal with stress and hardship
This is the key. Most people eat for comfort, not for survival.
I wonder if this weight loss I had has anything to do with pot. Pot decreased my social anxiety, made me learn more about myself and others around me, made me more aware, and it changed my life completely. That contributed to me not wanting to eat as much. It's an indirect cause of lowering obesity rates.
>>4638
>Wait til it catches up
Stop it with this excuse. If eating munchies has "caught up to you", it's either because you're over the age of 60 where it actually is a valid excuse, or you're eating more than you used to and aren't noticing it.
How relevant for a thread discussing health, though. You make a good example.
>>5672
>After about a year of smoking or two yu stop getting the munchies.
I don't think this is true. You just become easier at controlling it after two years. There are still moments where I get the munchies and eat junk, for example, and I know many people in that position as well. It's just that we can control it more than we used to and we don't allow ourselves to give in to the munchies as much as before.
>>5645
This is how delusional some of these people are. Even though this guy isn't sitting here calling weed a cure-all and a godplant, this guy is seething at the tip and is waiting to pretend that he is. He wants to hear a stoner call it a "godplant". That's complete delusion.
>>5853
>I need weed to be social
Is not what he said. This is another delusion. These people will imply that you've said or claimed this before you even begin speaking.
>>5899
If you rely on drugs to do all the work for you, you're going to have a bad time using them. Period. Also, stop posting like you're in the middle of a /pol/ tantrum.
>>5956
"It's addictive because I said so" is not a valid argument. If I can put the pipe down for months at a time, you can too. It's about as "addictive" as caffeine. If you don't call caffeine addictive whenever it's mentioned, then there's no need to do it here unless you're cherrypicking.
>>4631
I am very sure thats different from case to case.
Like, some of my smoking buddies are paper thin because they get high, and then they forget to eat.
I'm the opposite. I need to clear out the fridge before even trying to smoke or the munchies will make me eat everything in sight.
Lurker here, can you two anons not see the others point or are you just being \pol\ fags here. Pot is a drug; medicine is made up of drugs. Drugs work but have side effects. For instance loading weight when taking stimulants.
If you read one article on people losing weight after pot is legal and don't want to here about that not being a good sole reason to smoke. I suggest that you shove some of your "godplant" up your ass and then try and smoke it. I have you take "stim packs" for ADHD and I wish I had more of an appetite.
On the other hand if weed helps with obesity, great. Smoke it if you want to smoke it. There is no reason it should be illegal with alcohol and tobacco on the market. But you can't say it doesn't have any negative side effects because its a drug and (just like any other medicine) drugs have side effects.
>>6096
THC is a drug.
Pot is for stoner fags.
Smoking pot is not healthy for you, while TCH might have some medicinal advantages.
>>6096
except literally no one in this thread before you was being even slightly reasonable when arguing against marijuana's utility. no one was rationally bringing up real negative effects or even likely hypothetical ones; they were ridiculing anyone who thought this decrease in obesity could possibly be a good thing by completely misinterpreting our pretty obvious arguments into "i'm a stoner who loves my godplant" bullshit again & again, and one person deciding that impossible fitness regimes are a better solution to obesity than something that's actually demonstrated results. (i'm actually pretty sympathetic to that one since our society as a whole loves to focus on perfect, impossible solutions & deride flawed ones that actually work, but it's still not a rational argument.)
>>6130
Pot doesn't work.
If you want to use TCH medicinally I'm fine with it. But don't say
>DUDE, SMOKE WEED, CUREZ THE CANCER AND MAKES YOU LOSE WEIGHT
>>6138
so you want us to ignore real evidence found in this study for some reason? why? yes, marijuana has its risks and downsides that should be acknowledged, but i wasn't denying their existence or inflating its benefits in any way. don't pair me with the logic-denying stoners when i've done nothing to indicate i'm one of them
>>6129
>>6138
Actually, all of the chemicals in cannabis have medicinal qualities. In fact, there's something called the "entourage effect" which makes it so that all of the compounds together work better than a single compound.
Way to research your shit though, I can tell you're super informed. Way to spam your disinfo like a retarded 12 year old, too.
The biggest disadvantage of Marijuana is people who smoke it are unable to shut up about it.
It is all they are. All consuming.
>>6317
that isn't true of everyone, just a very vocal minority. and since in most places it's still illegal, the ones who don't constantly drone on about it are usually smart enough to not admit to smoking it at all, except to people proven trustworthy. once it's legal & the novelty dies down, you'll notice a lot more people who use it casually without letting it consume their whole lives.
>>6317
Thats just the memetic aspect of it.
>>6317
Stopping hanging around shitty hometown stoners. I deal for a decent sized University and for every weed fiend there's atleast four more high functioning weekend stoners.
A vocal minority does not represent all smokers.
>>4631
i lost 70 pounds when i started using cannabis. frequent cotton mouth lead to me drinking even more water than usual.
>>6317
there are plenty of people who use who don't talk about it. you're letting yourself be put off by stupid, uninteresting people who have to make things they do/like part of their identity. career weed smokers aren't much different from people who describe themselves as 'gamer' or 'feminist' who have to supplement their lack of a personality with a label.
the anti-weed people are more obnoxious and plentiful than the few who do make everything in their life about weed. same with vaping, the anti-vaping autists are way more fanatical and annoying than the few fedora tipping career vapers.
>>6828
They know this. They've always known this. The reason they latch onto this notion that all marijuana users are "stoners" is out of insecurity.
And that's not to say that stoners aren't annoying, but they're certainly not the worst people in the world. There are milder stoners that are very nice to be around. If you're closeminded about a specific group then it's no wonder why you could believe that all marijuana users are smokers, but it wouldn't be an excuse to continue believing this when evidence is all around. Even if you were absorbed in nothing but pop culture, there would be no reason to think all marijuana users were stoner "degenerates".
