As Korzybski liked to warn, the map should not be confused with the actual territory it is said to represent. So it goes that the headline should not be confused with the actual story. The headline, often written by someone other than the writer, is written less to inform and more to catch the eye of a reader in an effort to draw him or her to the story and, hopefully, the advertising that surrounds it.
There were two recent examples of this distance between the headline and the story in cannabis reporting. The first involved country music icon and cannabis advocate Willie Nelson. The second involved a reported relationship between cannabis and testicular cancer.
In the first case, a headline in the December 3, 2019 issue of the New York Post trumpets “Willie Nelson has quit smoking weed” and quotes an interview Nelson did with KSAT-TV where he says “I have abused my lungs quite a bit in the past, so breathing is a little more difficult these days and I have to be careful.” The 86-year-old then added, “I don’t smoke anymore — [I] take better care of myself.”
Similar to several other wire service reports on the same story, the article went on to imply that Nelson was giving up cannabis altogether, which is not the case.
Lindsey Bartlett, writing for Marijuana Moment, reported Nelson’s son Lukas had taken to social media to clear the air. Said the younger Nelson, “There is a lot of articles going around saying my father is no longer smoking weed. It’s almost 2020, how people ingest cannabis has changed. Between vaping, edibles, gummies, drops, etc. I think it’s safe to say Willie will never stop enjoying Mary Jane!”
Bartlett also reported that Willie Nelson’s namesake cannabis brand, Willie’s Reserve, tweeted, “No pigs in the sky, Willie’s still getting high!! At 86, Willie Nelson demonstrates there’s more than one way to get high.”
The second case of a somewhat deceiving headline involves a story that appeared on the website Inverse.com. An article by Alexandra Pattillo carried the headline, “Smoking weed every day puts men at risk of a deadly disease” and a subhead that stated researchers had linked using marijuana with testicular cancer.
A scary statement, if only it was more accurate. In her first paragraph Pattillo reports, “Now, after a meta-analysis of 25 studies, scientists say that smoking marijuana heavily for at least a decade heightens the risk of one startling disease: testicular cancer.”
However, in the next paragraph the article’s co-author Deborah Korenstein, a physician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, says, “importantly, this risk is not huge.”
Later in the article Korenstein went on to say that in her review the evidence for an increased risk for testicular cancer wasn’t “strong” and that more research was needed to determine the relationship between using cannabis and testicular health.
The devil, it seems, is not just in the details. He can often lurk in the lack of them.
Lindsey Bartlett’s helpful reporting on the confusion surrounding Willie Nelson’s comments appears in the December 5, 2019 issue of Marijuana Moment
To read Alexandra Pattillo’s article on the relationship between long-term cannabis use and testicular cancer you can visit the December 3, 2019 edition of Inverse.com.
pagesix.com/2019/12/03/willie-nelson-has-quit-smoking-weed/
www.inverse.com/article/61412-heavy-weed-smoking-increases-risk-of-testicular-cancer
Cannabis and Food
Whether you call it an Arkansas t-bone, a little slice of heaven or just plain meat candy, in addition to being a tasty part of a breakfast or brunch, bacon can also be the basis for an innovative delivery system for consuming cannabis.
That’s the word from Leo Marx writing for the website Las Vegas Cannabis Reviews. He says it takes just a little over an hour to create what he calls marijuana infused bacon.
The recipe itself is fairly simple, calling for marijuana flower that has been ground to powder and spread on a cookie sheet, which is then placed in an oven that has been preheated to 225 degrees. There it stays for about 45 minutes. This preheating—known as decarboxylation—is necessary to transform the cannabis so it can be consumed as an edible that produces the desired effect.
Once the marijuana powder is prepped it is used to season strips of bacon that are arranged on a cookie sheet which is placed in an oven that has been preheated to 275 degrees. The marijuana covered bacon is baked for about 10 minutes. You then remove the cookie sheet, flip each strip over, season it and place it back in the oven for another 10 minutes.
That’s about it, although Marx is adamant that the bacon fat that collects on the cookie sheet should not go to waste. The fat, which is now also infused with THC, can be used to cook eggs or hash browns, no pun intended.
For a more detailed account of how to create a new centerpiece for your next holiday brunch, visit Leo Marx’s Step-By-Step Recipe For Marijuana-Infused Bacon in the November 18, 2019 issue of Las Vegas Cannabis Reviews.
lvcannabisreviews.com/step-by-step-recipe-for-marijuana-infused-bacon3zw
CBD and Seniors
Despite a lack of regulatory guidance, a growing number of older adults continue to consume CBD products. Whether in smoothies or salves, one estimate is that nearly one in five Americans over 50 now use some kind of CBD on a regular basis.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are using it correctly or know how to tell if what they are using is actually CBD.
In an effort to bring some clarity to the subject, Abbie Rosner, a reporter who specializes in covering how older adults use cannabis for Forbes, asked Dr. Danial Schecter what seniors interested in using CBD should know. He is an Ontario-based family physician who is the co-founder of a network of cannabis-based medicine clinics that have served over 60,000 patients in Canada and the new Director of Global Medical Services at Canopy Growth Corporate.
For starters, when it comes to dosage, Schecter says the majority of people will respond to somewhere between 40 and 100 mgs of CBD/day when they are using it to address pain or anxiety.
Said Schecter, “In a healthy adults a starting dose would usually be 5 mg of CBD, but in people who are elderly, who are potentially on a number of medications, and who are very sensitive to side-effects of medications, we like to cut that dose in half, and start at 2.5 mgs of CBD.”
Schecter also told Rosner that usually individuals will find that psychological symptoms will take longer to respond to CBD than the physical symptoms and that it’s not a good idea to suddenly replace a medication with CBD without the guidance and supervision of a doctor.
To learn more you can visit Abbie Rosner’s article in the August 26, 2019 issue of Forbes. We are a big fan of Rosner’s work, which you can also follow on her own website, www.abbierosner.com.
www.forbes.com/sites/abbierosner/2019/08/26/cbd-safety-for-seniors/#5ee10ca846ba
Senior Cannabis Digest is compiled and edited by Joe Kohut and John Kohut. You can reach them at joe.kohut@gmail.com or at 347-528-8753.