Here’s an interesting list I found that puts the dangers of marijuana in perspective. The sources of these statistics are reports ranging from 2003-2006 from the American Medical Association, National Center for Health Statistics, and US Centers for Disease Control:

Annual Causes of Death in the United States:

• Tobacco: 435,000
• Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity: 365,000
• Alcohol: 85,000
• Microbial Agents: 75,000
• Toxic Agents: 55,000
• Motor Vehicle Crashes: 26,374
• Adverse Reactions to Prescription Drugs: 32,000
• Suicide: 30,622
• Incidents Involving Firearms: 29,000
• Homicide: 20,308
• Sexual Behaviors: 20,000
• All Illicit Drug Use, Direct and Indirect: 17,000
• Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs such as Aspirin: 7,600
• MARIJUANA: 0

This information could be used to make a case for outlawing couch potatoes who sit around watching porn, smoking cigarettes and eating Big Macs under the influence of aspirin. But, um, as a deterrent against smoking pot it didn’t exactly scare the pants off me. They’ll have to try harder.

Recommended Reading

• How to Pass a Drug Test
• One Tiny Step Closer to Legalizing Marijuana
• Schizophrenic? Don’t Blame It On Marijuana
• White House Reaffirms Intent to End Medical Marijuana Raids
• Pot backers hit Kellogg’s over Phelps
• NORML.ORG Needs your votes for a Pro-Marijuana Commercial!
• Phelps’ marijuana use puts focus on debate over the drug

Remember those study results that came out some months back, about how smoking pot is linked to schizophrenia? Turns out the results were bogus. What a shocker, ‘eh?

You can read the entire article here, but basically what it says is that a new study was done in the UK to try to prove the earlier study’s results (common practice among researchers). The conclusion the second study came to was completely different from the first one, and the results were recently published in the journal Schizophrenia Research.

The authors of this study were professional and polite in their wording, and they didn’t exactly come right out and say those other guys are idiots. But they didn’t need to, because based on the following excerpt from the news article it’s pretty damn obvious that weed can’t be linked to schizophrenia:

According to the study, cannabis use in the UK between 1972 and 2002 has increased four-fold in the general population, and 18-fold among under-18s.

Based on the literature supporting the link, the authors argue that this should be followed by an increase in schizophrenia incidence of 29% between 1990 and 2010.

But the researchers found no increase in the rates of schizophrenia and psychosis diagnosis during that period. In fact some of the data suggested the incidence of these conditions had decreased.

So in other words, in the UK there are four times as many people smoking marijuana today as there were in 1972. But not only has the incidence of schizophrenia not increased, it’s actually slightly decreased since 1972.

If the researchers that did the first study had any common sense, then they would see that it stands to reason that if smoking pot was linked to schizophrenia then there would have to be about four times as many schizophrenics today as there were in 1972. But it just ain’t so. Which has to make ya wonder – what were THEY smokin’ ?

Recommended Reading

• How to Pass a Drug Test
• One Tiny Step Closer to Legalizing Marijuana
• Scary Statistics About the Killer-Weed
• White House Reaffirms Intent to End Medical Marijuana Raids
• Pot backers hit Kellogg’s over Phelps
• NORML.ORG Needs your votes for a Pro-Marijuana Commercial!
• Phelps’ marijuana use puts focus on debate over the drug

The Whizzinator should be well known by anyone visiting this website. But just in case you’ve been living under a rock, you can find out what it is by visiting their website here.

Are the Whizzinator’s days numbered? I just read a really disturbing article. Two undercover cops in Pennsylvania each ordered one, which sounds like it started a domino effect that ended in federal charges being brought against the president and vice president of the Whizzinator’s parent company, Puck Technology. Holy s***!

The charge is conspiracy to defraud the government – specifically the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which oversees drug testing programs in federal workplaces. Note that these are federal workplaces we’re talking about here. That covers a lot of workers, but right now this would presumably only affect you if you work for the government. According to the article there’s talk of some kind of plea agreement, and you can bet that it will include some provision for the Whizzinator not being available to federal employees.

If you’ve spent any time on my website at all then you know I’m a huge advocate for the dilution method, for all kinds of reasons. But for people that work in a situation where they can easily get away with passing a drug test using the Whizzinator, then hey – I’m all for it, man. For that reason, I think it should DEFINITELY be an option for people.

I don’t think the Whizzinator is going to disappear overnight or anything like that, but the reason this article is really disturbing to me is that once there’s a case like this that is won in court, then it sets a legal precedent that can be used in other legal cases. It’s like ‘a foot in the door’, so to speak. A door pot smokers do NOT want to go through… The danger is that things like detox drinks might start getting closer inspection too.

Mind you, this all has to do with commercial products being sold to help people pass drug tests. As far as exchanging information about how to pass a drug test goes, that’s not in any danger because of our First Amendment Rights. I mean, telling someone how to pass a urine drug test seems pretty tame as long as it’s still legal to tell people how to make bombs, right?

Anyway, just a heads up if you happen to be a federal employee. It looks like you might have one less option for passing a drug test here pretty soon. If you’ve ever even considered trying the Whizzinator, you might want to make that purchase sooner rather than later.

You can read the full article here.

Recommended Reading

• How to Pass a Drug Test
• One Tiny Step Closer to Legalizing Marijuana
• Scary Statistics About the Killer-Weed
• Schizophrenic? Don’t Blame It On Marijuana
• White House Reaffirms Intent to End Medical Marijuana Raids
• Pot backers hit Kellogg’s over Phelps
• NORML.ORG Needs your votes for a Pro-Marijuana Commercial!

Passing a drug test when you don’t have a lot of notice beforehand can be tough, but it’s definitely not impossible. If you’re a daily smoker then it’s a sure bet you won’t have time to get clean just by abstaining for a while, but what if you don’t smoke all that often? Just how long does marijuana stay in your system, and do you even need to worry? Here are some basic facts, along with some solutions, about passing a drug test.

Does Detoxification Work for Passing a Drug Test?

First off, some basic science about where the evidence of marijuana use is found in your body. THC metabolites, which are the by-products that testing labs will be looking for in a urine test, are stored in your fat cells. They’re NOT stored in your liver, they’re NOT stored in your kidneys, and they’re NOT stored in any other major body organ. THC metabolites are only found in your fat cells. Which is why so-called ‘detox’ products are useless for passing a drug test – they can help cleanse organs like the liver and kidneys, but you can’t ‘detoxify’ fat cells – your only option for getting rid of THC metabolites in a hurry is by getting rid of fat cells in a hurry. And if you can do that, you’ll be a millionaire and you probably won’t need to pass a drug test anyway. :-)

But over time, these THC metabolites get processed naturally through your body and are eliminated through your kidneys, just like many other kinds of toxins and chemicals that we ingest. So if you’re a daily smoker, everyday you’ll be losing metabolites in your urine, and also adding new ones to your store of fat cells. Any discussion about how to pass a drug test has to start with the facts, and now you know: passing a drug test is possible through other means, but you cannot actually ‘detox’ your body in time to pass a test that you’ve got coming up the next day or the next week.

Just How Long Does Marijuana Stay In Your System?

To illustrate what this means for you, let’s use an example of Smoker A and Smoker B. They both smoke the exact same amount of weed everyday, and the exact same grade. And since they’re both smokers, they’re both looking for info on passing a drug test. Will the exact same method work for both of them equally? Very unlikely, and I’ll explain why…

Let’s say Smoker A is a sports freak who works out every day of the week. He runs, lifts weights, goes rock climbing, the works. This guy is a total hardbody without an ounce of extra fat on him. Smoker B works at a desk all day, and when he goes home his favorite sport is smoking a bowl while sitting on the couch and watching TV until bedtime. Over the years he’s slowly put on a few extra pounds (okay, probably more than a few).

Are you starting to guess where this is going…? It’s not rocket science. Smoker A doesn’t have very many fat cells where THC metabolites can hide out, so they’re constantly being filtered through his body and being excreted through his urine. If he completely stopped smoking today, he’d probably be clean in 10 days to 2 weeks, even though he’s a daily smoker. He still has to worry about passing a drug test on short notice, but if he has any kind of advance notice at all he can pass a urine test just by abstaining for a while.

But things aren’t so simple for Smoker B. Because he’s got quite a few extra fat cells where THC can plant itself, it takes a lot longer for it to cycle out of his body and into his urine. For him, passing a drug test means it’s definitely time for panic mode. Depending on how much extra weight he’s carrying, if he stopped smoking today it could be anywhere from 1 to 2 months before he’s able to pass his drug test.

So What’s Your Best Option for Passing a Drug Test?

So what can you do…? The reason why it’s so hard to know exactly how long marijuana stays in your system is because a person’s metabolism is very seldom as cut & dry as the difference between our friends Smoker A and Smoker B. We’re all completely different, and the only way to know if you’re clean or not is to buy a home drug test and just test yourself. If it comes up positive, and you know you’re going to be given a urine test, you’ve really only got one option: dilution.

Contrary to popular misconception, dilution does not mean drinking a gallon of water a day for a week or a month before your test. For passing a drug test, all you need to do is drink enough fluids right before your test so that your urine becomes dilute. Remember how I told you that the THC metabolites in your fat cells end up going through your kidneys and getting flushed out in your urine? Well, all you need to do to pass a urine test is drink so much that your kidneys become ‘overloaded.’ When that happens, your urine gets so dilute that your pee actually comes out clear, instead of yellow. And that means that anything that would normally show up in your urine (THC metabolites, and also other substances) is basically non-existent.

Every single detox drink on the market works on the principle of dilution. Their instructions tell you to drink a certain amount of water, and then what the drink does is add these ‘other substances’ back into your urine that are supposed to be there (for example, creatinine). Labs know that people try to dilute, so they run some tests specifically to see if you’ve been trying to game the system. Detox drinks have a sketchy track record of success, but if you’re a light smoker, with a fast metabolism, then your chances of passing a drug test with one of them are actually pretty decent.

Passing a Drug Test for Heavy Smokers

If you’re a pretty regular pot smoker, then using a commercial ‘detox’ drink is a big gamble. In that case, your best bet to successfully pass a urine test is to do your own dilution method at home. You can buy the same ingredients that are in the detox drinks and achieve much more reliable results by controlling the process. And especially if you’re overweight, you’ll also most likely need to drink quite a bit more water than the detox drink instructions tell you to, to help guarantee you’ll pass.

There are a lot of sites on the Internet talking about how to pass a drug test, but most of them are commercial sites of companies who want you to buy their products. But another real advantage of diluting on your own is that it’s a LOT cheaper. Which means you can afford to do a trial run and give yourself a urine test at home first, to make sure you’ve got the process down. You can pick up a home drug test in any major pharmacy, and once you can pass at home, then you can be confident of passing a drug test at the lab.

Recommended Reading

• How to Pass a Drug Test
• Why Does Weed Stay In Your System So Long?
• Passing a Drug Test – Know Your Detection Times!
• How to Pass a Drug Test Naturally – Is It Possible?
• How to Pass a Drug Test – Leave Your Paranoia At The Door
• Home Remedies for Passing Drug Tests – the Good, Bad, & Just Plain UGLY
• Tips On Passing a Drug Test – Always Consider the Source