your america i'm your host the right reverend david clark and i'm more than happy to come into your home today and to works onto the children so call your neighbor call your free call your mama corn your dad call your enemy and welcome them to listen want to say that i appreciate the time that we spent together in working on a project krishi you give me that opportunity to  t you in the music therapy project if it had not been for you i wouldn't have the confidence that i have right now in the dressing drug addiction so i want you to know publicly appreciate that it was a great project to work on yeah it was amazing i mean the timing was just right and i don't know how you came about like this occur you feel like you have a destiny and that particular area and the lord has really opened up some doors apparently really i have been authority board and serving in that capacity but i credit a lot of it to what i was able to learn to our conversations and through our projects and so  again objects thankful and extremely excited to have you to come and to appear on this project in the show and talk about the things that are going on industry you haven't won awards and you're just an expert in the field so let me ask you this question what is the difference it's you can mention all the investigator stuff and the research stuff but it's really leaders in the community that are really fighting this this epidemic that we have we've already drug and alcohol use among america or across the world  but with regards to your question regarding marijuana it's a very complex issue marijuana is obviously a plant and in medical purposes has part of that plant have been used to synthesize medications  medications that can be fairly effective for things like najah would people get sick for chemotherapy for example cancer and there are medications that are approved that will help with that   and in many respects the medical part is a lot different from the culture of use outside of the medical arena ok well that does that mean that  stronger before they go into the pharmaceutical industry want to capitalize on the holistic industry so now we're in a situation where the whole debate of medical zation of marijuana is very political certainly there are components of the plant and the plant itself has a type of substance called cannabinoid because there's four hundred of these types and some of them are very effective at certain conditions such as however the medical is a nation of marijuana across the country where about thirty to forty states have now considered or are considering legalizing marijuana for medical purposes is really not approved by the federal government so the food and drug administration has never approved the plant itself to be used for medical purposes synthetic substance of marijuana for their proper medical properties of anti matter right so how is this possible when they have so many  pain well i mean there are many facets of this so if the third there are several components so the first is this whole idea of medical marijuana in those states that have adopted medical marijuana you need a license practitioner it's some states very rarely is it indicated for pain and in fact we know that if you do use if you are prescribing prescribe marijuana legally across the country that less than two percent of those prescriptions are for the indications of hiv or for cancer so a lot of what's being prescribe is off what we would call off label not the intended purpose now why is that there is a lot of benefit to a tax rolls more of the states in order to receive money for growing marijuana there  are certainly a culture of many people in the country who have used marijuana and think that it's not dangerous so why can't i use it like you could use a cigarette for example who says that the medical is a sham part and there are several states across the country have who have legalized it for recreational purposes the most prominent one being colorado which now as of january one anybody can grow marijuana and or use it whatever reason they want to  outside the medical field so when you're talking about why why are people using medical marijuana or wire state moving toward this it's probably economic reason right and it's a political reason and it's not a medical reason it's the first to economic in the political well let me ask you this is marijuana behavior but a disease called marijuana use disorder where you have criteria if you meet these criteria you are diagnosed with a disease of marijuana addiction briefly  crust well if you have using more and more of the substance in order to get an effect if you withdraw from the medication if you're taking the marijuana and you have withdrawal symptoms which is very common in many patients with long term marijuana use if you crave the drug if you do things like missed school miss responsibility at home or in the job these are all kind of criteria that show that the substance that you're abusing in this case marijuana is is controlling your life in many respects and we know in many especially youth teenagers and young adults that about twenty to thirty percent of patien going into treatment for an addictive disorder are going in for the primary reason of marijuana use disorder or marijuana addiction so it is a problem yes  the cars there are about ten to twenty percent of people who smoke start casually can eventually get addicted to it and have major problems with their life and i imagine that if you're out there listening to the show and you know someone who smoking marijuana they may be doing other things seventy not be good for them because they're smoking they may be smoking marijuana while they're drinking alcohol or hazardous drink or they might be smoking marijuana and eventually move to harder drugs like cocaine or or opiate use so there are a lot of consequences and recently i published actually an article that showed that there are many many medical problems of just casual use of marijuana the medical problem medical problems so if we know from many many studies that if you smoke even casual amounts of marijuana you're at a five times higher risk of having a heart attack when you initially spoke within five minutes what you have chances of having lung problems especially since you're not only smoking that marijuana but oftentimes some other carcinogens that are in the marijuana smoke or things that cause cancer right there liver problems there are some cancers that may have increased incidence unfortunately the medical science it's hard to study marijuana it's hard to get grants to study the medical effects of marijuana so for many of what we do we look at studies large studies and see if people who use marijuana what kind of problems that they've had during the course of that study and we're finding these increased risks associated with marijuana use but above the medical risk is the social risks are the hardest the biggest problem truancy the last job the lost productivity the dio deal was when colorado legalized marijuana ten percent of the driving under the dollars in increased tax revenue for the first year but the but or hundred thirty five but the governor based on all the problems that they're seen with in colorado now are advocating for much more money just for event youth and young adults from using marijuana in hazardous situations so it's a it's cost neutral in many respects or even like an alcohol cost a loser right right willingness is the treatment or for cocaine use but there are also many medications we have for at the medication that they approve medications we can use for people with alcohol problems we've got two to three packs of three that are now used for treatment of   dependence or heroin addiction we don't have any medications for marijuana yet so we're we're lie a lot on marijuana treatment for individual and group therapies and there are very many different types of therapies that can be used edit that it's a really was a review article looking at the evidence associated with music therapy to reduce addictions in general and you know if you know we didn't find a lot of evidence out there and certainly there needs to be more research in this area well at this who are experiencing addiction we believe can set you free and relieve you of those cravings goals and desires that you have to take drugs but we know from experience that hillary had the liver so i encourage you to i was in the process of making preparations for this and i read a quote from oprah this want to hear what you think about what she's say cannot be legalized it will make it too easy we need all war on drugs because drugs are out of control certainly a very poignant concern considering the time since that time we've had a dramatic increase in the amount of patients or persons experiencing here to tell anybody that we should be legalizing something that's very harmful or for someone so i totally agree with that part of the quote and certainly we need to have a war on drugs however it's important to realize that it's not just a legal problem it's a medical problem so your listeners should really understand too that if there are problems we're going to call problems to not only talk to leaders in the community  about a person under its influence was just hiding people sometimes sport as a way of denying responsibility for what they really are it's an interesting quote using sports as kind of an analogy it's certainly addiction or problems associated drugs it's kind of an undercurrent of many of our lives and oftentimes people find ways or try to find things to escape that reality of drugs of abuse certainly i agree that we have to make it more apparent  eight jesse jackson in down with dope up with hope he says mine's moral do not reject dope to the degree that we reject the rope we are losing more young people to dope then we never lost to the rope certainly cultures racial ethnic persons who are at more risk for not only the harms associated with addiction but also the social consequences associated with that certainly we seen  rise in the amount of for example african american men using drugs and that probably contributes significantly to separation from the family unit addiction does that and it's important that we get that under control in order to preserve family ever preserve our society at large i'm on the same page again we like to thank culture in america in pittsburgh and in private communities we thank you for calling me a neighbor calling your friends and letting them know that  was in today and letting them know that we are determined to take war on drugs to another level again my prayer is that god will give you to see the light of jesus ears to hear the voice of jesus tongues to confess that jesus into law and heart to