From bud to brain : a psychiatrist's view of marijuana

Summary: "Most people get information about marijuana from friends, the Internet, popular newscasts and personal experience - all echo chambers filled with anecdotes, opinions, exaggerations and a smattering of facts. This is not because the public lacks curiosity about the topic. Rather, the general lack of scientific literacy about marijuana stems from the "Googlization" of information, the failure of clinicians to have objective and useful answers to patients' questions about marijuana, the superior power of stories to persuade more than facts, and scientists' difficulty translating their vast body of information about marijuana into an intriguing, easily understood narrative. Googlization encourages people to seek specific answers to specific questions without requiring familiarity with the deeper background context. People no longer need to study a field of information in order to discover individual facts that satisfy their immediate curiosity. And, of course, Google is designed to gather and present information that comports with each individual's interests. Marijuana advocates are directed toward one set of website "facts" while opponents are presented another set of cherry picked "facts", which leads to different silos of information reinforcing already fixed perspectives"--