Perhaps the Most Storied Rhetoric in the Reefer Madness Playbook.
The first thing I want to say is that any male that has ever used cannabis even once probably doesn’t really believe this. I was fifteen years old the first time I consumed cannabis and at that age I certainly didn’t need any assistance in libido. But boy oh boy did cannabis assist! Now an increased libido doesn’t necessarily translate to increased sperm count of course. But I think you would be hard pressed to find a doctor that didn’t think that increased libido and increased sperm count don’t parallel each other.
Before I debunk this ridiculous lie, I would like to take a moment to discuss a pretty fail proof system in which I have identified misinformation and disinformation about cannabis. As I discussed in my first blog usually the authors of anti-cannabis rhetoric will leave themselves an escape route. They do this by using vernacular that is open for interpretation. Verbiage such as “could lead to” “while a very small percentage of consumers experience these symptoms” , “May possibly be attributed to” and the like. When finding truthful information about cannabis generally I find things like concrete facts with numbers.
I will give examples in the following excerpts. This first set of excerpts are from University of Chicago medicine.org. Find the full article here. Which by the way is the first thing to come up on google in bold as if it were fact. Here comes the disinformation.
“What did your study find about marijuana’s impact on male fertility?
In the study of 409 young male patients seeking an infertility evaluation, we found that a certain part of the marijuana compound (CBD) had affinity to latch or bind to receptors on the sperm’s structure, altering its shape and function, which can ultimately decrease fertility in men. Interestingly, the negative impact on sperm function was seen in both current and past marijuana users. We don’t know how long men need to stop using marijuana — a week? a month? — in order to reverse sperm function. So, more studies are warranted to determine if marijuana’s affects are long-lasting.”
“Does marijuana affect sperm count?
Yes. According to the data in this study, marijuana decreased the volume of semen, sperm count and altered the sperm’s shape.”
Notice how these excerpts are entirely devoid of anything resembling any real data or facts. Now lets take a look at a Harvard study addressing the same subject entitled “Marijuana Smoking Linked to Higher Sperm Concentrations.
“For this study, researchers collected 1,143 semen samples from 662 men between 2000 and 2017. On average, the men were 36 years old, and most were white and college educated. Additionally, 317 of the participants provided blood samples that were analyzed for reproductive hormones. To gather information on marijuana use among study participants, researchers used a self-reported questionnaire that asked the men a number of questions about their usage, including if they had ever smoked more than two joints or the equivalent amount of marijuana in their life and if they were current marijuana smokers.
Among the participants, 365, or 55%, reported having smoked marijuana at some point. Of those, 44% said they were past marijuana smokers and 11% classified themselves as current smokers.
Analysis of the semen samples showed that men who had smoked marijuana had average sperm concentrations of 62.7 million sperm per milliliter of ejaculate while men who had never smoked marijuana had average concentrations of 45.4 million sperm per milliliter of ejaculate. Only 5% of marijuana smokers had sperm concentrations below 15 million/mL (the World Health Organization’s threshold for “normal” levels) compared with 12% of men who had never smoked marijuana. The study also found that among marijuana smokers, greater use was associated with higher serum testosterone levels.”
Simply the language itself from the first article is geared to an audience that is easily swayed in my opinion. And why does an article from the University of Chicago supersede an article from Harvard on the same subject as google lists it at the top of the search results on the subject? If you are initiated in the cannabis space you already know the answer; the powers that be, Big Pharma, corporate for profit prisons, corporate hospitals, Big Alcohol, mainly companies that exploit human beings for profit. All these types of companies are legally able to advertise on google, they all also happen to kill people (read that again), follow the money.
Working in the cannabis industry has its challenges. The greatest of which is simply undoing the 90+ years of rhetoric that most Americans believed and still believe hook line and sinker. People are slaves at times to their own conformation biases and would rather believe a lie they like than a truth they don’t. This is generally tied to some political ideology completely removed from any actual applicable logic or fact.
My fear is if cannabis continues to be grown the way it is grown in the legal markets in every state (more on this in future blogs) then many of the negative false claims about cannabis will become true. Not because of the plant itself, but the toxic way in which is was grown, with NO FDA or USDA oversight due to federal prohibition. In working in the legal commercial space and the non-profit cannabis space I felt compelled to start Cannabis Home Grow Consulting to help consumers grow their own medicine, saving their money and health in the process.
