Blog networks

Blog networks appear to have a life cycle. Today it is Scientific American that is blowing up its blog network.

Dave Winer, one of the medium’s pioneers, once defined a blog as, “the unedited voice of a person.”

sure.

It’s an honorable notion of what a blog should be, which suits independent bloggers just fine. News outlets, however, have unique responsibilities to their readers and to the public and as such their standards must differ.

So… maybe don’t pretend to have blogs? Just call them columns like you used to?

First, we are publishing a new set of Blog Network Guidelines so that everyone, bloggers and readers alike, is fully aware of our basic operational ground rules and protocols.

To make the most of these new guidelines, we are also reshaping the network to work more closely with our blogggers, create an improved balance of topic areas and bring in some new voices.

One of those statements is believable, anyway.

On down to a comment from what I guess is a staffer?

The reduction in the size of the network is not a statement about the quality of bloggers’ work—any more than any periodic update in any magazine’s content offerings is such a statement. Our decisions involved a variety of factors, including frequency of posts and traffic.

and adherence to the new Guidelines?

ah well. Like I said at the top, networks appear to have a natural life-cycle. The ones that are tied up to a traditional publishing entity perhaps are on a short burn from the start. They are just waiting for enough little kerfuffles to build up into a profound nervousness on the part of the suits upstairs. Then down comes the hammer.

Health report from Colorado: Recreational marijuana harms

a Reader put me onto a new Viewpoint in JAMA:

Monte AA, Zane RD, Heard KJ. The Implications of Marijuana Legalization in Colorado.JAMA. 2014 Dec 8. doi: 10.1001/jama.2014.17057. [Epub ahead of print][JAMA; PubMed]

The authors are from the Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Colorado and the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center. They set out to describe a few health stats from before and after the recreational legalization of marijuana.

Interesting tidbits:

However, there has been an increase in visits for pure marijuana intoxication. These were previously a rare occurrence, but even this increase is difficult to quantify. Patients may present to emergency departments (EDs) with anxiety, panic attacks, public intoxication, vomiting, or other nonspecific symptoms precipitated by marijuana use. The University of Colorado ED sees approximately 2000 patients per week; each week, an estimated 1 to 2 patients present solely for marijuana intoxication and another 10 to 15 for marijuana-associated illnesses.

This one is obviously frustratingly anecdotal in that there is no real measure of the rate before legalization.

The one on cyclic vomiting syndrome is better:

The frequent use of high THC concentration products can lead to a cyclic vomiting syndrome. Patients present with severe abdominal pain, vomiting, and diaphoresis; they often report relief with hot showers. A small study at 2 Denver-area hospitals revealed an increase in cyclic vomiting presentations from 41 per 113 262 ED visits to 87 per 125 095 ED visits (prevalence ratio, 1.92) after medical marijuana liberalization (A. A. Monte, MD, unpublished data, December 2014).

We’ve discussed the phenomenon of cannabis hyperemesis before on the blog. One thing we do have to be careful about is that since it has only been recently that the medical community has been alerted to the possibility of cannabis hyperemesis, we should expect the detection rate to increase. Thus, even against a stable rate of cannabis hyperemesis I would expect the reported rate to be increasing.

The University of Colorado burn center has experienced a substantial increase in the number of marijuana-related burns. In the past 2 years, the burn center has had 31 admissions for marijuana-related burns; some cases involve more than 70% of body surface area and 21 required skin grafting. The majority of these were flash burns that occurred during THC extraction from marijuana plants using butane as a solvent.

This is the e-cigarette and vape market at work people. In South Florida they apparently call it ‘Budda’.

Apparently some basic pharmacology 101 would be of help to the good citizens of Colorado.

Edible products are responsible for the majority of health care visits due to marijuana intoxication for all ages. This is likely due to failure of adult users to appreciate the delayed effects of ingestion compared with inhalation. Prolonged absorption complicates dosing, manufacturing inconsistencies lead to dose variability

Interesting. I recall the language in the original initiative was very vague about product testing, labeling, etc. Looks like this is a problem.

Ten to 30 mg of THC is recommended for intoxication depending on the experience of the user; each package, whether it is a single cookie or a package of gummy bears, theoretically contains 100 mg of THC. Because many find it difficult to eat a tenth of a cookie, unintentional overdosing is common. Furthermore, manufacturing practices for marijuana edible products are not standardized. This results in edible products with inconsistent THC concentrations, further complicating dosing for users. According to a report in the Denver Post, products described as containing 100 mg of THC actually contained from 0 to 146 mg of THC.8

Oh, and the children. Don’t forget about the children.

The most concerning health effects have been among children. The number of children evaluated in the ED for unintentional marijuana ingestion at the Children’s Hospital of Colorado increased from 0 in the 5 years preceding liberalization to 14 in the 2 years after medical liberalization.3 This number has increased further since legalization; as of September 2014, 14 children had been admitted to the hospital this year, and 7 of these were admitted to the intensive care unit. The vast majority of intensive care admissions were related to ingestion of edible THC products.

This Viewpoint certainly draws attention to the edibles/consumables products as being a problem. Seems pretty clear that maturation of product regulation would be a start, so that people are informed about what they are getting. This should probably be supplemented with some sort of public information campaign on the pharmacokinetics of ingested products compared with smoking marijuana. And, you know, keep it away from your kids.