Obviously people with mental discomfort are more likely to seek comfort in mind altering substances.
That said, as someone who is bipolar, has bipolar friends and has used cannabis for a significant portion of my half-century on Earth, cannabis usage is proportional to mood instability in myself and my friends. I have taken extensive breaks and noticed I am much more mentally resilient and less emotionally labile when taking breaks.
You just nailed the paradox at the heart of much cannabis legalization discourse. I don't think the general public understands the "not mutually exclusive" point.
The sentence is grammatically correct because as per the rules of English grammar the nouns/verbs/other parts of the speech are in the correct locations.
The overall sentence is syntactically incorrect because you forgot to put a question mark at the end.
The sentence is semantically correct (which you actually meant to ask), though with a better alternate, as explained by the sibling comment.
i appreciate you sharing this. ofc, it's only one anecdotal piece of evidence, but i have been a bit torn about my use of cannabis at times. i sometimes feel it maybe helps, but i wonder if that's just the short term side effects that seem to calm me, and the long term effects (even if only using once a month) make my emotions more unstable...
I live with bipolar as well and have avoided cannabis use because when I did smoke it, I was severely depressed afterwards. Recently I had some dental work that did not go well and I was on one of the Oxy formulations for a few days to deal with pain. I had a bad reaction to the Oxy and I found that 5 mg pot gummy's in conjunction with Tylenol provided better pain relief. When the pain faded enough that I just needed Tylenol, I didn't experience the usual post use depression.
I experiment with the gummy's afterwards and found that the depression post usage effect was still present. Something about using them as pain relief changed how my mind responded to THC.
Both can be true, weed can help with mood swings by numbing you out or shifting your mental state somewhere else. Weed can also be harmful because it numbs you, but harmful in a latent and subtle sort of way.
> have taken extensive breaks and noticed I am much more mentally resilient and less emotionally labile when taking breaks.
For sure, but that's an association. Which one actually caused the other? eg. perhaps you got into a state of mind that was less emotionally labile and so decided to take a break.
Sometimes I don't use cannabis for a while and feel fine. Then, while still feeling fine I unexpectedly end up in a situation where I can smoke a joint. Maybe it shows up at a birthday party. The days after there is a noticable change in my emotion regulation (less stable, easily feeling down).
There are other confounders associated with parties though, like drinking, staying up late, talking with people leading to innate comparisons with one's own life, etc. all of which affect one's mood. I'm not entirely skeptical of the possibility of a cannabis effect, just saying not to be too hasty in generalizing.
I'm terrified of seeking help for mental illness because certain diagnosis can have legal impacts. It is a sad truth, no one has a real response for it except "get over it", and it is very, very difficult to get support for political reforms to protect the mentally ill.
I am also terrified the medications we force on some mental health patients, especially injected long-term ones, are purely for the benefit of the care taker and not the individual.
I think cannabis had fell into a niche of "self-medication", for people who the system doesn't seem to work for. Cannabis nor alcohol are the ideal medications, they are simply the only ones most easily available.
> I'm terrified of seeking help for mental illness because certain diagnosis can have legal impacts. It is a sad truth, no one has a real response for it except "get over it", and it is very, very difficult to get support for political reforms to protect the mentally ill.
What are some of the impacts?
I remember the show "Homeland" the main character had a sister who was a doc who would prescribe her meds for bipolar, that way she could continue working for the government/Pentagon as a spy.
My brother was almost denied clearance because he saw a therapist when he was mentally healthy yet personally struggling just to ensure that he didn't have any metal issues
Remember that word "some" - it's really important. I knew someone who was floridly psychotic and would stab strangers when he smoked weed, until he got an Involuntary Treatment Order and monthly depot injections. He's still got very unusual ideas, but he's not stabbing anymore.
It's crazy.... depending on country as well can be an issue. My buddy in the Netherlands was telling me how difficult it is to talk to a therapist there. Wild.
there's tons of self-guided resources online that are amazing at helping with mental illness that don't require you to submit to some person or organization that could report you. we need to stop seeing "talking to a therapist" as the only way to define getting mentally healthy.
I'm personally partial to CBT. Burns' Feeling Great and Feeling Good are classics that have shown to be effective in research. Once you build familiarity with the concepts through those kinds of explanatory resources, individual exercises like those published by UW at https://depts.washington.edu/uwhatc/cbt-notebook/ can be done in a self-guided manner.
Every single chemical I put into my body has risk. Too much salt, caffeine / coffee, cheese, pasta / carbohydrates. When I drive a car I’m rolling the dice. When I let my 10 year old walk by himself to the subway, ride it to his friend’s house, and then ride it back, my mind can wander to all sorts of dangers.
Marijuana is absolutely a drug with downsides. There are also upsides - for example I enjoy my life more. I also enjoy alcohol, sometimes to excess. I acknowledge I have taken likely years of my life away through my actions. I have also dabbled in cocaine and ecstasy. I don’t think those drugs should be totally illegal either.
My point is we all make our own decisions and are forced to accept risk. Sometimes you just have to live. Otherwise why bother living?
10 ft away? I wish it were only that far. After legalization here in Michigan, you can smell it seemingly everywhere.
I supported, and still support, legalization. But the smell is a serious issue. Even just driving down the road I catch a whiff from other cars or buildings nearly every day.
This is potentially interesting, but it is important to bear in mind just how tricky mental disorders are to characterize robustly. Psychiatry does not have a record of strongly reproducible results. All of these primary criteria, cannabis use disorder, bipolar disorder, and depression are frequently diagnosed differently by practiced professionals.
One of the more academic investigations of addiction, the book High Price by Carl Hart, suggests that the real experience of addiction is substantially different from the way most people think of it and most addicts eventually quit on their own for a range of reasons. This suggests that the very concept of "cannabis use disorder" may not really make sense.
> the very concept of "cannabis use disorder" may not really make sense.
I've known people who used cannabis the way alcoholics use alcohol - if it wasn't a use disorder, I don't know what is. The concept is valid and can apply to sorts of things from gambling, pron, online gaming even. If the use becomes problematic then its a problem, 'use disorder' is the just the name for this.
Sounds reasonable, but that also seems to be within the range of you know it when you see it phenomena like porn. There is something real there, but making a science to study and control it may not be as trivial as it first seems.
A few months ago, we had a support group going at my clinic, with several patients with various diagnoses which are not directly discussed. We also had a presentation on sleep hygiene by a visiting psychiatrist. One of the newer support group members was openly promoting his love of smoking a joint and a cigarette and chilling out in the morning, and the psychiatrist said "cool, you do you!"
Then the next week, the clinician leader of the support group laid down a few ground rules for the new members, one of them being "if you show up while you're high, then you'll be gone just as quickly".
So I think it's safe to say that there is a range of opinions and attitudes among clinical professionals.
I have a friend who makes a good tech salary and lives in $LARGE_CITY, and she and I have compared notes on mental disorders over the years.
She enjoys her drugs, of all kinds. She worked hard to connect with a psychiatrist who could both prescribe the sorts of drugs she's into, and also not shame her for the recreational drugs she does on the side. She pays out-of-pocket for the privilege.
It became apparent to me that she's not really into treatment of her condition or healing, or repairing her relationships with friends and family. She just seemed to be on a hedonistic journey of seeking pleasure.
So you can decriminalize and reschedule all the drugs you want, but people will self-medicate, and find dangerous uses. People who use illegal or OTC or alternative treatments will not always report those to their physician or pharmacy. Even if they do, all interactions are not known, but many dangerous ones can result from trying to put someone on psychotropics while they're under the influence of something else.
>These findings may inform policies regarding the legal status and control of cannabis use.
But not without NNTs. For depression, OR = 1.8, NNT = 12 (assuming 10% lifetime incidence, this is very hard to estimate due to the difficulty in diagnosis). For bipolar disorder, OR = 3, NNT = 25. This is before accounting for any reverse causation: roughly 80% of incidence of BPD is associated with genetic variation.
So e.g. assuming a fully causal association with bipolar disorder (unlikely due to the strong genetic influence on bipolar disorder) you need 25 people to stop smoking weed to prevent one case of bipolar disorder. You can also calculate it in terms of how many people do you need to imprison to prevent one case of bipolar disorder.
This is particularly revealing when you look at studies giving an odds ratio of 2-3 for cannabis use associated with schizophrenia. The base rate for schizophrenia is <0.02% [1], so the NNT is >2500. You probably need to imprison hundreds of people to prevent one case of schizophrenia, again assuming the association is causal.
The claim that these studies should impact marijuana legality is just plain bad math.
I can vouch for Cannabis being able to cause a heavy depressive episode lasting several days. In my "research" it starts several days after intake and also strongly hightens paranoia levels / trust in other people.
There are of course many factors to consider, like medication usage. but not going into detail with that
Does it really surprises anyone that a psychoactive drug have psychoactive effects on it's users? This whole "cannabis is an inofensive natural plant" is so dumb, of course a drug that alters your mind and is used regularly will produce side effects on it's users. The other thing that I always try to warn my pot head friends is about the pulmonary risks involved in cannabis use. I know guys that smoke all day pretty much non stop. Imagine if instead of weed, it was tobacco cigarretes, UNFILTERED, being burned up and breathed in. Smoke is smoke, and your lungs will get covered in ashes and debris over time. Pot heads are just alcoholics who destroy their lungs instead of their livers, the mental impairment part is the same. I'm not talking about drinking a beer or two on the weekend, or smoking a joint once a week. I'm talking about the wake and bake type of guys.
As it naturally occurs it probably was fairly innocuous in longer term psychoactive effects.
Heirloom strains had CBD alongside THC.
CBD on its own has been as effective in research as antipsychotics in treating schizophrenia, and very much mitigates the OP effects in research.
But the vast majority of product today has selectively bred out the CBD.
It's time we stop talking about cannabis use and start regarding it as THC use, as the full spectrum of the original plant is no longer what people are really using.
It'd be like selectively breeding high arsenic almonds and then people getting sick eating them and declaring the problem as one impacting almond consumption instead of more specifically arsenic consumption.
THC unmitigated by CBD is a psychiatric sleeping giant that's currently not being addressed because the pendulum swing is still glowing strong with legalization momentum and any criticism is generally dismissed as simply being anti-cannabis use generally.
The THC levels in Canadian cannabis is f'd. Of all the things, I wish the gov. had put mandates that there must be a minimum level of CBD and maximum level of THC. It's bonkers.
I can't see the full study methodology without an account. That said…
The challenge with running studies ethically is that you can't split your test groups into two groups and somehow induce cannabis use disorder and see if major depression, bipolar, etc results from it. Rather, you can see if the people who naturally develop the disorder also have those problems.
The flaw in this reasoning is that people who develop depression and similar issues are likely to self-medicate with cannabis. In related news, umbrellas do not cause rain.
Indeed. Your reasoning was echoed in this critique from Prof David Curtis, Honorary Professor, UCL Genetics Institute.
> “Around 20% of young people in Denmark use cannabis but in this study fewer than 1% of the sample had been assigned a diagnosis of cannabis use disorder and these may well have been people who had a pre-existing susceptibility to depression and other psychiatric disorders.
> “Other studies have shown that cannabis use itself is not associated with increased risk of depression, so perhaps we are seeing that people with a pre-existing susceptibility to depression are more likely to be diagnosed with cannabis use disorder. This clearly does not mean that we should infer that cannabis somehow causes depression.
> “I don’t think that this study provides us with much information to help decide the extent to which cannabis use is, or is not, harmful.”
Obviously this is not a real argument against what you said, but the same thing happened with smoking. The tobacco companies said that there might be some set of factors that both caused lung disease, and caused smoking. As opposed to the alternate hypothesis that smoking caused lung disease. As is generally thought now, umbrellas do not cause rain but smoking does cause lung disease. Cannabis is federally illegal in the United States (the same way manufacturing machine guns without a license is for example), so if you live there don't use it. In some other places, I'd highly advise you to consider only the known benefits of using cannabis (and actually known, not something from a crappy study that you never read past the abstract or something a stoner buddy told you), and weigh that against known and potential risks of using the drug. Treat any form of smoking, including smoking cannabis, with high suspicion, as it involves inhaling large concentrations of combustion products. In conclusion, I would suggest you treat cannabis like how a rational person would treat cigarettes in the 1950s.
> They showed the link between smoking and cancer with a mountain of empirical evidence, including tests on mice.
Yes, it does now. From what I've seen, people complain about how long it took for official action in labeling to take place on tobacco smoking, but it's up to them how much effort they want to put into preventing a repeat situation. For a somewhat related example, some people think the FDA puts so much effort into preventing a repeat of thalidomide that it's a net negative for the entire organization to exist at all, and suggest expanding the category of "legal but not (effectively) mandated" to include almost all proposed drugs. "Never again" is much harder and more costly than many people think, because you have to get it right (or err in the direction of preventing the type of outcome in question) every single time, but if a single thing gets through, it's all over.
Make your decisions as rationally as possible.
> I suggest a war on ice cream.
Ice cream has some pretty funny statistics that I don't really buy as making actual sense. I'd limit usage quite heavily.
This really depends on the context. Note the various news articles currently going around that highlight the increased scrutiny Musk faced when he smoked weed publicly on a podcast. It’s still federally illegal and that can still come with very real consequences.
> Obviously this is not a real argument against what you said, but the same thing happened with smoking. The tobacco companies said that there might be some set of factors that both caused lung disease, and caused smoking.
Mental illness and substance use both affect/are effected by the Brain. It seems less likely that the same cause would affect both the Brain and the Lungs.
> Cannabis is federally illegal in the United States (the same way manufacturing machine guns without a license is for example), so if you live there don't use it.
That's not even really true anymore. I live in Texas, which has virtually no legal weed (beyond medical marijuana for a very small number of specific conditions like epilepsy and ALS - it's not like other states where you can say "Hey doc, I've got a headache, can I get a marijuana prescription?"), and yet I can walk into a nice, clean, friendly store in a strip mall and pick up some D9 gummies and brownies, as well as some THCA bud that to me is indistinguishable from "normal" marijuana.
The fact is the 2018 farm bill that legalized hemp had enough loopholes that it essentially legalized marijuana as well. While a lot of this is in a gray area (particularly in the case of THCA bud which appears to me to be a pretty blatant misrepresentation of the law, but I ain't complaining), it's clear there is no appetite anywhere to crack down on these loopholes. For example, Florida considered a bill this year that would crack down on D9 products, but there was already enough entrenched business opposition that the bill was killed.
Weed is legal in the US. If you're worried about legal consequences, just pay a little more and go to a nice dispensary and you're fine.
The ATF recently (in the last few years) updated some of their forms to clarify that cannabis is still an illegal drug. In addition, while the DEA may not enforce as much as they used to, they have a clear position on the matter.
This precisely. Who’s going to utilize weed more? People going through mental anguish. You know what causes major depression anxiety and psychosis? Trauma. Read the ACE study. A cruel traumatizing environment and behaviors are far more to blame than cannabis.
It's important to recognize that we've never successfully answered Hume's general skepticism about the existence of causality as something that is real outside of our own minds. So causality can't be positively confirmed to exist at all, let alone be detected and confirmed through statistics.
Before you dismiss that is philosophical non-sense, causality is closely related to the "Arrow of Time" which is considered an unsolved problem in physics [0]. From what we've observed time appears to be the only asymmetric physical process, largely due to entropy (that is you can immediately tell if a video of a jar breaking is being played backwards because we don't expected a jar to "fall together"). There are Quantum processes, for example, that are time symmetric, that is playing a video of these processes would look the same reversed and forward.
That said, as someone who does a lot of statistics, in practice what we do is model the causal process with a directed acyclic graph and see how well our models behave under causal assumptions. These work okay for answering practical questions about does A cause B. By controlling for correlating variables we can see the impact on what we believe to be a causal variable when we condition on these other correlating factors.
Worth mention that nearly all of the work is done by linear models in practice.
I don't think Hume's work suggests that causality isn't 'real' but that we can't prove causation using inductive methods. This isn't a problem unless our measure of 'truth' is proving some causal effect to be true. The solution is to pretend our models of causation are correct, run them and compare the results to observation. We never 'prove' the causal effect, but we judge its validity by how well it can predict future observations.
In my view the 'real' problem we currently have is that we cannot test hypothesis in isolation (Duhem-Quine thesis). Thus we rely on heuristics like "scientific consensus" to judge whether the hypothesis that make up a field are gaining predictive power or not. The solution to all these problems is to use the Lakatosian Method of Scientific Research Programmes to track a field's progress over time. Anything less than this just devolves into Kuhnian paradigms, which is basically a popularity contest to determine 'valid' scientific methods.
I think this 'real' problem can explain all the failures of modern science: the replication crisis, abuse of statistical methods, funding influencing results.
The comment above refers to Hume's 'induction problem' [1].
> we've never successfully answered Hume's general skepticism about the existence of causality as something that is real outside of our own minds
The quote seems to imply a strong consensus, but [1] disagrees.
The phrasing "the existence of causality as something that is real outside of our own minds" sounds like philosophical idealism [2]. One can take that view without discussing causation at all, seems to me. Forgive the following blunt questions: how is philosophical idealism either (a) useful or (b) testable? To me, currently, it seems to be neither.
Maybe I'm missing something? For those that get value from it, what are some practical take-aways you get out of thinking about Hume's 'problem of induction'?
I'm very much into philosophy, but I admit I don't see a lot of utility in digging into this outside of historical purposes. It feels to me that the tools from inferential statistics combined with some deeper study on causation are far more useful and enlightening than trying to figure out the historical context around Hume's writing here. I'm glad other people do it, for sure, but what I've skimmed doesn't "grab" me.
WRT causation, I often return to the idea of "no model is perfect, but some are useful". There are many times when we build useful models that -- when combined with proper experimentation -- very strongly indicate causation. The laws of physics, for example. As soon as people get involved, it gets messy.
I completely agree that looking at old epistemology isn't that useful; simply because more recent theorists will need to address the same issues, so generally refer to older theory within their work. If you want a deep understanding then you need to look at the source material, but as you mention this is mostly only interesting for gaining a historical perspective.
Unfortunately many of the people who create introductory science courses seem to mostly only be aware of Popper, so most students are aware of the importance of falsifiability but not of its problems. I suspect this is because reading Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend leaves one with an impression that science isn't an objective endeavour and this is an uncomfortable truth when start from a belief that science is some infallible rationalist project. Personally it transformed my view from "trust the science"(TM) to "question the science, always." Science isn't always science unfortunately.
No because you can never know for sure that there isn't a latent factor C which is the real causal factor and A is merely correlating with it (if we presume causality to exist at all, which is a pretty standard assumption).
We can compose DAGs that control for the factors we do know about, but it's impossible to exhaust or even know all possible latent processes that are impacting the outcome.
E.g. to show that A does not cause B, while B (or a latent factor B correlates with) causes A?
When people say that the study can equally be interpretted as cannabis disorder causes depression and as depression causes cannabis disorder, can't statistics show that these two hypothesys are not equal?
I hoped someone who knows statistics will just tell us, instead of me stretching my brain.
The famous phrase "correlation does not mean casuation" is not equal to "correlation is indistingushable from casuation", but that's how people seem to often treat it.
Ideally, the paper abstract should be clear about what can or can not be concluded. In the title they say "subsequent" as if suggesting casuality, but in the abstract they say "associated". Confusing for a layman such as me.
My intuition of how to distinguish correlation from casuation:
If cannabis and depression were symmetrically connected, then incease of chances for cannabis use between depressed was equal to the increase of chances for depression between cannabis users.
If cannabis increases chances for depression more that depression increases chances for cannabis, than we conclude cannabis tends to cause depression.
Formula:
percentage of depressed between canabis users / percentage of depressed in general population > persentage of cannabis users between depressed / persentage of cannabis users in general population.
Looking at it further, it's indeed not so easy. If we have a statistics produced by some casual relationship, e.g.
function takeMeasurement() {
// c (the cause) itself has probability 0.5
// d (the dependent) in absence of c has probability 0.5
// but the presence of c increases it to 0.7
const c = Math.random(1.0) < 0.5;
const d = Math.random(1.0) < (c ? 0.7 : 0.5);
return {c, d};
}
one can calculate an equally plausible hypothesis of causality in opposite direction, which would produce an equal statistics:
Is it really hopeless? Maybe not? For example, a boundary case when d only happens in case of c? Are the hypotheses "c causes d" and "d causes c" still equally plausable?
That "whitey" effect people getting smoking weed and hash for the first few times is from a sudden release of glutathione, a powerful antioxidant stored in the liver, and a supplement Asian people have been known to take to whiten their skin.
Not everything is A therefore B in our body's homeostasis. Well perhaps completely overindulging it gets to that point. But I think the idea is the effect can be there even if overused slightly.
I just quit weed after getting addicted for almost 2 years.
There is a large community of people who are trying to quit: /r/leaves
The article is nothing new to me. Read a few posts from the subreddit and you'd see a pattern.
Three weeks ago, I was pro-weed recreation legalization. Today, I'm strongly anti recreation use.
Edit: I'm not against decriminalization of weed. I'm highly against pro-recreational use. I'm against high THC %, easy access, advertisements, sponsorships, etc. I believe weed should be classified as a highly addictive drug - especially to youth. We should not have weed stores. It should be sold behind the counter. It should have a very high tax so that it's not cheap. It should have huge, bold warning labels on packaging. It should not be legalized at the federal level.
Society does this all the time though realistically. If there is a 1:N chance of harm; and N is low, and we have no idea who will be harmed, we tend to regulate or make illegal.
There are many things that provably have much higher risk of harm than cannabis but have no serious attempts underway to make them illegal. Unhealthy food. Motorcycles. All kinds of dangerous hobbies. And alcohol of course. The list is long.
I don’t think it has much to do with wanting to help or protect anyone, or else you would see more consistency in the things people want to make illegal. It’s more akin to religious people who think they know the “right” way to live and want to impose those values on everyone.
Many people just have an emotional dislike of cannabis for whatever reason—seeing its effect on others makes them uncomfortable, so they want to stop everyone from doing it. Soda and motorcycles don’t make them uncomfortable, so they don’t care about those.
Not convinced. Look at Singapore. I doubt they would care what the US does. Anyway, after the US legalizes everything for “freedom”, I’m not sure that many countries will follow suit.
With all due respect, I was a responsible user for the first year too. Good luck to you and I hope you never get addicted.
Unlike alcohol addiction, which can come on fast, weed grabs a hold of you over a longer period. It starts out as only beneficial with little to no downside. You won't notice you're addicted until much later.
Also, I find your decision to call the plant marijuana interesting. The names weed and pot have a negative connotation. But "marijuana" sounds a lot more acceptable. Nothing to do with you. Just something I noticed.
I first smoked marijuana 20 years ago. Since then there have been years where I haven’t had it at all, to smoking daily for months, to going back to not having it for months at a time. I have never had any issue stopping. No withdrawal. For me it’s even easier to quit than coffee. Not that I ever said to myself I need to “quit” smoking marijuana, because it isn’t an addiction. Sometimes I’m more busy than other times and want to focus on work, so I don’t get the time. Other times I’m in a more recreational period of my life and I find it is a lot more preferable than alcohol. Did you know some people casually are able to smoke cigarettes too without getting addicted?
> Also, I find your decision to call the plant marijuana interesting. The names weed and pot have a negative connotation. But "marijuana" sounds a lot more acceptable. Nothing to do with you. Just something I noticed.
Seeing the diversity of opinions and experiences here I am inclined to believe there is an interaction between the genetics of the strain, and your own genetics that determine whether your particular habit become something which is addictive for you.
This is highly fascinating, and opens the door towards in nuanced manipulation of marijuana plant genetics in order to create strains with the benefits, but without the addictive side effects and tailoring that genetic strain manipulation to the genetics of the individual user where they could undergo a kind of a genetic test, and then the strain could be tailored to meet their exact desired profile without any addictive qualities.
That would be great. I have a friend who get severe panic attack if he uses the wrong strain. Any other strain and he has a great night. I forgot whether it was sativa or Indica that does it
Plants are so fascinating. Yeah it's weird how diverse the experiences can be...and how it's about the whole of plant chemistry, not just a single compound.
Marijuana can be highly addictive, it depends on the person. I’ve been addicted for over 20 years, completely unable to stop for more then a week and I know a lot of people in the same situation. Not saying it should be illegal because of this, just saying that because it’s not addictive to you doesn’t mean it can’t be for other people. That is why it’s important not to advertise marijuana as a risk free substance.
> Three weeks ago, I was pro-weed recreation legalization. Today, I'm strongly anti recreation use.
The other posters here have a point. If one is vocal against cannabis while mostly giving alcohol a pass - it makes it harder to respect warnings of harm.
After 5 generations of lying drug war PR and ridiculous propaganda, this deeply incredulous debate needs a lot to be worth considering.
Just because alcohol is bad for you, doesn't mean weed is good for you.
I believe it's easier to get addicted to weed than alcohol. I think time will prove me right.
Think of it this way. Let's say there are 100 people in a society. Without weed, 5 are addicted to alcohol. With weed, 20 are addicted to weed and 3 are addicted to alcohol. Yes, there will be fewer alcohol addicts, but we added 20 weed addicts. Is this better for society? I don't believe so.
Being addicted to alcohol is easily an order of magnitude more destructive to a person and the people around them than chronic marijuana use. It’s not even close.
I’ve been to inpatient chemical dependency treatment twice, once for opiate addiction and once for alcohol addiction. There were 0 people that were inpatient for marijuana use.
But the problem is the ADDICTION, not the substance itself. People are trying to point out that if you are against marijuana legalization (because people become addicts), then you must also be against legal alcohol, as it is a much more destructive and addictive substance. And you haven't answered with anything except "weed is bad for you!"
I dont think its fair to just pull those number out of your bottocks and use them as argument. The same way I could argue "100 people, 20 addicted to alcohol, with weed 5 are addicted to weed and 5 to alcohol, while 30 begun to use alcohol/weed responsibly after broadening their views on how substances affect their mind.
Now the argument looks completely different, yet still holds 0 value.
It seems to me you are scared of weed now, and with your honest good will want to save others from it as well. That's nice and all, but please don't presume you know better than everyone, or even better than "those who haven't tried it yet".
I have had my fair share of experiences with weed, and while I agree that mindless consumption will bring harm (ask me how I know), I also believe that just landing hard in this case helped me discern this pattern in other areas of my life too - so (in my subjective experience) even this harm it brought me _directly_ improved my life in the long run. And that's before I start talking about effect it had outside its most obvious harm.
I advocate for education, and responsible trials for anyone curious, and I believe it can bring many positive changes into ones life. One just have not to abuse it.
Yes, I pulled the numbers out of my ass - just like you did. It's just my opinion and I was just trying to make a point with an example - not hard facts. I never presented it as hard facts.
So don’t be. What you’re saying is that nobody should be able to be in that room, because you know better than they what’s best for them.
You don’t seem to recognize that, at its enactment, drug prohibition had absolutely nothing to do with any sort of literal harm drugs caused to their users. Look up the horrifically racist excuse that was used for making cannabis illegal.
I watched the documentary on blacks and weed on Netflix. I'm not an expert. I have some idea.
I do not care about racism in weed or the past. I'm speaking purely from my own experience. I'm also speaking on weed's influence on my future children. Weed does not exist on a vacuum. It doesn't exist for only users and not at all for non-users.
I don’t think kids having easy access to lots of things is a good idea. However, I think adults having easy access to those same things is fine.
Why would you bring up that straw-man unless you think that you should still be able to control your children’s choices after they become adults? They may be your descendants, but when they are no longer children, you don’t get more than an advisory role in their choices.
Well, I wouldn't have been strongly anti recreational use if I didn't go through what I did.
Extremely high THC products coupled with professional marketing agencies? Yikes. We're going to have a weed epidemic soon. Maybe it's a silent epidemic now.
If we have a weed epidemic then we certainly have an alcohol epidemic too, as well as an obesity epidemic, as well as a traffic accident epidemic, and so on.
Making everything that can be harmful to some subset of the population illegal is not the way to deal with these issues. It's reductio ad absurdum into a totalitarian nanny state that literally controls your diet and makes you drive 25 mph on the highway.
It's not the government's job to make everything that could possibly hurt you if you overdo it unavailable to you.
I agree with you that cannabis can be very harmful to some people, and that the risks are often understated. But if you want to help people who are susceptible in this way, the solution is to help them realize they have a problem, develop self-discipline, and understand that while cannabis may be harmless to many people, for them it is not, and what works for many others (occasional moderate use) won't work for them.
In short, people with this issue should take responsibility, join a 12 step program, and fix the problem in themselves rather than expecting all of society to adapt itself to not trigger their addiction. That you can't use it in moderation doesn't mean no one can, just like there are probably many things you can do in moderation that other people aren't able to.
1. Weed has a mostly benign image right now. It has good PR.
2. It's much harder to realize that you're addicted to weed - unlike alcohol. Alcohol addiction is obvious to people around you as well. Not weed. Many weed addicts do not have the self awareness.
3. Weed can be significantly cheaper than alcohol per session - thus consuming more is economical for many. A few drinks at a bar could cost you $100 vs eat a weed gummy for $2 and then go out.
4. Weed addiction takes place over a long period of time. It could take years before you realize the negative effects. It's obvious for alcohol immediately.
> 1. Weed has a mostly benign image right now. It has good PR.
Maybe this is a US/Canada thing, but it is deeply untrue in the UK. Cannabis has a terrible image here, as opposed to alcohol. Someone who drinks a bottle of wine a night would not be frowned upon.
I never tell people at work that I consume cannabis, not even people I am friends with, as it leads to all kinds of assumptions and prejudices.
Many millions of people are able to use cannabis moderately and responsibly. If for whatever reason you can't, that's up to you to deal with--there are many resources available that can help. Taking it away from everyone because you have a problem is not a reasonable solution.
I'm against drug prohibition in general. I think it has been an abject failure. Strong regulation makes sense for the most dangerous drugs (cannabis certainly isn't one of them), but I don't think any drug should be illegal. I don't believe it's the government's job to save you from yourself.
Making a habit of driving 100mph on a motorcycle will probably kill you about as quickly on average as either of those drugs, and is more dangerous to other people to boot. Should motorcycles therefore also be illegal? If not, why not? If the goal is to stop people from hurting themselves, why are you only focused on one particular way that people can hurt themselves?
We have laws preventing 100mpg speeds on any vehicle. We also have laws that govern how a motorcycle should be driven.
The government can't ban everything that has a risk of death. You could die if a tree falls on you randomly. The government isn't going to ban trees. It has to do with the magnitude of the problem to society. Motorcyclists getting killed, although a problem, is not that high of a problem to society in the US.
Are you a software developer or work in tech? There are millions of things you can do to improve your product but you always prioritize the most important ones first, right? Best bang for the buck. And you'll likely never reach the improvements at the bottom of the list.
A law against 100mph speeds on a vehicle is not a corollary to drug prohibition--it's banning the use of vehicles completely.
"It has to do with the magnitude of the problem to society. Motorcyclists getting killed, although a problem, is not that high of a problem to society in the US."
Considering that cannabis kills exactly no one, you seem to be arguing against your own point here.
At 75% of the US population obese and a cost to society in the billions, that's no longer "some subset of the population".
It's long past the point of "people with this issue should take responsibility".
If you enjoy weed, and I think that's fine if you do, you should be able to forsee a future where the weed industry in a capitalist system with few regulations ends up in the same position as the food industry: having created highly addictive and unhealthy products to the point of causing massive and lasting damage to society.
It would be better to smartly regulate early on and avoid the disaster and the predictable overreaction as a result. It is hard to smartly regulate. But worth the investment if you want to continue enjoying something.
And smart regulations don't require a nanny state as you implied. You can still choose to smoke cigarettes. But smoking has declined from 20.9% of adults in 2005 to 11.5% in 2021. Thanks in part to smart regulations and higher taxes.
At the very least we should be willing to tax harmful substances at the same rate at which they cost society.
That's not a nanny state. That's just fair. Why should I pay a part of your choice to smoke cigarettes?
> We're going to have a weed epidemic soon. Maybe it's a silent epidemic now.
Whatever it is, it's been underway for long enough for the pot-parade of horribles to manifest itself. Heavy weed smokers are all over - but we aren't surrounded by ruin that is clearly attributable to pot.
If you have extra concern to invest, may I suggest one of our most pressing psychological catastrophe?
The criminalization of childhood growth (adult-free time) and the erasure of critical free range land. We've brought complete ruin to childhood and parenting in just two generations. Whatever you think pot is doing, this is actually far, far worse.
Track the timeline of your personal evolution on this topic as you progress in your journey. I'm a bit more than a week ahead of you, and I'm coming to see the problem as high THC content. Low THC (<10%) and high CBD may mitigate your (justified) concerns about recreational use. Of course as it's become legal in more places, Big Industry is showing its perpetual tendency to create higher potency strains with more addictive potential. Stay tuned..
1. A director screaming at a subordinate.
2. Employees working so hard that they had to take time off due to health reasons, related to overwork. All were on visas and in this job market they don’t have a lot of options.
3. Employee A being so mean to an employee B that she started crying in a meeting. Employee A wasn’t even reprimanded. I obviously no longer work there.
Just a reminder for anyone reading this that CBD has been shown to be an effective antipsychotic in its own right [1], and particularly in regards to THC related psychosis [2].
It's probably not a great idea that the industry is moving towards high concentration THC and low to zero CBD product.
The "naturally occurring plant" is getting further and further from what's naturally occurring with the psychosis inducing compound coexisting with the psychosis mitigating compound.
It's quite disappointing to walk into a dispensary and see only a tiny shelf in one corner of the store with 1:1 or greater CBD products and 95% of the product on offer as a race to the bottom in CBD potency.
In the majority of people, this won't necessarily result in a psychotic issue, but it's going to happen commonly enough that we're going to have continuing and expanding social issues if 1:1 products don't become more commonplace.
I'd strongly encourage any future legalization legislation to consider marginally subsidizing product that has higher CBD ratios, as often I see that the consumer push towards THC only is related to cost saving against more expensive mixed products.
Yeah, cannabis contains a multitude on cannabinoids: THC, CBD, CBN, CBG and CBC. These high-thc & low-cbd strains fuck you up immensely.
Not saying you should never use weed, if I go to Amsterdam, I will for sure use it but I don't bring it back home with me. Smoking once every couple of months will not harm you at all, IMHO.
The title is incorrect. It implies a causal effect, where the article suggests correlation. Also, it refers to a cannabis use disorder, not cannabis use (as mentioned by others).
I propose: "Cannabis use disorder correlated to increased risk of both psychotic and non-psychotic unipolar depression and bipolar disorder."
Or even: "People with major depression, bipolar disorder and psychosis are more likely to be addicted to cannabis."
Yes I have! I've dated someone even. Schizophrenia covers a pretty wide set of symptom sets but I would not call it flatly "life ruining" at all. Most people with the diagnosis have the potential to lead full, happy lives (that might have more inexplicable episodes than your life).
I'd also ask you to try to avoid further stigmatizing an already misunderstood condition. It's ok to be unsettled by symptoms of schizophrenia and want to avoid developing them yourself! But let's be too dismissive of the lives of those who happen to be diagnosed with a condition.
That statement is obviously not true in an absolute sense, for example, do you avoid driving cars due to the chance of acquiring PTSD after a severe accident?
I’m continuously, fascinated by how many commentators on HN are actually having a background in psychiatry and psychology. I took one or two psych classes in college, but I never got the feeling there was any overlap with tech really at all.
probably things have changed now but—-This likely sounds dismissive of psychologist and psychiatrist with regards to technology and I’m sorry for that it’s not what I mean.
I’m just curious where do all these psychiatrists and psychologists happen upon the interest to participate in what is ostensibly a technology form, although strictly speaking, it’s for anything that’s intellectually gratifying…But how do y’all come across it?
I wasn't a psychologist or psychiatrist, I was a Hospital Corpsman in the Navy (medical, kind of like a nurse), I went to what is called "C" school for training in psychiatry, and worked on a few different in-patient psych wards. The closest civilian equivalent would be somewhere between a psych tech and a psychiatric nurse.
As for how I got into that - I sort of fell into it. I did terribly in highschool, and grew up in a small, rural town. I didn't have a lot of options, so I joined the Navy.
I did well on the entrance tests, so was able to qualify for any job I wanted. The recruiter told me the best jobs were nuke power and hospital corpsman, I went with HM thinking it would be easier to get a civilian job afterwards.
I did so well on the exams, I was guaranteed a C school, after boot camp my options were pharmacy or psychiatry. Counting pills didn't sound interesting to me, so here we are.
This was all in the 90s, I'd been writing software and messing around with making games since the late 80s. Suddenly, in the mid and late 90s, writing code became highly in-demand. I bought a laptop (very rare at the time) and spent nights on the ward while the patients were sleeping teaching myself C, C++, and Visual Basic. I started moonlighting on my off time, and was able to get a full time job within a week of getting out of the service.
I like how the Navy gives people a chance when they might not otherwise, and how you did so well on all your tests that you blew away your high school expectations. So cool!
I avoid all 4 of those last things you mentioned as much as possible. Now you have me worried about milk! Will casein really fry my synapses like the vegans tell me? I thought that was just a scare tactic to save animals.
Standard milk is not bacteria free, standard pasteurization absolutely does not inactivate or kill all bacteria. Someone with an even somewhat healthy immune system should be fine, otherwise you could see if you could get it shipped in from Florida where some specialty suppliers run it under the beam. As with any animal or plant product the FDA and USDA can't set arbitrarily strict standards, as grown products are not perfect. I'm sure some percent of the allowed bug content in produce is infected/contaminated with bacteria as well. The US has one of the top rated food systems in the world[0], but it won't keep that rating, especially in the food access and safety net score, if most of the food is thrown away for not being "perfect". Milk naturally has calcium in it that can be treated with vitamin D3, making it a good delivery vehicle. It would probably be better if everyone capable of digesting milk drank it at a consistent level across the population, as there are currently problems in some demographics are areas.
[0]: potentially worse than the UK and Denmark, other systems are either tradeoffs or strictly worse.
> In this cohort study of 6 651 765 individuals in Demark, cannabis use disorder was associated with an increased risk of both psychotic and nonpsychotic unipolar depression and bipolar disorder.
I'm guessing they don't mean over 6 million Danes have cannabis use disorder, but are talking about the minority that do. In that case I'd wonder which came first, the mental disorder or the cannabis use disorder (I haven't read the full text)
> In the 2013 revision for the DSM-5, DSM-IV abuse and dependence were combined into cannabis use disorder. The legal problems criterion (from cannabis abuse) has been removed, and the craving criterion was newly added, resulting in a total of eleven criteria
You're trying to refute something I didn't say. I said that "cannabis abuse" became "cannabis use disorder" which is less offensive to pot addicts, but also contains two extra syllables, does that make sense?
Cannabis should be legalized and regulated. Period. People that want to partake ofc should have safe access to it.
That doesn't means and has never meant it is a harmless thing, like some groups portray it to be. "it's just a naturally ocurring plant!"
Education, more information and less zealotry help on both sides of the discusstion. It's not the devil's lettuce they had people think with 60s propaganda, but it's not a panacea either. Extremes are not good.
It always seemed like it would be a sea change if the government actually decoupled "this is an okay idea" from "we won't forcefully stop you from doing this". It thus made it feel impossible that they'd legalize drugs, but it's great to see it start to happen. But there may be other long standing examples I'm not thinking of. Smoking and alcohol seem to be on the edge.
It's difficult to 'educate' people when we don't know a lot about it. For example, for many people weed is good for a few years, but eventually descend into paranoia, unable to smoke even a little bit. What is causing that? A change in the brain? Is that harmful? Are there other side effects?
There is some discussion around cannabis bans and their causes in their thread. One aspect that isn’t discussed much but could be very relevant to differing opinions here is that different people respond incredibly differently to marijuana.
Some people experience various, mostly mild, forms of cognitive impairment such as sleepiness, thinking everything is funny, and memory issues. Other people seem to enter a state of heightened idea generation, like more of their brain is working on ideation than usual, and perhaps the sort of thing a priest class would find useful (thinking back to when this plant would have been domesticated). I’m sure there are many other types of reaction as well.
If someone experiences priest mode or is around those that do, they will be more positive towards it than others who only see impairment mode. It is much less homogenous in its effect on people than alcohol is.
> One aspect that isn’t discussed much but could be very relevant to differing opinions here is that different people respond incredibly differently to marijuana.
Because it’s not about (only) the THC. The other cannabinoids, the terpenes, ... all seem to modulate the effect of the high.
wow I’ve never heard it put like that but that’s exactly it! I definitely have the second type of reaction. It really feels like short-term hypomania (have some experience with that too).
You can’t excuse your way out with “it’s different for different people”. Guess what? Literally all medicines are. That’s why we use scientific analysis and statistical measures. No shit, things affect people in different ways. That’s the whole point of a large scale study like this.
The entire thread is HN playing denial of the harmful effects of a thing we've advocated for years, often with no dissent.
We're just finally catching up from the decades of stagnation around the research of cannabis and getting out of the honeymoon phase of legalization.
Anecdotally, my cannabis use fell into the "use disorder" category and it wrecked me mentally. Thinking back on all of the people I knew growing up who said that cannabis wasn't addictive really shows how ignorant we all were.
That said, I still think it should be legalized. We clearly got the war on drugs really, really wrong.
"Astroturfed" is baseless, but yeah there are a lot of boring nerds who don't do drugs and don't want anyone else to have fun either.
Cannabis is an order of magnitude less harmful than alcohol, who cares. More science is great and helpful, but this doesn't actually move anybody's needle on legalization, it just gives them an excuse to yell about it.
More like society has trouble facing the truth about one of it’s popular vices.
The empirical evidence is overwhelming that there are very serious public health issues, yet so many people have an extremely biased vested interest in either continuing their vice, profiting from others, or simply getting votes.
It will probably go down in 20 years as a disgraceful period of denialism, the promotion and legalization and misinformation to several generations of youth.
It been shown, multiple times, played out in several countries, that prohibition does. not. work. Singapore still had to catch and kill people who do drugs. In the War on Drugs, drugs is winning, by a large margin. We tried DARE, and Just Say No. They didn't work.
What's going to go down in history is how's stupid the way we've been fighting it has been, and the civil liberties we've given up in the face of it. Maybe one fought with therapists and psychiatrists, jobs and job placement programs, homes, and harm reduction would have better results, but we're not able to switch funding away from the DEA towards that. The only way to change the game is to fight it on the demand side. Make smoking pot that thing your lame parents, or that one uncle who never amounted to anything do.
Nah, people just realize that it’s not worth continuing to fight the drug war and kill and imprison hundreds of thousands just because little skylar turned into a bit of a pothead for a couple years.
This is exactly the kind of pro-drug war astroturfing GP is talking about. Think of the children, think of the health risks!
The risk has always been non-zero, but it’s not high either. And the net reduction in dead dogs and botched drug raids alone is a countervailing factor.
Nonsense. I don’t particularly focus on legality. I’m more interested in people having correct information.
I suspect you support cigarettes having scary mandatory warnings.
Keep it legal if you like, I don’t care.
But at least inform the public and require warnings etc. The worst part is the general
population even believes cannabis or “medical” marijuana has “health” benefits.
Ok but make sure you tell them that maybe 2-5% of you will trigger your predisposition to severe mental health disorders. Disorders we empirically know you would much less likely develop if you don’t use this “medical” drug abuse substance.
Maybe I’m just biased because I’m from an area where they grew a lot of weed before legalization anyhow, but I don’t know that the youths are consuming any more cannabis (or that a larger proportion of them do it) now. It was already there, readily available, and highly prized amongst the same kind of people 20 or 30 years ago. So to me, the major difference is…how bad they’re made to feel about their drug of choice, I guess?
Potency continues to increase and the message being heard by the general population is that cannabis is “safe”, that’s why it’s increasing legal. My own children believe “it has medical purposes”. The billboards and advertisements also convey this message.
This idea cannabis has “health” benefits is beyond absurd.
Unfortunately it will trigger and already has a serious mental health epidemic society wide.
Sometimes, actually frequently, the empirical realities are hard for societies to accept rationally.
Users all enjoy it. Businesses profit from it. Governments collect tax revenue. Politicians collect votes and support.
It’s like pollution or other externalities, this one the cost being numerous lives ruined with schizophrenia etc.
> My own children believe “it has medical purposes”.
Well, it is being used medicinally, ergo, it does.
But my kids don't believe it's a harmless medicine, they know it can be harmful if smoked excessively - not just from a health POV, but also from a "being stoned all the time is harmful to motivation and information retention" POV.
They also know that it can be harmful to a developing teenage brain when smoked consistently, and they also know that anyone with a family history of schizophrenia should stay well away from it.
They also know you shouldn't smoke weed after drinking a lot unless you fancy getting the spins and puking, and that you can't die from smoking it, although if you smoke a large amount, you might end up freaking out and thinking that you're dying, you're not, but it won't be a fun experience.
So you know, if you're going to smoke it, don't do that.
And they know these things because I taught them that, because I want to ensure they're safe.
Same reason I taught them to call an ambulance or me if any of their friends become unconscious from drinking alcohol, and to put them in the recovery position to ensure they don't aspirate their own vomit.
I don't think people should be put in jail for cannabis. However, we shouldn't be devoting our tier 1 retail space or having startups with massive advertising budgets pushing it.
It should be sold as a generic drug by pharmacies that make most of their business from other drugs not dispensary entrepreneurs creating massive retail brands like alcohol.
I feel like you’re being quite morally prescriptive and advocating legislation on that basis. Is your life so grand or so poor that you cannot empathize with those who’d seek a high from something rather benign?
I think this is actually a reasonable middle ground. People who want to get high can do so cheaply, without brands with large marketing budgets pushing people to do it and having drug dealers in our central business districts.
In Australia, tobacco is sold behind the counter. Tobacco has plain packaging and there is no advertising or promotion.
This is the way marijuana should be sold - cheap, clean, legal, available, but behind the counter and not advertised or promoted. It should not be like California or Thailand where you can go to cafes or marijuana shops.
Marijuana should not be treated as alcohol however - advertised, commercialised and glorified. Available, cheap, clean is enough.
I was going over the top because gp is insinuating a moral argument rather than a health argument based on their interpretation of a bad headline. Cannabis Use Disorder is not the same as occasionally puffing a doobie with Alice on the weekend.
> Caffeine starts off as a physical addiction unlike marijuana. Caffeine also does not require a lot of use from the substance in order to become physically addicted, unlike marijuana. When both substances are consumed in large amounts both have equally terrible withdrawal effects.
And the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) says that we can restrict retail space and advertising venues for some products deemed harmful, especially around children.
It has, and ironically one of those harms is that in the U.S at least ...it is still illegal or incredibly difficult to do medical studies on cannabis and it's effects because it remains a controlled substance. We need to reclassify cannabis at the federal level now so that scientists are free to do research without breaking the law.
Just today, I read some GOP members of the house want to deploy troops to Mexico as part of the war on drugs (with permission from the current Mexican government, but still a shooting war with the [other] cartels).
Way too much travel today for me to do anything more than lurk. Edited comment, apologies, I actually agree with you and completely missed the word "prohibition."
> why certain substances were banned in the first place
You obviously have no idea why cannabis was banned in the US.
It wasn't banned because of harm to individuals or to society. It certainly can do those things, but there was no scientific basis for the original ban.
It was banned because of a massive propaganda campaign by Harry Anslinger, who fabricated evidence that cannabis was a drug of immigrants, non-White Americans, and criminals. Anslinger was incredibly racist and had no respect for science or the truth.
He once said, "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men." If you think we're "rediscovering why [marijuana was] banned in the first place," you could not be more wrong.
This is like the people who say that auto company lobbying is the cause of poor public transportation in America. Sure, that is a cause, but there are many other causes as well, and the other causes likely dominate the named cause. Framing it as the cause seems implausible and even cartoonish to me.
For cars, it’s actually even more cartoonish than that. Read The Power Broker; auto-centric urban planning is basically entirely the result of Robert Moses’ insane power and influence (in the same way that the reason everyone has smartphones is basically solely because of Steve Jobs).
This is exactly what I’m talking about. That is too cartoonish to be real. I’m not denying that whichever person lobbied or propagandized in whatever way, but it is extremely unlikely to have been the main cause.
A more plausible explanation is that there is an emergent phenomenon where the use of cars drastically reduced the degree of coordination required to develop usable residential property. People are generally lazy when they can be, and so future developers took the easy route of developing land without much regard for things like walkability, because they no longer strictly had to. Prior to cars, if a developer did this, they would not have sold the property. Cars dissolved a natural constraint on property development.
I know it seems too cartoonish to be real, but if you read about Robert Moses, you’ll see that it is shockingly true. He didn’t just lobby and propogandize; he had absolute power over all public works projects in NYC. That’s not a typo or an exaggeration—absolute power, outside of the established system of checks and balances. And he genuinely loved cars, and hated public transit, so his projects were all designed as such. Since his reign, no one has had nearly as much power (some say he was as powerful as Gengis Khan), so it’s been very difficult to reverse the impact of his decisions.
Robert Moses was so influential in reshaping the urban fabric of the US to prioritize cars that everything else is basically a footnote.
It isn't the story itself that I'm saying is cartoonish (though it may be as well). It is jumping from that factually happening to that being the primary cause for the nation's car centric infrastructure and lifestyle. IME an emergent social dynamics explanation is much more likely to be correct than a conspiracy theory most of the time.
It’s not a conspiracy theory. The nation’s car-centic instructure is a direct result of the decisions and actions of Robert Moses, as detailed in The Power Broker.
Not to say that “emergent social dynamics” didn’t play a role, but Moses singlehandedly built most highways in NYC, and influenced hundreds (thousands?) more around the world. And he built them not simply as a response to emerging demand, but because he personally saw cars as the future of transportation.
I suggest reading The Power Broker to learn more about this; I wouldn’t have believed it either before reading it!
If you read the actual words and statements of the historic people fighting the actual drug war, they seem implausible and even cartoonish, and they absolutely drip with racism. While the reality was partly incredibly racist malicious actors deliberately ramping up the drug war, it was also an incredibly malicious right-wing culture war - imprisoning peace activists was a stated goal of the architects of the drug war. Nixon specifically supported it because it would imprison black folks and hippies.
I’m pretty sure a lot of these are cherry picked to paint a picture (not by you, but by the sources you have read). A lot of people are broadly against psychoactive substance use. The generous interpretation of why they are against it is because the rules of social interaction are set up assuming a certain level of mental presence and self control, and some psychoactive substances cause some people to lose the ability to consistently follow those rules. Blaming a propaganda machine for something with a simpler explanation is conspiracy theory adjacent (at least).
The Federal drug war was architected by specific men with an agenda effecting specific laws that cracked down severely on drug use. Not all popular opinion was pro drug-use, but the public weren't writing laws and pushing the agenda, and there wasn't broad popular support for mass long-tern incarceration of drug users. Nixon was one of the architects along with his cabinet, you can read their internal discussions - they were shockingly racist. Pay attention specifically to the people in power who were responsible for starting the drug war, other random people's opinions really are irrelevant.
This is different from the ban overall, which is what the GP post was discussing. I don't dispute that sentencing lengths for a crime could be or were determined by specific individuals.
I dispute that the ban broadly can be attributed to this, and that, by implication, the public opinion at the time was caused by some sort of propaganda brainwashing.
Also just want to add that a common trope of anti-minority sentiment is that the majority group believes that the minority group engages in immoral behavior. This does not logically imply that the majority group's belief in the immorality of whatever behavior was caused by anti-minority sentiment.
Again, please read the actual words of the actual policy makers of the criminalization of drugs instead of speculating and imagining what people might have thought.
You should probably stop commenting on things you admit you're ignorant on. Do what the other replies are saying and learn some history. Then dispute things based on facts instead of feelings.
Untrue. A minority of people are opposed to abusing substances that cause a loss of control, which is why alcohol is the most popular psychoactive drug.
The majority of people used to be against marijuana, but there is a time delay in opinion changing and law changing (unless you live in a dictatorship and the dictator shares the opinion).
I am not personally against marijuana at all, I just like to understand the perspective of people I disagree with.
> I just like to understand the perspective of people I disagree with.
The war on drugs isn't an abstract topic, and the architects of who promoted and effected it did so out of openly racist and malicious motives which they were recorded as saying. If you actually tried to understand them by listening to them, you'd find that they really were malicious. To truly understand their perspective you'd need to acknowledge when they held malicious and racist perspectives, otherwise you're actually actively working to not understand.
Heroin yes, but I'd be surprised if we ever re-ban cannabis — heroin was a new drug, whereas cannabis was used for millennia [1] by human societies, with criminalization only happening in the 20th century for... pretty suspect motives.
The first part is true (as far as I know from the other comments here; I do not know the history of United States much and do not live in United States, but I will assume it is true and I will believe you), but the second part is not necessarily true (we cannot figure it out ahead of time; it is possible to be true though but also possibly not).
There are other reason to be banned, e.g. to avoid second hand smoke (that is what I want to avoid, and if it can somehow be permitted in a way that restricts their use to their own personal use and not affecting the air outside for all other people/animal/trees/etc then they should do that somehow, I think).
I live in Canada and the marijuana being permitted does have the problem like I mention above, like cigarette smoking also did, so it should be considered.
I’ve been toking for half my life. The equivalent of having a shot of wine or something mild and barely noticeable like that. I believe at this point i’m incurring close to zero risk. I have my reasons and benefits from microdosing and will continue to do so. I’m also in agreement that cannabis has become very potent, dangerous and abused.
Prescription drugs carry a risk. Even water use has a risk. Everything has a risk. Should someone be stoned when performing serious tasks like driving, taking care of other humans, or working? No. Can cannabis be consumed safely when not taking care of these responsibilities? Probably.
Every drug carries a dose-dependent risk, so I’m not sure why you constrained your statement to “prescription” drugs. Your comments seems to betray a bias in thinking.
I’m asking if their definition of safe means zero risk. Because that’s the same rationale that the WHO uses to claim alcohol has no safe level of consumption (I.e., there is no level of alcohol consumption that is zero risk).
So either they think there is a level of cannabis use that is zero risk, or they have a different definition of safe consumption that they could elaborate on.
It's not accurate to say any amount of alcohol increases your risk of cancer. There is clearly a threshold amount and one droplet of red wine in a glass of water one time in your life is not going to increase cancer risk in any measurable way. The threshold amount does matter if people want to make the smartest choices and still enjoy life.
The same can already be said of cannabis.
"People who use marijuana have an increased risk of heart disease and heart attack, according to a large study led by researchers at Stanford Medicine.
The study also showed that the psychoactive component of the drug, known as THC, causes inflammation in endothelial cells that line the interior of blood vessels, as well as atherosclerosis in laboratory mice." [1]
Other studies have shown the risk of heart attack goes up in the first hour after smoking cannabis.
Prohibition doesn't work. And we need loads of more studies like this so folks can be well informed in their choices.
However regulations and taxes do work. Smoking cigarettes continues to become less and less popular thanks to information, higher taxes, and other regulations.
Considering how popular cannabis is, we should be funding more research so we can make informed choices, and at tax it at a level that recovers the actual cost to society.
Just as there is a level of alcohol use that is "zero risk". But that level might be one drop in a glass of water at meals, and a level which has zero pleasurable effects.
That's just it, though. The WHO says there is no level of alcohol use that is "zero risk."
The difference between toxicity and therapeutic use is what helps define the safety of the substance. There are some, like psilocybin mushrooms, that have a relatively monstrous gulf between therapeutic doses (in the mcg) and toxic doses (presumably in the kg). They are quite safe, though not zero risk. I believe alcohol is relatively unsafe by that measure, while cannabis is pretty darn safe. But that's not the same thing as saying "zero risk". I think the poster is just imprecise with their language when they mean to say "safe" and not "zero risk".
They drink wine on a daily basis in at least some of the blue zones where people regularly live to a hundred years old or longer. So it's not reasonable to say alcohol is relatively unsafe. Relative to what and in which circumstances?
As far as cannabis being "pretty darn safe", a recent study shows it causes heart disease. And more than one study shows it increases the risk of heart attack for up to an hour.
What we really need is an end to prohibition, and continued funding for studies on the substances that are the most popular so folks can make the most informed choices.
To apply this to your example, cannabis was linked to heart disease in daily smokers. As one would expect, the study showed a dose dependent relationship with cannabis and risk.
Just like you can find “some” people who drink daily and become centenarians, you have to be careful about the way you characterize the risk. I believe the better data show more than 4 drinks a week does increase your health risk substantially.
In both cases, it seems like moderation is key, although I maintain cannabis is far safer when you compare the ratio of therapeutic to toxic dosage. But that’s acute risk, where the study you’re talking about is chronic risk.
Do your views on smoking cannabis apply to alcohol as well?
Or do you adapt a more reasonable appropriate time and place for that type of drug?
I not sure if it hurts peoples ability to learn, even if some people have some memory impairment. But cannabis and other drugs change the way people think, and that can be good or bad depending on many factors. Have people created great creative works under the influence of cannabis? Yes. Would they have been better art if the artist had not consumed cannabis? Maybe not.
I know high functioning executives and parents who work and take care of family all day and eat an edible to go to sleep. And on Sunday night, they might smoke a joint and eat a meal with friends and discuss their next book or investment in between diaper changes.
I could care less if people get high, but as a general principle I will never consume a drug to help me sleep unless there’s a really good (doctor consulted) reason. I think we’re just setting ourselves up for an unhealthy dependence when we do that. (besides weed always had the opposite effect on me)
I wake up at least 4 times a night and get horrible sleep unless I eat an edible before bed. Just 5mg THC helps me sleep through the night. I just started regularly consuming marijuana this past year and it's been great as a sleep aid. I've tried a couple of prescription drugs and they make me feel awful.
There is some evidence it interferes with REM sleep and stops you from dreaming. I've often wondered if the folks who it helps with sleeping have disturbing dreams.
You might consider taking occasional breaks. Vivid dreams are reported when folks quit.
Jut an FYI, weed makes sleep quality worse. Also, your tolerance will build up over time. 5mg THC won't work in the future. You'll have to up it to 10mg, then 15, then 30 and so on.
Not always true. I'm prescribed medical CBD, THC and flowers, and pure indica strains help with sleep. Sativa is as you say, it makes sleep worse.
Without "Spectrum Red #1" I sleep in 2 hour shifts. I consume about 0.3 gm (whole herb vaporiser) around 9pm, by 11pm I'm asleep for 6-8 hours. Most importantly, I don't wake wishing I'd died in my sleep.
Note that I'm on CBD, so I don't get "psychotic" side effects.
I also have some 30%THC Sativa that is used to get me going to do things. I can find more reason to push through pain and move more, which in the longer term reduces the impacts of pain and suffering.
I've seen what you've posted about your experience, and if I'd met you in real life I'd have told you "You know you're probably the kind of person who should never use cannabis". I've said that to a few people over the years. Eventually they agree with me. Sadly it's sometimes after they've fucked their lives irrevocably. Cannabis does not do that to _most_ people though, as they use it non-compulsively.
Weed lowers sleep quality and completely destroys REM sleep. There are numerous studies confirming this. Over time, your brain and body will be deprived of good quality sleep.
If you met me in real life before I was an addict, you’d think that I’m the most ambitious person, sharp thinker, completely normal with no mental issues. No alcohol addiction. Never done any drugs. Never smoked cigarettes.
You wouldn’t think of me as someone who should never use weed. That’s what’s scary about weed addiction.
PS. There’s almost no difference between a sativa and indica anymore. They’re all hybrids. Most of the time, it’s just placebo. That’s why edibles don’t label whether it’s sativa or indica. Just THC content.
It's easier to get addicted to weed than alcohol in my opinion.
Alcohol addiction is very noticeable. People around you also notice. Alcohol will destroy both your mind and body. You're much more likely to be aware that you're addicted to alcohol than weed.
Weed addiction is slower. It starts out as only beneficial - until it isn't. Weed will only affect your mind. Unlike alcohol, it won't directly do physical harm to your body. The negative effects to your body from weed is indirect - such as getting lazy, munchies, etc.
>I not sure if it hurts peoples ability to learn, even if some people have some memory impairment.
This has to be a joke right?
Do you have family members who are below 18? If you truly believe what you said, you'd allow them to smoke weed and go to class.
When I quit smoking weed, I reflected on the reasons why I decided to quit.
Since HN is mostly pro-weed use, I will most likely get downvoted. But it doesn't matter. I was staunchly on the pro-weed side just a few weeks ago as well until I started reading the downsides and realized that most applied to me and I was an addict. I was a "responsible" user early on as well.
Perhaps this post will help someone else here realize the same.
Here they are:
1. Having a higher IQ
2. Actually getting REM sleep and feeling rested
3. Being able to remember stuff instead of forgetting everything. Even simple things like where I left the keys.
4. Not eating junk food and getting fat
5. Not looking extremely unattractive because I'm fat
6. Actually care about how I look
7. Being able to spend time with people who don't smoke weed. I lost touch with so many successful people because I only wanted to hang out with other stoners.
8. Having motivation and ambition again
9. Not revolving my life around getting high
10. Being a responsible son, friend, boyfriend, employee
11. Being able to work towards the life I actually want
12. Having better lung health
13. Not making my brain smaller
14. Saving money
15. Having dreams again. Both dreams when I'm asleep and dreams when I'm awake.
16. Not dealing with shady dealers (still illegal where I'm)
17. Not trying to convince sober friends to smoke with me and then having them politely decline my invitation
18. Not feeling like life is passing by while I'm high
19. Not having to hide the fact that I smoke weed from my parents, siblings
20. Not spending a huge amount of time on video games, pointless Youtube videos, and doom scrolling while I'm high
21. Not being antisocial
22. Not staying home by myself from 6pm - 2am getting high every evening
23. Not having to put "420 friendly" in my dating profile
24. Not putting off responsibilities
25. Not procrastinate to the max
26. Not having random paranoia while high
27. Not thinking about how I can get weed when I'm planning a trip
28. Not ignoring messages from old friends and family members because I'm more interested in getting high
29. Having a body that isn't built on junk food
30. Not spending an enormous amount of time researching strains and ways to smoke
>What are your thoughts on coffee/caffeine addiction?
I don't know. I don't have enough experience/thoughts on this.
I wish you success in developing your three week old belief into a resilient source of intrinsic motivation. I hope for you that it is a sustainable and healthy belief.
My brother in christ, it’s clear in your writings in this thread that you have a ton of emotion about the choices you made a few weeks ago. Those feelings are not contained in a vacuum chamber. My comment was sincere. I expect you have a shit load of work in front of you to heal and I sincerely hope you are on a sustainable path.
this discourse is like people reading an invisible script every time i've seen it online for the last 20 years -- "weed causes <some negative effect>", followed by a chorus of, "oh yeah well what about alcohol!?!"
I don’t know what I read, but someone said weed before all of the legalization in the last ten years was 5% THC. The stuff being sold in dispensaries now is 80-95% THC. Weed went commercial and so did the potency.
Corporate America got a hold of the industry for pure profits.
You can purchase concentrates which are oils or resins at high THC percentages. These are manufactured from plant material to concentrate it not unlike making orange juice concentrate.
The theoretical physical limit of THC development in the plant is around 30%. You cannot find flower that will test much higher than that - if that.
Yes it’s more potent than it was due to - drumroll - modern agricultural practices.
This kind of misinformation parroting is really no bueno.
That said, as someone who is bipolar, has bipolar friends and has used cannabis for a significant portion of my half-century on Earth, cannabis usage is proportional to mood instability in myself and my friends. I have taken extensive breaks and noticed I am much more mentally resilient and less emotionally labile when taking breaks.