In Colorado, opioid deaths fall following marijuana legalization | Hacker News Reader

In Colorado, opioid deaths fall following marijuana legalization

washingtonpost.com

256 pointso_nate101 comments

There's no evidence that this was due to legalizing marijuana. It's more likely due to first responder's greater access to naloxone.

"In April 2015, Colorado passed a new law, Senate Bill 15-053, expanding access to the life- saving drug naloxone, which is used to reverse overdoses to narcotic drugs, such as certain prescription medications and heroin. ... An individual at risk of overdose."

Marijuana has been good enough to prove itself without studies. So the more studies you have, the better. I believe.

FYI this is a dangerous line of reasoning - it can be used to support whatever outcome one desires.

If we can provide good research and complete facts, we should go out of our way to do it, rather than do some hand waving and accept all research that appears to support our claims.

I see where you're coming from, but just some food for thought.

Quick edit: It seems like I’ve been misunderstood - I was referring to the line of reasons being dangerous, not pot. Not sure how that happened since it’s the first line in my post.

I'm all in.

Prove itself dangerous. Just some food for thought ;)

There's a nice link in the article for how dangerous it is. http://www.denverpost.com/2017/08/25/colorado-marijuana-traf...

I live in Colorado, I've seen a definite decrease in safe driving the past few years. It is dangerous.

I lean towards marijuana being a possible cause of the increase in bad driving but I can also see the huge influx of outsiders being another potential cause. People new to an area tend it make a lot more mistakes on the road.

If there's a huge influx of outsiders, then that alone would increase traffic accidents without needing to appeal to drugs as the culprit. The OP seems to be looking a little too hard to fit data to his beliefs.

This is the kind of poor correlative thinking that created the spurious war on drugs. Morally, you have to draw the line at what is "dangerous", when the danger emerges from a complex behavioral scenario.

Some drug is vilified as a lampshade, because a physical substance is considered easier to control than irresponsible behavior. There is a diminishing return for prohibition that is hard to cost-benefit justify at any scale. e.g. the substance can create revenue outside of prohibition. This is the core error in the prescriptive "war on drugs" and decades later it's still confounding audiences as to why it's an incorrect conclusion.

The punishment severity of drug offenses is something to look at (the inverse relationship between drug offenses recorded and severity of punishment). This has nothing to do with the danger of the drug itself, but does address the behavior more directly. "Treatment" for addiction is still in the dark ages as many debunkers study this topic routinely. If you chase that topic, you might see how consequence is the stick, not blaming the inanimate substance.

Just like alcohol is dangerous.

Precautions must be made, I agree with you. But this looks like all drugs must be included in the next studies, and articles.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no reliable way to test whether a driver is actively intoxicated from pot. Existing blood tests will tell you if a person has used it in the past week or two, but not whether they've used it in the past hour.

So average measured blood-levels could well be up because more Coloradans are smoking, but that's no proof at all that more Coloradans are driving under the influence.

I wouldn't necessarily say that weed is harmless or safer than alcohol, but articles like the Denver Post one are written with an unfair bias.

> To the best of my knowledge, there is no reliable way to test whether a driver is actively intoxicated from pot

Police here use a spit test; supposedly it reveals use within the past 24 hours. But as far as I know, it can/will test positive for a regular user that did not smoke weed in the past 24 hours.

So I guess you are right; it is not reliable (but it'll still get you convicted..)

Do you mean "proof itself is dangerous"? If so can you elaborate, I'm not sure a sound argument can be made to support that claim but I'd love to hear it if it does exist.

While this is true, there are quite a few stories, where heroine users write about becoming clean with the use of cannabis. Just search https://www.reddit.com/r/trees and see for yourself if you doubt that.

Also, if you have the numbers of calls to ambulance, you might see a drop there too. But maybe that's also not enough evidence for you.

No, it's not. It's very dangerous to draw correlations like these(i.e. see all the "crime going down"/"crime going up" explanations) because of the huge potential for noise; it's not like we only take one societal decision per year to be able to measure its actual effects.

If people are heavily addicted to heroin, I find it very hard to believe they haven't also been smoking cannabis. 100% of the heroin users I've known have all smoked.

All who have tried to come off it numerous times have tried a plethora of ways o deal with withdrawl, cannabis may help to an extent but only to a small extent

> But maybe that's also not enough evidence for you.

Anecdotes should not be used to create policy.

Why speculate? That would be measurable.

That the study was done at all is the more incredible finding.

I work in CO in the medical research field. Frankly, getting funding for ANY type of weed study is near impossible. Absolutely no federal funds can be used, including your laptop and desk, let alone any lab space just to store paper or pipettes. The docs at the new VA are at wit's end with the weed ban. They can barely prescribe anything due to the churn-rate of the VA, and then the vets literally just go across the street and buy lots of cheap weed. Anecdotally, the docs say that the vets that use weed tend to be a lot better off, mentally, than the ones that don't. But we can't study it at all because there is no money.

Also, in CO, there has been an increase in severe head injuries that tracks pot usage very well, or so I hear from researchers doing their own thing on the side. Why? No idea whatsoever. But research will never see the light of day until we can get funding for it, as other priorities will always take over, since, you know, they get paid to do that instead.

Comparing the impacts of recreational marijuana laws on opioid deaths seems tricky to me. While there may be correlations I'm not sure there is enough to infer causation.

I'd say they'd want to focus more on the effects of the arrest rates going down. I think that is where you are going to see the biggest positive changes.

That said I think we still need to see marijuanna as a health danger. Much like smoking tobacco, long term irritation of your lungs is not a good thing. I hear a lot of people calling marijuanna a cure all and remember my grandmother telling me how she was told to start smoking as a cure to her anxiety. Not the same, but this was something she told me as I was watching her die slowly from a lifetime of smoking.

More study is always needed for any given substance that we introduce into the envorment/human body. But due to its federal classification it is very hard to do. The major drawback of marijuana ignoring the effect on the lungs is the hit to the reward center if the brain. But the same can be said about any shortcut to a reward. Especially when you consider the potency increase of marijuana since the 70s. The root problem here as with smoking is that humans are goal driven and if they cannot achieve and do, they will find a way to simulate that feeling.

Also the main medical use of marijuana is via CBD not THC which is the high you feel. For myself it relieves my hand tremors and reduces axiety with no high, which I take as a tincture droplet. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabidiol

I agree that smoking in general is probably harmful; marijuana can be vaporized, though, which seems like a good alternative.

One thing that worries me is that, at least around here, teenagers and young adults will often stretch the marijuana they can afford by mixing it with tobacco (from cigarettes). That's another reason for legalization: you get to actually impose rules on sellers, like giving away bags of more healthy filler herbs. Try doing that with the street dealer!

Or it could be they aren't stretching and simply taking lessons from other parts of the world, in which marijuana is usually mixed with tobacco or a herbal smoke blend. This is in part because it burns better and more completely and not really due to wanting to stretch their supply.

That said, there is no reason to force folks into giving away healthier filler herbs. Tax tobacco more, fine, but folks can buy their own fillers. And honestly, without testing the safety of the fillers, there isn't a real way to know how the safety compares to tobacco, especially if folks aren't using tobacco daily or regularly.

Well, yes, my friends and the other people in their social groups could be lying to me for some mysterious reason, but barring further evidence, I'm going to believe them. It's true that tobacco burns better, but the general agreement is that they would smoke pure marijuana if they could.

That said, there is no reason to force folks into giving away healthier filler herbs. Tax tobacco more, fine, but folks can buy their own fillers.

Fair enough. Just having it available at the shop, even if people had to buy them, would be a great improvement. Currently it's not easy to find around here.

And honestly, without testing the safety of the fillers, there isn't a real way to know how the safety compares to tobacco, especially if folks aren't using tobacco daily or regularly.

Right, so we should test them.

It doesn't mean your friends are lying. Sure, some folks could do that. My circle surely never mixed the two - we were more likely to mix pot and cheap alcohol to make the pot last a bit longer. The other point does exist in different pot cultures, just like some folks use slightly different tools to smoke.

Right, hence my initial "at least around here" :)

Agree with others in this thread: it's a tough correlation to demonstrate reliably.

HOWEVER, keep in mind that the prior for large parts of the country's leadership is still "OMG WEED IS A GATEWAY TO OPIODS" drug-warrior nonsense. This data certainly makes that interpretation less plausible.

> This data certainly makes that interpretation less plausible.

I still think that because it is possible that people will use weed instead of heron that it makes "nonsense" that people that start using one drug for personal pleasure won't use other drugs for personal pleasure.

What's interesting is the fact that the opioid crisis is a result of a couple of ultra-rich guys wanting to be even richer. Trump appears to be surrounded by people who are willing to sacrifice public health for their private excessive wealth. [0]

It would be nice if common people understood why their health care system makes fun of them (and why cheap and powerful substances such as psilocybin, MDMA, LSD are actively being blocked from receiving the required research funding).

[0] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41643080

Interestingly this just hit the wire a few minutes ago:

"Rep. Tom Marino withdraws from consideration as drug czar following uproar over his role in opioid legislation"

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/17/trump-says-rep-tom-marino-wi...

Trump was the one who socialized payments to drug companies? I thought that was GWB (part D) and Obama (ACA)?

The current "headline" story being referred to here centers around drug companies deliberately lobbying Congress to ensure that the DEA's ability to suspend suspicious opioid orders was weakened (the "Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act"). The Washington Post and 60 Minutes broke the story -- https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/investigations/...

The story concerns legislation and lobbying between 2014 and 2016, eg, legislation passed by a Republican Congress and signed by Barack Obama. Joseph Rannazzisi, who used to run the DEA's diversion control before "retiring" due to conflict over this very issue, seems to be the big driving force in the reporting.

It does seem that Mr. Rannazzisi riled Congress and pharma companies with his characterizations and rather aggressive stance (for instance, in the article, Mr. Rannazzisi characterized the main difference between pharma execs and heroin / cocaine dealers is that they "didn’t have a class ring on their finger from a prestigious university"). From my viewpoint, though, Mr. Rannazzisi's views are quite justified.

To be fair: there is another side to the story, as mentioned in older articles on this. ( https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/19/us/politics/opioid-dea-ad... ). Some balance does need to exist between people who legitimately need opioids for pain management. Still, the article suggests that there is far too cozy of a relationship between pharmaceutical companies and Congress. The fact that the response to this article seems to be a lot of backpedaling, nominee withdrawals, and "no comments" suggests to me there's a huge amount of truth in it.

That looks more like noise than something I'd be willing to bet on. Previous years, within that same graph exhibit similar trends to what the highlighted "downward" portion shows.

Sources please?

edit

Sorry, I'm asking about the "previous years similar trends".

I believe gravypod is referring to previous years in the graph that starts the article. For instance, look at the 2008-2012 period. There is a definite downward trend.[0]

[0]: https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2017/10/...

Yes, exactly. To prove a correlation, in my opinion, one would need....

    1. More smoothed/averaged dataset (centered rolling average ~4 months?)
    2. Explain the other extreme dips in this graph (2005, 2007, 2011)
    3. Plot similar data from other states (with and without legal marijuana)
    4. Investigate other causes (see sparrish's comment)

This is opinion, presumably informed by the graphic at the very top of the linked article. Asking for a source for an opinion is a little silly.

Is that a joke? The source is the linked article. The chart hardly shows a convincing downturn. The trend lines are very generously positioned.

I agree. I hate that I have to preface this sort of thing by pointing out that I am not against legalization. But, according to that graph, the rate is actually higher after the legalization of marijuana, but the "trend" is down. Except that the trend would have been upwards had you made the stopped measuring at the end of 2014 instead of the end of 2015. And they're cheating by not measuring the trend in the same way for previous years as the post-marijuana years because before the graph the trend is measured as a single line spanning 14 years, while the trend is only for 2 years afterwards. So you'd need to do some sort of running average, or whatever the equivalent is for linear regression. Actually now I'm seriously interested in knowing if there's a running version of linear regression like there is for averages.

I believe you can use a polynomial curve fitter for this sort of "regression" [0]. There are other, much better, curve fitting algorithms out there than in NumPy. Some implementations can also guess how many terms there are and iteratively optimize making it very similar to a linear regression.

A good first order (that is much more commonly used) is to just, as you have already pointed out, use centered averages spanning N days of data.

edit: I'd also like to note that I'm neither pro nor anti legalization. I am definitely against false reporting, knee jerking, and lying to the public with statistics.

[0] - https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy-1.13.0/reference/generated/...

As usual for popsci reporting, the headline discards any nuance the article may have had — which itself usually goes beyond the claims made in the science. :-(

> The authors stress that their results are preliminary

And we should take this with a huge grain of salt, wait a few more years, and see what the data looks like then.

I wish it was easy for citizens to get a hold of data like this. So much good that could be done with clean access to key data sources. Will we ever see the day where this sort of information is put in the hands of people who want to make a positive difference.

Judging by the actual data, the death count seems to have stabilized and stopped increasing at least. Unfortunately it's hard to tell with that completely bogus "trend" line atop the data.

The paper reports:

> Colorado’s legalization of recreational cannabis sales and use resulted in a 0.7 deaths per month (b = −0.68; 95% confidence interval = −1.34, −0.03) reduction in opioid-related deaths.

Which if I understand right, they're pretty sure it did something, but that something might be so small that the value of reporting it is negligible.

That seems to imply causation. I am skeptical.

Don't get me wrong, I smoke a lot of pot. I don't do so for health reasons. I just like smoking pot.

The default position I hold is skepticism. There have been some less than truthful claims of efficacy and curative properties.

I'm very much pro legalization. The medicinal benefits have no bearing on this opinion.

Spurious Correlation - http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

That graph is very misleading. I don't have access to the published paper which may be accurate, but the article doesn't mention the reduction in opioid deaths from 2008-2010, which appears to be similar to 2014-2016. Also, the title of the graph states the timeline through 2015, but the x axis suggests there is data up to 2016?

Here is the link to the paper: http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2017....

Probably unrelated to marijuana. See [1]. In Colorado, opioid overdose deaths decreased 6% in 2016. But heroin overdose deaths went up 22%. This followed a state effort to cut down on opioid prescriptions. The number of high-dose opioid prescriptions for more than 30 days was cut in half from 2015 to 2016.

Overview of heroin boom in Colorado: [2]

[1] https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/sites/default/files/Opioid%...

[2] https://localtvkdvr.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/heroin-in-co...

Like many of these stories, it's a bit shallow - that chart is interesting - but as others have pointed out it's pretty noisy.

However, you can line it up against national data[1] it's really bucking the trend. You also find that opioid prescriptions are at least stable or declining in Colorado. Again, against the national trend that's significant.

Equally, you see spikes in Heroin deaths - so picture is a lot more complex than that chart.

[1] https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/o...

I wonder how that heroin stat will compare over a longer term. From what I understand, a common suggestion is that overprescription of opiods leads to abuse. Then removal of the prescription, tolerance gains, or financial considerations push the user to heroin. And once a user is hooked on that, I think introducing marijuana as an alternative is not going to have as much impact. But if reducing number of opiod prescriptions leads to fewer heroin users, I would expect there to be a measurable impact at some point over a longer term, at least in comparison to national trend.

In the article's main image, cited directly from the paper in question (https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2017/10/...), there doesn't really appear to be much of a correlation. Looking at the high variance in the opioid death data (because there are - fortunately - so few samples), so I'm not really certain if one can extrapolate a trend so soon after the legislation was enacted. The data simply appears to be too noisy. Even the paper states that the upper limit of its 95% confidence interval is a net reduction in deaths by a whopping... 0.03 per month.

I've said this before, but; by all means, we should embrace the (clearly very real) medical value of this plant by allocating funding and legal frameworks to research it properly. Lots of current cannabis research is plagued by bad experimental methodology, statistically insignificant conclusions, extrapolation of non-existent trends, and broad hand-wavey statements that aren't really backed up by facts, and it's a shame because it cheapens the value of a genuinely promising medical treatment that offers hope for people suffering from a litany of conditions (myself included).

Someone needs to study the effects of weed smoke on the lungs. That's the most common way to consume cannabis and I have a feeling it harms the lungs similar to the effects of smoking cigarettes.

I think it's safe to say that lighting stuff on fire and inhaling the smoke is bad for you, regardless of the substance.

Note, I do smoke pot and cigars. I'm pretty sure both are bad for me.

I'm sure smoking anything is harmful to some extent, but tobacco is particular harmful. For instance, it causes mouth cancer just by chewing on it.

Ah, a man of sound first principles

I suspect you're right, but I believe (not a user myself) most users consume many fewer joints than cigarettes. I've known many "2 packs a day" tobacco users, but never someone who smokes so much weed. I'd guess that average marijuana users have similar lung issues to 'light' smokers.

On the other hand cigarettes have filters and to my (limited) knowledge no one smokes weed through a filter.

Lots of people smoke weed through a filter. That's the purpose of water in a bong.

What about the ones smoking joints?

Sure. Visit Amsterdam, and you'll find most joints have filters. Of course, they aren't "proper" filters, just tubes of paper rolled up and placed in the smoking end.

They are not really supposed to be filters though, just 'roach' to make the joint easier to hold.

Yup. Doesn't really exist in american pot culture, though - from that point of view, it is a filter. I think some folks would call those rolled-up paper bits wussy or something. Then again, lots of folks here (Norway) smoke hand-rolled cigarettes without filters as well - mostly starts as a cost-saving thing and cops aren't going to give you crap for having drug paraphernalia because you have cigarette papers like they would in the states.

I can't remember if I've seen actual filters for sale in the shops in Amsterdam or not, but I'm going to guess they'd sell so long as they don't affect the buzz at all.

This isn't really the same thing. Technically bongs, bubblers and bowls are much worse to smoke than a joint. Because these devices make it easier to "inhale the smoke", users typically get a far larger "hit" then they would from smoking a joint. This is much more damaging.

This is not accurate.

Whether filters are actually providing any health benefit or not is apparently a controversial topic

https://theconversation.com/filters-a-cigarette-engineering-...

http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/modern-cigarette-filte...

Not an expert but I'm sure inhaling any kind of smoke is not good for the lungs but you don't smoke 20 Marijuana cigarettes a day like you would tobacco. It's not consumed in the same quantities. The biggest difference between the two are that the Tobacco companies add a lot of chemicals to their product that can cause cancer. I would think that Marijuana is organic.

>That's the most common way to consume cannabis.

I'm very suspicious of this claim for users in Colorado without a source. Anecdotally, the vast majority of legal use I see in Colorado is edibles. They don't have the stigma of smoking or the (legitimate) smoke inhalation concerns and thus seem much more popular among legal users.

Flower is around 60% market share. And it's usually smoked.

By comparison, edibles are around 7% market share.

Source: Headset Cannabis Market Insights

Some of those flowers are also consumed using vaporizers or Volcano-type inhalers, which have no negative side-effects (since no carcinogens are generated). I doubt it's a high percentage though.

> have no negative side-effects

Do you know if this has been studied?

Perfect thank you.

I'm actively working on this. We've built lab equipment for academic researchers to run the ongoing study.

Further, second hand smoke from cannabis is worse than second hand smoke from tobacco!

>One minute of exposure to marijuana SHS substantially impairs endothelial function in rats for at least 90 minutes, considerably longer than comparable impairment by tobacco SHS.

DOI: 10.1161/JAHA.116.003858

That has been studied, of course. It's hard to believe most information about cannabis due to the decades of government-corporate propaganda against it.

Tobacco is highly toxic. Cannabis is not at all toxic, and in fact beneficial. That makes a difference in the smoke.

I read a report from the UK saying that cannabis's antioxidants and other helpful chemicals made up for any harm it caused by smoke.

One can vape anyway, and most serious enthusiasts dab.

Do you have any references handy? I would like to look at any studies you know of in that area.

If only my bookmarks were more organized... I'll check back if i can locate the articles i mentioned.

Correlation does not equal causation. This is Yellow Journalism at its finest. The researchers even stated that their "results are preliminary" and not final, but of course the media runs with everything.

anyone read this? it argues the fent was pushed because of lower marijuana sales (by drug lords) (due to legalizing mj)

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a46918/heroin-mexico-el...

"Okay, I'm going to say it: The heroin epidemic was caused by the legalization of marijuana."

The -most important- subject about Marijuana nowadays, is about being arrested by smoking a joint. I do think.

It's a great thing that we have authorities, but we chase for a better concept for what is 'legal'.

So, while the "opioid deaths" may not have "fall following marijuana legalization" (In Colorado), the world does have great news about the legalization itself.

In the period 2009 to 2011, deaths went down at least as much. Beware straight line trends.

State/Fed. government: Let's make recreational marijuana legal!

Citizens: Awesome! We all feel relaxed, and those of us dealing with pain feel much better, and we're not dying from over-doses; yay! ...But, uh-oh, a few more car fatalities...what to do?

State/Fed. government: Let's build hypertube all over the state!

Citizens: Unsafe drivers - including drinkers AND smokers - simply take the hypertube home; fatalities have taken a nosedive yay! Second benefit: individual and state costs typically associated with maintaining cars and roads for cars (to support long work commutes) goes down, and overall traffic congestion is diminished; yay! ...But uh-oh, our healthcare costs are still pretty high, since now the likes of Pfizer, Merck, etc. are legally producing marijuana, and not cheaply, what to do?

State/Fed. government: With the infrastructure funds now more narrowly focused on supporting efforts such as hypertube, re-allocate (as appropriate and legal) the remaining, unused funds to help bring down health care costs...Either through government tax breaks (just plain giving this unused money back to citizens) for citizens to pay their healthcare insurance...OR...to buy their own marijuana at retail...OR...use these remaining, unused funds to subsidize programs like ACA.

Citizens: Yay! ...But uh-oh, now that marijuana is legal there are less people being put into jails...and now the jail lobby is whining, what to do?

State/Fed. government: Invite the people who might otherwise be sent to prison (or who have been freed from prison after being unfairly jailed for minor amounts of weed) and have them work as construction workers building the country's hypertube network. A likely side-effect is that the private companies running the jails will surely convert into hypertube construction/management companies, but hey jobs, right!?!

Citizens: Yay! Long-term problems - while not solved yet - are on the mend...but, uh-oh, it appears while sending our satellits to other planets, we disrupted the hybernation of some war-like aliens, and they're bent on attacking us with their advanced technology, strategically planning to strike the most powerful nations on earth first! What to do?

State/Fed. government: ... ... ...

Citizens: Hello? Hello!?! Did you hear our pleas about the pending alien attack? Hello? Is there anyone there in the government offices? where the hellz did they all go???? somebody help us; these guns we have are worthless against these aliens! Heeeeeelllpp!!! ... ... ...

Narrator: Apologies for the levity on serious matters. My whole point is to remember that things don't exist in isolation...and maybe there will always be good and bad side-effects that get triggered from one major legislation change. Nevertheless, the country has lived through Prohibition, and there are expected patterns that likely emerge. So, i say, marijuana should definitely be legalized, though let's have a plan to be ready for any unexpected fallout, should they manifest. Cheers!

oh god just enough with the propoganda already. only 0.1% of marijuanna smokers actually need it as a medicine, everyboyd else is simply a pothead. stop praising the thing like its a fucking elixir sent to save the humanity

oh god just enough with the prohibition and the crime, corruption and damage it does.

It's a drug. Yes. It has medicinal value but most people like the recreational aspects of it. Deal with it.

0.1%? Where does that figure come from, or is it just hyperbole coming from your own discomfort with the subject?

0% of ethanol users and 0% of nicotine users actually need it as medicine!

Actually nicotine is very effective as a replacement for those on anti anxiety meds that only need occasional stress prevention to prevent anxiety attacks. Although I'm talking about its use in a controlled form as a medication instead of an addictive habit. Quite a few studies are ongoing thanks to the rise of vapes allowing an easy isolation tool for inhaled chemicals.

I stand corrected, thanks.

Created an account just to vote this up and agree.

Personally, I enjoy smoking/using marijuana. I think it should be legal. I agree with all the typical talking point about legalizing it and the social harm caused by the drug war.

But nothing is more annoying that potheads pretending that some minor study somewhere showing that marijuana has some minor positive effect on something or other means it's a "miracle drug."

What is even worse - various nefarious actors - from intelligence agencies, to Big Pharma, to various players with their own agendas, have a long history of, and a very obvious financial/power stake in, promoting - or perhaps over-promoting - certain social trends, including recreational drug use - and have co-opted a HUGE group of people who should know better to exaggerate the benefits of various things.

St. John's Wart, ten years ago, was "just as effective as Prozac," and everyone was talking about "herbal remedies." The reality was that daily exercise was, for most people, "just as effective as Prozac" but that doesn't have the "cool factor" of being "like, against the drug war, man."

Intelligence agencies have been trying to use drugs like LSD for a half-century to do what in their own lingo is "mind control" yet every time some ad supported, Fortune 500, In-Q-Tel publication like Wired.com tells us how "all the super-smart Silicon Valley execs are micro-dosing on LSD" even hinting at a slight objection will get you downvoted to hell on these social media sites like Hacker News and reddit.

There's a reason for that but no one wants to risk their social media karma pointing it out - you might be accused of being a "alt right neo-nazi trump kkk racist sexist homphobica" something or other.

There's multiple reported cases of the medicinal value of cannabis. Regardless of that, the harm reduction of allowing people to "self-medicate" with it vs. alcohol or opiates is worthwhile.

Your LSD theory is, um, odd.

Just because these drugs have overly enthusiastic users doesn't diminish the fact that they do have some real value.

>Your LSD theory is, um, odd.

Really? You must be completely unfamiliar with the history of LSD, which was introduced to American (and Britain) by the CIA (and MI5/6.)

Odd? I was 15 when I went to the public library and read the well-documented history via such famous books like "Acid Dreams" and "My Problem Child" and "Storming Heaven."

What I say is "odd" is how the Silicon Valley/In-Q-Tel has been able to reintroduce LSD - and make it "cool" again - while conveniently ignoring the well-documented history of why stuff like LSD was made illegal in the first place.

HINT: California parents in the 1960s were not particularly happy that intelligence agencies used their college aged children as subjects for unethical and in many cases out-right illegal drug experiments - and continued to do so when they used the democratic process to try to stop it.

>Just because these drugs have overly enthusiastic users doesn't diminish the fact that they do have some real value.

"Drugs" is a pretty wide category, isn't it? Heroin is a drug - so is aspirin. Would you care to be more specific?

He said "these drugs", obviously referring to LSD, weed and other psychotropic drugs that are relatively harmless physiologically, i.e. the drugs your post is about.

Of course, this is only one vector of incoherence in your rambling bundle.

>other psychotropic drugs that are relatively harmless physiologically

> one vector of incoherence in your rambling bundle.

All the evidence of harm is played down while minuscule "benefits" are widely exaggerated in the media - by the same media companies that "just happen" to be funded by the same people promoting these same drugs.

If I was instead talking about private industry, like say, Monsanto, I would be social media points on social media properties like Hacker News and reddit.com, which are typically funded by In-Q-Tel.

But going against the institutional agenda of In-Q-Tel (i.e., intel agency) funded sites like Hacker News and reddit.com will - obviously - get downvotes and hostile trolling like "rambling bundle."

I would challenge anyone to find In-Q-Tel funded media properties publishing anything even slightly negative about LSD - or even marijuana.

In fact, try to find a published article that is not overtly pro-LSD in the various online publications funded by In-Q-Tel (CIA) since the 1990s - it's more difficult than it would seem.

You will, on the other hand, be greeted with a well coordinated campaign of insults and "trolling" typified by such ad hom as "incoherence" and "rambling."

It's a pattern that is extremely easy to detect."

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Meh, I say stuff against the grain all the time. It is how you say it, defend it, and listen to replies.

Stick around, you'll figure it out. Loads of smart people here. I often get voted down and then someone comes along and reads it. Votes don't much matter, so long as you try to follow the written rules.

If you do make a claim, be ready to defend it with civility. Like all forums, some are more receptive than others. Here? I notice a higher percentage of reasonable and smart people. Keep am open mind, you can learn a lot here.

HN is a great educational resource. That's how I typically see it. Sometimes, I get to share what I know but I usually just learn and click links. I lurked for like a year and a half before I posted.

Seriously, stick it out. Civility goes a long ways here. It's sometimes amusing to see the crowd deal with uncivil responses.

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Of course there's possibilities of harm. That's a given in every legal drug out there.

Are there risks with LSD, fuck yeah. Is cannabis completely benign? Fuck no.

The problem that you just don't seem to fully comprehend is that demonizing and criminalizing them are actually in the government's interest far more than your conspiracy theories.

And as far as this rash of celebrating newfound drug freedom, maybe that's because it's been in the shadows so long that people get excited to have it come out into the light?

Take a break from the reefer and get your head on straight.

I'm quite familiar with the history of LSD, as well as the history of cannabis.

The intelligence community thought they might have a miracle "mind-control" drug on their hands. Please show me the evidence (or reporting of such) that these programs were successful and are is still employed today.

It wasn't just the "intelligence" community that thought they had a powerful new tool -- legitimate researchers did plenty of work with it too.

HINT: Researchers are showing significant results using MDMA and Psilocybin for treating PTSD.

HINT: Plenty of California parents were not happy that their college age kids were exposed to LSD through non-governmental agents (a.k.a. dealers). Do you have any evidence that Owsley Stanley worked for the CIA?

You wanna know why they really made it illegal? Because unlike alcohol, which deadens the senses and is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths each year, LSD has the power to expand the consciousness of the user and they might question the status quo.

Is that prior paragraph correct? Nopes, can't prove it, but it makes much more sense than your conspiracy theories.

As to the other "drugs" which you inserted: they should be legalized and regulated too. Any sort of ostensible "harm reduction" is eclipsed by the damage that the criminalization itself causes.

My brother died of a heroin overdose. Having it be illegal didn't stop him from getting hooked and only made treatment harder to get.

Self-righteous moralizers such as yourself only continue to let the madness of prohibition continue.

I don't smoke or drink but what is your opinion about Alcohol drinkers are they all drunks? What about Opiate users are they all pill poppers?

Marijuana has been used for millennia as medicine why all the hate? Let it help the sick people and let the others enjoy it's other aspects. No one will force a joint into your mouth. You will be safe...

>Marijuana has been used for millennia as medicine why all the hate?

What "hate?" I read the whole thread and I cannot fathom anything even close to anything that could be considered "hate?"

What I read was an extremely mild annoyance at how potheads have developed something extremely similar to a religious cult where their favorite (and my favorite) recreational drug must always be praised and its minuscule benefits must always be exaggerated and paired with a ridiculous and frankly comical pretense at "oppression" because it's not technically legal (although it is de facto legal for virtually everyone reading this website and most like it.)

Try selling pounds of it and tell me that it's only "technically" illegal. Or try being non-white, in which case your chances of being arrested for even personal-use amounts go way up. Or an ex-con failing their piss test on probation and going back to jail, or a manual laborer denied work-related injury insurance claims because they smoked a joint on the weekend. I know many people fucked over by the legal system over this drug that you seem to think is not actively prohibited.

there's some tautology in there

Even if marijuana were objectively bad to use for every possible purpose, I would still be in favor of it being legalized because prohibition is almost always worse.

You should meet Dr David Casarett, Chief of Palliative Care at Duke. He was also very skeptical of medical cannabis.

>"When I first started this project, I really thought of medical marijuana as a joke"

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/07/14/42287697...

Could you please not post vacuous rants here? We shooting for something a little better.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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