Is Marijuana as Safe as We Think?
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
(In CA, when I go to the pot shop, TCH and CBD percentages are labeled, and strain is sometimes labeled, but nothing else is.)
The thing that a lot of non-marijuana consumers don't realize is that the effects vary considerably from strain to strain. (It would be as if different brands of beer had different kinds of buzzes.) This most likely is because the cannaboids vary as from strain to strain, but we don't know what they are, and don't label them. The best we can do is try to stick with known strains that we like.
To be quite honest, (and to keep with the point of the article,) some strains are like coffee. They just make me feel a little different. Other strains really do put weird thoughts and paranoia into my head. Some strains make me very introverted. Could long-term heavy use of strains with certain cannaboids trigger behavior similar to mental illness? We don't even know what the cannaboids are to study!
[1] Challenges and Barriers in Conducting Cannabis Research. Committee on the health effects of marijuana: An evidence review and research agenda. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK425757/
[2] Why Is it So Hard to Study Pot? Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/why-is...
[3] Medical cannabis research. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_cannabis_research#Unit...
"With marijuana, apparently, we’re still waiting for this information. It’s hard to study a substance that until very recently has been almost universally illegal."
This could just be a correlation.
I remember reading somewhere that it can trigger latent mental illness in some individuals.
I have suffered from insomnia my entire life. Then two years ago, my job got significantly more stressful and I began having panic attacks. I was perscribed Lorazepam in case of future attacks, but the potential side effects were terrifying (you may just suddenly die in certain circumstances), so I was scared to take it.
Enter medicinal marijuana. I’m now part of the “smoke weed every day” lifestyle, except with edibles because my apartment doesn’t allow smoking. 20mg CBD, 5mg THC, about 2 hours before I want to sleep. Accept that I’m not going out for the rest of the night, work on some side projects, watch some TV, and then go to sleep waking up refreshed, no hangover or grogginess.
Only real detrimental effect I’ve observed is a reduction in my short term memory. So I started keeping a proper notebook and calendar to compensate for that. After a couple of days of not consuming, my memory seems to return to normal, so I’m not too worried about long term effects there, but I would absolutely love to see more clinical trials around it.
Saying that a therapeutic doze of lorazepam is going to make you "suddenly die", is a great exaggeration. Panic attacks are best fixed with a combination of drugs and CBT. So maybe try adding CBT to your drugs to wean off of it.
I used to smoke weed. I’m older now and it makes me antisocial, so I stopped. But I always was (and remain) pro-legalization, but I’ve reflected on its danger as an abusable substance and can now recognize that its addictive — even if just in lifestyle.
I personally use weed and it makes me relax, helps with my insomnia and lack of appetite.
It's similar to World of Warcraft: Weed isn't the problem. It's the easy escapism that is the problem.
Rather what you tend see in daily smokers is a attitude of mild delusional distrust, often leaning towards conspiracy theories, anti-authoritarianism, etc. Since many are not aware of any unreasonable thought patterns, it may be seen as a mild form of psychosis. It goes away only 1-3 days after stopping consuming it though.
But I think it's worth keeping an eye on, in this day and age, we really don't need more people following misguided errands.
Almost every article here on hn is about how some entity is spying on you, hacking you, or selling your data.
Just because I'm paranoid, don't mean they're not after me.
If it were legal, like alcohol, people would better be able to deal with it.
Even if not 100% harmless, prohibition is not helpful, for (almost) noone.
Also don't be so quick to assume there's a legitimate correlation... it could be sampling/observational error.
I specifically mean smoking weed, watching TV and living a more "relaxed" lifestyle (which isn't inherently bad) over doing things that might me seen as productive, both in a traditional sense (school, work) and in a personal development sense (hobbies, friendships, health).
I know that there's a very big chance that it's just a correlation, and not a causation. In these specific cases, it really did feel like weed did make things a lot worse. There were long stretches of time where one of my friends in particular would stop smoking (conscious decision) and mental health stuff would get better.
Note: I'm pro legalisation.
Breathing is not safe either. Living on earth as well; small rocks from outerspace have created mass extinctions over and over.
The universe isn't safe and I don't want to be safe; I want to be happy. You know what doesn't make me happy? The possibility of going to jail over something that hurts nobody.
So take your safe space and put it in that spot in your mind that is labeled "wishful thinking".
Edit: Note that anyone that is trying to argue the point of the article with me is missing out the point: it doesn't matter if it is safe or not, it is my choice to do it. Just like it would be my choice to take my own life away. Or to get an abortion (if I was a woman). It is not up to you, government, or society to tell me what I can or cannot do with my own body and whether I should feel bad about it or not.
So yeah, while you can argue whether it is safe or not, it doesn't really matter. Going to jail is definitely less safe than smoking pot.
Yeah, it does. It matters a hell of a lot that alcohol isn't safe, and there are a whole bunch of very well-known problems associated with using it regularly. Same for most medications. Many aren't super safe, and there is a fair bit of research and information dissemination required to make sure doctors and patients know the costs and benefits. When we fail at doing that, it causes a lot of harm to a lot of people. You should be able to make your own call, and that means knowing.
The really creepy thing about this conversation is that there is a shitload of money to be made by concealing the hazards of marijuana use, just as there is for alcohol and cigarettes.
Are you at all inclined to share sources of this? After reading this long article posted that essentially says "we don't have enough evidence, there's not enough studies being done", someone saying there are well-known problems has me wanting to read more and not just take their word for it.
>A study by the Highway Loss Data Institute in June of last year finds that states that legalized marijuana saw insurance claims for auto accidents increase about 3% over the general national trend for the time. An updated study by the same group finds 6% according to insurance claims, and 5.2% according to police reports.
Most patients/doctors don't really care if what they're taking is safe or not. The vast majority of Americans don't even know what the active ingredient in Tylenol is.
The same cannot be said of marijuana.
But you don't see many article pointing out what sure looks like a big public health problem. I have the impression I see a lot more articles about crisis PR based on the Tylenol poisonings.
https://www.bicycling.com/health-nutrition/a20040926/timelin...
You forget that there's been almost a century of lying about the "hazards" of "marijuana" while simultaneously concealing the hazards of other "legal" substances to protect corporate profits and throw people of color in jail.
There is actually pretty strong evidence that is actually was to put people of color in jail (at least initially).
At the very least enough plausible evidence to show that throwing around "bs" like that might be misguided.
https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/
> "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
- John Ehrlichman
Source: https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/
I hate that the legalization discussion is twisting into "well how safe is it?" If you're really concerned, don't use it unless medically necessary, or take your chances on other drugs which have plenty of known side effects. Just because it can be abused, or may not be safe in heavy dosages, is no reason to jail someone. Pertaining to regulations, I see no reason to extend beyond the current recommendations for alcohol - use in moderation, don't use pregnant, don't drive while impaired, etc.
For the typical user, the logic is usually that marijuana enhances their mood or creativity or coping ability, and that its adverse effects are relatively benign (based on informal/anecdotal knowledge from its millennia of use as a recreational substance). Decisions are also made at the margin, meaning the user rarely considers the impact beyond the immediate costs and benefits (a strong argument for taxation).
What would be useful to the majority of users is research in to how to mitigate the harmful effects to consumption (e.g. through alternatives to smoking) and through clear standards so they know what they are getting, the strength, duration, etc.
Substance abuse. Source, Bojack Horseman. I read your entire post in his voice.
I think people should have the right to do what they want, like smoke weed, but I think that researching how it affects health is a positive thing.
We know how safe and unsafe alcohol and medication are. And when we don't we study them.
If the perception of safety for marijuana doesn't match the realty then this article is appropriate.
This solves the issue of destroying lives for minor offences while still limiting consumption of a notoriously nefarious product.
The article points out that we don’t know marijuana “doesn’t negatively affect others.”
Truth is: if you get worse because of your weed abuse, you won't be the only one impacted by this. At a micro level, your family/friends/doctors will spend time/money/energy helping you out if you end up needing it. That's not fun. At a macro level this becomes a public health problem when we have to account for all the consequences it generates int terms of life expectancy, QOL for elders, treatments, care centers, hospitals, .... All those institution/studies/process we have to put in place is time not spent doing something else.
Just like peeing on the street is not really going to harm anyone, but it makes everyone life around you a tiny little bit less enjoyable. We kindly ask you not to do it. If you get caught doing it you get a slap on the wrist (and nothing more).
You are benefiting every day from the hundreds of little things we don't do so the community can work as a whole. And you respect 99.9% of those rules without even thinking about it because you agree with those. This is just another one you happen to not agree with. I can understand why, but there I believe it's OK for society to find the best possible way to limit MJ usage without destroying lives.
Decriminalization is a (self)lie - when the question is 'what about weed' and the answer is 'we don't know', 'its illegal, just less'. US model of the recent past is one of the worst in human history, as seen on long-term results, but decriminalization is some temporary state, nothing that makes sense long-term. In Netherland, coffee shops can sell but they can't legally obtain weed (something along those lines) - what sense does this make?
If I can buy a beer at local pub to wind off after long day, I sure as hell should be able to buy a reefer to do the same (or ideally something not requiring smoking for the same effect). Any deviation from this basic logic I've heard so far was flawed.
The fact that the plant used to grow everywhere helps my point: there is very little risk of people getting bad stuff if they buy it from a shady source since it's so easy to obtain the good stuff (or growing it yourself). Again the goal here is to reduce usage as much as possible without ruining lives for those who don't follow the rule. Getting the stuff everywhere, with referral, marketing, promotion, ... . will increase the consumption. Just like cigarette makers have developed a battery of technique to get teens/young adults hooked up on their product, so will MJ stores. Just not allowing the stuff to be so openly sold in the first place is _so much easier_. I can get the whole tax dollars argument, but I am willing to bet the cigarettes and alcohol cost way more in public health than they bring in in taxes, no reason to add more to the list.
> Decriminalization is a (self)lie - when the question is 'what about weed' and the answer is 'we don't know', 'its illegal, just less'. US model of the recent past is one of the worst in human history, as seen on long-term results, but decriminalization is some temporary state, nothing that makes sense long-term. In Netherland, coffee shops can sell but they can't legally obtain weed (something along those lines) - what sense does this make?
It is pretty simple actually: it is never OK to have/sell/consume MJ, just like now. The only difference is if you get caught :
- Before: appearing in front of a judge. Getting potential prison time. Maybe losing your job. Having a criminal file, and basically paying your blunt for the rest of your life. - After: Here is a $250 ticket.
The idea is just to stop clogging the justice system, and destroying lives for something as insignificant as weed, while preventing widespread distribution of the product, which has known and proven long and short term harmful side effects.
> If I can buy a beer at local pub to wind off after long day, I sure as hell should be able to buy a reefer to do the same (or ideally something not requiring smoking for the same effect). Any deviation from this basic logic I've heard so far was flawed.
The issue is simply: where does it stop ? Psylo mushrooms are fully naturals too. Is MDMDA OK (it really, really winds you off) ? I have heard good echoes of microdoses of LSD ? Cocaine as a booster is popular as well.
We already have two well known psychoactive substances in wide circulation (alcohol and cigarettes). Both can be (and are) used responsibly by a lot of people. But we also know from experience that they pose significant additional health problem , and are abused by a lot of people. We also know that the producer will do everything they can to increase consumption without regard for the consequences. I don't see how adding more to the list is better for the common good.
You conflate it with much more dangerous cigarettes, probably because its still mainly smoked, but in future this won't be the case. Simply replace all MJ with beer in your statements, maybe it will be more obvious.
What I want to say - get off your high horse a bit, don't try to do blanket statements for all humanity - weed ain't more dangerous than beers if consumed by sane people in reasonable amounts (same as alcohol). Stop trying to remove it from society - society wants it. Not because we're all hard addicts on it, simply because we enjoy effects. Same as I enjoy effect of a beer after long day, or glass of good red wine with my SO.
Don't get me wrong, I smoked pot daily more than half of my life. I know I'm a better person without it and after quitting my long term girlfriend said the changes were incredible. That's not an argument for criminalising this plant, but the argument really isn't as simple as a one-liner.
Most Americans live pay check to pay check [1]. Fines can also destroy lives.
If we find evidence of harm, a better solution would be taxation, which evenly spreads the financial penalty (think of it like pre-fining), and limits orn marketing. (This is what we did with tobacco.)
[1] https://www.wisn.com/article/nearly-80-percent-of-americans-...
If society is going to allow people to smoke it legally, it ought to at least provide enough regulation to give people a way to know that what they are smoking is what they think it is.
Not everyone is willing/able to grow their own.
https://www.amazon.com/Legalize-This-Decriminalizing-Practic...
Too much can impair judgement resulting in increased agreeableness to sexual advances.
Too much can result in impaired driving, and the decreased judgement can allow someone to decide to drive despite impairment.
Too frequent use increases risk of GI cancer.
Too much can result in physical dependence, with concomitant socioeconomic consequences.
Too little can result in withdrawal symptoms, from mild to life threatening.
On a silly side note, alcohol causes researchers to waste time trying to justify regular alcohol consumption, such as supposed cancer benefit or increased cardiovascular health (what studies have consistently shown a benefit?).
Marijuana likely has no obvious benefit besides as an aid for increasing appetite or as an aid for terminal cancer pain treatment, but likely obvious negatives such as behavioral problems, carcinogen inhalation, waste of economic resources.
We don't know the risks from consuming marijuana (aside from anecdotes, but I've got a good sense of the risk from personal consumption and the effects on people close to me). The marijuana-legalization discussion is advocating that it doesn't have risks, and it's leading to people making uninformed choices. That's the discussion here.
What are the downsides?
Tell me, how does an article like this improve the actual problem at hand at all? It doesn't, and by doing so, it shifts the conversation from what should be illegal to a conversation that is totally irrelevant.
I'm bringing it back to the core of the issue.
Prohibition is bad. It doesn't work. We fund drug cartels because of it. We fund drug dealers. And ultimately, it is up to the individual to make his own choices over what he should or should not do with his body.
Arguably very few articles improve problems at hand, but for over a quarter of the US population, marijuana is legal recreationally. In Canada, marijuana is legal recreationally. And even where marijuana is illegal, it's often not terribly-well-enforced anymore. New York City, the city this publication is based around, has decriminalized the substance and is no longer arresting people for marijuana possession.
The question for this audience is "should I consume it?" and "should we societally start investing in understanding the downsides of consuming large quantities of THC?"
Those are the important questions for these people, who live in the post legalization (or heavily decriminalized) world. And we don't have good answers for those people.
> it shifts the conversation from what should be illegal to a conversation that is totally irrelevant.
The readership of the New Yorker, I would hazard, has already come down strongly on the side of "should not be illegal". It's a liberal publication in a liberal city that has decriminalized marijuana usage, and its readership, I'm almost certain, overlaps strongly with people who are in favor of legalization. Why is the conversation of "is this healthy" not relevant?
I'm not really expressing an opinion on weed or anything, just the flawed logic.
Why shouldn't safety be a requirement for something to be legal? Should drunk driving be legal? Should firing a gun in a crowded place be legal? Should serving food that's contaminated with a poisonous substance be legal?
I know that marijuana isn't harmful in the way shooting a firearm or poisoning someone's food is. But this line of reasoning--"never consider safety when determining what's acceptable"--is ludicrous.
Of course drunk driving should be illegal, you're putting others at risk.
Think of Kantian logic applied to the body. As long as I am only affecting my body when doing something, it is irrelevant whether it is safe or not.
Also, there are clearly medical benefits to the drug for some people, although I do resent how the industry as a whole is trying to act like it’s medicine for all people.
These kind of articles make no sense when we see how much damage alcohol does each year. And no sane person would propose alcohol prohibition again.
Rather, they are advocating that the fundamental conversation around marijuana legalisation--something roughly resembling "it's got no harmful effects and is a magic medical cure-all" deserve re-examining.
Marijuana has been illegal for so long, and the penalties so draconian for the substance, that society has naturally pushed back on that. But it could be pushing back too far--there's all sorts of marijuana discussion that is unwilling to consider whether it has harmful effects.
Alcohol is unsafe, I agree. And that matters. It matters for the car accidents, domestic abuse, and lives that alcoholism destroys. And if the conversation around alcohol involved plugging our ears and pretending it wasn't harmful, then people would routinely engage in unsafe behavior to the detriment of themselves and society.
Hence why domestic abuse and drunk driving are illegal and should be.
This article is asking the question--what are the downsides?
You're instead defending against the notion of criminality.
Tell me, how should I react to an article that could be used as an argument against my rights being the same as yours?
The article isn’t advocating a return to prohibition. It just asks us to confront widely-held assumptions about the drug.
It prompts questions. (With flourish.) Should marijuana be taxed and restricted, in its marketing, like tobacco? Currently, it’s headed towards being treated more like alcohol.
I recently moved to a state that has legal weed. I was pulled over yesterday and the amount of FEAR I felt when the cop got out of the car was intense. I spent years being harassed by cops who would "smell marajuana."
And then it clicked in my head: I don't have to be afraid. Weed is legal. They can't use that excuse anymore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_(EP)
Also similar and popular, but without changing shape as the concentric shapes move out:
https://www.slashfilm.com/wp/wp-content/images/Black-Mirror-...
>Nobody half-understands a topic as lucidly as Malcolm Gladwell. Unless he's found one case study claiming the contrary.
https://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/big-data-vs-big-...
>And now, finally, just for fun, we have the Coup de Gladwell:
>“I think millennials are very trusting,” Gladwell said. “And when they say they’re not...they’re bullshitting.”
>And there you have it, folks. Who needs data when you have Gladwellian Pronouncements. The future is not the era of Big Data...it is the era of Big Gladwell.
I don't trust Malcolm Gladwell to fully understand a topic, much less explain it to the public. This particular article is also suspicious because he's been pro-tobacco for decades: https://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/
We might not know everything, but we do know a couple of things. For example, we know that nobody has died from cannabis overdose in the history of humanity. That, at least is something worthy of mention.
There is also a massive amount of quack medicine out there "treating" cannabis users because that's the alternative to going to prison. Those quacks are not going to give up their gravy train without a fight.
Overall the article is disappointing especially coming from Gladwell who I expect would delve into Drug War quackery and scientific fraud. He points out that cannabis is unstudied, and then goes on to the scary anecdotes.
His omission of the harm reduction aspect of cannabis is highlighted by his use of non-cigarette nicotine products as an example of hard reduction that is sometimes the object of moral panic.
There's no sense of perspective. Are we looking at a hidden public health crisis or a "D&D is harmful to some people" level of concern?
But the question does seem a bit silly. Like, yeah it's probably not totally salubrious to get blazed every day. No need to clutch pearls. It's also not healthy to get drunk every day or eat tubs of ice cream constantly but we feel as a society that the freedom to do those things is worth some of us overindulging and hurting ourselves.
But meanwhile the dur-hurr, let's all get stoned crowd is pretending today's 20%+ THC weed is the same as what we might have enjoyed decades ago. It isn't and THAT is perhaps even less studied.
Criminalizing it to the extent that's happened is a whole other train-wreck.
So, yeah, bring on more testing and actual scientific study of it.
Stop trying to deflect the argument because it might actually reveal problems. There are problems. Let's have a better understanding of them AS we move forward.
The casual manner in which Gladwell dismisses the danger of tobacco is jarring. Each year, tobacco is responsible for at least five times as many deaths as opioids are in the United States (480k vs 70-90k) [0][1]. Globally, tobacco kills more than 7 million people each year [2]. Although Gladwell has dismissed claims that he has shilled for the tobacco industry [3][4], his trivialization of the dangers of tobacco do not support that position.
Nevertheless, that does not undermine the argument that caution should be exercised with THC and other cannabinoids. It was prohibitively difficult in the past to do research on the compounds [5], so we should exercise humility when making definitive claims about them without further investigation.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal...
[1] https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/o...
[2] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tobacco
[3] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/08/malcolm-gladwell-s...
[4] https://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/
[5] https://www.newsweek.com/why-its-hard-do-marijuana-research-...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine-induced_anxiety_disor...
Who claims this? This is just obviously false. Weather there is a physical addiction has yet to be studied, but there is def a possibility of psychological addiction.
> It is nowhere near as destructive as some drugs including alcohol, but there are psychological problems that come along with habitual use depending on how much that need to be studied and addressed.
What psychological problems? Where is your proof?
what is true is that the one lab authorized to grow weed for federally funded research grows mids that are unrepresentative of commercially available medical and recreational weed.
That seems kind of like the government saying that wine consumption can only be studied using samples of vodka produced by one lab since the active ingredient is the same.
As for Canada, I would say that whoever wanted to consume marijuana was already doing so long before legalization was passed.
You'd be pretty foolish to think anything BUT that would happen. At least not without a framework of understanding, testing and regulation that limited it.