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Comment by high_derivative | Hacker News Reader

It totally weirds me out how defensive people are about your anecdote here. Talking to any clinical psychotherapist dealing with young adults, you will hear lots of stories about weed-induced psychosis and anxiety.

What I wonder is why it matters to people that it's not as safe as they may believe? Cognitive dissonance? We do lots of unsafe things.

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I think it's because for many years anecdotal reports from clinical psychologists and psychiatrists drove a narrative (convenient to pro-prohibition authorities) that cannabis caused psychosis. Large epidemiological studies now suggest that's probably not the case, but the original narrative is often parroted uncritically by news outlets and others.

There are almost certainly risks from taking cannabis, but they are almost certainly an order of magnitude smaller than the risks of drinking and smoking (individually... not just becase A and T are more widespread)

i) clinical psychologist

It’s not even anecdotal. The relative risk for developing schizophrenia for cannabis smokers vs non cannabis smokers is 2.3. This means that you are 2.3 times more likely to develop schizophrenia if you smoke cannabis.

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4988731/

With that said, I think it should be legal. I just think people shouldn’t downplay the risks.

Reporting relative odds or risks without a baseline is very misleading. The absolute risk in either case is still very low. People aren't downplaying risks.. they are setting them in a proper context (where other legal recreational drugs cause substantially more harm).

> This means that you are 2.3 times more likely to develop schizophrenia if you smoke cannabis.

Unless unless causation goes wholly or partially the opposite way (more likely to smoke cannabis if you are already predisposed to schizophrenia).

Or you smoke it because it ameliorates your symptoms.

That's a huge stretch, but whatever.

Schizophrenia is an imbalance in the polyphony of minds occupying our heads. Our minds and bodies take training to pilot properly. If we want to have agency, we need to be methodical and purposeful in what we do and don't vastly surpass our current limits. You can't go squat 400 lbs w/o training. The same goes for mind altering substances.

I don't think anybody knows what Schizophrenia is exactly.

there's a fairly deep schism between the "I should be free to harm myself however I want" crowd and the "we need to protect people from themselves" crowd. the first group doesn't necessarily believe drugs are as safe as they publicly claim, but they fear that discussions about harm are the first step towards issuing or doubling down on bans. they don't think it becomes safe by winning a debate; they just don't want to let the second group win the debate on the record.

the second group, for their part, tend to come off as sanctimonious busybodies.

I think this is essentially a tribal, not a logical issue. A nuanced view is not welcome on these kinds of issues, you're either with us or against us.

You can be against the prohibition of marijuana while also thinking it's a bad idea to smoke it all the time, or at all. Laws don't have to match your personal beliefs.

I agree thet debate is polarised. But I sympathise with the irritation caused by the focus on poor quality evidence linking cannabis to psychosis when the widespread harms of alcohol and tobacco are basically ignored.

Are there many people out there who think drinking and smoking are great ideas for your health!?

Plus, I think we'd all much rather deal with a stoner than a drunk.

People want to hear what they're doing is OK. To go against the choices you've consciously made is anathema.

There are certain topics where normally logical people completely abandon it.

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