Lead exposure in last century shrunk IQ scores of half of Americans: study
today.duke.edu
today.duke.edu
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-55330945 (Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah: Air pollution a factor in girl's death, inquest finds)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/16/girls-de...
>A highly significant association was found between lead exposure and children's IQ (P < 0.001)... There was no evidence that the effect was limited to disadvantaged children and there was a suggestion of the opposite.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8162884/
That's a 1994 meta-study that turned up in 30 seconds of googling, and I'm sure more recent evidence also exists.
> With whites as the reference group, the odds of consuming soda was 3.1 times higher for U.S.-born blacks (95% CI 2.6–3.7), 2.4 times higher for Puerto Ricans (95% CI 1.9–3.0), and 2.9 times higher for Mexican/Mexican-Americans (95% CI 2.0–4.1). Those living in households with income less than 200% of the federal poverty level were more likely (odds ratio [OR] = 1.7, 95% CI 1.4–2.1) to be frequent soda consumers than those in households earning 600% or more of the poverty level.
[0] https://www.consumerreports.org/food-safety/arsenic-and-lead...
Cursory research shows that might be the case(regarding lower income consuming more fruit juice):
> By contrast, the highest 100% juice consumption was found among children, racial/ethnic minorities and lower-income groups.
https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2...
I wouldn't be surprised if people who have difficultly affording/accessing fruit would think juice was "at least some form of fruit". The packaging often seems to be designed explicitly to mislead us into thinking that way.
The shelf life of juice is easily in its favor too. Normally, I have easy access to fresh produce and in our house it's about even odds that fruit will go bad before it's eaten and I don't have the stresses and struggles of a low income household with children that could make that even worse. If I were on a very tight budget it might be hard to justify the expense on something you're likely to throw away.
The highest blood lead levels are seen in children living in denser population areas at or below poverty thresholds. Homes in these largely urban, low-income areas are disproportionately built before 1978 and subject inhabiting children to a significantly higher lead exposure risk. In 2014, it was estimated that 90 percent of all DC homes were built before 1978.
Despite Baltimore leading the charge to inform the public concerning the risks of environmental exposure to lead by banning lead-based paint (but not plumbing or other construction products) in 1951 following a clinical study from Johns Hopkins University, many Baltimoreans, primarily Black, continue to face excessive exposure to lead. The US would not follow Baltimore's example and ban lead-based paint until 1978, because lead lobbyists continued to disrupt regulation efforts.
Lead remediation is an expensive process and even with programs that help or completely cover the costs, many people may not be aware of the programs to take advantage of them.
You can start to see why the problem disproportionately impacts the Black population.
1) alter representation in poorer neighborhoods, as in, black people wouldn't be so heavily represented, but then you would still have the problem of somebody being exposed to lead paint and apathetic landlords
2) the additional demand would wind up pushing people to the bad neighborhoods anyway, some part of me thinks getting right back to square one, but there are a ton of variables there. (Like maybe the higher prices would have incentivized more developers, or even the landlords of bad buildings to renovate)
the outcome that has occurred is still messed up. a lot of race based discrimination in the US against black people has had an economic rationalizing, I wonder if the increased pricing was a factor, alongside more clear cut segregationist idea.
I have genuine, actual trouble maintaining faith in humanity when I hear about people like this existing. It just makes me incredibly depressed and bummed out about life.
That’s because a few IQ points in black and poor people is not considered more important than not using tax money to solve the problem.
Arguably, the added IQ points times the number of people affected would most likely have a positive effect on the GDP and would pay for the fix in a couple decades.
That we even think that we’d need to do the math to justify it is deeply depressing.
Because the strategy is elimination, lead remediation is a huge expense and has driven landlord behavior to embrace incredulous ignorance. There’s actually an incentive to not maintain property in some cases - remediation may exceed the value of the property.
A smarter strategy imo would be to reduce harm. Do stuff like pay landlords to replace windows and paint trim to encapsulate older lead paint. In poor neighborhoods, you could use this to incentivize section 8 enrollment which gives the government more power to drive other remedies for different problems.
I grew up in an 1890s home and live in a circa 1918 home today. There is almost certainly lead present in both the water supply lines and in various painted structures. Because the homes were/are maintained and the water system isn’t run by criminally negligent people, my kids do not have any lead exposure.
In my city, if I pull a permit for any type of work, it triggers a bunch of nonsense including licensed remediation, etc. Depending on the inspector and the contractor, that could be a big deal.
Europeans go what? I'm thinking of all my friends and family and out of hundreds of houses I've been in I can only think of a handful that were built after 1978. I'm not sure why lead isn't a problem so much though, maybe phased out earlier? .
>examined risk factors; survey years; binary gender; bodyweight; low birthweight; anemia; health insurance coverage; Medicaid/CHIP enrollment; federal Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) supplemental food program enrollment; use of water treatment devices; b age in months; c educational attainment less than 9th grade education; d housing built before 1960 or 1940; e number of cigarettes smoked inside the home per day (1 to 40 or more); f poverty-to-income ratios
I don't see traffic proximity aka urbanicity aka leaded gasoline particulate pollution in there.
Lead plumbing and lead paint are two factors. But there is lead all through the soil and air as well.
Apparently, it's considered to be acceptable by current standards. Despite the fact that babies will obviously touch the bottle (and the paint) and then put their hands in their mouth. I bought glass bottles because I wanted to avoid plastic thinking it'd be safer and I was reassured by seeing that they were manufactured in Germany :(
I think we still have very far to go in terms of toxic substance exposure.
As a pigment, titanium dioxide also seems like it's currently the go-to less toxic replacement for the lead-based pigments in lead paint.
Taken at face value that quote seems like reason enough to at least suspect that there's a possible problem. It also says that by the time they did that France had already banned it.
The fact that a bunch of people evaluated evidence that gave them significant concern doesn't prove that they're right, but it is some reason to believe it's toxic... It's not a lot very strong thing to base that belief on, but it's something. Reading that alone I would try to avoid the stuff until I got the chance to look into what all that evidence was.
That's assuming the article can be taken at face value. This is wikipedia after all. I did notice that there was a prominent statement right at the top of the "Health and Safety" section which says it "is regarded as "completely nontoxic". Maybe that is true, but the citation points to a source from 2006 while the EU decided to ban it 15 years later after "new understandings of nanoparticles".
Lead bioaccumulates, it stays in your body until you die, there's no mechanism to remove lead. The scientific consensus is that there is no safe level of lead exposure. See https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27837574/ or even the CDC: "No safe blood lead level in children has been identified. Even low levels of lead in blood have been shown to affect learning, ability to pay attention, and academic achievement. " https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/prevention/default.htm
So, yes, there are a lot of toxic things in the environment and I'm not concerned about most of them but lead is dangerous and has been proven to be. There is also no reason whatsoever for a company to use lead paint (which has been banned for constructions in the 70s) on a product meant to be used for children (a baby bottle).
The FDA didn't care about lead when it was being spooned directly to infant's mouths in the form of their baby food. The standards aren't what they are because of the amount of risk to people's health, or they would never have allowed it. I wouldn't assume something was safe just because it met FDA standards/recommendations.
The report found that the FDA's inaction and approach "appears designed to be protective of baby food manufacturers." if that's true, then you couldn't really trust them to tell you they know that something is definitely bad
Link: https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house....
Being sure that there's no issues without having done the research is just as ignorant as someone who panics without having done the research. If I'm concerned about something, you can be sure I will read everything to see if it is an actual issue or not.
See: https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/prevention/default.htm https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27837574/
I felt the same about the amount of arsenic, lead, and mercury, in baby food. Companies have gotten away with having dangerous amounts of them in the food they sell. It wasn't even limited to weird off brands but popular brands I probably ate myself as an infant like Gerber and Beech-Nut.
I don't have much faith n the FDA at this point. I would have thought "No literal poison in baby food" would have been the standard, but turns out the FDA allowed dangerous amounts. A congressional report found that the FDA did nothing to limit the levels of dangerous metals in baby food, and that they appeared to be doing it "to be protective of industry". Now the FDA has said they'll do something about it, but even their plan is called "Closer to Zero" when what we need is an "Essentially zero poison in baby food" standard.
https://leadelimination.org/factfile/
Why is it so popular in the US? Is it better? Cheaper?
I'm quite shocked to see it's still happening. Lead in pain has been forbidden for interiors in Germany since 1921 (exterior since 1989)...
As long as kids don't eat your walls, it is safer too- the risks from a few chips are much lower than fine powdered dust that lingers around a long time and is even harder to completely remove.
To put it another way: a child won’t break through your living room wall and ingest that paint. They might scrape flakes off the already flaking window sill, though.
Not easy to remove from old window sills or concrete ledges. It only gets removed somewhat during necessary window and door replacements.
So it is ubiquitous in older houses and flats. Doesn't matter if it is 1 million USD, the lead will be somewhere if it is old enough. Particularly attics and basements, or anywhere with grindy old doors or windows -- not safe for children.
The plumbing also has lead, either through lead pipes directly or iron pipes with leaded solder or other high lead content.
Besides people melting lead batteries everywhere for recycling, much of the cooking dishes are made from recycled aluminum auto parts. Often laced with lead.
https://annalsofglobalhealth.org/articles/10.5334/aogh.2754/
The following paper also pegs pottery as an issue. Just devastating.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221499961...
> Our results indicate that more than 15% of the population will experience a decrement of more than 5 IQ points from lead exposure. The analysis also leads us to believe that lead is responsible for 820,000 disability-adjusted life-years for lead-induced mild mental retardation for children aged 0 to 4 years.
Does anyone know if there is a test that can tell "historical" levels of lead? It sticks around in the blood right? So if I get a regular lead test will it account for any historical consumption?
Has there also been any research into devising a test to determine if IQ has fallen due to lead poisoning? I guess I don't see a way for this data to be collected after the fact?
Not exactly, you can get STC approval to use mogas in most piston engines, it's just a hassle and expense so most people don't do it: https://www.autofuelstc.com/
https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-industry-chart-path-elimina...
There's been another push to get rid of leaded gas in aviation but studies show that it's virtually undetectable in the environment.
https://uiobservatory.com/2010/how-intelligent-design-saved-....
At the bottom here is a link to the studies presented to the local government in an attempt to shut down the airport by local residents: https://news.sccgov.org/newsroom/reid-hillview-airport-airbo...
Here is a PDF of the "airborne lead study" which in fact only talks about blood lead levels, and does not include a single measurement of lead in the environment, oddly.: https://news.sccgov.org/sites/g/files/exjcpb956/files/docume...
I don't work for anything related to aviation or petrol, quite the opposite, and I don't have any interest in it, just was suprised to hear the FAA say that there's no detectable lead in the environment, and then a lead blood level study trying to argue otherwise. In the study they do admit that 25% of the homes in the study were built before 1960 (which I thought was an odd year to pick, as lead paint wasn't banned until almost 20 years later (1978), and I'd wager 65%+ of the homes there were built 1960-1978).
That's about as much time as I have to look down that rabbit-hole. I may be convinced, but there's enough cherry-picked data to make a very gray issue questionable. Looks like nationwide BLL is about 1.50 ug/Dl and in the homes less than a thousand feet directly downwind of the airport it was 1.70, and a child in a typical lead paint home was 1.90
It would have been much more convincing (and conclusive), to me, if there was a measurable amount of lead, particularly downwind, in the areas with the higher blood lead levels. But those readings either were not done, or were absent in the report.
The AOPA link has a letter that addresses some of the points you made and much more. Thanks for the interest. Save Reid Hillview
Actually, I think I have a vague memory pre-millennium of there being leaded pumps (typically red handle vs the green unleaded)
On the other hand, the thing is literally being dispersed from the high-up, so who knows. It is really a strange result, as one should expect detectable differences even if not large enough to matter. Is water carrying it away?
That has zero relationship to exhaust from avgas.
However, it's worth mentioning that recently the first unleaded avgas, G100UL, was approved by the FAA. We're trying to move away from 100LL (leaded avgas) and are finally making some progress on that front.
That is largely why the FAA is reluctant to certify older high-compression engines for non-leaded fuel. AFAIK
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2118631119
I don't have access and the abstract isn't very informative in terms of sample size control group etc.
(He also came to a famously ironic end, strangling in a rope contraption of his own design.)
specially in the midst of an information/propaganda war
all I'm trying to say is that I have decided not to think in the way you just did e.g. "where's that study which supports what I already believe?". It doesn't seem like a good tactic anymore
But I hate to sink into defeatism and assume that there is no such thing as objective fact unless I do the experiments myself (and get them right...).
Hmm.
It looks like you're ascribing to the above comment the thought process: "I'm only looking for studies which only tell me that which I believe." However, the above comment doesn't seem to be saying this. They thought there was more to the story and are querying for the rest of the story.
Meanwhile, you seem to ascribe to yourself the quality of not searching for data that supports what you already believe.
However, it seems to me that searching for more studies (even if you're only looking for data that confirms your bias) is a better outcome than assuming (without more proof) that people who aren't you are thinking "the bad way"TM.
I mean, if you had searched for additional proof to discover that what you already thought was true about above commenter (ie they were thinking the bad way) you might have discovered that they in fact were simply looking for additional context due to recalling past events that indicated that there might have been additional context.
It goes against our nature, so it's a skill that needs to be learned and practiced. This means that the average person isn't going to have those skills, and even people with those skills aren't all going to be experts.
What is new is that the internet is leading every random idiot to believe that they're an expert on everything. So finding a link to a "study" with a title that sounds like it supports your point (without even reading it, and definitely without critically evaluating it) is seen as doing research.
> all I'm trying to say is that I have decided not to think in the way you just did e.g. "where's that study which supports what I already believe?". It doesn't seem like a good tactic anymore
You might be victim to what I described above. Finding a study that already supports what you believe was never a "good tactic". In fact, calling it a tactic makes it seem as if it's an adversarial thing where there's a winner and a loser. It's not. Facts and truths aren't partisan (ignoring them is)
To add, playing a paper like a trading card is essentially an appeal to authority[1].
Readers, you have to build mental a model and use causal mechanism and research studies as evidence, not proof. Accept the models which are stronger than the ones you have, even if they make you uncomfortable or conflict with your preconceived notions. Its ok to flip between conclusions as new evidence presents itself.
It's not enough to say simply that a study exists (even if it is a large meta-study); it's necessary to actually read it in full and critically appraise it.
But ain't nobody got time for that.... which is a problem!
On a system- or industry-wide basis, this approach fails to address the real issue of the significant time taken for evidence to reach patients. Simply walking away leaves the problem unresolved.
I'm not sure you have if you immediately assume what veltas believes because they're asking to be reminded about another study. Seems like projection.
My personal opinion is that it's less noble to close your ears to new information once you've found the information that you prefer than it is to look for more information when you don't like the information you have.
https://greyenlightenment.com/2021/08/02/the-effects-of-lead...
https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/prevention/sources/paint.htm
The study in the OP also specifically calls it out:
>Our estimates, based on leaded gasoline consumption, may also have underpredicted high-lead exposures owing to leaded paints and pipes, which tend to aggregate within particular communities (e.g., those with high rates of homes with lead service lines and lead paint in disrepair).
Landlords of shitty apartments or houses just slap a new coat of the cheapest possible paint over the old.
Any tenant can force their landlord to remove lead in those high risk areas (at landlords expense!) if there’s a young child but few renters know about this option.
Stripping is uncommon and can't remove all lead paint from porous surfaces anyway -- like concrete blocks, walls, or ledges.
Landlords use a special lead blocker paint if required to pass inspections. Otherwise -- who knows.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Needleman
'The Removal of Lead from Gasoline: Historical and Personal Reflections'
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.54...
'Lead, IQ and Social Class'
https://academic.oup.com/ije/article-abstract/18/1/180/61682...
Some also attribute the removal of lead to substantial decrease in violence over the last few decades. So, I am not surprised that the effect size here is so large.
Might an impolite question to ask, but is there a known correlation between IQ and propensity for physical violence ? (controlled for socio economics and protected classes of course)
No. Leaded gasoline was used throughout the world. Leaded paint on the other hand was in some cases banned in other countries 50 years before it was in the US.
> controlled for [...] protected classes
I hope not. This fear of not fitting in with contemporary politics is toxic to science. Social science is already badly broken and is filled with it. If somebody can't be objective because of fear of being labelled a heretic for not deferring to the law to decide which factors must be controlled for, they have no business doing science on that topic. Are you aware that genetic information is a protected class in America, despite the fact that it influences IQ? Why would you arbitrarily control for that, but not for other factors that influence IQ such as maternal care? It's complicated to decide what to control for, but the law is absolutely not the place go to make that decision.
Perhaps when we finally translate "unintelligent people" into "vermin" we'll do what many previous iterations of society have done... genocide.
Part of this is literally possible. A big part of made stark to point out that we should be careful in the way our language dehumanizes people of below average intelligence. They're still part of our species, and biological history.
We can't let the ghosts of eugenicists past scare us away from asking important questions. Avoiding the awful mistakes of the past will require care and diligence, and can be (must be!) done without embracing the easy path of reactionary "moral" ignorance.
I honestly think part of it is like Parkinson's law, but for resources to spend on children -- Children are expensive to rich people largely because rich people spend lots on their children. (too much?) Children mostly thrive in opportunity and resources (so long as it isn't pacifying their desire to achieve for themselves).
On the tradeoffs, this is pure psychology. Generations of people who have shirked social responsibility, and maximized selfishness. "Me" generation + "me me me" generation and all that. Time for people who see society, humanity, and duty as more beneficial than getting a bunch of likes on TikTok for doing something that inconveniences others (like dancing in a crosswalk or something) .
200 ok /Rant
Nothing is monocausal, don't trust anyone who makes such a claim unless they provide extraordinary evidence.
There is no such natural experiment for abortion. It's just an idea.
This makes me think that we just can't be too certain about these things.
Is this actually true? I've seen a lot of people saying this politically but haven't seen a lot of data to back it up. From what I've seen there's been a slight bump, which isn't too surprising given the state of everything... but it's still massively dwarfed by the decrease in the 90s and 00s
For example https://www.bbc.com/news/57581270
> Despite rising sharply in 2020, the U.S. murder rate remains below the levels of the early 1990s.
> Americans remain far less likely to die from murder than from other causes, including from suicide and drug overdose.
You're right in that there doesn't seem to be a definitive cause, but quite a few things have changed since Covid started and we're not sure what changes are permanent.
> Blood lead data were instrumental in developing policy to eliminate lead from gasoline and in food and soft drink cans. Recent survey data indicate the policy has been even more effective than originally envisioned, with a decline in elevated blood lead levels of more than 70% since the 1970s.
Otherwise, if the IQ is redefined to always follow the current mean, it can only be used to classify people between smarter than average and "dumber" than average, which is not so useful.
This won't be perfect, but, using mathematics, Id think it would be possible to know how (im)precise the comparisons would be (confidence intervals of the differences).
Also, might not work for really bright people (they'd learn how the auto generated tests get generated? They might sort of "disassemble" them and find the answers quickly?)
This is all a pretty big mystery and suggests we really don't understand this "IQ" thing we are measuring. However, one big consequence is that we definitely cannot meaningfully compare scores across time.
Also of interest might be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
Anywhere there is an airport with prop aircraft there is leaded fuel/exhaust spew for miles around it.
Can't believe we just don't have the care to protect people, write it off as their problem and then let the poor/ignorant suffer in "pollution zones"
https://www.epa.gov/regulations-emissions-vehicles-and-engin...
In terms of actual lead, the amount used by aviation is a tiny fraction of that used in cars.
Say I measure the average number of toes in the population twice. Once in 1990, and once in 2020, and there is no difference in the average number of toes between these two populations. Now instead imagine, for my second measurement, that I sort the people by how many toes they have, pick midpoint of that list, and take the average number of toes in each group. The average number of toes has now indeed decreased in this half. Mind you, I'm just responding to what you said. I have no idea what you meant.
The landmark study by Herb Needleman on the link between lead exposure and IQ only studied white children to reduce any doubts about the validity of its claims [1].
[1] https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/g-pro...
Also, get a lead test for your child at every checkup, not just the ones where they offer it to you. The finger prick doesn't bother them nearly as much as the vaccinations do.
On the contrary, my kids have definitely figured out the cold hard truth. Finger pricks suck much more than injections.
Lead is known to decrease empathy and increase crime.
I don’t want to generalise an entire generation but boomer generation was heavily poisoned by lead and perhaps this made them more selfish and less emphatic. Maybe this is the primary cause of many current problems? I wonder if humans were supposed to be more emphatic in past before all lead poisoning happened.
German here. The root cause for Nazism was not just a widespread acceptance of antisemitism, but especially the economic hardships following WW1 that gave rise to populism. A poor and desperate population is always liable to fall for a skilled demagogue.
The antisemitism was not unique to Germany. It was all around the Europe for centuries.
Leaded gasoline consumption rose rapidly in the early 1960s and peaked in the 1970s. As a result, Reuben and his colleagues found that essentially everyone born during those two decades are all but guaranteed to have been exposed to pernicious levels of lead from car exhaust.
I'm not disputing the claim that lead poisoning can lead to violent crime, I'm disputing the claim that the turmoil of the last few years (my guess OP means starting with Brexit/Trump) is due to lead poisoned Boomer brains being less empathetic. Arguably the world is more empathetic than ever if you study history (simple data point: entire economies were built around slavery for most of human existence) and this one data point in isolation is really not a particularly strong one to point to for the claim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#/me...
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#/me...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#/...
The timing is also wrong, the drop in crime started before incarceration ramped up.
Also as I mentioned the plurality of incarceration is for nonviolent crime, a lot of which is simple drug possession.
Japan follows a similar curve despite starting and peaking later, 70% of those crimes for the whole period are nonviolent petty thefts. My mistake in including Japan doesn’t support either point your tried to make. Neither place has mass incarceration.
I'm not even sure what you're actually arguing here. You're coming across like a contrarian who is frantically googling for a counter point.
Crime in Germany peaked in 1992[3]. Italy 1991 [4] Canada also 1991 [5]
[1] https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2%3A526664/FULLTEX... [2] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Crime_drop [3] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?end=2018... [4] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?end=2018... [5] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?end=2018...
You can't turn the world into utopia by sticking to a moral panic triggered by the civil rights movement.
Again these are basic facts. I'm not drawing any conclusions here really.
https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/crime_statistic.htm...
You've simultaneously argued that there is no downward trend, it doesn't matter in the long term, it did happen but because of mass incarceration in the US, and you've just been tossing out contrarian bullshit. You're acting in bad faith, and that sucks.
I argued first with the incarceration, which suggests the opposite.
You also said it happened in all countries, while it in fact didn't.
You ignore the inconsistencies and keep pointing back to that single piece of data that seems to support your position.
There doesn't seem to be any general improvement in behavior, only a decrease in standards.
So yeah, violent crime is WAY down from 1990, drug arrests have been soaring since.
[1]https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...
> western lead globalism
You probably meant 'western-led globalism'.
“Lead is bad for health”, “sugar is bad for health”, “marijuana is bad for health”. Not whataboutism.
“Mr Senator what’s with your taxpayer funded holiday?”, “What about YOUR broken election promises?”. Whataboutism.
> “Whataboutism or whataboutery is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy, which attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving the argument” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
We are already seeing studies that show regular marijuana use is correlated with permanent decreases in intelligence, memory loss, motivation, and mental health. And anecdotally, this seems very apparent in my peer group. And Americans are using copious amounts of the stuff right now, and younger than ever before.
I'm not against legalization by any means, or free of my own vices. But the risk in 50 years of people saying "we should have known better" seems really high.
I don't think this is correct, personally.
(I'm pretty sure you'll find studies arguing for both sides, so we can only go on personal wisdom.)
>(I'm pretty sure you'll find studies arguing for both sides, so we can only go on personal wisdom.)
This is blatantly false. Find me 1 study that shows definitively that MJ is worse than Alcohol for society.
I wouldn't contest that more people die from alcohol than marajuana. That wasn't the issue under discussion. The issue is, which is worse for society.
Part of why I find your comment so aggressive is because you're being very sharp with me, but you don't realize you aren't talking about the same thing.
> This is blatantly false. Find me 1 study that shows definitively that MJ is worse than Alcohol for society.
Having worked in academia as a researcher, I don't actually believe studies can reliably be understood by anyone other than those who conducted it and their immediate peers in the field.
A weaker form of that, which I also agree with, would be, "studies are rarely definitive." But you're asking for a definitive study. That doesn't seem fair.
Anyway, it isn't incumbent on me to do the work for you that you are asking me to do.
If my comment is what you consider to be overly aggressive maybe you need to get out more.
All research is BS therefore opinion is king is one of the weakest arguments I have ever heard.
BTW your not so subtle digs are uncalled for.
To collect data, visit all the hotels, restaurants, bars, police, security guards, and entertainment venues in your area and ask all the front line employees this question. Or even who you would rather drive around.
I guarantee everyone would rather deal with someone high on cannabis, who might ask for extra snacks or drive slow and be unlikely to go on a belligerent tirade or get physical.
In terms of other societal risks, I have not heard of a cannabis addict beating their spouse or children yet.
Without opinion on the relative damage of both, I'll note that considering this a logical statement is really flawed.
You can pretty much always find "studies arguing for both sides" on an issue, but that doesn't mean much in and of itself.
I can't understand what you are saying here.
> You can pretty much always find "studies arguing for both sides" on an issue, but that doesn't mean much in and of itself.
Just trying to cut off the expected "studies show X" comments before they get started. Because if studies aren't definitive, which they rarely are, there isn't any point in raising that. And a simpler way to explain this is "studies conflict."
My point was that you are actually very rarely in the case that studies are in conflict to the point that the best you can do is personal experience. It's the exception, not the rule.
To paraphrase Churchill: science is the worst system we have for understanding these sorts of things, except for all the others.
I didn't make my point very clearly, but my actual view is that only the researchers who perform a study and their immediate scientific peers are able to determine whether a study is reliable and what conclusions can actually be drawn from it. I say this as someone who worked in academic research.
> To paraphrase Churchill: science is the worst system we have for understanding these sorts of things, except for all the others.
Preaching to the choir, there. I'm not arguing against science.
See also the large amount of shelf space typically required to stock bottled water and soft drinks.
Is this a healthy relationship with what is, in the final analysis, an intoxicating drug? If there were an aisle in every supermarket with 10 times as much cannabis as you'd currently find in the average dispensary, would we regard that as equally normal?
I suspect you have not been in a dispensary recently if you think a supermarket would stock 10x as much; the range of products in most US dispensaries is truly enormous now across edibles, waxes, flowers, tinctures etc. I would strongly argue we would see a smaller range of products in the supermarket, should it become legal to sell there. This is exactly like alcohol too, where dedicated booze stores often have a wider range. It would still be significant in size though - lots of people like weed.
When used at very young ages. Important caveat. The other things you mentioned are highly speculative and I typically discount anecdotes as mostly useless.
This is fair. I mention it because it was only in hindsight that it was so obvious how many smokers were getting emphysema and lung cancer, and that these were not actually common diseases.
And so this is pretty easy to test. I did a quick search for 'marijuana use by rate by income' and the first paper that I came upon [1] showed there is indeed quite a strong correlation between substance use and socioeconomic status - in other words, the richer or more privileged individuals were (in terms of coming from wealthy family backgrounds), the more likely they were to use drugs.
So unless there is some confounding variable that we may not be considering, it seems fairly easy to reject the hypothesis that people are using drugs because of a lack of money.
To most people hope doesn't mean more money, it means a better future. These are not the same.
There isn't a period after better.
I can maybe believe it but I am yet to see a convincing Meta-Analysis or at least a large RCT. In general, people seem to recover from a lot of drug usage if they stop for long enough and weed isn't one of the heavy ones. Can you share what studies you are referring to?
A New Zealand study found that persistent cannabis users had a 6-8 point decline, even if they had given up cannabis: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1206820109
Here's a meta review that found a 2 IQ point drop across a wider range of usage types: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medici...
There's a lot less known about cannabis at this point, but what we know so far isn't very positive.
Further, cessation of cannabis use did not fully restore neuropsychological functioning *among adolescent-onset cannabis users*.
In contrast, within-person IQ decline was not apparent among adult-onset persistent cannabis users who used cannabis infrequently (median use = 6 d) or frequently (median use = 365 d) in the year before testing.
... for adolescents. Both your studies only show impact in youth.
It's also important to point out that for the adult-onset group they only looked at 1 year back. This doesn't preclude the possibility that longer periods as an adult find different results.
I don't think, even within the marijuana community, that there is any debate that marijuana use in adolescents is harmful. I regularly see /r/trees comments telling teens to stop until they're at least 18 and their brain finishes developing.
There is a large, large difference between 'Americans' and 'adolescents'. Vast.
I think "Cannabis" is the prefered term nowadays. The word "Marijuana" has negative cultural connotations which we would do well to escape when discussing this issue.
The problem is that the research into the risks of exposure to both of these substances was/is not exactly at the top of the list due to various factors.
That said, I'd take my chances with a bong over a car exhaust *or drinking water pipe. At least you have some choice over what goes into (and, consequently comes out) of the former.
There might be such a reckoning, just not at the same level or with the same impact.
Water is simply a necessity, and marijuana is not. Quite literally 100% of Americans ingest water in some capacity and/or means. Also, brain development delay and interference, caused by contaminated water, would be present in children, who are not, by default, marijuana users.
It is also likely that cannabis is generally less harmful than alcohol or even acetaminophen, and unlike those, considered fairly non-toxic. Consider that cannabis metabolites can be detected in your body for up to a month after consumption. It's apparently not that high of a priority for your body to purge it. Cannabis does not need to be combusted. The resins will readily vaporize at temperatures well below the point at which the plant matter actually burns.
I no longer consume alcohol, but occasionally consume cannabis. My personal decision comes from a lot of experience with both, the way my body feels after consuming them, and studied risks associated with each. I exercise responsible moderation in my consumption and strongly believe that cannabis is the safer choice.
This conversation is more about the extent to which we need to protect adults from their own adult decisions, and/or protect the antiquated and partially racist underpinnings behind how and why cannabis was initially made illegal. To that end, I'm not sure it bears much, if any, similarity to lead exposure.
OTOH, and this is anecdotal, I worry about how potent a lot of "normal" marijuana has become and how rapidly we've normalized high-dose delivery mechanisms for it (like waxes and tinctures). It's hard to predict the future given how "primitive" marijuana consumption used to be, in contrast.
What I mean is, there will always be some hard drug users, now from the discussion I understand some "hard" THC products exist, will this result in any kind of demographic change like the OP worried about, or is it just a new drug of abuse?
Just because these things exist, I don't think it automatically follows that they will get used by most people, or even more people than would have found some other destructive thing to do in their absence
Technology has massively changed how people consume cannabis - many people today may have never rolled or smoked a traditional joint ever. You can buy it in ready to load resin cartridges powered by a LiIon battery. Many of these things produce cold vapor that makes it staggeringly easy to smoke an enormous quantity. At least with a joint, there normally comes a point one's throat will probably not thank you for continuing... The cold vapor from many vaporizers is almost odor free too, meaning people can consume in places they couldn't previously.
The availability of vape pens also makes it REALLY easy to end up smoking way more than you would otherwise and as an easy way to start smoking in general. I smoke and enjoy the convenience of pens but they are perfect tools for increasing cannabis consumption in a population.
It is almost as if flower based cannabis is a gateway drug to these concentrated forms and I think it is really easy to go down that path as an already regular user. It's more economical, potentially better for you (less smoking) and now very easy to obtain.
I think the "overton window" of cannabis use is being shifted to the heavier end. Casual users will probably stay about the same but regular and heavier users will all shift to more or higher potency consumption.
The concern for marijuana is less about the toxicity of it as a substance, and more the psychological effects of being high.
Then I started smoking pot. And I experimented with a ton of hard psychedelic drugs. And it absolutely took a toll on my cognitive abilities. But it had a much more profound effect on my personality. A positive effect. Especially LSD.
It was like a light switch went on in my personality. I suddenly was much more "tuned in" to the world around me. I became mindful and considerate. My judgement faded. My outlook had changed to one that was seriously more healthy. Today I don't drink or do hard drugs. Just Marijuana. And I'm happy with myself.
I don't know what to make of that but I do know that I've seen things and felt things and understood things from perspectives that people who have never taken drugs can literally not imagine. You couldn't even dream the things I've seen.
I believe there could be clinical uses for taboo things like psychedelic drugs. I hate to think that without them I probably would have eventually been red pilled or turned into a fascist. It was that much of an eye opening experience for teenage me.
So while it probably did cost me about 15% of my cognitive ability, it also gave me 100% of my critical thinking ability.
I personally had horrible experiences on LSD, and I've seen even worse bad trips and panic attacks as a trip dad, but I know it helps quite a few of my friends figure themselves out. Which is why studies on these drugs is crucial.
Is there any evidence this happens with alcohol and if there is what was societies response? I suspect it alcohol does similar damage and we tolerate it due to the perceived benefits.
Imagine if we weren't allowed to study alcohol freely, if we had to jump through a dozen hoops to become qualified to do one of the few alcohol studies. We might not have so much knowledge about alcohol's toxic effects, and we might not have the current picture of "Marijuana is slightly healthier than alcohol" if Marijuana had been as thoroughly studied.
It "goes back" to Nixon needing a tool to criminalize the anti-war and racial justice movement.
https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-rich...
By the time Nixon came out with that policy, multiple commissions around the world had concluded that pot was largely harmless and should be decriminalized. People in his own administration - who he ordered to come up with a "damn strong statement" - concluded the same, infuriating him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_policy_of_the_Richard...
Reagan, however, was the one who really ratcheted up the criminalization aspect: https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs
quote from https://gizmodo.com/anti-marijuana-laws-were-based-on-racism... :
-----------------
Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (an early predecessor of the DEA), was one of the driving forces behind pot prohibition. He pushed it for explicitly racist reasons, saying, "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men," and:
"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."
The main reason to prohibit marijuana, he said was "its effect on the degenerate races." (And god forbid women should sleep with entertainers!)
-----------------
That tells me all I need to know about this whole situation. We would rightfully cancel/hold accountable someone saying that now. Why aren't we viewing the laws in the same light in which they were made?
There seem to be a few threads I've found that are worth pursuing:
1. The general increase in state power in various domains of life .
2. The decline of traditional communities and move toward urbanization creating a disconnected group of people that worried the upper classes.
3. The tendency of geopolitics to follow social trends/fads.
My explanation would be that the US drug war was aggressively international.
The US drug war is international with respect to a few drug producing countries, but had very little influence elsewhere, such as in Asia. In my home country of Bangladesh the recent proposal is to make the death penalty available for drug traffickers and dealers. Nixon had no influence in Bangladesh (and in fact is strongly disliked because he supported Pakistan in the independence war).
Anti-drug sentiment arises out of cultural attitudes. Drug use is viewed as anti-social, because it often makes you less suitable for work, and degenerate. Some cultures are less forgiving of this than others. This is true in America and other highly religious countries, like Bangladesh, Iran, and the Philippines. But it’s also true in certain countries that aren’t highly religious but place a high cultural priority on industriousness, such as Sweden and Japan.
So I suspect you’ve got the Nixon anecdote backwards. Nixon didn’t cultivate anti-drug attitudes out of racism. The harnessed a reactionary sentiment against 1960s liberalism—which included trying to normalize drug usage—to stoke existing Puritan attitudes against drug use. His racism was in treating drug use as an issue especially relating to Black people, as opposed to being a vice common to white people and Black people alike.
Ha! Ever tried to get a Swede to do something he or she doesn't already want to do?
The alleged Ehrlichman quote is brought up every single time drug prohibition is mentioned but it should be taken with at least some skepticism.
The surviving members of his family don't believe he made the quote:
>...Multiple family members of Ehrlichman (who died in 1999) challenge the veracity of the quote: The 1994 alleged 'quote' we saw repeated in social media for the first time today does not square with what we know of our father...We do not subscribe to the alleged racist point of view that this writer now implies 22 years following the so-called interview of John and 16 years following our father's death, when dad can no longer respond.[22]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman
This is a very explosive quote - if Baum had included it in his book in 1996 I am sure it would have garnered a huge amount of attention for the book. Instead Baum did not include it in his book, but instead would wait for many years before making the claim when Ehrlichman was no longer around to dispute the quote.
If the quote was actually said by Ehrlichman, it isn't a very accurate description of the overall drug polices of the Nixon administration. While Nixon is remembered for "war on drugs" rhetoric, the actual substance of his policies is a bit different than what people think it was:
>...I have been fortunate over the years to discuss the distorted memory of Nixon's drug policies with almost all of his key advisors as well as with historians. Their consensus is that because he was dramatically expanding the U.S. treatment system (by 350% in just 18 months!) and cutting criminal penalties, he had to reassure his right wing that he hadn’t gone soft. So he laid on some of the toughest anti-drug rhetoric in history, including making a White House speech declaring a “war on drugs” and calling drugs “public enemy number one”. It worked so well as cover that many people remember that “tough” press event and forget that what Nixon did at it was introduce not a general or a cop or a preacher to be his drug policy chief but…a medical doctor (Jerry Jaffe, a sweet, bookish man who had longish hair and sideburns and often wore the Mickey Mouse tie his kids had given him).
https://www.samefacts.com/who-started-the-war-on-drugs/
>..."Enforcement must be coupled with a rational approach to the reclamation of the drug user himself," Nixon told Congress in 1971. "We must rehabilitate the drug user if we are to eliminate drug abuse and all the antisocial activities that flow from drug abuse."
>The numbers back this up. According to the federal government's budget numbers for anti-drug programs, the "demand" side of the war on drugs (treatment, education, and prevention) consistently got more funding during Nixon's time in office (1969 to 1974) than the "supply" side (law enforcement and interdiction).
https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs
>Reagan, however, was the one who really ratcheted up the criminalization aspect:
To say Reagan "ratcheted up the criminalization aspect" ignores the structure of the US federal government. The president does not make laws, the president can merely sign or veto laws made by the legislature. Unfortunately the drug policies of the 1980s were a bipartisan affair. The real bipartisan push for harsher penalties in the US came in the 1980s after basketball star Len Bias died of cocaine overdose.
>…Immediately after Bias's death, the speaker of the House of Representatives, Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr., from the Boston area (where Bias had just signed with the Celtics), issued a demand to his fellow Democrats for anti-drug legislation. Senior congressional staffers began meeting regularly in the speaker's conference room as practically every committee in the House wrote Len Bias-inspired legislation attacking the drug problem. News conferences around the Capitol featured members of Congress extolling their efforts to clamp down on cocaine and crack.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2006/06/24/u...
>...It became the sole focus of legislative activity for the remainder of the session on both sides of the aisle. Literally every committee, from the Committee on Agriculture to the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries were somehow getting involved. Suddenly, the Len Bias case was the driving force behind every piece of legislation. Members of Congress were setting up hearings about the drug problem and every subcommittee chairman was looking to get a piece of the action...
https://www.salon.com/2011/06/19/len_bias_cocaine_tragedy_st...
If you want to go back further, a good person to start with is Harry Anslinger who headed the Federal Bureau of Narcotics:
>...Prior to the end of alcohol prohibition, Anslinger had claimed that cannabis was not a problem, did not harm people, and "There is probably no more absurd fallacy"[15] than the idea it makes people violent. His critics argue he shifted not due to objective evidence but self-interest due to the obsolescence of the Department of Prohibition he headed when alcohol prohibition ceased - campaigning for a new Prohibition against its use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger
A difference with Nixon is that he was one of the first to try to greatly expand drug treatment and also reform sentencing in at least a small way:
>...the mandatory minimum sentence in a federal prison for marijuana possession was 2-10 years until Nixon slashed it to 1 year with a judicial option to waive even that sentence. No federal mandatory drug sentence would be rolled back again for 40 years (in the Obama Administration).
An acute example of this is a psychedelic called “DMT”. This psychedelic is nearly everywhere in nature, including our own brains. When inhaled, it lasts less than 10 minutes, give or take. After that 10 minutes, a user is completely sober without any indication that they were not, and no physiological side effects. But during that 10 minutes? It is an acute spiritual and existential experience, possibly the most acute non-normal experience possible for a human being. A true exploration of altered states, and possible contact with a different form of life unbound from our reality.
And for some reason, this substance is scheduled. It does no harm to a user, to third parties, nor to society, is short lived, and offers true spiritual experience but it’s scheduled. The scheduling as a whole is archaic, oppressive, and if nothing else, misguided.
This is also in top of the fact that it discourages addicts from seeking real treatment due to fear of being criminalized.
Edit: cannot edit any longer. While I do not think they do cause psychological harm in the long term (I think they force confrontation with buried psychological issues in order to transcend them), they most certainly can cause short term psychological distress and issues for people unprepared, approaching with the wrong mindset, or using in an otherwise problematic set or setting.
Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2000 and saw a huge reduction in harm associated with drug use, and did not see an increase in usage. They went from among the worst in the EU in terms of HIV infections to among the lowest. [1]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radic...
Except it opens doors in people's minds which allows them to think differently for themselves. This results in them behaving less like sheeple. Why would that ever be scary for society?
Sure, not all mj users may experience it this way, but a lot do! I certainly wouldn't be arguing it opens the door to a bunch of usefully profound thinkers in society.
MJ used more sparingly, and especially when used on someone with exposure to a psychedelic (not simultaneously but maybe the weekend after a trip)? Entirely different ballgame. It can awaken an internal symphony of inspiration and thinking.
Everything can be abused. Eat too much if anything and you will suffer. But when used appropriately, very magical experiences can be had that enable routes of thinking and problem solving that seem to come from out of this world.
In general, my recommendation to anyone is to try these things while simply meditating or hiking a safe & easy trail. Your mileage will vary but when done correctly, you will acquire otherworldly inspiration applicable towards your skilled professions and hobbies.
And if nothing else, even falling short of that result, this possibility should be enough for legality.
That said, psilocybin is highly sensitive to set and setting, especially to other neural nets and especially to others also on it. There is a massive host of issues in partaking with friends or around anyone else for that matter. It will amplify hidden untruths or other sort of otherwise “benign” sober psychological distress and make them acute.
What people call a “bad trip” I call an important lesson. We can choose to react negatively and label it accordingly, or visit it in a sense that a very advanced mindset was indicating a problem. When done this way, bad states cease to exist and it becomes clear the “bad trips” were just bad other things that needed some conscious attention.
All this to say: go get lost in the woods and trip with some plants & with people who hang with that setting, they will take care of you and it is a much better setting to do the work on self.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model - I should add that the way we deal with the LNTM in radiation protection is quite similar to the neuron model I just laid out: we look at the natural variation of radiation exposure and don't worry (much) about exposure less than that range.
> But the risk in 50 years of people saying "we should have known better" seems really high
The problem with lead was that it was everywhere. Walls, gas, water, air. As long as society chose to use, we all had to ingest it. That's not so much the case with narcotics. I wouldn't expect anymore of a reckoning with MJ as there has been with alcohol.
Said no one ever about lead.
https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2013/08/01/secondhand-smoke-in-ba...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29870518/
For controls on residential buildings, we would need better standards in shared housing construction and perhaps also we could take a look at better airflow and particulate filtration methods. I expect it will be some time (and perhaps another airborne pandemic?) for that to be addressed seriously.
In large doses, it can bring about negative effects especially in people with ADD but the bad parts are almost always gone after cessation.
I don't think it
It's that when you are in your teens and you start smoking marijuana, the risk is big but I see many grey markets happy to sell you marijuana to people still going to high school.
I find both sides obnoxious, the Singaporeanesque fear mongering about "permanent damages" based on curated and manipulated data and the Western panacea attitude that it be used for everything.
Trying to tie lead exposure to marijuana is just asinine.
https://www.real-leaf.com/blogs/realleaf-blog/smoking-marshm...
Although certainly any combusted plant will produce tar, and this is well known to cause pulmonary issues which will indeed place more stress upon the heart.
Well, we are just about 100 years after alcohol was legalized. We have lots of data on how horrible it is for out bodies, how many accidents and premature deaths it causes. But I hear absolutely nobody in North America talking about curtailing alcohol in any way. (The UK medical bodies have spoken out against alcohol use in recent years.) In fact I see advertisements for alcohol virtually everywhere. So no, I do not believe we will have a reckoning in 50 years about pot.
> Fig. 3 shows that, among adolescent-onset persistentcannabis users, within-person IQ decline was apparent regardlessof whether cannabis was used infrequently (median use = 14 d)or frequently (median use = 365 d) in the year before testing. Incontrast, within-person IQ decline was not apparent amongadult-onset persistent cannabis users who used cannabis in-frequently (median use = 6 d) or frequently (median use = 365 d)in the year before testing.
So more specifically smoking weed while your brain is developing seems to be correlated to a decline in IQ later in life. While those who start smoking, even copious amounts, as adults don’t have a permanent decline.
I am cannot find reference to support your claim that people are consuming it younger than before.
If you’re going to cite studies, you could at least represent the findings honestly. Also, it’s pretty apparent you’re trying to sell a narrative to others to induce fear of marijuana… this is a post about lead poisoning after all. Quite the leap, IMHO, to compare it marijuana use…
The paper you linked below and incorrectly summarized for anyone curious: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1206820109
https://www.mlive.com/resizer/G7WZuDwdu5D2eCujzIi_RYGWYkc=/7...
When I do have it today I make sure to seek out the weakest stuff I can. It's annoying that you might just have one option below 15%. Of course edibles are a far superior option in legal states. Easy dosage and no damage to your lungs. I'd also suspect that the milder (but longer) highs are easier on the brain.
It's basically the cigarette filter thing; people know where they want to get, and they'll keep going until they get there, no matter how weak you make it. Which is what made filtered cigarettes worse for your lungs than unfiltered ones.
The calculus would be different if you were talking about edibles, because they actually sneak up on and can surprise you.
If anything broke down the social norm against drug use it was the heroin and opioid epidemics.. Which started shortly after Afghanistan.
Probably the trillions of dollars pumped into feeding terrorism instead of going on free school lunches and the like pushed people into drug use as well.
Seriously, I don't know how people can miss the mark this far. Yet apparently many in DC do, and it's getting REAL OLD.
"A large study of more than 36,000 high-quality MRI brain scans has found that drinking four units of alcohol a day – two beers, or two glasses of wine – causes structural damage and brain volume loss equivalent to 10 years of aging."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28735-5
I always said I would never smoke marijuana because my brain is my biggest asset and I wouldn't want to do anything to decrease its value to me. Now it looks like I need to take a good hard look at my alcohol consumption. I just can't square it with my values anymore.
It's just so ingrained in society, many don't even question it at all. But it's one of the more dangerous drugs. It destroys a lot of lives.
[Edit: Which isn't to say there couldn't be a very persuasive weed marketing campaign or something, that influences people to use it and hides the negative effects. Just as there was a campaign to squelch public debate about the negative effects of tetraethyl lead. Nonetheless, being able to individually decide to reject inhaling lead, like you can with pot, would've been a welcome privilege.]
Not sure what "current" generation means, by the way. I'm currently alive, and currently, I'm in the same generation I've always been in. (I'm not mad, just teasing you a bit.)
I thought that sentence was going to end with "Covid".[1] Research was just published yesterday which indicates that even mild cases have resulted in damage to the brain. Meanwhile, over the last few months we have just accepted that everyone is going to get it eventually. Who knows what the long term impact will be of us all giving ourselves a little brain damage?
EDIT: It is funny that the HN community's commitment to moving on from the pandemic has gotten to the point in which linking to research that suggests maybe getting Covid is bad is downvoted.
Until we transition over to non-smoking marijuana consumption, I don't see an easy for the anti-marijuana lobby to make any claim about marijuana that the pro lobby wouldn't be able to refute by simply pointing to the smoke as the root problem. I agree that the reckoning will come but it will come in the form of anti-smoking ads (in favor of edibles or whatever else) rather than anti-marijuana ads.
[0]https://www.lung.org/quit-smoking/smoking-facts/health-effec...
[1]https://www.everydayhealth.com/stop-smoking/herbal-and-natur...
Where in that article does it say that smoking marijuana is just as bad as smoking cigarettes? Marijuana smoke is not good for the lungs and it contains carcinogens, but that doesn't mean it's as bad as tobacco. For example, another source[0] says: "Whether smoking marijuana causes lung cancer, as cigarette smoking does, remains an open question."
[0] https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana...
However, the planet is arguably the most ideologically polluted it's ever been. First world cultures have developed an aversion to individual and organization/group responsibility. Democracy is not doing great. Many institutions are bankrupt. Hardship is looming. We're in for a wild ride.
Millenials are -not- the ones responsible for disastrous policies (yet). They haven't been around long enough yet. It's mainly boomers, some gen x, and a few silents.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/02/12/boomers-sil...
edit: Added "(yet)" because it's not obvious, I suppose. My point here is that the actual policymakers in congress, right now, are majority "not-millenials". So stop blaming millenials and/or gen-z when they're not the ones currently writing legislature...
Edit: That struck a chord with millenials, ha! Tell your friends that bitching does not help, voting does. Boomers seem to understand this and so they have a disproportionate amount of influence. You want it to stop? VOTE.
2018 was the first election where Gen X and younger together outvoted Boomers and older.
There is, still, a statistical bump in the boomers, hence the baby boom.
There is just more of them, and they vote. They've only just started dying in big numbers.
Plus the older voters get the more they tend to vote, for various reasons.
However, I'm tired of silents/boomers/gen-xers making comments about and blaming millenials as if it's somehow our fault the boomers and silents in congress are out of touch. A quick look at voting demographics and the demographics of congress dispels that notion (for now, as of 2022).
The blame game is unhelpful unless a holistic explanation of Why Did You Do That is also given.
It's difficult to be omniscient about the impact of everything to everything else for all future outcomes.
Smacks of Ageism, to my mind.
And yes, I'm aware that said commodity production produces wealth which also improves well-being. But there's a contradiction there in our economic model that is not serving us well.
EDIT: I should add to my point above that what's common with both these is one overarching world altering product that has completely transformed the world: the automobile.
Ribbons of tarmac lace the earth (it wouldn't surprise me if this is a long term environmental problem, too), even in some of the most remote sections of the planet.
Cities are built around them, privileging automobile use above a bunch of other aspects of quality of life.
Road transport is 75ish% of global CO2 emissions.
And, yeah, leaded fuel poisoned our bodies, minds, and the environment for decades.
The way it usually goes is "everyone is +5, except the village that shares the watershed with the mine"
On anything but the shortest timeline things like like wealth, health and productivity are fungible at the societal level.
If the net cumulative effect of the externalities wasn't smaller than the benefits of the progress then the progress wouldn't happen because more people would be worse off and things would grind to a halt because the gains would be more than offset.
It's still naive, or maybe obtuse. Repeating the "negative externality" buzzword doesn't give you a blank check to peddle your preferred ideology (government intervention/regulation) while crapping on the other team.
Without regulation we get lithium batteries and a couple dozen poisoned watersheds.
With regulation we get slightly more expensive batteries and fewer poisoned watersheds.
Regardless of how you or I or anyone else feels about regulation it's somewhere between farcical and deceitful to pretend that the economic activity in both of those situations doesn't help more than it hurts. If it didn't work this way progress would grind to a halt because the increased material wealth of having the batteries would be more than cancelled out by the problems that poisoned watersheds create, to run with the existing example.
I don't think we should be surpsied, as much as pushing to regulate this garbage.
As an aside, Michelle Obama's campaign when Obama was in office was about improvement children's health. Her focus was going to be on nutrition (lunch food). Shortly thereafter Coke and Pepsi came in with "donations" and the whole thing became about exercise, no focus on nutrition.
There should be no surprise that capital takes precedent over health in our current system / culture.
Arguably, we should care more about sugar than we do about covid.
Except that presumably includes the current generation, instead of everyone pre-millenial. There is certainly not any real consensus or meaningful action being taken in regards to sugar. It is as prevalent now as it ever was.
https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative...
Also buying fresh vegtables and cooking instead of buying ready made dishes helps.
Even without human interference, fruit can actually be bad for you if you eat it at the wrong time and in the wrong quantities - fructose has the same effect as sugar - but now we are basically getting into nutrition more generally which is a tricky subject. Fruit still comes with many other nutritional benefits compared to sugary manufactured snacks, and even fibre that make it worth while (note that orange juice, as minimally as we are processing the fruit, still allows you to consume it in unnatural quantity and concentration, which can be very bad).
It does require spending a little time cooking and probably to shop around rather than getting everything from a (possibly overpriced) supermarket depending on how much you can spend. So it's strictly an inconvenience, it requires stretching the argument really thin to view it otherwise.
If everyone did this, less processed sugar would be in our food supply. (corn syrups especially but also weird stuff like stevia, sneaky stuff like maltodextrin, etc..)
The problem is there are far too many pollutants for everyone to be able to educate themselves about every one, and take steps to avoid them. Instead, it's the role of government to decide in each case whether to allow, ban, tax, inform or restrict each type of pollutant.
Virtually my entire extended family are working class people, and they all were feeding their kids apple/orange juice on a regular basis without diluting it. When I showed my sister that she could literally do a 5% solution of apple juice in water, and it still tasted sweet, she was blown away. I'm pretty sure most members of the laptop class know that juice is bad for kids (gatorade too), but that message hasn't filtered to most of the population. And these kids are too young to know how toxic it is for them.
Can you cite specific examples of the public health establishment pushing juice as healthy? I got a minor in nutrition over a decade ago and back then, public health officials were very quick to call out the juice industry for its predatory tactics on kids and false equivalencies. This doesn't match my experience in university at all.
Sugar is our generation's tobacco for sure.
This might seem far fetched, but I think it's pretty accurate.
When tobacco was at it's height most people didn't really think it was bad for you - which gradually turned into a denialistic "yeah but it's not that bad" - it took a long time for society to come to terms with just how harmful it is.
The quantity of sugar in every day food has increased dramatically over time, and our attitude to it has been similar to the denialistic phase for tobbaco - "yeah it might hurt my waistline a little bit but it tastes too good" - Making people think if they aren't fat then it's ok, when really the consequences are far worse, sugar is pretty much poison for our bodies, it's bad for every single part of it (melts teeth, causes gum disease which poisons your bloodstream, ages skin, causes inflammation, causes heart disease, causes diabetes, affects the immune system, messes with cognition, makes you more hungry by sharply switching off ketosis, and finally displaces nutritional food making your body even more susceptible to aforementioned ailments).
I wish I understood this better when I was growing up. Thankfully I had a parent who never encouraged sugary food, and put in the effort to cook good meals... but many people don't and are at the mercy of what super markets sell, which is increasingly extremely sugary food.
If there is a single leading harmful substance that is as prevalent as leaded petrol was - i think it's probably sugar (in the west at least).
You know, I wouldn't mind this as long as the scale of the donation was big enough. If they donated $1000 per american to the US government, who could use it to reduce taxes or improve life for americans more than the sugar decreases quality of life through illness and poor health, that would be great.
But they didn't. I bet their donation was $100k or so, or less than 1 cent per american.
This isn't accurate. There were changes to the school lunch program, and by most accounts they were pretty effective: https://sph.washington.edu/news-events/news/obama-era-school...
The main takeaway is that the changes were fairly expensive, so lots of schools didn't participate.
My kids school lunch now is all packaged sugary crap. Corndogs, cinnamon buns for breakfast, Trix yogurt, etc. Even the milk is gross - lowest bidder swill that tastes like wax.
The hot food items are all oven-baked, in plastic wrappers. It’s essentially the same crap that you would see in a university vending machine.
Marijuanna and sugar and a million other potential vices like alcohol and video games should be available.
But we should teach kids discipline, critical thinking, and impulse control - rather than playing whack-a-mole with every vice that comes along.
Sweeteners are heavily subsidized in the US which is why they're in everything.
Likewise we have levers, should we be selling soda / pop with outrageous amounts of sugar in them without some sort of healthcare tax? I don't mind sugar being available, but right now its subsidized by our health care fees. My insurance is more expensive because of diabetes, heart disease, etc.
But monied interests and some vegetarians who think all things that come from plants must be good for you, prevent this from being shoved into near all packaged foods.
"Evidence-informed dietary priorities include increased fruits, nonstarchy vegetables, nuts, legumes, fish, vegetable oils, yogurt, and minimally processed whole grains; and fewer red meats, processed (e.g., sodium-preserved) meats, and foods rich in refined grains, starch, added sugars, salt, and trans fat."
Well also, the right-wing culture war machine decided Michelle Obama was taking everyone's children's freedoms away.
It's also too easy to cast judgement backwards in time, given the lack of context and the benefit of hindsight. Better to look forward.
We saw it with tobacco/lead/etc, so it's only natural/right to apply that experience to other things. Theorizing that sugar/THC could also fall into the same model is not wasting of anyone's time. If evidence is found that it is bad, then good can come from that knowledge. If evidence is found that it is not bad, then party on Wayne. But the studies should be conducted. Let's look forward to having actual knowledge rather than just blindly carrying on in the dark with no flashlight to guide.
To make such a statement implies how little perspective one might have for how hard life was, the risk and tradeoffs being made, especially when there were unknown - and especially for 'how good we have it now'.
I'm not even that old, but I have the lived experience from my grandparents who were born on farms without electricity and I believe without a doubt that we have crossed the line into 'civilizational wealth'. We are really rich for the first time in history. Unequal, yes, but even lower-middle class people have access to vast material bounty: actions, travel, decorative clothing, choices, opportunity, education, amazing produce throughout the year, entertainment, technology, delivery, amazing health care innovations. Heck .... people are even less afraid of getting shot these days because we know how to stabilise and save people. Getting 'shot' used to mean 'pretty much going go die'. Even 'heart surgery' is now done on an outpatient basis these days like getting an oil change.
'Millenials' have already let loose Facebook and other completely destructive technologies, and are taking absolutist views on necessarily complicated things like gender identity (and more) and I'm 100% certain that history will come back like a wrecking ball on at least those things, of course it's already happening with Social Media.
The issue with lead is hard to fathom, it's still a bit grey, I'm wondering what the effect of some other things are going to be i.e. micro plastics, and the steroids they use on livestock etc..
I'm not 'organic' by ideology but I'm wary that there's a lot of risk in those kinds of things.
And it goes further: lighting in the cities all night, and noise pollution in the city and with our gadgets. It should be mostly dark and quiet at night.
Granted I still think we have a more enlightened perspective on some issues as a generation just due to better education overall, but at best we might manage a marginal increase in overall quality of life for people.
Plus the basket of crises we've faced starting with the Great Financial Crisis has allowed many to blame external factors for their situation and not take personal responsibility, even when they clearly should. I've met plenty of unwise/stupid millennials who could do more to better their situation, but are happy to just sit still and bitch about everything but their self-destructive habits.
It's like how the Boomers got associated with Woodstock/the hippies/counter-culture, but in reality most Boomers didn't rebel all that much. Boomers elected Reagan, and he ran in part as an anti-counter-culture figure.
One thing that already gets me thinking of future generations looking down on us will be this quest for travel and high living especially for social media glamor and the new keeping up with Jones'. This increases more flights, polluting untouched places and how bad it is for the climate.
It's crazy to think about having a lower IQ than I was capable of having for something that could have been solved a few decades previously.
IMO weed will be in 50 years where "big tobacco" is right now.
I think the whole point is that it hasn't been studied yet, so we can't say definitively if its safe or not.
Eating marijuana can have some negative cognitive effects but its pretty obvious it doesn't do anything terrible looking at all the old hippies.
I'm not saying I know either way, but this seems like an easy thing to be wrong about.
It definitely hurts parts of cognition, and is linked to certain mental illnesses, there are other odd and end health concerns that pop up rarely. Overall marijuana is pretty gentle when ingested, you can just tell from your own health when consuming it.
When I smoked cigarettes I felt terrible all the time, and when I stopped it was night and day. Consuming edibles I feel pretty darn good actually, less stress, better sleep, and when I get off them I don't feel like I've been harming my body. This opinion is shared by pretty much everyone I know
Yes I’m aware that idiots are also fixated on fluoridation. That doesn’t make the science wrong though.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6923889/
Neurotoxicity appeared to be dose-dependent , and tentative benchmark dose calculations suggest that safe exposures are likely to be below currently accepted or recommended fluoride concentrations in drinking water.
It seems like so many of these conversations end at the "who is responsible" part, without the understanding that we really shouldn't care.
This despite the fact leaders are overwhelmingly at/past middle age, as is wealth required to make moves as an individual.
I have no issue whatsoever with complaining about individuals who are destroying the world right now [3], I'm certainly not going to sit here and defend basically any fossil fuel executive, but I think saying it's a generational thing is needlessly reductive and doesn't buy us anything. I don't think Noam Chomsky [1] or Bernie Sanders are destroying the world [2], and I don't think millennial/gen-z bozos like Charlie Kirk are helping it.
[1] I realize he's older than a boomer, but I think my point still fits. [2] At least not advocating for stuff that's destroying the planet. I am not trying to take a directly political stand.
[3] clarification edit.
All they need to do is treat the water to raise ph like every other city with a large lead solder install base, but they’ve been dragging their feet for literally decades while the people they serve get lead exposure.
1: https://www.opb.org/article/2021/11/30/lead-portland-oregon-...
Premise is off...
This assuming millenials are not reckless. We're humans and our behavior is not defined by our generation.
And we still have supplements and pots and pans that have lead in them, along with other heavy metals.
1) school performance
2) job performance
3) income
4) crime rate
5) health and mortality
6) quantity of lead exposed to
7) NOT intelligence
Hm, I know some obvious contradictions. Just saying.. not interested in discussing this.
In all seriousness, IQ is an important component of intelligence, mainly "fluid intelligence" that correlates well to learning speed in science and technology field, so for anyone that needs to do lots of learning/unlearning and career/domain hopping like we're all going to do more and more in the future it matters a hell of a lot!
I a world where someone could pick a job/domain and stick to it for life, IQ would matter but less... but it's not the world we're living in, everything is accelerating and our kids are likely to go through quite a few career changes / professional re-conversions etc.
E.g. it happens that IQ is something we measure, and EQ much less so. That lead leads to measurable reductions in IQ is strong evidence that it damages EQ too. (As its association with crime would suggest.)