Comment by program_whiz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by program_whiz | Hacker News Reader

AITA For wanting to be able to walk in peace without inhaling smoke? Weed gives me extreme paranoid reactions even from small doses. Being forced to breathe it feels like an assault and I have anxiety until it wears off. As a society we have rationalized the use of smoking by saying that there are absolutely no downsides, it has no addictive properties, and is safe and useful to anyone (unlike all other known substances). However some people are infirm, elderly, children with developing brains and lungs, have health problems, have anxiety issues that weed exacerbates, et cetera. Ive known more than One person who is pushed to a psychotic break by heavy weed use. Maybe it's anecdotal, but there are mentally unstable people, and exposing them to highly concentrated thc of today seems cruel (possibly condemning them to a hellish life).

I feel this mindset of spraying substances everyone must endure is a bit like a factory polluting the river, an externality the selfish justify because it benefits them and doesnt have personal cost. But rest assured, others are bearing the cost.

If you think that everyone else should be subjected to your psychoative smoke, then you should have no problem with people disposing of half used medication into the office water cooler. After all it was prescribed by a doctor and is probably safe in small doses. There are no studies showing any negative effects of half a prozac dissolved in a water cooler, so there are probably no negative effects. If everyone disposed of their half used medications into unfiltered drinking water, we can be sure it would cause no problems since my experience of that medication has caused me no problems.

You're drawing a lot of parallels and making a lot of equivalences, as well as bold large claims. It appears to have not even a shred of evidence, except for the fact that you appear to have a strong placebo response to secondhand smoke. It sucks for you, truly. I do not believe that everyone should stop doing a thing that bothers mostly just you just because you don't like it. It's not a reasonable expectation.

It is not “mostly just [them]”. Many, many people - most people, maybe - would rather the world not smell like weed.

And I would rather the world not smell like car exhaust, which is definitely far more harmful

Nope, you're a reasonable and rational person and just like cig smoke, its rude to smoke pot in public/on the street

Not only this, but pot smokers stink from a great distance. When driving I can often tell when a person who regularly smokes is in the car ahead of me.

Once I went to a small comedy club with very close seating. A young kid came in and just stunk to high hell, made it really hard to enjoy the show.

No you cannot smell a person through your car and through their car. What?

I often drive by a home, in a state with legal weed, and I can smell the stench from the road ... every single time too, and no, they aren't smoking outside at all times of day. I'm not anti weed, and I wouldn't complain about someone smoking on their own privacy, or even when alone/not around others, but you can indeed smell it from afar. And if you smoke, you know.

My guess is that they are growing pot, not just smoking it. These days you can smell the industrial marijuana warehouses from the freeway in Oakland, inside a car with the windows up.

That is nonsense. I could roll around in shit and drive and you wouldn’t be able to smell me from a car behind me, that’s crazy.

I'm not making this up. And I'm not alone in this (I'll ask a passenger if they too can smell it and they'll often say they can).

I might have a more sensitive nose than most.

Regular pot smokers absolutely stink.

As to your comment about shit, agreed I likely couldn't smell it from a car distance with windows up. Which tells you how much stronger pot smell actually is since I actually can smell that.

Nah, I can confirm I've smelled heavy pot smokers through my car. Happens at least once a week.

I think it's specifically blunt smokers, but I have no data to support that.

I feel like these people can't tell the difference between driving past a skunk and cannabis

If you can smell weed coming from the car ahead of you, it's probably because they are smoking weed in the car.

While I'm not a fan of constant exposure to the smell of Cannabis at home from people growing it without proper odor control in my neighborhood and people smoking it everywhere, it's highly unlikely that your anxiety is from secondhand exposure to cannabis smoke.

There are several good studies about second hand exposure, like https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25326203/ (and related listed) though not without limitations and not fulfilling all science best practices that come to the same conclusion:

You basically need to be exposed to secondhand smoke in an unventilated room for hours to inhale enough active ingredients to have minor behavioral and cognitive effects from second hand exposure.

Without giving you medical advice, I'd probably consider talking to a psychiatrist if you obviously have considerable discomfort from the smell of cannabis. As someone with PTSD who sometimes got flashbacks and anxiety from smells like charred meat, maybe there is an (un)conscious event in your past or youth that you connect with the smell of cannabis that makes you this uncomfortable.

It's worth checking out, it got significantly better for me from therapy and "unlearning" that connection.

Amen; I agree.

I absolutely don't mind weed, or even cigarettes, but it sucks to be assaulted by the smell all of the time.

Not much that can be done about that aside from making smoking at all illegal and heavily prosecuting people that do it, and even then the people with no fucks to give will still smoke up.

Second hand weed smoke does not lead to any meaningful increase in THC plasma concentration

> Second hand weed smoke does not lead to any meaningful increase in THC plasma concentration

Every high school stoner that's hot boxed a car before class with friends knows firsthand that's not an accurate statement.

But smelled in passing outdoors, sure.

As a former hotboxing teenager I would argue that hot boxing a car doesn't do anything to increase THC plasma concentration, but it is a great way to restrict oxygen

As someone who for much of his youth socialized with pot smokers without being one himself, I've had enough "contact highs" just from sharing enclosed spaces with these people to know the second-hand effects are present (though weak).

If hot boxing a car over an hour consumes enough oxygen to matter it wouldn't be possible to sleep in a car without running out of oxygen. A couple blunts doesn't consume that much.

Restrict != run out

My point is that the oxygen consumed over the duration of hotboxing a car is so trivial compared to spending hours sleeping in a car that if the former has any effect the latter should too.

What makes you think that it doesn't?

Automobile passenger compartments are vented, otherwise there'd be problematic pressure spikes on door/hatch closures. You're not getting deprived of oxygen sleeping in a vehicle.

What is the rate of air exchange in a closed passenger compartment of a vehicle that is not running?

Likewise, what is the rate of CO2 production from an average sedentary human?

On top of that, what is the rate of combustion byproduct production from burning plant matter in a closed passenger compartment?

An increase from 0 to a tiny and insignificant amount is an increase of infinity percent.

But it isn't pharmacogically relevant

For some people -- some people will die if peanut dust gets in their mouth. We decided to use warnings and labels for this small subgroup.

Sorry but THC is not an allergen, it doesn't work like that. People aren't magically thousands of times more sensitive to a neurotransmitter than others. Yea there is some variation but not like that

I like to believe molecules dont dissappear at random so I assume one passing breath of the high concentration strains has an effect on people who are not tolerant, but maybe something magical happens so those particular thc molecules have no effect.

Similar to "these pesticides are dumped far from people and definitely are not harmful." Until I see population studies I believe molecules entering the body have effects and in complex systems those effects are unpedictable. You claim there is no effect of adding these new molecules into a population of ~10M, a strong claim that would be the first time "psycoactive substance I use for the mood altering affect has no affect on others."

I didn't realize THC was a new molecule

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