Marijuana, hallucinogen use, binge drinking at historic highs in U.S. 35-50Y
news.umich.edu
news.umich.edu
And I can't think of anything much more self-destructive than binge drinking. It's right up there with opioids.
It almost sounds like the grandparent is going to welcome The Matrix. Are things so bad that they would rather take the blue pill and forget the real world altogether?
Name one negative thing about a drug should be a pre requisite to any adult discussion.
Hell, I could do that about cofee, drug of my choice. It's most likely loaded with cancer causing chemicals due to the roasting process. There, enlightenment first, needs and feels second.
Psychedelics and green are not in the category of hard drugs. There is little to physical dependency. Nicotine, alcohol, caffeine, and sugar have much worse addicting properties and worse outcomes.
narcotics do not generally all create a "euphoria". Thc especially does not do this. It allows you to experience things in different ways, makes new connections. Some people use this to enjoy things more, same as humans have done since someone figured out the plant that feels funny when you eat it can also be smoked.
Psychedelics used in therapy bring out more natural emotion. That's why they're used.
Conflating medical/therapeutic use of narcotics (with clear, defined doses and dire warnings of overdose) with recreational drug use, making sugar somehow worse than narcotics... Also, really? Sugar? People need carbohydrates to live, and sugar is a carbohydrate.
> It allows you to experience things in different ways, makes new connections.
You know what also makes new connections? Talking to people, sober.
I suppose this entire perspective is a product of living in the thoroughly depressing and broken system that is the US. Sucked dry by the cost of education, by the cost of healthcare, by the cost of rent in cities, by the cost of pretty much everything, I suppose people have little recourse but to, as a commenter below so eloquently puts it, 'f*ck it, let's get wasted and high.' I also suppose the sugar argument comes from the US food industry stuffing high-fructose corn syrup in everything.
I believe that any recreational drug use—whether cannabis, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, or even nicotine, alcohol, caffeine, and excess consumption of sugar—should be treated with the extreme caution that they all deserve.*
What, pray tell, is the threshold of dangerous overdose for weed? For LSD? For psilocybin?
How many patients are admitted to hospitals each year suffering an overdose of these substances? How many of those patients subsequently die?
> making sugar somehow worse than narcotics... Also, really? Sugar? People need carbohydrates to live, and sugar is a carbohydrate.
Carbohydrates being biologically necessary doesn’t change the fact that sugar addiction is insanely impactful to the health of populations. In the US alone, obesity affects over forty percent of the population. A large majority of these people are effectively experiencing addiction to sugar.
But this thread is celebrating marijuana use and binge drinking at all time highs in a demographic as a natural ramification of ending prohibition?
Naturally, one should hope that there is an explanation that means overall use is a better public health situation after the prohibition. I.e. increased alcohol use is among generations traumatized by prohibition and younger generations will choose better for themselves.
I suspect if you find the numbers for the rates of increased cases of psychosis you will realize how absolutely ridiculous this argument is.
“Higher rates” doesn’t mean a whole lot when the background rate is vanishingly small.
Heart disease is the leading killer in the U.S. you believe the arguments are "wishy washy" because you are believing rhetoric someone else told you. Likely someone paid to do so from a specific political party.
People may get "wasted", they also do this with everything else. Food and porn is most common, as is psychological abuse of others. These are physically addictive highs with far more harm.
You also forgot to address the "harm" part. You're using narcotics buzzwords and assuming green is the same as heroin.
The idea of "drugs are bad" requires one to not have knowledge of how medicine works or why it's created because "drugs" are no different from all the other medical drugs. Have you taken anti-anxiety meds? Perhaps lithium? Those solutions are barbaric when compared with cannabis and some kinds of hallucinogens.
Medical interventions must be fully encompassing. Everything is a compromise. Cannabis may be harmful, it is also very low on the list of significant harms, and high on gains for specific use. If you care about saving lives then regulate away sugar.
So can art, movies, and relationships.
This is the reason many show up to the show, not something to be afraid of. It's the feature, not the bug.
/pedant who finds it funny to comment on this because I don't even consume cannabis what with being allergic to it.
Contrarianism? Or is it something to do with political affiliation?
Personally I think prohibitionism was a step in the right direction.
In future generations we'll have the War on Drugs to look back on, so we won't make the same mistakes, but drug use will become too much at some point, and we'll look for other ways to curtail it.
So, maybe people are transitioning from one set of drugs to others? The stuff that’s going down seems generally worse than the stuff that’s going up.
Along the same lines, marijuana is becoming more available (i.e., decriminalized), which is naturally going to increase availability and usage. Hallucinogens are on a similar path.
Your pee might eventually not show traces but your hair is like an elephant, it never forgets.
All that said, I would think there should be some concern for the fact that more and more individuals need such help just to get by. When are we going to address this? Where is the leadership that has the backbone and vision to do so? "Let them smoke weed" isn't cutting it.
It could have been very simple. Prescription for a couple days for edible tablets, an inhaler vaporizer good for a week. To treat pain, anxiety, PTSD and other conditions.
But the medical industry and the fed especially continued to use marijuana and psychs as a method to increase arrests and gain votes to further themselves. Nobody gets into that kind of power without investors and powerful interests behind it.
So now it's left out of the regulatory equation because government failed and by nature humans are doing what they want to anyways.
You can see the rhetoric even now, people still believing the crafted memes Ronald Reagan left behind.
F*ck it let’s just wasted and high.