More Teens Who Use Marijuana Are Suffering from Psychosis
wsj.com
wsj.com
I quit cold turkey a few years ago and now my vice is maybe I’ll drink a couple of beers or wine a couple times a year on special occasions.
I am much better creatively compared to just thinking I’m creative because weed knocked my IQ down by 20-40 points and anything seems “interesting” and groundbreaking there lol.
This is really the key here as it means that previous studies that showed health benefits are completely irrelevant now.
This isn't like the image of smoking pot in the basement from the 70's anymore. I'm watching the descent of my BIL's mental health from smoking American marijuana and it's really sad.
This line has been in use (with a different antecedent period) as a prohibitionist staple since at least the 1980s.
You know how we would not have this issue? If there was legalization and regulatory standadization.
Are you saying that all previous studies of marijuana are still valid, and that strength hasn't gone up?
As an outside observer it is classic "over the top" Americanism.
You like a large vehicle, we will make comically large vehicles!
You like hops in your beer? We will increase hop usage by 1000%! (Honestly some of the American independent IPA beers I tried in the 2000's practically required straining through your teeth)
You like strong weed?...
And that's where we are at, it would also explain why Musk went from jerk to unhinged.
Furthermore, the lack of regulation in the black market has allowed growers to make their weed stronger (which makes them more competitive).
The proposed solution is to bring weed back into above board society and regulate it so the THC content needs to be at least disclosed but likely limited - or create different classes of weed based on that (and perhaps other criteria).
It's true that legalisation alone won't stop this behaviour though - it needs to be properly regulated which is something the US seem to have a bit of an aversion to.
Well that's what I originally said, but it was blasted as being propaganda from people who wanted to ban it. Which isn't what I said, I don't care if you ban it or regulate it, it's just overdosing on anything has side effects.
However if you have weak, medium, strong, very strong, how many Americans are going to be sensible and go for the weak to medium levels?
It's just not in the American culture and not the sort of thing I observe in my brother in law.
Where are you from?
People generally take/drink/smoke as much as it takes to get to where they want to be. I might drink a 0.5L of beer, or I might have a shot of liquor, but I won't have 0.5L of vodka because I'm a thinking human being who realizes that vodka is much stronger than beer. Ditto for low potency 70s cannabis vs fancy 90% extracts today.
If you say that potency of cannabis is 3x higher than it used to be, that's significant, but you need to qualify that by saying how much a typical user would consume in 1 sitting.
1) If people smoke as much as they did in the 70s then they're ingesting 3x as much THC. I believe that this can cause more mental health issues, but it has everything to do with the total consumption of THC, not potency of the product.
2) If they're smoking 1/3rd as much as they did in the 70s then their total THC intake hasn't changed and there must be other explanations for increased mental health issues. Perhaps most notably, severe mental health issues have been on the rise since the dawn of social media.
This lack of nuance makes the article alarmist rather than genuinely informative. It only serves to further perpetuate myths and simplistic takes like "cannabis is unsafe because it's too strong".
Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome was something unheard of a few years ago
The quiet part people don't want to be said out loud is that the medical play was just to get the ball rolling towards legalization. Now that it is in several states, we're doing to marijuana what we did to IPAs and microbrews. Do everything you can to maximize disregarding the overall effect unless that desired effect is just getting wasted.
Many/most parents have no interest in it, because they value stability and risk aversion. When they were interested, it was illegal and a no-no. So many kids grow up with free-for-all, and with parents who can't teach them the respect they need. Add to that group pressure, and re-legalization without some sort of phasing-in seems like it would cause lots of acute issues.
Pure capitalism says that if they are too sick to work, they'll get no money and starve. But most people are luckily not willing to be that cold-hearted. But then a society-wise compromise is needed.
These days people can lead intense, immersive (though certainly unhealthy) lives from their couch.
It's so "The Machine Stops".
I've never touched marijuana (or any illegal drug) because I've been perpetually paranoid about the possibility of it being spiked with something horrible. Even as a teenager, when all my friends were smoking weed all the time, I never even tried it because I, as a rule, don't eat or drink anything if I cannot potentially sue the person who gave it to me.
I've had my share of alcohol [1], so it's not like I'm moralizing or anything, and I do wish weed would be legalized just so we could properly research potential side effects, because what really annoys me is how much of an over-correction people have made with weed. The logic appears to be "the claims about weed's harm were really exaggerated, so therefore there's no downsides to it ever at any point". I've known people who put THC in their vape and just puff on that all day, and when I've very lightly mentioned that it might a tiny bit unhealthy to need to consume a drug all day, they give me a lecture about all the positive features of weed.
I'm at least a little glad now that I never experimented with it when I was a teenager; I got enough mental issues as it is.
[1] Not in quite awhile, and I'm a full teetotaler now since I have sleep apnea.
Every time I bring this up, they go all defensive. They would not change their habit a little bit.
This is the biggest issue, and I'm honestly shocked that so many supposed adults in positions of authority have basically taken the position of "I like to smoke, so it's not that bad, I'm ok right? Don't insult me by saying I'm negatively affected. Of course we shouldn't control or ban this."
It's incredibly....childish. I picture 5 year olds tucking into ice-cream, and with the sugar high, just throwing absolute tantrums when you try take it away from them.
Drugs are bad, marijuana needs to be controlled like all drugs, and harsh actions need to be taken now to arrest this slide otherwise there is no turning back already.
My ex's whole family smoked like chimneys, but she had a few bad experiences and essentially went straight-edge outside of the occasional glass of red wine.
Her older brother had serious psychosis issues and was even institutionalized for it briefly. Was on meds, had a few rough years.
Eventually he quit because his then girlfriend got him a job at one of the few remaining Blockbusters and they demanded drug-free, ironically enough. He liked working there, and between him and the girlfriend, quit smoking. Maybe a year later he dropped the schizophrenia meds and started working out. The transformation happened while I was with my ex and it was amazing to see it play out. Like, dude was basically crazy, and in a couple years was managing a video store, had a gf, and got his shit together.
Perfectly normal guy since, at least last I heard.
I do not believe these disorders are thought to originate from environmental factors present in late teenage years. Thus, we should expect a large increase in these diagnoses if cannabis is indeed a causative agent that is now more attainable than it used to be.
Also, individuals will instinctively self-medicate (think about a pet favoring a wounded paw). If these disorders reflect structural brain abnormalities - which they do, in large part - we then can’t distinguish whether cannabis use is a compensatory mechanism or a causative mechanism
This kind of article doesn’t offer any evidence toward the idea outside correlations - and this kind of correlation is very tenuous.
A good example to demonstrate the idea is the outsized use of tobacco products amongst those with ADHD diagnoses. Do we immediately conclude that ADHD rates are influenced by the availability of cigarettes? Or can we instead ask how nicotine may influence neural circuits that are abnormal in ADHD?
https://www.thelancet.com/article/S2215-0366(19)30048-3/full...
Next, I'm no statistician, but I have never heard of this kind of trial being proof of causality (it can only provide supportive data - but as above, we know that the results may prove incorrect in a stronger study design). There are a lot of confounding factors that make causality a difficult thing to prove in humans.
There is actually a way to prove causality in humans, and I suspect someone will do this for marijuana since it is a hot-button issue: https://archive.cdc.gov/#/details?url=https://www.cdc.gov/ge...
I'd recommend at least 5:1 CBD to THC for people who don't want any psychoactive effects. However I think many people do want those effects.
Otherwise, we don't have to completely deregulate sale and use. Legally limit THC concentration, and/or require a certain minimum for the CBD-to-THC ratio in products. As the article (and others here) have pointed out, THC concentration has only gone up over time, especially as pot has become legalized in many places.
Certainly some people will still find/make things with higher concentrations, but legally limiting the concentration will act as education of its own, and a lot of people will end up with safer products.
Education is an idea, let people know what the risks are and what symptons are to go see a doctor. This could be a mandatory magazine at shops.
People at risk could get better treatment, just someone to talk to about their strugles in life can be very helpful.
Ignoring that these are teenagers that are going to do whatever they want because that's what a teenager does just means that you're going to waste your time.
They've started to put the above statement on top of cigarette cases at my local grocery store. It's not super prominent, nor is its color garish but I'm still surprised every time I read it and I've seen a few others surprised too. There are certainly ways to effectively use reading material to combat these things.
If the goal is preventing severe mental illness, then the best solution we've got right now is coordinated and well-funded multi-agency intervention to support at-risk families and young people.
The issue is that criminal records also ruin lives and are socially self-inflicted wounds.
Given the much higher potency of a lot of the pot you find in the US these days, the more-relaxed culture around it, and people's tendency to overuse illegal things that have been recently legalized, this result is hardly surprising. THC is a psychoactive compound... what do we think it's gonna do if consumed in large concentrations?
I think it's fine and good that pot is legal in many places in the US now (and hope that only expands), but I don't think education is up to par. People seem to think "oh it's safer than tobacco/alcohol/whatever" and don't really think too much about their consumption levels or frequency. I've known people who consume so much pot, that if it were alcohol, we'd be super worried about them and want them to go to AA or something. And yet, with pot, it doesn't trigger any warning bells for most people.