Daily cannabis use overtakes drinking in US first | Hacker News Reader

Daily cannabis use overtakes drinking in US first

bbc.com

81 pointspseudolus123 comments

Relative to alcohol this is probably a good thing but I think most people grossly underestimate the negative impact of daily cannabis use. I’ve seen many people slowly deteriorate. Cannabis psychosis is no fun at all

Agreed. It's understandable that people were fed up with the rampant misinformation around the dangers of weed, but I fear we may be overcorrecting in the other direction now. Some people like to pretend that it's completely harmless even as they struggle with dependency issues.

We need some actual fact-based education around weed.

Hopefully once it's rescheduled federally in the US, we'll get medical research rolling! Having it as Schedule I has really hindered progress.

I dunno if alcohol is so much worse than weed in the grand scheme of things. A lot of Europeans, especially up north, are downright alcoholics by US standards, and yet their societies seem to be doing just fine, quite flourishing really.

For example Ireland has the highest GDP/Capita in EU and Finland has the best educated school students in the EU.

Not promoting alcohol consumption, but from my POV here in Europe, traditional alcoholic societies seem to have developed further than traditional stoner societies.

Just a shower though.

Which societies do you consider "stoner"??

Tool/Cypress Hill audiences could qualify.

Well there was one at university that pretended to be about hill walking.

India and Jamaica come to mind, but one had their GDP drained from 23% to just 4% of global GDP by British colonialism and the other is a former slave colony so those examples might have rather more significant downward pressure on productivity other than cannabis

The probability of being hurt or even just disturbed by someone else due to them being high on cannabis is far, far lower than the probability of being hurt by someone due to them being high on alcohol.

Work in a public facing role, especially at night or on weekends. Or even just drive around at night to see the difference.

Irish society being held up as a shining example to argue a point. I think the Irish could double their drinking and it wouldn't bring any more tech companies to the country. They're there for tax status, this is common knowledge especially in this part of the world.

It is common in family/small types businesses to start drinking at the office after lunch, this is Sweden/Norway/Denmark/Finland. It is dark and is sucks, what else you gonna do?

"common" is a pretty big exaggeration.

What are a few examples of "traditional stoner societies," especially on a country scale?

What does this look like?

There are lots of factors in life that can cause psychosis, reading philosophy can do it via triggering an existential crisis? Right? Obviously other traumatic events cause psychosis.

I wonder if these require multiple things to happen, a life event + regular usage.

Or if it really is a deterioration is inevitable.

> reading philosophy can do it via triggering an existential crisis

if thinking about stuff deeply can cause psychosis, maybe the the problem isn't the text?

The picture is murky: both addictions co-exist (i.e., there are now two addiction issues), but for the overlapping group, combined use may lead to more alcohol consumption [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8855954/]. There's only a moderately positive effect if cannabis use doesn't grow further, and substitutes alcohol abuse.

The increase in traffic fatalities after legalization is also well documented, e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09553...

> Cannabis psychosis is no fun at all

What is "Cannabis psychosis"?

What it says on the tin: psychosis triggered by cannabis. Its rare, but not that rare, and well established scientifically and anecdotally. It's debated whether cannabis causes it, or just exacerbates it, but give 100 random people a super strong edible, a few will have a break from reality.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2424288/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3927252/

https://medicine.yale.edu/psychiatry/step/early-intervention...

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/marijuana-induc...

https://www.brightquest.com/cannabis-induced-psychosis/

> well established scientifically and anecdotally

Those things don't go together.

(What are these downvotes, you all want your facts to be based on anecdotes?)

Scientists doing studies and people talking on forums can't notice the same thing? Seems pretty common in the healthcare field.

"Well established anecdotally" is like saying "poorly established".

Not at all. It’s saying that a lot of people have personal stories about it. This is in combination with scientific studies.

Why is it an argument for an effect being real that a lot of people have personal stories about it? For instance, a lot of people have stories about mentioning a niche interest while using certain software and that interest later appearing in Google results. That can happen for reasons related to statistics and confirmation bias. Consequently, a lot of people have stories. So what? Some software spies, some doesn't, the rumors aren't how we tell the difference, and "scientifically and anecdotally" is a terrible phase, as if those things were of equivalent merit. Lots of people have stories about bigfoot.

That’s cool. I’ll keep listening to my friends and family and trusting their word over some angry dude on the internet. Best of luck

The problem isn't cannabis, the problem is how it's dosed and flavored. Edibles are too strong, and taste too delicious.

> but give 100 random people a super strong edible, a few will have a break from reality

Give 100 random people 10-20 shots in a short period of time, and they will also have a break from reality.

The difference is that hard alcohol has a very clearly identifiable taste and causes stomach discomfort: If a child mistakes a glass of whiskey for a glass of apple juice, they aren't going to chug it.

In contrast, cannabis gummies (which I eat plenty of,) taste wonderful, and are often too strong.

When I made my own brownies, I would only have intense experiences if I ate a lot. In contrast, what appears to be a "normal" bite of a chocolate bar, or a handful of gummies, can end up being like an LSD trip.

> Give 100 random people 10-20 shots in a short period of time, and they will also have a break from reality.

Source? Remember that you are replying to a comment with 5 studies linked.

I watched plenty of alcohol abuse in college. People do weird things when they are blacked out drunk.

That is not a source.

With edibles, taking the right dosage is notoriously difficult. They are very prone to accidental over-consumption (e.g. becoming "higher" than desired).

The feedback loop is very slow. It can easily take 30-60 minutes after ingestion before you can start gauging how strong the overall effect will be and how it might peak.

A break from reality is a very mild way of saying THC induced schizophrenia

This must mean psychosis correlated with cannabis use in a controversial way, complicated by matters of genetics, environment, the use of other drugs, and pre-existing psychiatric conditions. It means schizophrenia, and possibly other forms of long-term psychosis but I'm not sure what those are. Delusions of persecution? But that isn't very different.

I’m becoming pretty alarmed at cannabis smoking/vaping causing endothelial dysfunction.

Alcohol is hilariously bad even relative to most drugs, but at some point we’re going to have to start examining cannabis on its own and it’s not that great. Edibles seem relatively inert though.

Overuse is bad in any ways.

If you have to do something cannabis is probably the better option especially if you eat it instead of smoking it. I stopped drinking 5 years ago and my blood pressure dropped from like ~135/90 down to ~115/75 most readings. Now coffee is my only vice.

Try mushroom matcha (ryze brand). I used to drink tea, a lot. But now I am only mixing mushroom matcha with a small spoon of raw organic maca powder, and a hot water. Don't add maca in the evening, it might affect your sleep hours.

It's been pretty much my drink for the last couple of years.

Does it taste like it sounds? I.e. like shit?

Coffee is an amazing one for me..

I live in a country where weed is still illegal. I'm not a user, but I used it heavily in my teens (which I don't recommend). In principle I'm all for legalisation - get the profits out of the hands of criminal gangs and into legitimate taxable enterprise.

In practice I have heard on podcasts based in places like Washington and California where hosts say they almost can't leave their home without being hit in the face with the stink of weed. I absolutely hate the smell of weed smoke. This is the one practical hitch in my mind. I wish that we could rely on pot smokers to be a bit more respectful to people who aren't.

> In practice I have heard on podcasts based in places like Washington and California where hosts say they almost can't leave their home without being hit in the face with the stink of weed.

These podcasts are meant to scare people to farm engagement. I live in WA and barely smell weed (except when I myself am smoking it.) And when I do, it's usually just the scent and not clouds of smoke or anything.

I live in Northern Europe and almost never feel the smell of weed here. In my travels around the USA and Canada, it was very clear to me it's far, far more common over there.

Well it is more legal here :)

> just the scent

I think you underestimate how much weed smells to someone not used to it. Even the tiniest hint of it makes me uncomfortable.

I wish the UK had something like the smoking chambers in China where people can do what they want without affecting others too much

You may not live in the city. I smell it all the time. Regardless of whether I agree or not, its pretty prevalent depending on where you live/spend your time.

Part of living in a city is smelling a bunch of stuff you don't really want to. No need to special-case weed there heh :)

The last podcast I heard this on was Slate Magazine's Political Gabfest. Hardly the kind of publication that's trying to scare people away from weed.

You are a pot smoker yourself. You probably are so used to it that you don't realise how incredibly pungent the odour is.

I live in NYC and travel semi-regularly to both CA and WA, and this is completely overblown. You might catch a faint whiff every once in awhile, but it’s very far down on the list of annoyances a major city offers.

And no, I don’t smoke weed.

I don't think people are scared about it, it's more of an annoyance. And it's not being wildly exaggerated. In NYC nowadays it's more common than not when walking anywhere to get at least one strong whiff of weed per trip, if not multiple. It's also become quite common for people to light up in subway stations. I'm a former user who's not offended by the smell but still find it a bit annoying, for fear of it clinging to me.

> I live in WA and barely smell weed (except when I myself am smoking it.)

You're probably noseblind to it, since you smoke yourself.

idt I'm noseblind to it. When I go downtown in various WA cities I smell it more often. Often from far away / as it's fading. Since it's so rare to be exposed to actual second-hand weed smoke.

>In practice I have heard on podcasts based in places like Washington and California where hosts say they almost can't leave their home without being hit in the face with the stink of weed.

that's some severe hyperbole. you'll probably smell it on the bus if you use the bus, but weird smells are part of riding the bus. I rarely smell it at the grocery store unless someone's carrying flower in an unsealed package, it's pretty obvious in those cases

> but weird smells are part of riding the bus

They don't have to be — this is an American phenomenon.

Hahaahahahahahahah no. No it bloody isn’t mate. Jesus. Hahahaah. What a hilarious comment. Well done!

I live in UK where it’s still illegal. It used to be like once a month that I’d smell it in public, and now it’s a few times a day. I think it changed during the Pandemic? Doesn’t bother me personally but the sharp change is interesting.

That sounds like a technological issue. I believe people already have it in pill form?

Legal pot taxes profits from law abiders. It doesn't get anything from crooks. They move on to other contraband if anything, or don't go out of sight if caught.

What else is a good reason to legalize?

At the very least, you get acclimated to the smell of cannabis much quicker then the smell of cigarettes at least in my experience. It's also becoming increasingly common to vape cannabis in America, which only has a residual smell in small, enclosed spaces with frequent use.

We finally mostly got rid of tobacco smoke, and now there's cannabis smoke everywhere.

It's extremely unpleasant.

If you want to take some, please eat it instead of smoking. It's not right to inflict the smoke on others. (And yes this includes outside.)

couldn't that be said of farts?

I can't smell my neighbor's farts from inside my house.

Cigarette or weed smoke, though, is very noticeable and it tends to linger. To the point that I avoid opening certain windows because someone 30ft from it likes to smoke on his balcony.

how many minutes can you fart for? I didn't think so either..

my manager from Atlassian used to fart a lot, standing by his desk. He even had no hesitation, it wasn't once or twice. I was wondering why nobody was willing to sit next to him when I just joined. I've learnt it the hard way. He moved now to Australia fortunately!

I can't smell a fart inside my apartment from someone on the other end of the parking lot, but apparently with weed smoke I can.

There's only "14.7 million daily drinkers" in the US?

To be honest, I'm a little surprised it's that high.

as someone who used to drink daily but stopped, I found that I dramatically overestimated how much the average USian drinks. when you're surrounded by drinkers it's an easy mistake to make.

Drinking is very unevenly distributed. Most people don't drink much, and many people don't drink at all.

I’m surprised it’s that high. Yikes.

There are about 260,836,730 adults over the age of 18 in the US as of 2022, so 14.7 million daily drinkers seems relatively low:

https://datacenter.aecf.org/data/tables/6538-adult-populatio...

yeah. a bit suspicious. that's < 5% of the US population. highly dubious.

For daily drinking? Why is that dubious - most people drink occasionally, not daily.

I think there's a lot of people that drink a glass of wine at dinner maybe? They're not by any means alcoholics but would be included in that 5%, which seems expected I guess.

It's possible that those who drink wine daily, both cluster together and reinforce each other.

Thus, it may seem like a significant proportion of the population from the perspective of someone who does, or hangs around at least 1 such person.

In Hungary, it seems maybe half the male population drinks daily.

Seems about right to me, if not high. Keep in mind that this isn't the number of Americans that consume alcohol, but the number of Americans that consume alcohol on a daily basis. People that drink on the weekends, or a few times a week after work, don't qualify. 1 in 20 seems a bit high to me, but within the ballpark.

This thread is fascinating for highlighting that what seems normal to one person seems rare to another.

I'm not sure I know a single "daily drinker". Even the people who had reputations as being heavy drinkers I don't think drank every day. Drinking daily sounds like something someone in recovery would talk about as the final stage of their spiral towards rock bottom before they went to rehab, not something I'd expect 1 in 20 people to be doing.

But maybe I'm underestimating how many people have one glass of wine with dinner or one beer after work.

Before becoming a techie I did construction work and nearly every person drank beer after (and often during) work. It was a way to alleviate the pain from hard manual labor.

Heavy manual labor jobs almost require two beers in the evening if you don’t have a bathtub to soak in.

I forget the exact statistic, but something like 10% of Americans drinks 90% of the alcohol.

I was surprised too, a quick search produced something a bit different.

"The top 10 percent of American drinkers - 24 million adults over age 18 - consume, on average, 74 alcoholic drinks per week"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think...

Perhaps a lot of them binge hard a couple days a week, dropping them out of the “daily drinker” category? Does seem weird.

I mean I’ve gone through parts of my life where I’d have close to 10-12 beers a day over the course of the entire day… womp womp

Long distance binge drinking

There are some issues with that claim: https://whatifpost.com/no-10-of-adults-dont-have-more-than-t...

Yeah it was surprising but this is from NIH, they didn't have a stat for daily drinkers so I took the most extreme.

According to the 2022 NSDUH, 16.0 million adults ages 18 and older reported heavy alcohol use in the past month (see glossary for definition of heavy alcohol use)

Heavy alcohol use (or heavy drinking):

NIAAA defines heavy alcohol use as follows: For men, consuming five or more drinks on any day or 15 or more per week For women, consuming four or more drinks on any day or 8 or more per week

https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-to...

That definition makes the majority of Irish men (living in Ireland) heavy drinkers.

And Ireland has the highest life expectancy in the EU

And it's full of redheads (I've heard).

It's high, but not the highest.

I was using 2022 data so a little out of date.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2022/1222/1343395-health-report/

It’s all so close at the top it shuffles around regularly so it’s kinda moot.

I don’t think that’s physically sustainable for one week much less ongoing to be an average over the course of a year.

I’m pretty sure that would kill me and I’ve always had a relatively high tolerance.

You have no idea what real alcohol dependance can look like. 74/Week is a run of the mill alcoholic. Many drink double that for years and even decades before their liver forces them to stop or die.

Yea, that's what I thought, too. When OP posted that figure, I thought, that's like 10 beers a day... I mean, yes that's a lot, but even I might have achieved that during the peak of my irresponsible drinking era. When I think "actual alcoholic" I imagine about 3X that number.

The other issue here is the term tolerance. There's the "I have a high tolerance" sentiment from people who think that means they can drink a couple more drinks than their friends and not pass out verses real tolerance in the medical sense of the term. Tolerance in the medical sense is that you have submerged your central nervous system in a depressant for so long that it has effectively "Overclocked" itself to compensate. It now runs faster and hotter in order to overcome the constant presence of something trying to slow it down. That's why people with real tolerance sweat profusely, have uncontrollable shaking and potentially seizures and hallucinations when the CNS depressant is removed from their system. Their nervous system has adjusted to only function normally with the depressant in their system and functions extremely abnormally without it.

One of the aspects I'm most concerned about is the number of people who smoke while driving. I frequently see people blowing vape smoke out of their windows in traffic. I walk past people parked in their cars smoking. So many delivery drivers smell like weed, especially Door Dash drivers and Amazon subcontractors. We're probably headed back to 1950s levels of impaired driving, and at all hours of the day rather than primarily at night.

Vape smoke doesn't have to be weed, it could be nicotine which is also very common, and also better than smoking a cigarette.

I do agree that no one should be inebriated while driving though.

> Cannabis-use disorder does not lead to organ damage or death unlike alcohol or opioid-use disorders, but it can cause that health and social problems that greatly impact a person's quality of life or even their safety.

You can't kill yourself, but you might forget to shower or eat proper food. All told, it's not the worst thing a person could do to themselves.

While I’m sure usage is up, this is survey data and I’m sure willingness to share/report is up too.

I can't imaging having alcohol every day, let alone getting high.

That's a good thing. I don't drink everyday because I'm happy and well adjusted.

One of the hangovers is way worse than the other, so I could at least maintain a life smoking daily. drinking daily? might as well put me in jail

Just like with any substance - daily use increases tolerance of the substance and it's side effects. This includes "hangovers" for habitual over-indulging drinkers... they don't get hangovers like someone who drinks occasionally and then overdoes it at a party.

Other countries do it all the time. Europeans drink wine at meals. My wife's company even serves wine at their cafeteria in their Geneva office while their US offices are completely dry including office parties. No drinks at the Xmas party.

> No drinks at the Xmas party.

Because people can't be trusted to behave or? Sounds a bit extreme...

> My wife's company even serves wine at their cafeteria

Seen that but I think very few people consider buying it. Maybe last day before a vacation or similar (once or twice in a lifetime).

I don't know any morning drinkers yet I know about a half-dozen people who smoke cannabis in the morning before work.

I don't like that this has become normalized.

Impairment for e.g. driving isn’t so great but as far as just before work—how many people are on prescription mood-altering drugs? The potential for abuse is worse with self-medication (well—I mean, hypothetically, but see also opioids) but I don’t per se see “I like to stay a little high at work, makes my day a ton better” as a significantly worse than “I take a Wellbutrin each morning, makes my day a ton better”.

I think this is exciting news. Scientifically, there is a clear consensus that marijuana is far less harmful to human health than most illegal drugs. It is also less dangerous than legal, highly addictive substances like alcohol and tobacco. The health effects of marijuana, compared to other recreational substances, depend on frequency of use, potency, dosage, and the age of the user. For healthy adults, occasional moderate use is virtually, if not completely, harmless. Marijuana primarily makes people feel pleasant and mellow, whereas alcohol can lead some drinkers to cause trouble in bars, commit violence at home, or drive dangerously.

It’s great if it’s replacing alcohol. It’s not so great if alcohol usage remains constant.

yesterday's convo: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40441099

[dupe]

some more discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40441099

given the statistic, is it high time for legalization at federal level?

as an outsider, doing something non-essential daily rarely has a net-positive effect. the roadblocks in research in this field is primarily due to the above restrictions, and it is better to have more research sooner than once this becomes widespread.

regardless, a philip morris of cannabis is in the works as we speak.

I can see the trend of less drinking.

It's hard on the body. Especially as you get older.

You sleep like shit. Even with just a couple of drinks.

You're less patient with the people that you love.

Less motivated.

It just sucks the life out of you.

Multiple friends have gone “California sober” (no or extremely rare drinking, just weed) and even the heavier users seem much better off for it.

I mean, the calories alone are really bad, before you consider the other harmful effects of alcohol.

Not saying it’s better than doing neither, necessarily, but it does seem a ton better than drinking.

There's no trend of less drinking. People are just doing more drugs faster than they are doing more alcohol.

In case anyone else is curious about some U.S. data on per-capital alcohol consumption: https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/surveillance-reports/...

There's a lot of writing about a trend of less drinking. Do you have information to the contrary of them?

Here are some references:

https://www.theiwsr.com/moderation-trend-drives-demand-for-n...

https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-gen-z-drag-down-...

It's harder to be funny in social situations but the mornings are a lot better. :-)

> Less motivated. > It just sucks the life out of you.

Is that exclusive to drinking?

No one said that.

Not to mention the long term major health risks.

It sucks because alcohol seems to unlock a part of my brain in a way that no other drugs can. But the half life is SO short, and you have to keep redosing. And then you inevitably pay for it the next day. I can avoid hangovers pretty well, but even then, my mood is noticeably impacted for at least one or two days after drinking. Even just the shitty sleep you get after a few drinks makes it a hard sell these days...but at the same time, the occasional night drinking helps me feel things I'm not able to otherwise. Ugh. I'm trying to keep it to just a couple nights a month.

I'm fairly certain EtOH causes depression directly because an antidepressant I take now feels exactly like a hangover whenever I miss a dose and sleep.

I don't drink now because there's no particular benefit to it, only risks. Maybe a half glass of wine or one finger of very old single malt whiskey every now and then.

EtOH is ethanol in case anyone else is wondering what this strange undefined acronym is that this user introduced for no good reason.

Must work in a medical examiners office

It’s pretty incredible for an illegal drug to be more commonly used than a legal one.

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