Cannabis smoking associated with persistent epigenome-wide disruptions | Hacker News Reader

Cannabis smoking associated with persistent epigenome-wide disruptions

bmcpulmmed.biomedcentral.com

22 pointsec_gv8 comments

In peripheral blood samples. That's important because they show that some of the epigenome changes are concentrated in specific biochemical pathways related to cancer. But, they don't find pathways specific to blood cancers, so I'm really not sure what to make of that. What does it mean that a white blood cell has epigenomic changes similar to those observed in a collection of other studies of colorectal cancer? Honestly, probably not a lot. I'm made even less certain by the finding that the epigenomic changes are strongly concentrated in pathways like "Bacterial infection of epithelial cells". That's quite obviously statistical noise, but there's not much you can do about that when you're doing these population scale biochemical/genetic studies.

They also report that the cannabis smoking group had a statistically significant difference in cigarette smoking, so that's probably a big confounder, along with other lifestyle choices that you might expect between people who report never smoking weed vs those who do.

It's just really really hard to make strong conclusions from a single study like this.

I’ve learned that people on this site don’t understand cannabis very well.

Unsurprising from a qualitative, anecdotal perspective: heavy delta 9 THC users seem to develop "tweaker" psychological and personality changes. Just a little seems to result in chiller people. Moderation in all things except moderation. is often a fail-safe strategy.

A related issue is pervasive discounting of personal safety with a pattern of unsafe strategies like taking drugs of unknown quality and unknown strength, and smoking burning substances without filtration under the "it's natural" fallacy.

Can you be specific about those tweaker psychological and personality changes? I’m someone who’s never dealt with weed smokers, as it’s non-existent in my circles.

He is referencing delta 9, which has a lot of the same similarities as what we refer to colloquially as "weed".

Delta 9 is much different physiologically and psychologically and can induce this abhorrent behaviors.

Also in the mid to early 2000's over 50.3% of US adults (Pew Research Center) had tried cannabis, I can assure you someone in your "circle" has smoked in their life.

IME: Increase in artist-like traits like creativity, magical beliefs, and odd behavior. I've seen a couple of Youtubers like this and remember some heavy weed smokers in undergrad who started to go off the rails.

Or people who's minds are swirving more and more use weed as a guard rail which eventually can't contain the ever growing mental swings.

> A related issue is pervasive discounting of personal safety with a pattern of unsafe strategies like taking drugs of unknown quality and unknown strength

I don't think thats necessarily a quality of the drug itself. Most weed smokers of my generation were heavily saturated in a narrative that all drugs are bad and weed is horrifically addictive and on the same level as heroin. Someone who then smokes weed and realizes it was a lie would very plausibly start to doubt the danger and risk factor of harder drugs.

As with a lot of things, a bit of transparency and honesty goes a long way when it comes to harm reduction.

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