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Comment by knowaveragejoe | Hacker News Reader

Being a bit pedantic here, I'd just like to point out that development of schizophrenia is not a mild side effect. With higher THC% strains, we have no idea the extent of latent mental disorders we're stimulating.

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Maybe my wording was confusing. I didn't mean to say Schizophrenia is a mild side-effect by any means. Rather, the most dangerous side-effect we know of is a possible link to the development of Schizophrenia, and other than that, the remaining side-effects are rather mild. In a 65yr old patient with advanced-stage cancer, development of Schizophrenia just is not high up on the list of concerns.

As a person who had a roommate whose schizophrenia was likely induced by heavy marijuana use (along with his tripping on multiple bottles of Robitussin), the fact of the matter is that the harm done to this small percentage of people is vastly outweighed by the damage done to people who can't get access to it for their medical needs. And that's ignoring the huge harm caused by prosecuting recreational users due to an absurdly ineffective prohibition policy.

The higher % strains, by the way, are a direct result of prohibition. If a drug dealer is caught with an ounce of high grade that sells for 400, vs. an ounce of low grade that sells for 100, he gets the same penalty. Take a wild guess which one brings more reward for the risk. And this, my friend, is why you have higher THC %.

Sorry about your roommate but that is anectdata.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19560900

All that this study shows is that the amount of psychosis and schizophrenia in the population stayed constant. This doesn't in and of itself disprove a link between cannabis use and schizophrenia, it just disproves the prior hypothesis that a greater percentage of people would develop it.

Right, during a period in which pot use increased.

Sure, but it's entirely possible the schizophrenia-prone population did not alter their pot usage. Also, if there's a link to the amount consumed, the number of individuals smoking pot at all could have increased while the number of individuals smoking enough pot to trigger psychosis and schizophrenia stayed constant. Wider consumption of alcohol doesn't necessarily correlate with more alcoholism.

Yeah, but this population prone to schizophrenia would have: a) to know they're predisposed to this condition; b) to know that weed would worsen it; c) to believe that this effect on schizophrenia would be bad enough to outweigh smoking a joint. Or have another factor linked to schizophrenia that makes them avoid weed. It's possible, in principle, but I think you're stretching it too far.

And it's assumed the distribution of smoking per capita didn't change by much. I think that's a good assumption; again, it's possible that what you suggested happened, but it's a bit sketchy.

Oh, I meant the opposite, that if being schizophrenia-prone made you cannabis-prone (self-medication, effectively), that more people overall smoking pot might not mean that more schizophrenia-prone people were smoking pot, because that population would already be saturated.

I'm not saying that my hypotheses are correct, I'm just pointing out that if we're going to be scientific about whether cannabis induces schizophrenia we need to avoid jumping to conclusions.

you're kind of truther'ing on statistics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statist...

The problem is that there are two simultaneous arguments happening.

The first is whether cannabis should be legalized and available as a business opportunity. You'll find very few people here to disagree with about this; there's a practically universal belief that cannabis should be legalized.

The second is whether cannabis is benign. There is a valid discussion to be had about how safe cannabis is. Having it does not imply that anyone thinks cannabis should be outlawed. Trans-fats, tobacco, and sugar are also not benign, and few people jump to the conclusion that critics of those substances are pushing for their prohibition.

Well stated, most accept that it should be legalized, based on the essentially economic argument of Milton Friedman and others.

Given that, its health effect is still important, as it impacts how much it should be taxed, how we allow it to be advertised and sold, and whether we should treat vaporization differently (as, all evidence shows that vaporization is healthier than smoking).

Very well stated, this is essentially what I'm getting at. I'm all for legalization/decriminalization, but there are serious issues with chronic marijuana use that need to be addressed.

Here's the question as far as I am concerned.. are the medical risks associated with chronic use of marijuana greater than, or less than other less than universally beneficial and completely legal substances (tobacco, alcohol, trans-fats, hfcs, etc)?

I'm not a pot head, and for that matter, I only have a drink a handful of times a year.. that said, I don't think that marijuana should be illegal for recreational use, let alone medical use.

You could add the practice of american football and boxing to your list...

BTW,

Schedule I substances are those that have the following findings:

1. The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.

2. The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.

3. There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.

Tobacco fits this definition.

I think a big reason these arguments get tied up together is that people who want to legalize recreational usage have seized upon medicinal usage as a convenient wedge to open the legalization debate.

But if we are talking about medicine, then there are much higher levels of scrutiny on topics like side effects, interactions, dosage control, quality control, etc.

I really wish the debates were better separated. I think the legalizers have harmed their cause by exposing it to FDA levels of critical scrutiny, and I think the medicinal uses are tainted by association with a bunch of long hair hippies who just want to get high. (Hyperboly intentional.)

At present, it should be obvious to anyone that the greatest harm that marijuana causes, by a long shot, is found in the gov't response to those who use, make, and traffic it.

The U.S. made >6,000,000 arrests in 2011 [1] for the possession or sale of marijuana. Many of those arrested were incapacitated for an extended period of time (in custody), and had their life permanently changed for the worse. Even if 10,000 people a year get schizophrenia from heavy marijuana use, to try to mitigate this by ruining the lives of millions more is the height of absurdity.

[1] http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/c...

Why do you assume the schizophrenia was "likely induced by heavy marijuana use"?

Sorry, why are you convinced that the problem is marijuana and not the Robitussin? Robitussin's active ingredient is dextromethorphan, an NMDA receptor antagonist that can destroy your NMDA system through repeated usage, which is a leading hypothesis for the cause of schizophrenia.[0]

You could compare what you're saying to "my friend smokes weed and tobacco and got esophageal cancer, but I'm pretty sure it's the weed."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutamate_hypothesis_of_schizo...

Actually, (as I told his parents) I think his use of DXM in both Robitussin and powdered form was a big contributor to his schizophrenia. I'm pro-leglization of marijuana for both recreational and medicinal use, FYI, but I think the science is still ongoing as to whether it can aggravate latent schizophrenia in people.

I'm certainly not claiming that I KNOW what caused his schizophrenia. The point I was making was that I know how bad schizophrenia can be from experience, but I still think it should be legalized due to the huge harm of prohibition.

It's not clear whether the schizophrenia induced is stimulated or just aggravated—i.e., was the person already a schizophrenic with a high threshold for psychosis that the weed lowered? I don't think we'll know for a long time.

to add to that, its also highly likely (no pun intended) that someone who is schizophrenic would be aware something is not right and try to self medicate...

From what I'm aware, Schizophrenia develops in the mid 20s—it's entirely possible someone could become a regular user before realizing they were schizophrenic. And (as I mentioned below) I've witnessed a weed-induced psychotic episode. I think it's highly unlikely someone would wish to continue after experiencing that.

Actually, I suspect that pre-schizophrenic people might use marijuana not for self-medication, because they think something is wrong, but rather because early onset schizophrenia may intensify the pleasurable effects of marijuana.

You can't "already have" schizophrenia without having the symptoms of schizophrenia (assuming you aren't on medication that completely controls the symptoms). The reason is that schizophrenia and almost all other mental illnesses are diagnosed on the basis of behavior. The current thinking is that there's a genetic predisposition, and then certain environmental factors like child abuse (linked to mental illness in general) and exposure to hallucinogens will increase the chance of the condition developing.

Psychosis is not required for a definition of Schizophrenia, or at least, it wasn't in the late 90s when we looked at it in the DSM. The most frequent symptom of Schizophrenia at the time was 'hearing voices', and that struck 69% of diagnoses. Have a look at the DSM-IV criteria.

And certainly, it's possible to have a lighter form of schizophrenia that is worsened by whatever factor.

Auditory hallucinations indicate psychosis; psychosis itself is not a symptom but a catch-all state of mind that refers to many different symptoms, including auditory hallucinations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia#Criteria

Agreed that schizophrenia could be aggravated by pot; I was just disputing that you could "have" schizophrenia without having ever presented any of the symptoms. I may have incorrectly inferred this claim from the original post.

> You can't "already have" schizophrenia without having the symptoms of schizophrenia (assuming you aren't on medication that completely controls the symptoms).

Yes you can, you can be genetically predisposed before the symptoms appear.

a) I used the words "genetic predisposition" in my reply; b) just because you are genetically predisposed to having breast cancer doesn't mean you have or will have breast cancer.

Straight out of the misinformation arsenal of the anti drug crowd; in fact there is no evidence that the strongest modern strains are any stronger than the strongest strains available in the 60's.

That's not true. 40+ years of breeding plus advancements in botany and horticulture have yielded us some incredibly powerful strains.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana#Concentration_of_psyc...

In fact it is true, people have been concentrating thc for millenia, there is nothing out there stronger today than there has been for thousands of years:

http://www.briancbennett.com/history/excerpts/thc-content.ht...

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