Pot use, pot abuse, and legalization
Pot’s illegality hasn’t stopped it from being used with great frequency in recent years by a great deal of the American public. So why not legalize it?
Well, one reason might be that it would result in even higher use:
…[A]longside legalization, such problems [self-described cannabis-use disorder] are becoming more common: The share of adults with one has doubled since the early aughts, as the share of cannabis users who consume [pot] daily or near-daily has jumped nearly 50 percent—all “in the context of increasingly permissive cannabis legislation, attitudes, and lower risk perception,” as the National Institutes of Health put it.
Public-health experts worry about the increasingly potent options available, and the striking number of constant users. “Cannabis is potentially a real public-health problem,” said Mark A. R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at New York University. “It wasn’t obvious to me 25 years ago, when 9 percent of self-reported cannabis users over the last month reported daily or near-daily use. I always was prepared to say, ‘No, it’s not a very abusable drug. Nine percent of anybody will do something stupid.’ But that number is now [something like] 40 percent.” They argue that state and local governments are setting up legal regimes without sufficient public-health protection, with some even warning that the country is replacing one form of reefer madness with another, careening from treating cannabis as if it were as dangerous as heroin to treating it as if it were as benign as kombucha…
“I do think that not legalization, but the legalization movement, does have a lot on its conscience now,” [Kleiman] said. “The mantra about how this is a harmless, natural, and non-addictive substance—it’s now known by everybody. And it’s a lie.”…
“The reckless way that we are legalizing marijuana so far is mind-boggling from a public-health perspective,” Kevin Sabet, an Obama administration official and a founder of the nonprofit Smart Approaches to Marijuana, told me. “The issue now is that we have lobbyists, special interests, and people whose motivation is to make money that are writing all of these laws and taking control of the conversation.”
As a member of the generation of Americans that grew up in the 60s and was probably the first cohort to experience fairly widespread pot use (although the drug was very very different back then in terms of strength), I’m not the least bit surprised at the drug’s capacity for fostering problematic dependence. It’s been clear for decades that it has a lot of potential in that direction, and that although it’s almost certainly less dangerous than alcohol that does not make it benign.
I’m trying to think whether there is another substance that has been banned in America for a long time and has then become legal, and if so what happened after that. I can’t think of one, however. Liquor is not a good example, because it was traditionally legal and its use commonplace, and then it became illegal for a very short time (Prohibition) before it became legal again.
Alcohol is an enormously problematic substance that was already so heavily used by the public at the time of its banning that Prohibition didn’t have a chance. It was an example of a cat that was already out of the bag and could not be put back in. I believe that marijuana use today has been approaching that level, and that previous criminalization has resulted in differential, spotty, and ultimately ineffective prosecution. There may be no putting that particular cat back in the bag, either. But that’s not to say it isn’t a dangerous cat.
I don’t have an solution, unfortunately. But I definitely see a problem.
Here are some proposals:
One extreme option would be to require markets to be noncommercial: The District of Columbia, for instance, does not allow recreational sales, but does allow home cultivation and the gifting of marijuana products among adults. “If I got to pick a policy, that would probably be it,” Kleiman told me. “That would be a fine place to be if we were starting from prohibition, but we are starting from patchwork legalization…
The government could run marijuana stores, as in Canada. States could require budtenders to have some training or to refrain from making medical claims. They could ask users to set a monthly THC purchase cap and remain under it. They could cap the amount of THC in products, and bar producers from making edibles that are attractive to kids, like candies. A ban or limits on marijuana advertising are also options, as is requiring cannabis dispensaries to post public-health information.
Then, there are THC taxes, designed to hit heavy users the hardest.
At this point, the states represent a natural laboratory for the study of various approaches and their effects, because there’s a great deal of variety there. It seems to be the best we can do right now.
The habituation potential of marijuana, and its sometime leadership into other bad drugs (opioids) has been well-known for decades. For decades. I heard if that as a teen and am now in my 70s.
It is another triumph of the Big Lie.
Who started it?
The hippie generation, all Left-wingers. The escalation of marijuana use began about the same time as the use of The Pill. We can date all of this bad stuff to the 1960s, led by the heavy immoral hand of “If it feels good, do it”. Secularism, moral relativity and individualization all running amuck.
Here is a recent professional statement: “Marijuana-related problems fall well within the scope of psychiatric practice: many patients use marijuana, which is likely to affect their psychiatric symptoms and response to treatment.
For decades, marijuana has been associated with the emergence of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. Recent data show that in genetically vulnerable individuals, psychotic disorders are more likely to emerge and to emerge earlier if marijuana is used. Ongoing marijuana use by patients with schizophrenia is associated with worse outcomes. Thus, patients with individual or family histories of psychosis can be counseled that marijuana use puts them at greater risk for the development or exacerbation of a psychotic illness.” source: http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/couch-crisis/marijuana-and-psychiatric-patient 2017
The 25 year long Denedin, New Zealand Longitudinal Multi-disciplinary Health and Development Study, published in 2012 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, made a big impression on me.
Intended to follow 1,037 participants from ages 13 to 38, with periodic, very intensive, and meticulous day-long checkups, which assessed all aspects of their mental and physical development every few years along the way, it identified some incidental information on those in the study group who happened to be heavy marijuana users.
What they found was this; those in the study who were heavy marijuana users who started in their teenage years (the younger they started smoking, the worse the effects), when their brains were still developing, suffered an average of an 8 point drop in IQ. This loss was sufficient to drop someone with an average I.Q of 100 from the 50th percentile down to the 29th.
Moreover tests indicated that this loss of I.Q was permanent, and even if you stopped marijuana use after years of heavy smoking in your teenage years, you could not regain that lost intelligence.
The Study also found that if you started your heavy use at a later stage in your life, say, at college age, when your brain had essentially stopped developing and had matured, you could—if you stopped marijuana use—regain some of that I.Q. loss.
Not only did young heavy smokers suffer, on average, an irreversible loss of 8 I.Q. points, they also displayed symptoms of “neuropsychological decline”—things like apparently permanent deficits in learning, memory, and executive agency. They also had a higher incidence of violent behavior, and serious mental illness.
One would think that this was a blockbuster Report, front page news, a Report that would be reported on by every MSM outlet, and one that everyone would know of, yet, from what I can see, that was not and is not the case.
Moreover, in the years since 2012 there have been repeated efforts to discredit this Study.
All sorts of interests and people have a lot—monetarily, morally, psychologically, politically—invested in making sure that Marijuana smoking is seen as a fairly benign and relatively harmless habit.
According to the Denedin study, it is anything but.
“For decades, marijuana has been associated with the emergence of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.”
My experience with pot (while a teen) is that it had the affect of bringing on hyper-analytical thought and paranoia. My husband had the same experience. I hate the illicit use of drugs of every type. All drugs have negative side-effects, every single one, beginning with aspirin and ending with the most effective chemotherapy. So to think that one can use substances for pleasure without there being some negative consequence is nonsense. Every person I personally know who has taken medical marijuana for a medical condition did not receive the benefit for which it was prescribed. In 2 cases, they have continued to use it anyways. The legalization of pot here in California has been attended by even more dangerous drivers on the road and litter. By litter I mean the myriad presciption canabis containers I see when I walk my dog–even in my own residential neighborhood. A friend of mine rents his home for $6500/month to a marijuana dispensary owner. He pays his rent in cash every month.
In the truly libertarian society these son of bitches claim to speak on behalf of, they would get both what they want, and what they deserve. They would have the privilege of smoking their brains out, and ending up laying in a ditch; and others would have the privilege or even the moral duty of leaving them to lay there.
But the drug takers want only half of that. For no matter how degraded they become they still hang on to others: sleeping on their park benches in their pathways and under their bridges, shitting in their streets, blocking their doorways, accosting passersby: A walking, talking – or mumbling – miasma. They don’t march off into the wilderness singing “I gotta be me!”.
Some, “It’s my own body and life!” statement. Hypocrites.
My extensive experience with heavy pot smokers, is that the hyper-analytical part is largely an illusion fostered by the experience of rumination … a return to the same thought or theme repeatedly. Probably in part because it throws your sense of time and its passage off. The resulting insights are nowhere near as profound or penetrating as the subject imagines at the time.
Drunks do something similar. “Good talk, man!” Bump fists.
Yeah.
Correction to the earlier post. It should have been, “sons of b******”
DNW-Thankfully our experience never included “heavy use” but was a short time of sporadic use. My husband is 5 years older than me and lived in California while I lived in Illinois so this isn’t something we experienced together. One day when under the influence, he actually saw himself as a skeleton in the mirror and never touched the stuff again.
“Letting the cat out of the bag” was the act of a bungling confidence artist in the middle ages. The con was to sell “a pig in a poke” when the animal in the bag was actually a stray cat. A better metaphor might be “letting the genie out of the bottle” or if one is thinking more of a demon rather than a genie, perhaps “opening Pandora’s box” works better.
Along with Sharon W., I worry about the quality of drivers in traffic. I used to assume that many of the many mentally vacant drivers I encounter are on Valium or Xanax, or the like. Nowadays, it’s probably THC in some form.
Another aspect in our community is the edible marijuana being discarded along hiking trails, beaches, and dunes. Then dogs eat the tasty morsels, sometimes even when on leash, if the owner is not quick enough. Treating these dogs is a booming veterinarian business I am told.
Everyone I knew smoked pot growing up in NYC, tail end of the baby boomers. It was so uncool not to smoke pot that I actually pretended to inhale when joints were passed around. (And then felt lonely while everyone around me got stupid.)
Pot makes me feel like absolute crap, blacking out and such, so it’s not like I had a moral reason for avoiding it as a kid. Though in retrospect, my brother lost an entire decade of his life to the inertia of a pot induced haze. He is currently avoiding it for moral reasons as he is struggling to support his family. Anyway, I hope he is avoiding it.
Weird thing is, if I mention to people, even now, that I don’t smoke marijuana, or that it makes me feel bad, they often act threatened and get angry at me.
Is that reaction part of the deep blue bubble I live in, or is it a universal phenomenon?
“The government could run marijuana stores, as in Canada. States could require budtenders to have some training or to refrain from making medical claims. They could ask users to set a monthly THC purchase cap and remain under it….”
Blah, blah, blah, etcetera and so forth.
This is all just shoveling seaweed against the tide. Once the pro-dopers got the “Medical Marijuana” BS into the mainstream this current state of affairs was baked into the pot brownies.
No going back now.
What most of the legalized states are looking for now is a dependable and constitutional way to determine is one is driving “impaired” from smoking dope. That’s the next cashcow for them after high THC taxes.
@ Esther
I think that it’s probably the bubble you currently live in: as most mid and late baby boomers who I know in the Midwest, as well as the subsequent 1965 to 80 cohort, have contempt for pot-heads, and tokers or whatever else you want to call them. I have no idea what millennials are doing, so I won’t comment.
The implied boomer exception would be the 1940’s to early 50’s boomers who seem to still take that “we are the new age” anthem crap they were spouting seriously. Guys who are now in their mid to late sixties are defiantly and proudly still smoking pot as if it’s some kind of statement, or has some kind of positive moral attributes or is a “superior” way to get a buzz on. These persons, I must say, are among the most self-regarding, immature, socially autistic characters I have ever met. It seems that having once been informed of their incredible world-historical specialness and importance, they learned nothing else of moral importance in the ensuing 50 years. They still listen to rock and roll; and not merely for an occasional dip into nostalgia, but as if it still resonates with their broader sensibilities.
Was I also hassled to smoke? Kind of, by the older guys I hung with. Resisted for a couple years as I worked through college. Thought it was stupid and would interfere with my physical workouts. Started at about 21 during “informal” touch-tackle football games which – just tackle without pads – we played against other stores. “Here, take a drag on this, it will hurt less”. Didn’t help. Eventually, in later episodes, it did what was usually promised … put one into a kind of relaxed timeless zone where music really stood out, and the ego receded a bit. The swaying “hippie chicks” present in halter tops and hip-hugger jeans offered added encouragement.
Quit for good in my mid 20s when I saw that these friends even used outdoor recreation as an excuse. Didn’t make sense. We were already “getting away”. What was the point of doping yourself on a canoe or fishing trip, then? It didn’t add to the fun. It just added stupid to the mix.
It’s a treadmill some of them are still walking.
I have no experience of marijuana. Thus I’m mystified by the two camps.
One says it’s harmless, the other says its dangerous. What to believe?Where are the studies? Why hasn’t the NIH commissioned some decent studies of the drug? One thing is clear from the comments here. Pot does not affect all people the same. Not a big surprise. It’s the same with prescription drugs. If we are going to legalize it, shouldn’t we know at least as much about it as we do about prescription meds?
It’s totally legal here in Washington State. The reports are conflicting. The police say driving under the influence of marijuana has increased, but the accident rate has not increased markedly. Its easy availability may have attracted more homeless people to the state. The biggest problem seems to be that the legal dealers are prime targets for smash and grab robberies. It’s reported that the black market for pot is thriving, which the state is upset about because it deprives them of tax revenues. I don’t know if employee efficiency has been affected by pot use. There have been no reports on that. There are often reports on the local news of people who have been helped by medical use of marijuana but I don’t see any doctors coming on and reporting that they have patients who can only be treated with pot. Nor are there reports by people who tried it for a medical condition and found it didn’t work for them. So, it’s a mixed bag and confusing to say the least. I believe we need much more information to be able to make a judgement about legalization
I used marijuana frequently during the period when I was in a band. Everyone in that milieu did, it seemed, and many musicians fully expected to get high before they played. One interesting thing
I noticed was that I rarely made mistakes when playing while stoned, whereas any alcohol at all would make me sloppy and error-prone. I was a keyboard player who was more or less classically trained; I gave a few recitals when I was 20 and 21.
But that 1970s marijuana was mild, extremely mild compared to the future substance.
I became paranoid and quite frightened after smoking some in maybe 1979. It wasn’t that big a part of my life by then, so I just stopped. When offered some by others ever since I’ve explained what happened and no one has ever been offended or bothered in any way. I only discovered how strong it has become in maybe 1995, when a friend of mine (at the time) talked me into trying it while we were listening to music — and my heartbeat sped up and wouldn’t go back down. Tachycardia. A bad part of this episode was the embarrassment I felt and the awful suspicion that I’d talked myself into the panic. I hesitated and hesitated, then finally had my friend drive me to ER.
Yes, I was correct. My heart was beating unnaturally fast, twice as fast or so than normal. I felt like a fool (as I knew ERs), but I told them the entire truth. They then treated me somewhat humorously, kept me on a monitor but said it would wear off… and it did.
The zealous advocates of pot-legalization I view as dishonest creeps. I have MS, and many people have come on very strong to me about how marijuana will ease symptoms and get rid of pain. Maybe it helps some patients, I don’t know. The placebo effect or something mor. But it never seems to get systematically studied in double-blind trials. I’ve heard the same kinds of claims from naturopathic advocates as well.
It’s not even as on-violence producing vs alcohol as its proponents claim. Crips and Bloods toke up when they do drive-bys. Salvadorans get high before they torture someone.
And the drug in general use now is not the same mild substance some remember sentimentally from the 1960s.
Cheech & Chong, and Beavis & Butthead weren’t exactly looked upon as good examples, people to emulate. Neither was Otis (from Mayberry) or Foster Brooks.
Maybe people knew inherently that inebriated wasn’t a great way to go through life.
I’d like to see an approach that is based on the available and most current data and knowledge. Allowing the states to control what happens makes sense. The Federal prohibition should be abolished. I am absolutely opposed to the government being involved in the market – when they have an interest it corrupts their decision making, just look at alcohol distribution and gambling.
Thanks for your perspective DNW. Although I’ve figured out how to navigate the expectations in my bubble, it has become increasingly claustrophobic. Hearing that there are other ways of thinking is like opening a window.
Cheech & Chong, and Beavis & Butthead weren’t exactly looked upon as good examples, people to emulate.
No, but we knew Cheech & Chong routines by heart, especially Sister Mary Elephant.
I should mention that the Denedin researchers–who were not, I might point out, looking for anything to do with marijuana use as a primary aim of their study, this was data on a peripheral subject that just fell into their laps–also found some evidence that those who were heavy pot smokers as teenagers had the onset of the symptoms of things like schizophrenia and psychoses occur earlier than they did for people who did not smoke a lot of pot as teenagers.
All in all, I thought that this heavily documented, apparently meticulous study, having followed and closely observed the physical and psychological changes in more than a thousand people over the course of 25 years, was a huge indictment of ingesting marijuana for any purpose whatsoever.
I agree with those who feel that pot is not as harmless as its proponents proclaim. I try to make the comparison to alcohol and find there are distinct negatives for both, in part based on how and when they are used. However, the tough question is what to do regarding legalization. As bad as pot may be, I’m not sure we should make it any less legal than booze, particularly considering the impact of having a criminal record on someone’s ability to succeed in life. I’m actually quite torn, and hate to set policy based on double standards.
Back as a freshman in college (1970) I decided to try pot after much pressure from peers. What turned me off was the result that I could not effectively complete any of my calculus or physics homework for about 2-3 days after. Analytic thinking was nearly impossible. In my junior year I watched a roommate who was a very bright physical anthropology major descend into oblivion from daily pot use, and eventually drop out and disappear. I know..anecdotal. My own experience was explained many years later when I read a study which shows that THC attaches itself to fat, of which there is a lot in the brain. It is not metabolized by the liver like many drugs, including ethanol. It takes a long time for it to be removed from fatty tissue in the brain. The study I read showed a biological half-life on the order of 7 days. So, if a person is consuming daily there will never be a reduction of THC in the brain. Perpetually stoned, along with all the associated psychological issues.
As far as legality is concerned, as has been mentioned, the cat is out of the bag. I keep hoping Darwin will prevail on those habitual users, but what happens when that includes a very large proportion of the population??
I’ve never tried pot– my drug of choice in college was (and still is) chocolate. Pace Gerard, I’ve never tried the famous Alice B. Toklas brownies, either. Have no interest in doing so– rechecked this news item from just two years ago about the 50-something dad in the heartland who ate some brownies his (adult) kids had left in the car and began to feel what he called “bad anxiety.” One of the kids arrived home at this point and said that he was “pretty sure it was just marijuana in the brownies,” according to a police report.
“Paramedics called to the scene who checked the man found his vital signs to be normal. But they noted that he was displaying odd behavior — crawling around on the floor, randomly using profanities and calling the family cat a ‘bitch.'”
https://www.omaha.com/news/metro/omaha-dad-finds-pot-brownies-eats-of-them-says-mean/article_385099cc-649c-11e6-86a8-4728d60cb7fe.html
I prefer to keep my sensory perceptions and cognitive capacities intact so that I can direct appropriate profanities at Those Who Need Not Be Named rather than at random; and I know that neither of my cats would answer to “bitch.”
As I see it, in life there are all sorts of temptations, ways you can,”spin, crash, and die,” and a myriad of addictions and bad behaviors that can ruin your life, and that of your family.
We have more than enough ways to make disastrous decisions and mistakes, or even earn a Darwin award.
Why add another one?
MiklosRosza’s excellent comments remind me of the precipitating cause of my giving up recreational toking, which I’ll add to what I said to Esther.
Sometime around ’80, I think, [ I’ve probably mentioned this before] one of the “younger generation” of high school graduates coming into work wanted to share some weed with we of the older crew: i.e., we who were either recent college grads, graduating that spring, or who were a bit older.
It was actually kind of endearing, as I guess they looked up to us – even saying things along that line about the college men there.
Anyway, we get this overture to the effect that they have this really good stuff that they would like to share, because we have been such great guys and mentors and never treated them like little outcasts and creeps, etc etc …
“You say it’s good stuff?”
“Yeah man, Hawaiian sensimilla buds”
“No spiking, right? No hash mixed in?” [I knew they were basically stoners]
“No, of course not!”
I also knew the buds were the tacky little blobs in the weedy stash, but I had no idea of what was entailed in this particular cultivar/practice.
Half a dozen hits later and I was out of the flow of time. “W.T.F.?” Shaking my head. Focused breathing, deliberately shifting my gaze and trying to control and assimilate the passage of time.
It didn’t work. I’d be standing there and unable to remember just how long it had been. Had I been motionless for minutes? Someone would ask me a question and I would answer, and not be able to compute how long ago I had answered or if they had another question that I missed, and then I’d be surprised when they seemed satisfied and moved on.
It took a couple of hours to fade. “Enough of this crap. I don’t trust this business”
And that was pretty much it. Left a few lids untouched which sat in a drawer till they dried to the point of being unsmokable. When after 18 months of personal abstinence I saw that my old friends still were repeating the same old tunes, and dragging them into new circumstances, like the outdoor sports I mentioned earlier, my attitude hardened all the more.
It just seemed so … effen dumb.
It’s clear marijuana causes conservative IQs to drop by 10 points or more — and that’s when they are only talking about it! Not to mention they become nasty and hypocritical.
Perhaps neo should write a post on this sad phenomenon and similarly wring her hands on the problem’s intractability.
When I read the neo’s post and moreover the comments, I’m struck it’s just the right-wing version of leftists complaining bitterly about the need for more gun control and their appeals to “settled science.”
Guns have lowered the IQs of many thousands of children and teens to zero and that was deadly permanent. Do conservatives care about this as much as an alleged 8 point IQ drop in adolescents who smoked pot regularly in their teens? Not that I can tell.
Most marijuana studies have been terribly slanted to the “Marijuana: Threat or Menace” side, if one is paying attention and most conservatives don’t. While conservatives (rightly IMO) don’t buy that you can quote some guy or gal with a lot of academic credentials on “climate change,” the same conservatives are more than happy to sign off with a study or two which deprecate marijuana use.
Well, here’s a study contradicting the teen use claims:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/twins-study-finds-no-evidence-marijuana-lowers-iq-teens
I don’t know where this lands ultimately. Maybe teens really shouldn’t smoke pot. It could be. I’ll wait for more studies.
I smoked pot a few times when I was 16, but since I was 18 I’ve smoked daily except for a 15-year break when I was being a good Tony Robbins guy.
Feel free to debate me. I must be easy meat, given my brain damage.
I think that doing something that doesn’t make you stupid can still be stupid.
And I think that my friends, and the particular subjects of whom I spoke, were being stupid in elevating pot to the status of a fetishistic symbol, or presenting it as a universal life-enhancer.
That said, I have no idea why you use daily, and see nothing to debate.
Perhaps, if you think it makes any difference in how an outsider might evaluate the behavior, you might say why you do, and what benefit it is that you think you derive from it.
As I mentioned earlier, a consistent dual edged libertarianism, would be theoretically unproblematic.
DNW: I’d prefer an old-fashioned discussion based on facts, observations, and reasoned arguments, as opposed to accusations of stupidity.
I don’t claim marijuana as “a universal life-enhancer.” I find marijuana handy for a variety of functions — fun, aesthetic focus, creativity, sensory pleasure, relaxation and sleep.
Back in 1964 an Israeli scientist, Dr. Raphael Mechoulam, synthesized THC and spent the rest of his career researching cannabinoids, the psychoactive chemicals in marijuana. In 1982 Dr. Mechoulam said that if marijuana were legalized it could replace 10-20% of all pharmaceutical prescriptions. He may not have been wrong.
By 1990 scientists discovered we humans have internal cannabinoid chemicals and a neurosystem which responds to them. This is called, reasonably, the endocannabinoid system. All animals except insects have an endocannabinoid system.
When I first read the phrase, “endocannabinoid system,” it sounded like stoner science humor. But it’s as real as the brain systems which process serotonin, dopamine and endorphins. We respond to marijuana as we do because we possess a built-in biochemical system which is modulated by cannabis chemicals like THC.
I mostly find conservatives ignorant about marijuana. They use it for their particular front on the culture war. I don’t consider this admirable.
One negative effect of legalization in Colorado is the experience some of my family and friends have had with “second hand” smoke. One son is in retail, and the miasma that attends pot smokers (like that of tobacco smoke) makes him physically ill to the point of having intense migraines.
A friend who is a highly-liberal Goth had to move because the smokers in her wing of apartments contaminated the air so badly she was getting sick.
As for the need for solid studies and hashing out the pros and cons: I think that all of those should have been done back in the sixties, and the rush to criminalization short-circuited the research that would be settled by now.
Just in case there are any retro Beatles fans here, maybe even DNW, Paul McCartney wrote “Got to Get You Into My Life” for marijuana, not some pretty bird.
What can I do? What can I be?
When I’m with you I wanna stay there
If I’m true, I’ll never leave
And if I do I know the way there
Ooh, then I suddenly see you
Ooh, did I tell you I need you
Every single day of my life?
Got to get you into my life
I’ve got to get you into my life
As for the need for solid studies and hashing out the pros and cons: I think that all of those should have been done back in the sixties, and the rush to criminalization short-circuited the research that would be settled by now.
AesopFan: Considering that the biological substrate of marijuana was unknown in 1970, that seems unlikely.
In any event prosecution of marijuana goes back to the mid-thirties, though its notoriety as a “Schedule 1 Narcotic,” along with heroin and above methamphetamines(!) was cemented in place by the “Controlled Substances Act” (1970).
Technically marijuana is still a “Schedule 1 Narcotic,” though with the hodgepodge of state laws decriminalizing and legalizing marijuana, its pragmatic status is unclear.
Nonetheless, be sure the US legal system, which prosecutes Americans on the basis that marijuana is worse than meth, is a joke to the millions of us who make marijuana, as Paul McCartney once sang, a part of “every single day of my life.”
Conservatives who back that joke are also jokes to us. We’re easy pick-ups. About half the male ex-hippies I know already vote conservative.
Yup, marijuana smokers get weirdly angry if anyone says they don’t enjoy smoking marijuana.
Huxley,
So as to emphasize the line of argument I was pursuing by retracing, let me requote myself, adding emphasis and comment.
This, is obviously a general statement; and about behaviors and their effects, and not directed at anyone in particular, nor even at pot in particular.
This statement, was specifically about my middle aged acquaintances and their sociopolitical attitude toward their own use of pot.
Now comes the part relevant to you.
And I make the following offer purely for the sake of understanding, and purely as an option.
Finally, I restate my own principles on the matter.
Now, I doubt that properly understood, what I have said would offend any third party such as yourself. Unless that is, a third party such as yourself for example, and only for an example, decided to pick up the cudgel on behalf of others he surmised were being unjustifiably demeaned, or in defense of a principle that all partakers deserved respect, or in defense of the substance and its use as a positive and unmitigated good (if marijuana use was considered a positive and undoubted good by such a person).
So, I still don’t really see any debate here.
Although some, like Pere Paul may wax rhapsodic over the effects of pot because of what it does to or for them, the mileage of others, and their biochemistry, may vary … significantly.
If “man” is one species in a morally meaningful sense, it is likely still true that in some cases one man’s meat is another man’s poison, or discomfiting bibe, as in the case of adult milk drinking.
Huxley says,
Well I think that that’s fair enough, as no one was calling you stupid. I claimed that the people I knew were being stupid and immature. And, as I doubt that you know them too, or understand them as well as I do, it’s probable that you have little or no reason to object to my characterization of their behavior and attitudes as “stupid”, unless you see something in them that seems self-evidently defensible and immune from criticism.
What you describe may not be a universal life-enhancer, but it certainly covers a lot of bases; saving perhaps, “improves digestion and reduces flatulence”.
Personally, I might agree with “relaxation” in a qualified sense; though my use of it was primarily, no … that’s exclusively, social, and often ornamented with the presence of bra-less houris in midriff baring bell bottoms. So …
In any event, that severe, loss-of-the-flow-of-time event which so alarmed me and punctuated my pot smoking career, as well as my associates’ continued pointless gilding of perfect wilderness days with pot smoke, left me saying about pot and its enthusiasts, in current parlance … “meh”.
huxley:
The analogy you make in your 9:52 PM comment is faulty because there is no protected right in the US Constitution to smoke marijuana. The right to bear arms is specifically protected in the Bill of Rights.
Not only that, but marijuana has already been federally banned for many many years. We are talking here about a proposal for lifting a previous long-lived and well-established ban, and what the consequences would be of that legalization of a previously banned substance, and how many limits to consumption of that substance should remain if and when the drug is legalized.
Completely different situation. If people want an amendment protecting the right to ingest cannabis, they are welcome to pass one.
My guess: if an amendment passed protecting the right to ingest cannabis, everyone would soon be required to ingest cannabis and disliking it would become a hate crime.
Huxley wrote: “While conservatives (rightly IMO) don’t buy that you can quote some guy or gal with a lot of academic credentials on “climate change,” the same conservatives are more than happy to sign off with a study or two which deprecate marijuana use.”
I think this thread has died, but I still want to respond. With the climate change crowd there is a good scientific reason to be sceptical: they base their results entirely on models that fail to align with real world observations. They commit the cardinal sin of science: to ignore the data. For the marijuana studies, at least they are using direct observation. While many biomedical studies of effects on large populations use statistical analysis can be flawed, at least they are trying to gather real data. And, the study I cited is direct biochemical observation of where THC binds and metabolizes in the body. This does not depend on statistics for its results. Real data. That’s why we are skeptical of the results in one area, and not the other. Yes, there can be confirmation bias in all cases, but I don’t think that’s in play here; or at least not too much.
Well, the solution is simple. A strain of hemp with no THC.
Probably would replace standard pot much in the same way Welch’s Grape Juice has virtually eliminated the demand for red wine.
The threads die here pretty fast and I have my own real life obligations, so I didn’t get back here last night.
I’m around tonight and this weekend. If anyone wishes to continue this discussion, I’m available.
Considering neo has been content to quote an authority referring to people like myself as “stupid,” I’m happy enough to return the insult that when it comes to marijuana, as far as I’m concerned, neo and most of the commenters here are stupid.
Does anyone here really consider marijuana a more serious threat than methamphetamines?
I thought not.
neo: So, if firearms weren’t protected by the Second Amendment, I take it you would be onboard with limiting access to firearms as much as possible because they reduce IQs to zero, not just by an alleged 8 points and only for teenagers.
How about unless there is a seriously good reason, the government remains limited and stays out of its citizens’ lives?