re: People that drink alcohol but are completely against/opposed to weed

Job

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wow you are stuipid

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Posted by runningTiger

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lol

Now that's funny.

Drinking Alcohol-Socially acceptable
Smoking Weed-Trashy, and sharing hits off a joint can probably give you Ebola.

One issue I do have with many of the pro-weed crowd is how they deny and downplay any negative aspects of weed. They remind me of old snake oil salesmen in the way they sing the unending praises of all that is good with weed. Look, just be honest about what is good about weed and also the risks and negative aspects of weed. People see though all the bullshite anyway and all you accomplish is you alienate people who otherwise support legalizing weed. And I say that as someone who does not smoke weed but supports legalizing it.


Give the man the Tigerdroppings Pulitzer

Well when you've smoked as much weed as me, and know as many people that smoke weed as I do, it's hard not to notice that no body ever has any bad side effects, and they all seem like healthy normal people.


If marijuana does have any bad sides to it, they are minimal. No drug is perfect, but weed is a better option (health wise) than pills, alcohol, ciggerettes, and even coffee.

I have nothing against pot use but can't stand the laziness that comes with being a pothead. I'm not saying that blindly either. My friends who smoke a ton of pot lie around all day and do nothing productive. Not hurting anyone but I can't deal with that lifestyle personally.

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Laeknabladid. 2014 Sep;100(9):443-51.
[Does the use of cannabis increase the risk for psychosis and the development of schizophrenia?].
[Article in Icelandic]
Jonsson AJ, Birgisdottir H, Sigurdsson E.

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The data reported are very poor here. They fail to define "schizophrenia" and do not mention anywhere in the body of the article of patients developing "schizophrenia." They do mention psychosis and psychotic symptoms, but they do not give numbers as to how many people are at increased risk for true schizophrenia. Drug-induced psychosis has long been established and no one will argue it. What makes this article very underwhelming is that in each of the longitudinal studies it references, it mentions a dose-dependent correlation between psychotic symptoms and THC use, but it doesn't make any mention or distinction of how many of the patients were still using THC at follow-up, making their results very uninteresting. Now, if they were to include data tables showing that one-time use or heavy use with prolonged abstinence increases the risk, it may be worth noting. As is, it's a wholly unimpressive article either to shoddy reporting or lack of evidence leading to the author trying to hide the lack of results.

Upon further looking into the "Prospective cohort study of cannabis use, predisposition for psychosis, and psychotic symptoms in young people" article which is referenced in my above reference, "The effect of cannabis use was much stronger in those with any predisposition for psychosis at baseline (23.8% adjusted difference in risk, 95% confidence interval 7.9 to 39.7, P = 0.003) than in those without (5.6%, 0.4 to 10.8, P = 0.033)." One significant finding was, "Our results confirm those from three previous studies that showed that exposure to cannabis plays a part not only in the expression of psychotic disorder but also in the emergence of less severe psychotic experiences." "Psychotic experiences" are not schizophrenia, and to experience some form of psychosis from a pro-psychotic drug is, again, uninteresting. There is some merit to the animal arm of the study finding schizophrenic-like patterns of receptor expression in mice, but this is far from proof that it is a causal agent of schizophrenia in humans who begin smoking in adolescence.

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ront Psychiatry. 2014 May 22;5:54. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2014.00054. eCollection 2014.
Gone to Pot - A Review of the Association between Cannabis and Psychosis.
Radhakrishnan R1, Wilkinson ST1, D'Souza DC2.

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I only have access to the abstract, which echoes the point I was attempting to make quite loudly:
"Acute exposure to both cannabis and synthetic cannabinoids (Spice/K2) can produce a full range of transient psychotomimetic symptoms, cognitive deficits, and psychophysiological abnormalities that bear a striking resemblance to symptoms of schizophrenia. In individuals with an

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established

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psychotic disorder, cannabinoids can

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exacerbate

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symptoms, trigger relapse, and have negative consequences on the course of the illness." Of course, later on: "The relationship between cannabis and schizophrenia fulfills

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many but not all

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of the standard criteria for causality"

This would be an interesting article to read in its entirety, since the first statement of the abstract clearly points to drug-induced psychosis simply resembling schizophrenia while the second statement makes an assumption of long-term psychiatric illness despite earlier only referring to "transient" symptoms (presumably temporal to the substance being ingested, which again would not cause "schizophrenia" but would cause "a drug induced syndrome quite similar to schizophrenia." It fails to mention long-term deficits during prolonged abstinence, but I would expect that somewhere else in the article other than the abstract. This is better evidence to your point, but only marginally. So far in this review, there has been no evidence of deficit during abstinence, which would be required for a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

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Psychol Med. 2014 Dec;44(16):3387-405. doi: 10.1017/S0033291714000166. Epub 2014 Feb 20.
How much do we know about schizophrenia and how well do we know it? Evidence from the Schizophrenia Library.
Matheson SL, Shepherd AM, Carr VJ.

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Again, only have access to the abstract. Their conclusion? "We conclude that while our knowledge of schizophrenia is very substantial, our understanding of it remains limited." while listing risk being increased with cannabis use. Not enough info here for me to give any real strength or weakness to the article. Seeing as there hasn't been any ground-breaking practice changes, I'll assume it's consistent with dose-dependent psychotic symptoms most pronounced in adolescents particularly in the "vulnerable" subgroup, as is consistent with every other study to date, that does not show symptoms during prolonged abstinence (pretty much required for causality).

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Schizophr Res. 2014 Jul;156(2-3):211-6. doi: 10.1016/j.schres.2014.04.003. Epub 2014 May 13.
The effect of drug use on the age at onset of psychotic disorders in an Australian cohort.
Stefanis NC1, Dragovic M2, Power BD3, Jablensky A4, Castle D5, Morgan VA6.

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Again, only has an abstract that's available to me. Again, associates onset of symptoms with use. Does not explain that people who were at no/low risk before use, get schizophrenia, continue to have schizophrenia after use.


In conclusion, though I mostly was only able to read abstracts, you indeed make a strong case for drug-induced psychotic disorders with very little compelling evidence of causality of schizophrenia that persists with abstinence.

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of course, i don't expect potheads to do any actual reading or critical thinking because they'd rather rest on their headlines and assumptions

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Just in case you're lumping me in with "potheads (who don't) do any actual reading or critical thinking," I'll point out that I have never imbibed, and even with legality knocking on the door, I have zero desire to try it. I don't deny any other negative aspects, particularly cancer (mainly upper-airway in origin, when smoked unfiltered moreso than through a filter. In short, the lungs weren't made to inhale fine particulate matter. Nothing in the plant is particularly carcinogenic to the lung parencyhma, from the evidence that I have seen, though that's wildly debatable given the illegal status of the drug making good research hard to come by. My educated guess would be, for the person who smokes unfiltered joints in particular, a greater instance (per volume smoked) of squamous cell cancers (increased particulate matter) that translates to an actual lower frequency of these same types of cancers given the typical lower volume of marijuana smokers compared to cigarette smokers). It would be quite difficult to find the proper population for that study, though. Thus, my practice pattern will largely reflect that of harm reduction: "You should probably stop using marijuana altogether, as it does have negative effects, at this stage mostly legal but to your health as well, and most of its benefits other than elation/euphoria can be had in other ways to greater effects with fewer negative effects. That said, it is very likely that you are going to continue to use. If you do continue to use, I strongly urge you to consider some method of oral ingestion/edibles as opposed to smoking."