Let's talk about drugs.

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When you said this:

were you not referring to this:

?

"Communication break dowwwwnn"

When I say marijuana user I refer to people like myself who smoke a few times a month at most. Anyone who smokes every day is an abuser

Ah, ok.

Believe it or not, there are actually people who make the claim that daily use isn't harmful, so clarification is always good for things like this.

Sorry, I should have been more clear on that issue
I actually know some people like that. They also tend consume alcohol daily. I think the real issue is a certain type of person rather then the drugs themselves. The only people I think need to consume marijuana daily are maybe people who are going to die and wish to enjoy their last months, or those who suffer from chronic pain. Even in these cases, they shouldn't smoke it, and thankfully, medical marijuana comes in many different forms that don't have to be smoked

I'd really like to see biochemical evidence of amotivational syndrome. Dopamine plays a role in motivation, but marijuana has no effect on dopamine related brain systems so there's one possibility ruled out.

I don't care for statistics about marijuana use and grades, cuz a lot of the conclusions drawn from em are faulty attributions and generalizations without considering the shedloads of variables. It doesn't take into account preexisting problems causing the student to self-medicate, if they're delinquents that don't give a s**t about their grades, how frequently they smoke within a day, whether or not they smoke during school, etc.

Getting drunk day by day is probably also a large detriment to productivity.

91, this is getting harder than it should be. I think that discussion will take ages in regards to whether some drugs are worse or better than others, because, there are tons and tons of parties affected economically by the use or no use of something. So, how about this.

Instead of focusing about which drugs are more harmful, try finding any evidence (non-anecdotal) that there is a direct correlation between legality and consumption. The scientific consensus seems to be that there isn't, so you would have to find a ground-breaking study or analysis of data.

Last edited by Vexcalibur on 23 Jan 2011, 6:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I can actually believe this; if someone is a chronic user, then their brain is not going to be able to continually build new connections and adapt. It would be the cumulative effect of multiple, long periods of time in which the brain is working at sub-optimum levels. If that, or something like that, is in fact the mechanism, then getting off of pot should eventually reverse the effects, unless they were smoking during childhood and puberty in which case they've possibly screwed up the development of their brain.
There's a farily significant minority of people here who are 'stoners,' and they're pretty obvious when you talk to them. They're very sedate, almost like someone with a mal-functioning thyroid gland. They rarely say anthing interesting or intelligent. I don't know if its because they use more than other people, or if they started doing pot young (this being my uncle's theory), or if they simply react in a more extreme way.

^with the above said, I wonder if we would be worse off if all of the depressed people on prozac (for example) could just eat a brownie once or twice a week instead. My aunt used pot when she was on chemo and dying of cancer. It was one of the few things that would allow her to eat despite the nausea. On the other hand, most of the 'medical use' cards here are bogus; people get 'prescribed' pot so that they can 'calm down,' but most of the people with these prescriptions are middle-class young men with very little to worry about other than getting to school every day.

One of the reasons I favor decriminalization is that it would allow for more nuanced control of pot. There are strict criteria in medi-Cal and medicaid for the circumstances that will allow clinicians to prescribe drugs, wheras under California's current medical use law all you need is for a doctor to say you 'need' it. They don't have to specify why. There are unscrupulous physicians whose entire practice is built around giving people 'medical' marijuana precriptions.

I've read that smoking cannabis every day leads to a build up of THC plaque between neurons in the brain. I'd need verification of this, but smoking every day, or drinking every day; nobody should abuse any substance. There are principles of responsible use of any substance I believe need to be maintained. Some facts about alcohol:
It is bad for your liver
It is bad for your brain
It can lead to respiratory depression
It is a stomach irritant
The amount of alcohol required to kill you is not that much and varies between people so you can never be sure. The amount of Cannabis required to kill you is so vast that you would die of oxygen deprivation from smoking too much long before THC poisoning
It is bad for your skin (notice alcoholics have Rosacea-like skin patterns after long-term abuse)
It is addictive
Most alcoholic beverages have a lot of calories, especially beer- so hello, beer gut
Hangovers. Enough said
Black outs that can involve delusional or even psychotic behavior
People get drunk and fight. People don't smoke and fight unless they've got PCP in their s**t or they're already aggressive

Most of these effects however only become relevant when you're an abuser. The few effects that Cannabis has on a person are likewise, only relevant to abusers, and even then, are much milder.

ROFL @ THC plaque, that's a new one. I just did a quick google search and apparently THC inhibits amyloid plaque and acetylcholinesterace, which means THC blocks alzheimer's plaque formation. Looks like whatever you read has done some real brutal twisting.

I didn't think it was an accurate claim either thank you for verifying

Sorry if the link is broken, I will give the references as journal links.
You should be able to find some of these by just putting them into google or google scholar.

Pope, Gruber et al, 2001

Pope, Yurgelun-Todd, 1996

Gruber, Hudson et al, 2003

Lundquvist,, 2005

Solowij et al, 2003

Sustman, Westreich, 2003

There have been about a dozen other studies that have produced similar results as these. They all verify memory loss and other cognitive defects from sustained cannabis use.

@Vex

I put the argument for criminalization along with the stats relating to it near the bottom of page 5.

Sorry about the double post, but I thought this was very interesting.

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/ ... -lost.html

Not only do you have a tendency to take statistics at face value without even considering how it was sampled or classified, but you just come with one source right after the other which don't even address the points I made before that. You do this conveniently right after I destroy the previous source.

First you argue the semantics of "low grade cannabis intoxication" and try to say I'm missing the point. Then when I give a neurochemical explanation of how marijuana doesn't impair your memory after it's inactive and that the only way it can is brain damage which has been proven BS, you don't even rebut my points. You just post another source, which I've proven to be politically motivated.

And now this? Ok here's the challenge. The next source you post has to directly address my arguments.

Marijuana usage worldwide has increased since the 60's yet the global prevalence of schizophrenia is still at 0.3–0.7%. No link has been established between marijuana use and the cause of schizophrenia. This is a long winded read, so I suggest checking out the other sources since I only put this source here for the sake of proving my statement isn't a random unfounded claim.
http://www.ukcia.org/research/TestingHypotheses.pdf

Does marijuana cause schizophrenia or do schizophrenics tend to smoke marijuana more than others as a way of self medicating? People with mental illnesses tend to do drugs in general more so than the rest of the population.

This article makes really good points on how to interpret statistics. Numbers don't lie, but they do imply:
http://loopylettuce.wordpress.com/2010/ ... zophrenia/


Hover your cursor over the word "recent" for the source to that study.


Professsor Wayne Hall from the University of Queensland sets this whole correlation and causation thing straight:
http://www.abc.net.au/quantum/poison/marijuan/wayne.htm


This means that marijuana can make schizo's function worse, but there is no evidence that says marijuana causes schizophrenia. It is known that you can become paranoid or anxious while stoned, but that is for the duration of effects.

I agree with AceOfSpades. I read through that whole article and I feel very sorry for that young man and his family. However mental illness like this has existed long before marijuana use. I question the anecdotal statistic of '1/4' of users being susceptible to mental illness. Where I come from, there is a large and responsible culture of (18+ first time smokers) marijuana users that is analogous to those who treat alcohol with respect in other parts of my country or the United States. Some young teenagers begin abusing marijuana at a young age, and if the supply of marijuana was controlled it would be much more difficult for them to get this marijuana. I am in 100% agreement that marijuana should not be allowed to people below the age of 18, in the same way that alcohol is controlled. In the US I could see the ATF becoming the ATCF- Alcohol, Tobacco, Cannabis & Firearms

Legalize all drugs, regulate them and the age at which one can purchase them.