Kid's Pot Use Up

[KitemanSA]

This is starting to sound like arguing that Full Metal Jacketed rounds are safer to shoot people with than Hollow Points.

Aren't hollow points safer? Less collateral damage?

[Betruger]

What I find interesting is that on one of the major topics of the day so much ignorance and misinformation abounds. It is not like tying a few words into Google and following the links is so hard.

The only way people get off their ass (generally speaking, for anyone with pedantic reflex) is if it's on fire. This leads back to Tytler cycle arguments.

This is starting to sound like arguing that Full Metal Jacketed rounds are safer to shoot people with than Hollow Points.

Aren't hollow points safer? Less collateral damage?

Pretty sure the hollow point was intended to do more damage. The way a frag is more damaging than some clean concussion explosive, or some dirty blade more than a scalpel.

Unless you're thinking collateral as in damage to other objects near the target. Maybe that's the misunderstanding here.

[KitemanSA]

This is starting to sound like arguing that Full Metal Jacketed rounds are safer to shoot people with than Hollow Points.

Aren't hollow points safer? Less collateral damage?

....Unless you're thinking collateral as in damage to other objects near the target. Maybe that's the misunderstanding here.

This is the case. Seems "D" et. al. are partially anti-drug becasue of collateral damage. So that was my point.

[MSimon]

Aren't hollow points safer? Less collateral damage?

....Unless you're thinking collateral as in damage to other objects near the target. Maybe that's the misunderstanding here.

This is the case. Seems "D" et. al. are partially anti-drug becasue of collateral damage. So that was my point. :wink:

There is no doubt about the damage drugs + prohibition do - at least given how some view the "problem". My point is that we will have less damage if we were dealing only with the drug "problem".

Of course I'm a bit of a radical on the problem: "people in chronic pain chronically take pain relievers" which is sensible enough until you look for the wounds in the "addicted". For the vast majority the wound is hidden in the amygdala. i.e. PTSD.

[Betruger]

I'm a radical on stupidity. People falling for drugs is discipline problem. You break it you pay it. If relatives are dear to you, you invest the time and effort into preparing them to deal with the temptation. I am a life long eccentric, but I was raised sane. I love life too much to spoil it with drugs. Pot and alcohol just don't appeal to me, because as powerful the pleasure trips they put you on, they derail your life - you are not fully in control, you're less the author of your every savvy and choice of action every fraction of a second that paves the way from present to future.
I love life enough that being able to do my best every step of the way is something I can't stand giving up to the clouding influence of drugs. I am not religious nor atheist, traditions and dogmatism in general repel me... So in that respect I am proof the Diogenes way is just bunk.

More than analogous to FMJ/HP, IMO it's akin to traditional mothering vs fathering methods. I.E. protecting versus preparing. Sheltering versus being trained. Paralysis versus power.

And.. The only way humanity will survive the future is if it deals with exactly these "libertarian" growing pains. Because drugs today are nothing in terms of "mind altering" power compared to what technology will enable in the coming couple of centuries. The discipline rooted in taboo-less understanding, discipline of health of mind and body and environment needed to survive the coming risks of technology, will be as much of a test of Man as anything in any myth.

These tests are coming anyway. Fossils like Diogenes are obstructions to genuinely facing and overcoming these challenges.

[MSimon]

People falling for drugs is discipline problem.

So you can make any level of pain go away with discipline? I'm sure it is possible. But the distribution curve is against you for the vast majority.

[MSimon]

More than analogous to FMJ/HP, IMO it's akin to traditional mothering vs fathering methods

I'm totally down with that.

[Betruger]

You can't make all the pain go away with only discipline. But you can grab it by the horns rather than give in and bury yourself in druggie issues.

Pain isn't all bad, is part of what I'm saying. Letting yourself burn in pain is good if you have that discipline. Mental pain anyway.

[MSimon]

I propose that those heavy into alcohol switch to pot. It is safer.

It's only safer if you don't mind developing cannabis psychosis and other permanent cognitive impairment.

http://priory.com/psych/cannabis.htm

There is NOTHING safe about pot.

Not a single one of those studies is worth a "durned". You can't come to any conclusions from retrospective studies. You have to know the order things happened in objectively.

Were those folks self medicating for mental problems. Or did the drug use come first? To get a good reading you would have to follow about a million people from birth through age 60 to see if there is causation or just correlation.

The only people fooled by that sort of hocus pocus are those that want to be. You aren't a catastrophic climate change believer are you?

The article published today in "Health News" makes the claim that smoking marijuana is "linked" to early onset of mental illness.

However, although the article implies some sort of cause and effect, that conclusion has no scientific basis. In fact, the authors of the study don't even bother investigating whether marijuana use causes mental illness or if people with mental illness have a higher rate of smoking marijuana than the general public.

If marijuana caused mental illness, then cultures that have a higher rate of marijuana smoking than the U.S. should have a higher rate of mental illness. But in fact, the opposite is true. Cultures with higher rates of marijuana consumption have lower rates of mental illness than the United States. This would indicate that rather than marijuana causing mental illness, as your article implies, it is people with mental illness who are self medicating with marijuana in order to alleviate their symptoms.

This (more correct) reading of the data, however, does not fit the narrative being presented by the politicians who are making their careers by "getting tough" on marijuana smokers, nor does it fit the narrative of the manufacturers of the currently legal psychotropic drugs, like Prozac and Zoloft, who stand to lose billions of dollars if medical marijuana is legalized, and who funnel millions of dollars to those politicians who present their dubious science as fact.

http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/conte ... al-Illness

The literature abstract for this proposed study is interesting:

http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00946348

People with schizophrenia tend to smoke significantly more tobacco than the general population. The rates are exceptionally high amongst institutionalized patients and homeless people. In a UK census from 1993, 74% of people with schizophrenia living in institutions were found to be smokers.[96][97] A 1999 study that covered all people with schizophrenia in Nithsdale, Scotland found a 58% prevalence rate of cigarette smoking, to compare with 28% in the general population.[98] An older study found that as much as 88% of outpatients with schizophrenia were smokers.[99]

Despite the higher prevalence of tobacco smoking, people diagnosed with schizophrenia have a much lower than average chance of developing and dying from lung cancer. While the reason for this is unknown, it may be because of a genetic resistance to the cancer, a side effect of drugs being taken, or a statistical effect of increased likelihood of dying from causes other than lung cancer.[100]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_ ... obacco_use

Funny thing: tobacco is a mild anti-depressant. So is cannabis.

[MSimon]

Despite increases in cannabis consumption in the 1960s and 1970s in western society, rates of psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia remained relatively stable over time.[91][92][93] Also, Sweden and Japan, where self-reported marijuana use is very low, do not have lower rates of psychosis than the U.S. and Canada do.[94] Thus, there remains controversy over whether or not the apparent association between cannabis and schizophrenia is a causal relationship.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_ ... a#Cannabis

[MSimon]

This (more correct) reading of the data, however, does not fit the narrative being presented by the politicians who are making their careers by "getting tough" on marijuana smokers, nor does it fit the narrative of the manufacturers of the currently legal psychotropic drugs, like Prozac and Zoloft, who stand to lose billions of dollars if medical marijuana is legalized, and who funnel millions of dollars to those politicians who present their dubious science as fact.

http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/conte ... al-Illness

[KitemanSA]

This (more correct) reading of the data, however, does not fit the narrative being presented by the politicians who are making their careers by "getting tough" on marijuana smokers, nor does it fit the narrative of the manufacturers of the currently legal psychotropic drugs, like Prozac and Zoloft, who stand to lose billions of dollars if medical marijuana is legalized, and who funnel millions of dollars to those politicians who present their dubious science as fact.

http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/conte ... al-Illness

Just what are you saying here Mikey? Follow the money? Oy, vhat a concept!

[GIThruster]

Not a single one of those studies is worth a "durned". You can't come to any conclusions from retrospective studies.

You're all about studies until someone points out that there are hundreds that show cannabis causes psychosis. There are more studies done over the last 50 years than one can read in a lifetime, and yet you stubbornly refuse to see the facts as facts.

Here's some more. I'm sure you'll have some dopey reason these studies aren't valid and that you know more than the researchers who performed them. Just makes you sound idiotic. And lets state the obvious: cannabis does not have to have a causal relationship with psychosis. If there is for example a genetic predisposition toward psychosis that is set off through cannabis use, the fact remains, people who don't use cannabis, don't suffer cannabis psychosis, no matter their predisposition. Same is true with the lack of ambition associated with cannabis use, lack of inhibition caused, etc.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/ ... 2F20110302

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 165726.htm

http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mentalhealthin ... nabis.aspx

http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv ... hosis?open

http://www.ukcia.org/research/young/psychosis.php

http://www.erowid.org/plants/cannabis/c ... lth3.shtml

[Netmaker]

The health issues of smoking pot versus the use of tobacco or alcohol are negligible compared to the societal and cost issues of the criminalization of pot.

Criminalizing pot means there are huge profits to be made by selling it on the black market. Those profits go to fund larger criminal enterprises which further usurps the rule of law, increases violence, increases police/legal/prison costs and introduces "soft core" criminals into training for the "hard core" criminal world.

It's a vicious self-reinforcing spiral the result of which is that Mexico, whom we have an open indefensible border with, has practically become a failed state. Much as our exported oil money has funded violent Islamic Sects our illegal pot money is being used to fund violent narco-terrorists and corrupt our own police and judiciary.

Far better that we legalize pot and turn it from a criminal issue and into a regulated product that may result in (mental/physical) health issues over time.

[Diogenes]

The health issues of smoking pot versus the use of tobacco or alcohol are negligible compared to the societal and cost issues of the criminalization of pot.

Criminalizing pot means there are huge profits to be made by selling it on the black market. Those profits go to fund larger criminal enterprises which further usurps the rule of law, increases violence, increases police/legal/prison costs and introduces "soft core" criminals into training for the "hard core" criminal world.

It's a vicious self-reinforcing spiral the result of which is that Mexico, whom we have an open indefensible border with, has practically become a failed state. Much as our exported oil money has funded violent Islamic Sects our illegal pot money is being used to fund violent narco-terrorists and corrupt our own police and judiciary.

Far better that we legalize pot and turn it from a criminal issue and into a regulated product that may result in (mental/physical) health issues over time.

Your point is based on the assumption that no harm will come from the legalization of pot. While it may not be even as bad as alcohol (which kills about 11,000 people per year in drunk driving accidents) I doubt it is harmless. If it leads to the decriminalization of harder drugs, it will likely cost as much to society as did the civil war.