Infrastructure Reforms

[ladajo]

Blankbeard,
Yes I have references. I also unlike normally, purposely left them out. I added enough hints for them to be found.

The Irish one in particular was interesting. They noted a 4 times increase in teen psychosis following the police policy of not enforcing possession. After seeing this as hard data, they rescinded the non-enforce policy, and low and behold, teen pscyhosis rates have also reduced.

In your interpretation of stable society, I think you need to explore the US a little more. We are not very stable these days at all, and have not been for while. Other countries also follow suite. You cite New Zealand as an example. I can tell you that there are serious issues internally that have to do with caste/race and income which are related to substance abuse and entitlement issues (sound familiar?). One of the latest really funny events was an attempted racial claim to the entire coastlines of the main three islands. Sometimes these are not funny at all. Like a world class rated golf course/club in Auckland that was "claimed" and then the facilities were burned to the ground and squatters(homeless) took up permanent residence throughout what had been the course. Outsiders not welcome, visits can get you dead. Just like some neighborhoods here and there.

[Blankbeard]

Anyone who works with psychotics knows this isn't true. A close friend of mine works in a clinic and everyone there expects anyone coming in with psychosis is a cannabis user. Almost all of them admit it. When they go off their specified regimen it is almost always that they decided to start using again.

The literature doesn't support this. Neither does my own knowledge or experience. If your close friend has knowledge of this, you might inform him that he has an ethical duty to inform the larger medical community of his experience. That's how medical knowledge advances. Also, he becomes a pubmed rockstar.

But this doesn't change that currently, for individuals with no predisposition towards developing schizophrenia, using pot doesn't alter their risk.

It doesn't matter whether psychosis is the cause and cannabis use the effect, or the other way around.

Wait, you're saying that the difference between correlation and causation is unimportant? There's a well-known correlation between the winner of the Super Bowl and the yearly performance of the stock market. If you're right, a viable economic strategy would be to simply mandate that the AFC (the bad news conference) throw the game. Hopefully you recognize that's not a sound economic plan. Otherwise you may have a future in Obama's cabinet.

Other correlations you may want to consider are that those who develop psychosis are more likely to have significant contact with religion. Likewise, many find Jesus after committing crimes and then go on to commit more. My explanation for these (and the association between pot and psychosis) is that troubled people tend to look for what they believe will help them. If you are right, we should immediately amend our constitution so that we can remove that dangerous scourge from our society as well as pass the Football Fixing for Economic Growth bill. Luckily though, you're not right.

Causation is notoriously hard to distinguish. In fact, it's usual to test correlations until we are very certain that the correlation is strong and not simply an artifact of our experience.

Let me show why this matters using a real life example. When hormone replacement therapy was introduced, doctors noticed that women given HRT were less likely to have heart problems than the general population. On the basis of this correlation, doctors began prescribing HRT widely, hoping to benefit their patients by not just by controlling symptoms but also by increasing heart health.

Everyone knows how this story ends. A much larger study drawn from a wider section of the population showed that the cardioprotection came because these were uppermiddle class women who had healthier lifestyles. HRT increased the chances of heart attacks and ischemic events relative to the most similar cohort. While we've backed off a bit since then on the magnitude of danger posed by HRT, real women died solely because they were on HRT. If you're attitude was prevalent in medicine, women would still be dying.

This stuff matters. It's more important than your ideology.

There is obviously a life-wrending cycle and it is only when people stop using cannabis, there is hope their psychosis can be controlled. And just saying, these arguments that there is no causal relation here just because the studies are only able to identify a correlation are a very poor reading of the data. There is certainly an enormous correlation and when you remove the drug, you get much healthier people. This is why in-patient programs are highly preferred and more effective in treating psychosis--because they remove pot from the picture.

I seem to recall that you are trained in philosophy. If so, you've probably heard this before but you're talking theory. And of course, the difference between theory and practice is that in theory there is no difference between theory and practice but in practice there is.

You're committing the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy here. You can't assume that because one thing follows another temporally that the first caused the second. I wash my car and then it rains. Did washing my car cause the rain? You need to statistically analyze the relationship to see if the correlation is strong or weak. And so far, the relationship between psychosis and cannabis is weak EXCEPT in the case of those individuals who are genetically predisposed to developing schizophrenia (and maybe bipolar, though the evidence there is weaker). More study may change this conclusion but for that to happen we have to do the study. We don't jump to the answer that lines up with our ideology.

As an additional note, in theory every patient follows all of the doctor's orders, never misses a dose of medication, and takes no medication but what he is prescribed. Out here in the real world, patients do none of that. No clinician wants to manage a patient who is self medicating no matter the drug. But real clinicians successfully treat real patients with psychiatric disorders (including every from of psychosis) while those patients are non-compliant with their orders and taking any drug you care to name. It's not easy but most doctors didn't choose the medical profession because it was easy, doubly those who choose to work with psychiatric patients.

Doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out an hallucinogen is not good for someone suffering psychosis.

I'm glad I don't get my pharmacology from you. Both typical and atypical anti-psychotic drugs as well as most sedatives like benzodiazapines are mildly hallucinogenic. This is actually why they are thought to work. In a person with a psychotic disorder, certain neural pathways are overly sensitive or overstimulated.

There is a gap between two neurons in the brain. In order to transmit a signal from one neuron to the next, the liquid filled gap (the "synapse") must have a certain amount of neurotransmitters. When the amount is high, the neurotransmitters across the synapse bind in large numbers to receptors on the downstream neuron and cause it to fire. The amount is increased by the "upstream" neuron releasing more. But there are chemicals in the synapse that destroy the neurotransmitters. Also, the upstream neuron has receptors for the neurotransmitter. When the concentration is high enough, re-uptake begins and the neuron begins absorbing neurotransmitter from the gap, recycling it for the next firing. In addition, there are often controller neurons that may encourage or suppress firing when they fire. It's an elegant, beautiful, and complex system and like other such systems, it can go very wrong.

In psychosis, re-uptake might be slow, neurotransmitter destruction can be slow, an inhibitory neuron may not fire, or the neurons may be very sensitive and fire at lower levels of neurotransmitters. In every case, the neuron fires uncontrollably. When this happens on a large area of the brain, psychosis is the result.

The entire reason these drugs work that they have enough chemical similarity to the neurotransmitters to bind to the receptor but they activate it less strongly. Only one ligand (a chemical that binds to a receptor) can bind so the net effect is to decrease neuronal activity. Symptoms tend to decrease. Yay! Science!

(There are certainly other drugs that work in other ways used to treat psychiatric disorders. But the core of our ability to treat this class of disorders lies in the curious fact that a weak hallucinogen will block a stronger effect. Naloxone, the treatment for opiate overdose, works the same way.)

I don't mean to be harsh but reality does not care about your ideology. What works, works whether you like it or not. Currently our political class is trying to force their ideologies on reality. So far it doesn't seem to be amused. Things that can't go on, don't. Thinks that can't work, don't.

Let me attempt to quote Mark Twain here: “It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”

[GIThruster]

Anyone who works with psychotics knows this isn't true. A close friend of mine works in a clinic and everyone there expects anyone coming in with psychosis is a cannabis user. Almost all of them admit it. When they go off their specified regimen it is almost always that they decided to start using again.

The literature doesn't support this.

Yes it does. We've been all through this dozens of times before. Anyone using cannabis has a 5,000% higher chance of experiencing a psychotic episode. And as I have just explained and you apparently do not understand, it DOES NOT MATTER that the studies are only able to show correlation and not causation. When you remove cannabis from the equation, the bulk of psychosis is removed as well. It simply does not matter that cannabis induced psychosis may well be congenital or morphological in nature. If it is not set off in the absence of cannabis, then obviously the way to avoid it is to avoid cannabis.

Likewise, we know that about 9X as many people use alcohol as use cannabis because most people won't use a drug that is prohibited by law. We know that prohibition works. If that prohibition is removed and 9X as many people use cannabis as they do now, we should fully expect 9X as many cases of psychosis. When that happens, crying that the studies show correlation and not causation won't mean anything. Only those predisposed to drug use will be able to buy these obviously flawed arguments--but they will believe anything.

[Blankbeard]

Blankbeard,
Yes I have references. I also unlike normally, purposely left them out. I added enough hints for them to be found.

The Irish one in particular was interesting. They noted a 4 times increase in teen psychosis following the police policy of not enforcing possession. After seeing this as hard data, they rescinded the non-enforce policy, and low and behold, teen pscyhosis rates have also reduced.

First, if you have the source, why don't you post a link to it? At least its abstract. Then I can see it myself and be convinced, just as you have.

Again, post hoc ergo procter hoc fallacy. Economist Steven Levitt put forth a rather controversial argument in his book "Freakonomics." In the late 80's and early 90's the US experienced a huge drop in violent crime. The drop occurred even in areas where no extra police had been placed. Interestingly, the drop was, across the US, almost entirely among 16-24 year olds. Older criminals were unaffected. What event occurred 16 years before the start of the steepest drop and 24 years before the end of the steep drop? Roe vs Wade. The correlation even went so far that states with lower abortion rates experienced a correspondingly lower drop in crime. This evidence is much stronger than the irish connection. If you believe that, you have no reason to reject the idea that abortion causes lower crime rates.

In your interpretation of stable society, I think you need to explore the US a little more. We are not very stable these days at all, and have not been for while. Other countries also follow suite. You cite New Zealand as an example. I can tell you that there are serious issues internally that have to do with caste/race and income which are related to substance abuse and entitlement issues (sound familiar?). One of the latest really funny events was an attempted racial claim to the entire coastlines of the main three islands. Sometimes these are not funny at all. Like a world class rated golf course/club in Auckland that was "claimed" and then the facilities were burned to the ground and squatters(homeless) took up permanent residence throughout what had been the course. Outsiders not welcome, visits can get you dead. Just like some neighborhoods here and there.

By any reasonable measure, the US is one of the most stable productive societies in the world. Full stop.

I question the sanity of anyone who claims that the United States of America is less socially stable, less productive, or less culturally stable than Nigeria. Or that the 10 nations with the highest drug use aka Western Democracies are less stable than those with the lowest drug use or even less stable than average. You need to present actual evidence of this though and it's going to like proving water isn't wet.

If you'd like to talk about New Zealand, let's compare it to burma, italy (I notice you didn't actually try to claim italy was more stable in any of your criteria. That's a hard row to hoe.) sub-Saharan africa or large areas of latin america (which has improved the last few decades). It sounds like your very much in the #firstworldproblems territory. Yes, it sucks that your government is bad or your crime rate is high but it doesn't really compare to societies where the government employs death squads to suppress dissidents, or where they can't stop roving rape gangs that destroy entire villages with impunity. Most of the world the government can't even provide the basics of rule of law so that food, commerce, and basic sanitation can exist.

There are areas in the US where outsiders Dare Not Go. New Zealand almost certainly has a few of its own. That's bad. In the Congo there are areas where the military Dares Not Go. And the people in those areas come out at will and rape men until they can't sit down for no better reason than than they can. They press 10 year-olds into their army. They rape women to destroy bloodlines. Nothing in your experience compares to that. First World Problems indeed.

Again, apologies for the length.

[GIThruster]

Yes, it sucks that your government is bad or your crime rate is high but it doesn't really compare to societies where the government employs death squads to suppress dissidents, or where they can't stop roving rape gangs that destroy entire villages with impunity.

That's exactly why the comparisons you want to employ are useless. There are far too many loose variables for you to isolate nations and make meaningful comparisons. Even in comparing Scandinavia to the rest of the West, there are so many important distinctions in temperament and world view that meaningful comparisons are impossible. You can't justify drug use in Milwaukee by looking at drug use in Amsterdam.

And seriously, you need to stop reasoning by analogy and look at first principles, without denying all the evidence. Drugs are bad. They make bad people do bad things. They make normal people crazy. Until you get this, you are not able to have an adult conversation on the matter.

[Blankbeard]

That's exactly why the comparisons you want to employ are useless. There are far too many loose variables for you to isolate nations and make meaningful comparisons. Even in comparing Scandinavia to the rest of the West, there are so many important distinctions in temperament and world view that meaningful comparisons are impossible. You can't justify drug use in Milwaukee by looking at drug use in Amsterdam.

It's not my argument you're attacking. It's ladajo's. He made the claim not I. I held that the claim was useless because it's obviously wrong.

And as a point of order, I haven't even attempted to "justify drug use." Please address the arguments I make, not the ones you wish I'd make.

For clarity, even if drug use is inherently bad, our current drug policy is immoral because it has been worse than ineffective at a huge cost in public trust, human life, money, and erosion of civil liberties. Supporting immorality is itself immoral.

And seriously, you need to stop reasoning by analogy and look at first principles, without denying all the evidence. Drugs are bad. They make bad people do bad things. They make normal people crazy. Until you get this, you are not able to have an adult conversation on the matter.

Drugs are bad? That's you're argument? Seriously? Is TPA bad? That's the wonder drug that compresses years of stroke recovery into a few minutes when it works. What about antibiotics? Are they bad? They've saved literally hundreds of millions of lives.

Maybe you only mean illegal drugs. That's even more troubling. Are you claiming the Drug Enforcement Agency is incapable of making a mistake or misclassifying a drug? Does that extend to the rest of the Executive Branch?

What evidence do you have to support any of this? Was it vouchsafed to you on a hill by an angel? Why should anyone accept it when you've produced no support at all?

Let me make a counter-argument. Like guns, technology, and ideas, drugs are inherently morally neutral. They can be put to good uses, like TPA or beta blockers. They can be put to abusive evil purposes, like someone who uses a date rape drug to have sex with someone against their will. They can also be put to morally neutral uses, like a guy getting stoned while staying in his home. People use and abuse them in moral, morally neutral, and immoral acts. But just as "Guns don't kill people, people do" Drugs don't kill people, people do. The responsibility for our actions remain with the moral actor, not the inanimate agent.

And the crack about mature arguments? That might have hurt if it hadn't been at the end of an infantile argument. As a philosopher, you are capable of better. Please do better.

[GIThruster]

Drugs are bad? That's you're argument? Seriously?

No. That's my conclusion. If you want all the arguments, dig up all the conversation on this over the last year in a dozen different threads. You can't expect us all to hand hold you through the same discussions over and over again. Respond to the arguments rather than pretending they didn't happen. Respond to the evidence rather than flatly asserting it doesn't exist. What you're doing is cheezy rhetoric and it doesn't really deserve more than to hear again the conclusion, "drugs are bad". I'd use smaller words if I could.

[Blankbeard]

Drugs are bad? That's you're argument? Seriously?

No. That's my conclusion. If you want all the arguments, dig up all the conversation on this over the last year in a dozen different threads. You can't expect us all to hand hold you through the same discussions over and over again. Respond to the arguments rather than pretending they didn't happen. Respond to the evidence rather than flatly asserting it doesn't exist. What you're doing is cheezy rhetoric and it doesn't really deserve more than to hear again the conclusion, "drugs are bad". I'd use smaller words if I could.

Conclusions come after arguments which are based on evidence. If you have this evidence that the scientific and medical communities are unaware of (Pubmed knows naught of your evidence. There are lots of suggestions but no firm evidence. And this is the canonical go-to spot for medical studies.), how about a link?

So come on, I've read this forum for the past couple months. I've even searched the forum on this topic. I haven't seen any of this evidence. BUT that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Sure, it's strange that this evidence in an important policy debate isn't known to anyone in the debate outside of a relatively obscure internet forum that isn't even devoted to drug policy. Stranger things have happened though.

So, throw me a bone. I can't find your evidence. Link it for me. Give me a thread title where I can find it or search terms to help me out. If it's real evidence, I'll admit that I'm wrong and I do what I do when I'm wrong: I'll change my mind.

I haven't come here and imperiously declared anyone was wrong. I've made evidence based challenges. I've tried to make my sources clear, except when they were obvious. If anyone wants a source, let me know and I'll link it here or at least give you the pubmed search terms. You on the other hand, have dealt in ad hominem attacks, used non-sequitur and unsupported statements. And you've dodged my questions. If you truly have a degree in philosophy (I'm not accusing you of lying, I'm pointing out what a person with such a degree would know.) then you know that your arguments would get laughed out of a philosophy course for non-majors.

You're not any kind of acknowledged authority on drug policy. Real men support their arguments. Support yours or be mocked.

[GIThruster]

If you have this evidence that the scientific and medical communities are unaware of (Pubmed knows naught of your evidence. There are lots of suggestions but no firm evidence.

But the scientific and medical communities are not unaware of the evidence that cannabis use is completely detrimental.

Everyone in the medical community knows what you're proposing is suicide. It's just dopes like you that pretend cannabis use is okay, that form the assault on common sense.

You've got it backward. Sensible people know that smoking dope is hurtful. It's on you to show it's not, and quite honestly, given your predilection to obscure and malign the real evidence, you
are not to be trusted in any sense.

You're a doper, aren't you? You violate the law in order to suit your own needs.

Isn't that right?

[Blankbeard]

But the scientific and medical communities are not unaware of the evidence that cannabis use is completely detrimental.

Let's examine both parts of that statement. First

But the scientific and medical communities are not unaware of the evidence

Wow. That's horrible. Are not unaware? How about is aware? I wouldn't normally bring up awkward phrasing but if you turn in a book report like that you'll end up repeating eighth grade and I don't want that. (Yep, that's against you. But mine are funny. Your ad hominems are just pathetic.) Your "evidence" is not on Pubmed. That means it has never been referenced in publicly funded or publicly available private research. That means the medical and scientific communities are unaware of your "evidence." Virtually every private journal in the fields of chemistry, pharmacy, drug policy, and psychology are indexed on Pubmed. If they don't reference it, it probably doesn't exist. But again, one Ctrl-V and you can show me your evidence.

Second, you said

Cannabis use is completely detrimental.

For that to be true, there can not be one single piece of evidence that shows cannabis is useful in any situation. That's all it would take to falsify your statement. So I went to Pubmed and I searched for "Cannabis nausea." And what tp my wondering eyes should appear but the very thing you said doesn't exist!

The therapeutic potential of cannabis and cannabinoids.

Note: See how the text is blue? That's a link which is what I'm asking you for. If you can't make one just paste the address from your browser into the message body and I'll take it from there. Note his conclusion and his method. Literature review means he gathered up lots of other people's work and reviewed it. If you look in the upper right hand corner, there is a link to the free text of his article. You can read it and determine which work he used and how he used it. So, your statement is now known to be false aka wrong. Unless you can show that that paper doesn't say what I say it does no amount of insisting otherwise will do anything but make you look foolish.

Oh, and here is a paper suggesting that cannabinoids may be useful in treating schizophrenia since its method of action is very similar to atypical antipsychotics. Isn't life a hoot?

Everyone in the medical community knows what you're proposing is suicide. It's just dopes like you that pretend cannabis use is okay, that form the assault on common sense.

Also false, as demonstrated above. Real doctors consider pot and its constituents to be useful therapeutically in at least some situations. These are real life doctors with real patients in the real world, not internet philosophers who never mastered the basics of argumentation.

You've got it backward. Sensible people know that smoking dope is hurtful. It's on you to show it's not, and quite honestly, given your predilection to obscure and malign the real evidence, you
are not to be trusted in any sense.

Again, adults support their claims. I've done so (those two links comprehensively refute your contention that pot is always dangerous. That doesn't mean it's always safe of course. And I encourage you not to trust me. Look at the research. See if it's reliable. But you won't do that, will you? I certainly won't trust you unless you support your arguments with evidence. Again, you have no intention of doing that, do you?

You're a doper, aren't you? You violate the law in order to suit your own needs.

Isn't that right?

Awww. Cute! That ad hom made my day. Are you going to threaten to call the cops on me? Ooh, I know! Do "You only disagree with me because you're an America-hating jew communist!" I have a soft spot for the classics. The whole purpose of an ad hominem argument is to deflect attention off the person's lack of argument and on to his opponent. So I shouldn't do this but I am a pharmacist and am subject to random and periodic drug screening. I've been trained in chemistry and pharmacology. You on the other hand have no knowledge of those things and have yet to demonstrate the ability to formulate an argument.

I would really appreciate it if you'd post your evidence. You haven't shown the ability to formulate an interesting insult.

[GIThruster]

ROFL!!!

Tell the truth. . .this is Simon once again fighting for the rights of all dopers!

Just can't help but laugh at such stupid rhetoric.

Again a liar, and deceiver. . .all pent up to support drug abuse.

Who are you?

[Blankbeard]

More personal attacks and still no evidence. I've concluded that no such evidence exists. You're just spinning lies to support your immortality. So I'm done with you. Unless you learn basic argumentation, there's no reason to pay any more attention to your trolling.

Ladajo, please post a link to your article or at least title, journal and issue so that I can read it. I hate to sound like this but after spending an evening chasing non-existent evidence from a forum clown, I just have to say there is no reason not to post a link or title unless the article doesn't exist. Thanks in advance.

[ladajo]

http://www.herald.ie/lifestyle/health-b ... 61898.html

http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv ... _psychosis

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12616543

http://drthurstone.com/new-research-und ... psychosis/

and a dated countered argument...

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lib ... nc1g_7.htm

This was just a quick push as I am busy right now, but should give you enough to go to source materials. You now have names dates & places for researchers. There was another specific study and article discussing the enforcement phenomena in Ireland, but I did not see it on this quick sweep, and did not retain it in my files. I will look again later.

[ladajo]

And here is the link to the google search I used for the above...

http://www.google.com.tr/#hl=tr&gs_nf=3 ... 12&bih=649

[ladajo]

This paper is also an interesting read. But remember to take out government bias, as well as go to the actual source materials where you can.

www.justice.gov/dea/docs/marijuana_position_2011.pdf