I bristle at "medical marijuana". Everyone involved knows that this is a sham. There may be some tiny minority actually using marijuana to treat a medical condition, but the vast majority are just doing it to get high. When we had medical marijuana in my home state, marijuana shops would have a doctor on staff so sign "prescriptions". I never tried to get one but I'm guessing that anyone who walked in got one. So why do we pretend otherwise? Make it legal or don't, but please, skip the sham and the lies of "medical marijuana".
Oh and just by the way, another thing that really riles me: During covid, the government here ordered restaurants, plant nurseries, clothing stores, a whole swath of stores to close. But exempt from these rules were "essential businesses", which included liquor stores, marijuana shops, abortion clinics, and the state lottery. Yes, buying seeds to plant a vegetable garden in your back yard during an epidemic was not "essential", but getting marijuana and a lottery ticket were.
So, legalize marijuana because some people do not become addicted, use it prudently or only for medical reasons? I wonder what the percentage is of this cohort compared to those who will abuse and become addicted to any substance because of addictive personality traits, are too young to make rational decisions relating to long term consequences, or adults who are too irresponsible to manage their use so that it doesn't damage their health and livelihood.
Advertising is meant to sell a product, not necessarily tell the truth about it. Legalizing marijuana gives it the imprimatur of being harmless. It isn't. If marijuana does provide medical benefits, it should be treated as any other controlled drug, requiring medical documentation of the purpose for its use, and severe consequences for the user and prescriber if it is used or prescribed under false pretenses.
So here is another perspective.I lived amongst marijuana growers for many decades. There was a lot of pot. Yes, some people could handle getting high and benefitted. Yet, there was a huge population of young men who were exposed to it before their brains had fully developed and right around their 30th birthdays they could not deal with their bipolar disorders anymore and committed suicide. There were others that I knew that couldn’t get out of bed in the mornings without first rolling and smoking a joint. Addicts. One of the brightest people that I knew never reached her full potential because her addiction to marijuana.
If it works for some, great, but I think John has a great point. I was sad to see it legalized for recreational use. And yes, I occasionally smoke but mostly use it medicinally (great for migraines)
Many of my friend’s sons were the ones who died. Very sad.
Oh, and I do not like the pendulum effect of the codeine craziness. It’s too bad that Perdue Pharma’s greed caused that. There are times that hydrocodone is certainly needed.
I feel like your research is faulty and prejudiced. My life has been changed for the better by having marijuana for medical reasons. In a day where Hydrocodone cannot be prescribed but extreme pain exists, it's a godsend. Plus it's more natural. You say that marijuana makes people "slow, stupid, and lazy". This is just rude and generalized. I'm not slow, stupid, or lazy. I resent you implying that because I take marijuana for the pain I fit into your group.
I appreciate seeing another person's point of view, but this article is just plain bashing. I'm no snowflake, I can take opposite opinions. I think you should take some time to see how much it helps people too before completely condemning marijuana use.
P.S. I also don't like the smell, or the taste, but prefer it over the pain.
I'm with Paddy O'Furniture (first commenter,) i.e. I am 74, have used weed since I was 16, and do not regret it one bit. Obviously, there are plenty of users who have had adverse experiences, but that's true for nearly any substance we ingest, from mother's milk onward. With such a large number of users in existence, all legalization does is to decriminalize possession and use. Countless lives have been totally ruined by the legal system and social ostracism, far more, in my estimation, than have ever been ruined by use of marijuana. Prohibition of alcohol was the classic example of how making a substance that people are going to use anyway into a society-wide disaster is the inevitable result of government interference into natural patterns of human behavior. Keeping weed illegal was doing the same thing until the authorities recently figured out that they're fighting a losing battle with nothing good to show for it. Even if we grant that it's probably not optimally healthful to smoke ANY substance, the simple fact is that people have been doing so for millennia, and are most unlikely to cease for any reason. Such is the nature of freedom of choice. Governments need to butt out of individuals' choices as to what they ingest, and so should do-gooders who want to control every aspect of other people's lives. TL/DR: Leave us the hell alone. Go on and do what you want to do; that's probably what you're going to do anyway, and you should be able to do so in peace as long as it's not hurting someone else.
In my humble opinion, there's a big leap from "a bad idea" to "should be illegal". I have never used marijuana and I have no intention of ever using marijuana. Yes, it's bad for your health. But if some people consider the benefits worth the harm, who am I to say no?
Where I DO have a problem is when people get taxpayer-subsidized medical care for problems caused by marijuana smoking. If you want to do it, any costs should be entirely on you. If you enjoy getting high, okay. But *I* didn't get high, so why should I have to pay for your high?
Thanks for the perspective and for risking all the haters, as people get so defensive about their weed use, and probably the people addicted but in denial are the most defensive! However, the IQ information you gave isn't the full picture. Here's a quote from the paper I read for my post on 4/20 this year:
"Meier et al. (2018) report a longitudinal co-twin control study that showed no significant association between adolescent cannabis use and neuropsychological decline, and instead suggest social and environmental factors as explanations for poor executive function among cannabis users. This study was particularly insightful because of a large sample size (n = 1989) and IQ assessments prior to the onset of cannabis use (IQ obtained at age 5, 12, and 18). It demonstrated that adolescents who used cannabis had a lower childhood IQ and a lower IQ at 18 than non-users, but that there was no decline in IQ from pre- to post-cannabis use (Meier et al. 2018). These results are in line with another co-twin longitudinal study that investigated two large cohorts of twins and found no significant difference in IQ change over time between twins discordant for cannabis use (Jackson et al. 2016). However, lower baseline IQ was associated with adolescent cannabis use suggesting that social and environmental factors influence an adolescent’s subsequent cannabis use (Jackson et al. 2016). Together, these studies suggest that lower IQ may be a risk factor for cannabis abuse rather than the use of cannabis resulting in neuropsychological decline. "
A lot of the other research you quote is based on correlations, which do not imply causation. I'm not arguing that pot is harmless, just that research based on correlations cannot be used to draw causal conclusions without extra statistical care, such as that used for showing that smoking causes lung cancer, which I think has such a strong effect size that it was easy to draw the conclusion. Cigarette smokers are several times more likely to get lung cancer than non-smokers, so that large of an effect size it is easier to draw conclusions from, but most of the time in papers when they quote "statistically significant results" they actually have a tiny effect size and it's hard to control for all the different variables involved without careful, unbiased research.
I'm not sure whether legalization is right or wrong, it's a complex issue, but in my case it led to an accessible supply and an eventual addiction that I have been struggling to beat for 5 years, with varied success. I just loved using it so much, it really gives my brain what it craves, but it's not good for me to be using it as much as I will if I let myself have any. I probably would have been one of the haters, getting all defensive about it, back before I started to realize my use had become problematic. I'm now 57 days sober and I plan for this to be the last time, as I decided for myself, based on the research, that I don't want to put marijuana into my system and risk my brain any further, even if I could use it moderately, which I know I can't anyways because of my history of addiction.
My Substack is about my journey to sobriety from weed, if you're interested in my perspective. There's also a podcast called "My Last Joint" full of stories of people beating their marijuana addictions. Anyone who says marijuana isn't addictive is not up to date on the modern research of the effects of THC on the brain. I was taught it wasn't physically addictive in high school, but I was also taught that the runner's high is endorphins. It's actually Anandamide, an endocannabinoid that we hadn't discovered yet at the time, that binds to our CB1 receptors that are located all over the body, but very much in the brain. It causes the CB1 receptor expression to go down, and for the signaling pathway's activation to also be decreased, due to your brain trying to reach homeostasis in the CB1 pathway. That's a physical addiction in the brain, requiring more THC to cause the same effects over time.
Contrary to what you wrote about alcohol and cigarettes have been around longer than marijuana, indigenous populations have been using marijuana for 1000’s of years. It has passed the test of time.
Regardless of any effects of ingesting a substance (alcohol, weed, cocaine, etc), it is NOT the government's responsibility to care for our personal health lives. If someone wants to ingest a substance and face their consequences, they have the natural God-given right to do that. Solely on principle I think people should be free to ingest whatever they want to, even if it kills them. The laws against these things are stupid because it's the gov't trying to "parent" the citizens, which is literally patronizing and condescending. That's not the government's job. That's the sort of thinking that led to mask and vaccine mandates. The government needs to get out of our personal health lives.
The comment section surprises me. I tend to agree though, simply making something illegal because some people are more susceptible to harmful effects and can't handle the usage doesn't necessarily change that it won't continue to happen, but it will ensure otherwise harmless people are given criminal records, and i don't want my tax dollars paying to feed someone in prison just cause they had a pound of weed on them. Pots been easily and widely available for decades, i've been out of high school for almost 13 years and even in my state before we had medical marijuana it was just a phone call away all the time. I do think the level that pot is advertised, and the sheer number of cannabis companies that have exploded throughout legalized states are actually harmful to society in a way. Hard to articulate why i feel that way despite being a semi-regular smoker myself.
The THC being "x% stronger than it was 10 years ago" trope has been used for literally almost a century now ever since cannabis was made illegal (seriously look it up, if you go by the numbers claimed in the media since back in even the 1930's to now, marijuana is somewhere like 10000 times more potent than it was back then). So that one I'll disagree with wholeheartedly.
That being said, I have multiple friends who are regular users and its true. there are some that can't handle it, have to smoke it all the time, etc. I have a friend who smokes almost every day, but literally only takes a few drags off his pipe and doesn't have anymore after that. Its not a cut and dry scenario
I think an interesting (and more political) topic on the effects of marijuana legalization lies in how it's affected the influx of other drugs into our country. The cartels used to move alot of pot into the us before legalization, once that happened, the market prices went down so much they couldn't compete. So they diversify, and now we're seeing a huge influx of much more dangerous drugs like fentanyl, cocaine, etc. coming across the border. Ironically i believe the pro-weed camp was saying that legalization would help curb the opioid crisis by offering an alternative, but i think the opposite effect has taken place, and now the heavier drugs are more widely available.
Some of your reasoning is faulty. While any substance that distorts reality can be dangerous, marijuana is not addictive. Habitual for some yes. There are proven medical uses that should be supported. Yes there are unscrupulous doctors who are money hungry but as many studies show some therapeutic value as those funded by big pharma that claim the opposite. Tobacco is a greater drug problem with heart and lung issues. Edible marijuana is a better choice and should be regulated and used by those over 21 yrs old. Younger than that can slow brain and cognitive development. If you and other conservatives don’t get on board and reschedule it to a III from schedule 1, we are going to lose this country. Wake up and stop spreading half truths and “Reefer Madness” histeria.
Horseshit, pure and simple. I am 70 yrs old, have replaced alcohol with THC, have used THC on and off my entire life beginning around 19-20, and have friends and family who partake as well. Lots of them, and they have lots of friends likewise, and have never seen any issues as described in this article. My entire life.
Like any drug, it's up to the user to be prudent, same as hootch which is best comparison. One learns how to drink, how much, how it affects you, etc. Same here.
I bristle at "medical marijuana". Everyone involved knows that this is a sham. There may be some tiny minority actually using marijuana to treat a medical condition, but the vast majority are just doing it to get high. When we had medical marijuana in my home state, marijuana shops would have a doctor on staff so sign "prescriptions". I never tried to get one but I'm guessing that anyone who walked in got one. So why do we pretend otherwise? Make it legal or don't, but please, skip the sham and the lies of "medical marijuana".
Oh and just by the way, another thing that really riles me: During covid, the government here ordered restaurants, plant nurseries, clothing stores, a whole swath of stores to close. But exempt from these rules were "essential businesses", which included liquor stores, marijuana shops, abortion clinics, and the state lottery. Yes, buying seeds to plant a vegetable garden in your back yard during an epidemic was not "essential", but getting marijuana and a lottery ticket were.
So, legalize marijuana because some people do not become addicted, use it prudently or only for medical reasons? I wonder what the percentage is of this cohort compared to those who will abuse and become addicted to any substance because of addictive personality traits, are too young to make rational decisions relating to long term consequences, or adults who are too irresponsible to manage their use so that it doesn't damage their health and livelihood.
Advertising is meant to sell a product, not necessarily tell the truth about it. Legalizing marijuana gives it the imprimatur of being harmless. It isn't. If marijuana does provide medical benefits, it should be treated as any other controlled drug, requiring medical documentation of the purpose for its use, and severe consequences for the user and prescriber if it is used or prescribed under false pretenses.
So here is another perspective.I lived amongst marijuana growers for many decades. There was a lot of pot. Yes, some people could handle getting high and benefitted. Yet, there was a huge population of young men who were exposed to it before their brains had fully developed and right around their 30th birthdays they could not deal with their bipolar disorders anymore and committed suicide. There were others that I knew that couldn’t get out of bed in the mornings without first rolling and smoking a joint. Addicts. One of the brightest people that I knew never reached her full potential because her addiction to marijuana.
If it works for some, great, but I think John has a great point. I was sad to see it legalized for recreational use. And yes, I occasionally smoke but mostly use it medicinally (great for migraines)
Many of my friend’s sons were the ones who died. Very sad.
Oh, and I do not like the pendulum effect of the codeine craziness. It’s too bad that Perdue Pharma’s greed caused that. There are times that hydrocodone is certainly needed.
I feel like your research is faulty and prejudiced. My life has been changed for the better by having marijuana for medical reasons. In a day where Hydrocodone cannot be prescribed but extreme pain exists, it's a godsend. Plus it's more natural. You say that marijuana makes people "slow, stupid, and lazy". This is just rude and generalized. I'm not slow, stupid, or lazy. I resent you implying that because I take marijuana for the pain I fit into your group.
I appreciate seeing another person's point of view, but this article is just plain bashing. I'm no snowflake, I can take opposite opinions. I think you should take some time to see how much it helps people too before completely condemning marijuana use.
P.S. I also don't like the smell, or the taste, but prefer it over the pain.
I'm with Paddy O'Furniture (first commenter,) i.e. I am 74, have used weed since I was 16, and do not regret it one bit. Obviously, there are plenty of users who have had adverse experiences, but that's true for nearly any substance we ingest, from mother's milk onward. With such a large number of users in existence, all legalization does is to decriminalize possession and use. Countless lives have been totally ruined by the legal system and social ostracism, far more, in my estimation, than have ever been ruined by use of marijuana. Prohibition of alcohol was the classic example of how making a substance that people are going to use anyway into a society-wide disaster is the inevitable result of government interference into natural patterns of human behavior. Keeping weed illegal was doing the same thing until the authorities recently figured out that they're fighting a losing battle with nothing good to show for it. Even if we grant that it's probably not optimally healthful to smoke ANY substance, the simple fact is that people have been doing so for millennia, and are most unlikely to cease for any reason. Such is the nature of freedom of choice. Governments need to butt out of individuals' choices as to what they ingest, and so should do-gooders who want to control every aspect of other people's lives. TL/DR: Leave us the hell alone. Go on and do what you want to do; that's probably what you're going to do anyway, and you should be able to do so in peace as long as it's not hurting someone else.
In my humble opinion, there's a big leap from "a bad idea" to "should be illegal". I have never used marijuana and I have no intention of ever using marijuana. Yes, it's bad for your health. But if some people consider the benefits worth the harm, who am I to say no?
Where I DO have a problem is when people get taxpayer-subsidized medical care for problems caused by marijuana smoking. If you want to do it, any costs should be entirely on you. If you enjoy getting high, okay. But *I* didn't get high, so why should I have to pay for your high?
Thanks for the perspective and for risking all the haters, as people get so defensive about their weed use, and probably the people addicted but in denial are the most defensive! However, the IQ information you gave isn't the full picture. Here's a quote from the paper I read for my post on 4/20 this year:
"Meier et al. (2018) report a longitudinal co-twin control study that showed no significant association between adolescent cannabis use and neuropsychological decline, and instead suggest social and environmental factors as explanations for poor executive function among cannabis users. This study was particularly insightful because of a large sample size (n = 1989) and IQ assessments prior to the onset of cannabis use (IQ obtained at age 5, 12, and 18). It demonstrated that adolescents who used cannabis had a lower childhood IQ and a lower IQ at 18 than non-users, but that there was no decline in IQ from pre- to post-cannabis use (Meier et al. 2018). These results are in line with another co-twin longitudinal study that investigated two large cohorts of twins and found no significant difference in IQ change over time between twins discordant for cannabis use (Jackson et al. 2016). However, lower baseline IQ was associated with adolescent cannabis use suggesting that social and environmental factors influence an adolescent’s subsequent cannabis use (Jackson et al. 2016). Together, these studies suggest that lower IQ may be a risk factor for cannabis abuse rather than the use of cannabis resulting in neuropsychological decline. "
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11481-018-9782-9
A lot of the other research you quote is based on correlations, which do not imply causation. I'm not arguing that pot is harmless, just that research based on correlations cannot be used to draw causal conclusions without extra statistical care, such as that used for showing that smoking causes lung cancer, which I think has such a strong effect size that it was easy to draw the conclusion. Cigarette smokers are several times more likely to get lung cancer than non-smokers, so that large of an effect size it is easier to draw conclusions from, but most of the time in papers when they quote "statistically significant results" they actually have a tiny effect size and it's hard to control for all the different variables involved without careful, unbiased research.
I'm not sure whether legalization is right or wrong, it's a complex issue, but in my case it led to an accessible supply and an eventual addiction that I have been struggling to beat for 5 years, with varied success. I just loved using it so much, it really gives my brain what it craves, but it's not good for me to be using it as much as I will if I let myself have any. I probably would have been one of the haters, getting all defensive about it, back before I started to realize my use had become problematic. I'm now 57 days sober and I plan for this to be the last time, as I decided for myself, based on the research, that I don't want to put marijuana into my system and risk my brain any further, even if I could use it moderately, which I know I can't anyways because of my history of addiction.
My Substack is about my journey to sobriety from weed, if you're interested in my perspective. There's also a podcast called "My Last Joint" full of stories of people beating their marijuana addictions. Anyone who says marijuana isn't addictive is not up to date on the modern research of the effects of THC on the brain. I was taught it wasn't physically addictive in high school, but I was also taught that the runner's high is endorphins. It's actually Anandamide, an endocannabinoid that we hadn't discovered yet at the time, that binds to our CB1 receptors that are located all over the body, but very much in the brain. It causes the CB1 receptor expression to go down, and for the signaling pathway's activation to also be decreased, due to your brain trying to reach homeostasis in the CB1 pathway. That's a physical addiction in the brain, requiring more THC to cause the same effects over time.
We are talking about decriminalizing pot so people don't go to jail because they smoked a joint. People who deal a pound of pot will still go to jail.
Contrary to what you wrote about alcohol and cigarettes have been around longer than marijuana, indigenous populations have been using marijuana for 1000’s of years. It has passed the test of time.
You cannot tell me he isn't on some sort or performance enhancer with his physique. I feel like that likely plays a role over the marijuana
Regardless of any effects of ingesting a substance (alcohol, weed, cocaine, etc), it is NOT the government's responsibility to care for our personal health lives. If someone wants to ingest a substance and face their consequences, they have the natural God-given right to do that. Solely on principle I think people should be free to ingest whatever they want to, even if it kills them. The laws against these things are stupid because it's the gov't trying to "parent" the citizens, which is literally patronizing and condescending. That's not the government's job. That's the sort of thinking that led to mask and vaccine mandates. The government needs to get out of our personal health lives.
The comment section surprises me. I tend to agree though, simply making something illegal because some people are more susceptible to harmful effects and can't handle the usage doesn't necessarily change that it won't continue to happen, but it will ensure otherwise harmless people are given criminal records, and i don't want my tax dollars paying to feed someone in prison just cause they had a pound of weed on them. Pots been easily and widely available for decades, i've been out of high school for almost 13 years and even in my state before we had medical marijuana it was just a phone call away all the time. I do think the level that pot is advertised, and the sheer number of cannabis companies that have exploded throughout legalized states are actually harmful to society in a way. Hard to articulate why i feel that way despite being a semi-regular smoker myself.
The THC being "x% stronger than it was 10 years ago" trope has been used for literally almost a century now ever since cannabis was made illegal (seriously look it up, if you go by the numbers claimed in the media since back in even the 1930's to now, marijuana is somewhere like 10000 times more potent than it was back then). So that one I'll disagree with wholeheartedly.
That being said, I have multiple friends who are regular users and its true. there are some that can't handle it, have to smoke it all the time, etc. I have a friend who smokes almost every day, but literally only takes a few drags off his pipe and doesn't have anymore after that. Its not a cut and dry scenario
I think an interesting (and more political) topic on the effects of marijuana legalization lies in how it's affected the influx of other drugs into our country. The cartels used to move alot of pot into the us before legalization, once that happened, the market prices went down so much they couldn't compete. So they diversify, and now we're seeing a huge influx of much more dangerous drugs like fentanyl, cocaine, etc. coming across the border. Ironically i believe the pro-weed camp was saying that legalization would help curb the opioid crisis by offering an alternative, but i think the opposite effect has taken place, and now the heavier drugs are more widely available.
Some of your reasoning is faulty. While any substance that distorts reality can be dangerous, marijuana is not addictive. Habitual for some yes. There are proven medical uses that should be supported. Yes there are unscrupulous doctors who are money hungry but as many studies show some therapeutic value as those funded by big pharma that claim the opposite. Tobacco is a greater drug problem with heart and lung issues. Edible marijuana is a better choice and should be regulated and used by those over 21 yrs old. Younger than that can slow brain and cognitive development. If you and other conservatives don’t get on board and reschedule it to a III from schedule 1, we are going to lose this country. Wake up and stop spreading half truths and “Reefer Madness” histeria.
Horseshit, pure and simple. I am 70 yrs old, have replaced alcohol with THC, have used THC on and off my entire life beginning around 19-20, and have friends and family who partake as well. Lots of them, and they have lots of friends likewise, and have never seen any issues as described in this article. My entire life.
Like any drug, it's up to the user to be prudent, same as hootch which is best comparison. One learns how to drink, how much, how it affects you, etc. Same here.