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I have a strong worries that our current generation will have a similar huge reckoning with marijuana. We are already seeing studies that show regular marijuan

I have a strong worries that our current generation will have a similar huge reckoning with marijuana. We are already seeing studies that show regular marijuana use is correlated with permanent decreases in intelligence, memory loss, motivation, and mental health. And anecdotally, this seems very apparent in my peer group. And Americans are using copious amounts of the stuff right now, and younger than ever before. I'm not against legalization by any means, or free of my own vices. But the risk in 50 years of people saying "we should have known better" seems really high.

scythe 5y ago
Kids aren't smoking weed when they're eight. Or four, for that matter.
- mark-r 5y ago
  Second-hand smoke?
  - sethammons 5y ago
    I was at my 3rd grader's outdoor field trip and saw a puff of vape come up from a trio of kids. Someone had gotten a small juul cartridge and they were puffing away on it. The dispenser makes it much easier to hide, but it is not a new phenomenon. My mom started smoking cigarettes when she was 10 years old.
  - scythe 5y ago
    I doubt SHS would ever cause the effects described, unless the exposure was truly massive. The complaint about marijuana affecting intelligence re: brain development hinges on the central effects of THC itself, while lung cancer from SHS typically involves DNA damage caused by contaminants in the smoke (ranging in size from nitric oxide to benzopyrene). DNA damage is typically considered with a linear-no-threshold-model[1] because any incident of DNA damage can have long-term effects on cancer risk, but neurotransmitters likely do have a threshold for long-term damage, because the rate of neuronal receptor activation has a natural range of variation, and disturbances within that range are unlikely to cause any kind of long-term effect, because they simulate the natural conditions. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model - I should add that the way we deal with the LNTM in radiation protection is quite similar to the neuron model I just laid out: we look at the natural variation of radiation exposure and don't worry (much) about exposure less than that range.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
The societal risks are the same with additional worse effects for non participants with alcohol and they have been known for a long time. If society is OK with those risks, then I cannot see cannabis being an unacceptable risk in 50 years. Can throw in refined sugar too.
- javert 5y ago
  > The societal risks are the same and additional worse ones with alcohol I don't think this is correct, personally. (I'm pretty sure you'll find studies arguing for both sides, so we can only go on personal wisdom.)
  - adamsmith143 5y ago
    It's not even comparable. You an ignore the fact that far more people use Alcohol regularly, that it has countless other deleterious health affects and just look at pure death rates directly attributable to Alcohol. It's just not even in the same universe. >(I'm pretty sure you'll find studies arguing for both sides, so we can only go on personal wisdom.) This is blatantly false. Find me 1 study that shows definitively that MJ is worse than Alcohol for society.
    - javert 5y ago
      You're being aggressive. Please stop. I wouldn't contest that more people die from alcohol than marajuana. That wasn't the issue under discussion. The issue is, which is worse for society. Part of why I find your comment so aggressive is because you're being very sharp with me, but you don't realize you aren't talking about the same thing. > This is blatantly false. Find me 1 study that shows definitively that MJ is worse than Alcohol for society. Having worked in academia as a researcher, I don't actually believe studies can reliably be understood by anyone other than those who conducted it and their immediate peers in the field. A weaker form of that, which I also agree with, would be, "studies are rarely definitive." But you're asking for a definitive study. That doesn't seem fair. Anyway, it isn't incumbent on me to do the work for you that you are asking me to do.
abcc8 5y ago
It might make more sense to first have a similar reckoning with alcohol. It is a far more dangerous intoxicant and exacts a large toll on individuals and society.
- alex_sf 5y ago
  We can do both.
  - wutbrodo 5y ago
    Can we? Everything I understand about the public tells me otherwise.
    - slothtrop 5y ago
      Interesting to see where the U.S. stands in this list - https://www.abbeycarefoundation.com/alcohol/alcoholism-by-country-statistics/ https://www.abbeycarefoundation.com/alcohol/alcoholism-by-co...
    - coding123 5y ago
      It does seem weird to me that about 5-10% of a grocery store is bottles of alcohol.
      - giobox 5y ago
        Fluids consume large amounts of shelf space by volume regardless of what fluid it is, not much we can do about this, so a large amount of shelf space does not mean a large percentage of the store's total items, in theory. By percentage of total items, it's likely very small for most supermarkets. See also the large amount of shelf space typically required to stock bottled water and soft drinks.
        dTal 5y ago
        The variety of alcohol on offer does seem a tad perverse, in a way that status quo bias renders difficult to perceive. How many brands of bottled water do you usually see? Half a dozen, tops? And much of the volume in that aisle is occupied by huge 16-packs and giant carriers. Meanwhile the average wine aisle has hundreds of different brands, nearly all no more than 75cl, and might even stretch to two aisles in a large supermarket. It dwarfs the available selection of any other category of product. And that's before we get into the bafflingly endless rows of spirits. Is this a healthy relationship with what is, in the final analysis, an intoxicating drug? If there were an aisle in every supermarket with 10 times as much cannabis as you'd currently find in the average dispensary, would we regard that as equally normal?
adamsmith143 5y ago
>We are already seeing studies that show regular marijuana use is correlated with permanent decreases in intelligence When used at very young ages. Important caveat. The other things you mentioned are highly speculative and I typically discount anecdotes as mostly useless.
- legitster 5y ago
  > I typically discount anecdotes as mostly useless This is fair. I mention it because it was only in hindsight that it was so obvious how many smokers were getting emphysema and lung cancer, and that these were not actually common diseases.
  - adamsmith143 5y ago
    Well to be fair vapes and edibles are much more common now and that would greatly reduce those kinds of risks.
JaimeThompson 5y ago
Perhaps if the typical American was paid better and had more hope for the future then less would use such things to escape from reality.
- jshen 5y ago
  It’s more than that. High paid people in very demanding jobs also turn to it and drinking so they can “turn off” work for a bit.
- sonicggg 5y ago
  Of coursr, all the wealthy and successful people absolutely do not partake in recreational drugs.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    You missed "had more hope for the future"
- somenameforme 5y ago
  When saying things like this, I think you should intuitively consider the corollary of your sentence. If people are using drugs to "escape from reality" presumably because have insufficient money to do nicer things, then the implication is that people who have lots of money would use drugs at a substantially lower rate. And so this is pretty easy to test. I did a quick search for 'marijuana use by rate by income' and the first paper that I came upon [1] showed there is indeed quite a strong correlation between substance use and socioeconomic status - in other words, the richer or more privileged individuals were (in terms of coming from wealthy family backgrounds), the more likely they were to use drugs. So unless there is some confounding variable that we may not be considering, it seems fairly easy to reject the hypothesis that people are using drugs because of a lack of money. [1] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3410945/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3410945/
  - JaimeThompson 5y ago
    >t seems fairly easy to reject the hypothesis that people are using drugs because of a lack of money. To most people hope doesn't mean more money, it means a better future. These are not the same.
Tenoke 5y ago
>We are already seeing studies that show regular marijuana use is correlated with permanent decreases in intelligence, memory loss, motivation, and mental health. I can maybe believe it but I am yet to see a convincing Meta-Analysis or at least a large RCT. In general, people seem to recover from a lot of drug usage if they stop for long enough and weed isn't one of the heavy ones. Can you share what studies you are referring to?
- legitster 5y ago
  The study in the linked article found that lead reduced the IQ of exposed Americans 3-6 IQ points. A New Zealand study found that persistent cannabis users had a 6-8 point decline, even if they had given up cannabis: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1206820109 https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1206820109 Here's a meta review that found a 2 IQ point drop across a wider range of usage types: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/intelligence-quotient-decline-following-frequent-or-dependent-cannabis-use-in-youth-a-systematic-review-and-metaanalysis-of-longitudinal-studies/26BEC9CBD2A39010C26100278F8CA813 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medici... There's a lot less known about cannabis at this point, but what we know so far isn't very positive.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    That's not actually what the study found. Further, cessation of cannabis use did not fully restore neuropsychological functioning *among adolescent-onset cannabis users*. They did not find a 6-8 point decline for folks who gave up cannabis if they started later in life. In fact they found no decline in IQ whatsoever for folks who started later in life - both when using it and after stopping. In contrast, within-person IQ decline was not apparent among adult-onset persistent cannabis users who used cannabis infrequently (median use = 6 d) or frequently (median use = 365 d) in the year before testing. > There's a lot less known about cannabis at this point, but what we know so far isn't very positive. ... for adolescents. Both your studies only show impact in youth.
    - staticassertion 5y ago
fkfkno 5y ago
>I have a strong worries that our current generation will have a similar huge reckoning with marijuana. I think "Cannabis" is the prefered term nowadays. The word "Marijuana" has negative cultural connotations which we would do well to escape when discussing this issue. The problem is that the research into the risks of exposure to both of these substances was/is not exactly at the top of the list due to various factors. That said, I'd take my chances with a bong over a car exhaust *or drinking water pipe. At least you have some choice over what goes into (and, consequently comes out) of the former.
- deleted 5y ago
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manuelabeledo 5y ago
> I have a strong worries that our current generation will have a similar huge reckoning with marijuana. There might be such a reckoning, just not at the same level or with the same impact. Water is simply a necessity, and marijuana is not. Quite literally 100% of Americans ingest water in some capacity and/or means. Also, brain development delay and interference, caused by contaminated water, would be present in children, who are not, by default, marijuana users.
- deepsquirrelnet 5y ago
  Cannabis will probably never be legalized for children, outside of some extreme medical conditions -- or CBD, which is not psychoactive. It is clear that THC is not good for a developing brain. It is also likely that cannabis is generally less harmful than alcohol or even acetaminophen, and unlike those, considered fairly non-toxic. Consider that cannabis metabolites can be detected in your body for up to a month after consumption. It's apparently not that high of a priority for your body to purge it. Cannabis does not need to be combusted. The resins will readily vaporize at temperatures well below the point at which the plant matter actually burns. I no longer consume alcohol, but occasionally consume cannabis. My personal decision comes from a lot of experience with both, the way my body feels after consuming them, and studied risks associated with each. I exercise responsible moderation in my consumption and strongly believe that cannabis is the safer choice. This conversation is more about the extent to which we need to protect adults from their own adult decisions, and/or protect the antiquated and partially racist underpinnings behind how and why cannabis was initially made illegal. To that end, I'm not sure it bears much, if any, similarity to lead exposure.
woodruffw 5y ago
I agree with some of this in the abstract, but I think it's worth noting that "regular use" in academic studies of marijuana usually entails dosing lab animals with quantities that a human being couldn't physically consume, or surveying the (much smaller) population of people with psychological addictions to marijuana. OTOH, and this is anecdotal, I worry about how potent a lot of "normal" marijuana has become and how rapidly we've normalized high-dose delivery mechanisms for it (like waxes and tinctures). It's hard to predict the future given how "primitive" marijuana consumption used to be, in contrast.
- Scalestein 5y ago
  I agree 100% with the potency concerns. Many of the studies showing negative impact were using standards like "10 joints a day" which was easy to dismiss as that was an unreasonable amount of weed for most people. Now with wax, tinctures and 20%+ THC strains becoming the normal it seems really easy for many people to be hitting those previously unrealistic dosages.
  - version_five 5y ago
    I'm curious, because I have not heard of wax or tinctures, do you think those are things that more people will use, vs people who would have used some hard drugs anyway? What I mean is, there will always be some hard drug users, now from the discussion I understand some "hard" THC products exist, will this result in any kind of demographic change like the OP worried about, or is it just a new drug of abuse? Just because these things exist, I don't think it automatically follows that they will get used by most people, or even more people than would have found some other destructive thing to do in their absence
    - schrectacular 5y ago
      They are very common - "vape cartridges" are the preferred intake mechanism for a lot of people because it's much more discrete (almost no smell, can pass for normal vaping) and convenient (small size). And those cartridges can be upwards of 90% THC.
s_dev 5y ago
> But the risk in 50 years of people saying "we should have known better" seems really high. Is there any evidence this happens with alcohol and if there is what was societies response? I suspect it alcohol does similar damage and we tolerate it due to the perceived benefits.
WhompingWindows 5y ago
Marijuana needs to be reclassified off of Schedule I Status in the USA, so it can be more thoroughly studied. Schedule I category shouldn't include recreational drugs like marijuana, which has no overdose possibility and has limited withdrawal side-effects. This wrong classification, going back to ignorant viewpoints of the early-mid 1900's, has heavily limited our scientific understanding of marijuana's effects on health and society. Imagine if we weren't allowed to study alcohol freely, if we had to jump through a dozen hoops to become qualified to do one of the few alcohol studies. We might not have so much knowledge about alcohol's toxic effects, and we might not have the current picture of "Marijuana is slightly healthier than alcohol" if Marijuana had been as thoroughly studied.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  > This wrong classification, going back to ignorant viewpoints of the early-mid 1900's It "goes back" to Nixon needing a tool to criminalize the anti-war and racial justice movement. https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-rich... By the time Nixon came out with that policy, multiple commissions around the world had concluded that pot was largely harmless and should be decriminalized. People in his own administration - who he ordered to come up with a "damn strong statement" - concluded the same, infuriating him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_policy_of_the_Richard_Nixon_administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_policy_of_the_Richard... Reagan, however, was the one who really ratcheted up the criminalization aspect: https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs
  - noasaservice 5y ago
    The anti-cannabis groups started in the 1930's with Hearst and loads of yellow journalism quote from https://gizmodo.com/anti-marijuana-laws-were-based-on-racism-not-science-1500321449 https://gizmodo.com/anti-marijuana-laws-were-based-on-racism... : ----------------- Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (an early predecessor of the DEA), was one of the driving forces behind pot prohibition. He pushed it for explicitly racist reasons, saying, "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men," and: "There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others." The main reason to prohibit marijuana, he said was "its effect on the degenerate races." (And god forbid women should sleep with entertainers!) ----------------- That tells me all I need to know about this whole situation. We would rightfully cancel/hold accountable someone saying that now. Why aren't we viewing the laws in the same light in which they were made?
deleted 5y ago
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axiosgunnar 5y ago
Interesting. What about porn abuse?
- deleted 5y ago
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- quercetumMons 5y ago
  Overblown.
BobbyJo 5y ago
>I have a strong worries that our current generation will have a similar huge reckoning with marijuana. > But the risk in 50 years of people saying "we should have known better" seems really high The problem with lead was that it was everywhere. Walls, gas, water, air. As long as society chose to use, we all had to ingest it. That's not so much the case with narcotics. I wouldn't expect anymore of a reckoning with MJ as there has been with alcohol.
- dr_dshiv 5y ago
  MJ definitely increases aspects of my intelligence. Said no one ever about lead.
WinterMount223 5y ago
Exposure to marijuana and marijuana derivatives is optional. Exposure to lead is almost never optional.
- _-david-_ 5y ago
  Second hand smoke is not optional. It is the same reason we banned smoking in various buildings.
  - fkfkno 5y ago
    True, but this was for tobacco, and the ban was mainly to protect non-smoking workers (and more recently the patrons) in restaurants and bars who started suffering with long term health complications usually attributed to smokers. The lawsuits would have crippled the industry, so the change was largely financial in nature, such is the basis of most public health legislation. https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2013/08/01/secondhand-smoke-in-bars-and-restaurants-means-higher-risk-of-asthma-and-cancer/ https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2013/08/01/secondhand-smoke-in-ba... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29870518/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29870518/ For controls on residential buildings, we would need better standards in shared housing construction and perhaps also we could take a look at better airflow and particulate filtration methods. I expect it will be some time (and perhaps another airborne pandemic?) for that to be addressed seriously.
deutschew 5y ago
As a long time marijuana user I am leaning towards that view and I've ceased using it but largely "permanent" is wrong and its the same thinking that lead to war on drugs. In large doses, it can bring about negative effects especially in people with ADD but the bad parts are almost always gone after cessation. I don't think it It's that when you are in your teens and you start smoking marijuana, the risk is big but I see many grey markets happy to sell you marijuana to people still going to high school. I find both sides obnoxious, the Singaporeanesque fear mongering about "permanent damages" based on curated and manipulated data and the Western panacea attitude that it be used for everything. Trying to tie lead exposure to marijuana is just asinine.
- antattack 5y ago
  Smoking (anything) is bad for your lungs, throat too.
  - mrits 5y ago
    Not a huge problem when we die from diabetes or heart disease first.
    - staticassertion 5y ago
      Something being bad for your lungs is presumably going to be very bad for your heart.
      - fkfkno 5y ago
        Marshmallow leaf is often used as an alternative for those seeking to quit tobacco, and does have known health benefits: https://www.real-leaf.com/blogs/realleaf-blog/smoking-marshmallow-plant-root-leaf-benefits https://www.real-leaf.com/blogs/realleaf-blog/smoking-marshm... Although certainly any combusted plant will produce tar, and this is well known to cause pulmonary issues which will indeed place more stress upon the heart.
  - bitxbitxbitcoin 5y ago
sandworm101 5y ago
>> But the risk in 50 years of people saying "we should have known better" seems really high. Well, we are just about 100 years after alcohol was legalized. We have lots of data on how horrible it is for out bodies, how many accidents and premature deaths it causes. But I hear absolutely nobody in North America talking about curtailing alcohol in any way. (The UK medical bodies have spoken out against alcohol use in recent years.) In fact I see advertisements for alcohol virtually everywhere. So no, I do not believe we will have a reckoning in 50 years about pot.
- serjester 5y ago
  Anecdotally I know a good amount people that now smoke all day, every day now that we work from home. At least among the people I know, there's no stigma - they tell me it "helps them think". I don't think this is the case with alcohol without a lot of people calling you out for having a "drinking problem".
  - BakeInBeens 5y ago
    Consuming cannabis everyday all day will also results in dramatically less consequences in your life than consuming alcohol the same way. The abuse factor of cannabis is really low all things considered and gets even lower if you avoid smoking.
rubyn00bie 5y ago
You’re really not telling the story correctly based on evidence you linked below, to quote: > Fig. 3 shows that, among adolescent-onset persistentcannabis users, within-person IQ decline was apparent regardlessof whether cannabis was used infrequently (median use = 14 d)or frequently (median use = 365 d) in the year before testing. Incontrast, within-person IQ decline was not apparent amongadult-onset persistent cannabis users who used cannabis in-frequently (median use = 6 d) or frequently (median use = 365 d)in the year before testing. So more specifically smoking weed while your brain is developing seems to be correlated to a decline in IQ later in life. While those who start smoking, even copious amounts, as adults don’t have a permanent decline. I am cannot find reference to support your claim that people are consuming it younger than before. If you’re going to cite studies, you could at least represent the findings honestly. Also, it’s pretty apparent you’re trying to sell a narrative to others to induce fear of marijuana… this is a post about lead poisoning after all. Quite the leap, IMHO, to compare it marijuana use… The paper you linked below and incorrectly summarized for anyone curious: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1206820109 https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1206820109
markus_zhang 5y ago
Unless it clearly provides any medium to long term benefit I guess I'm going to avoid it. Plus it is expensive. Same for alcohol amd cigarette, I avoid them as much as I can. The only thing I need is caffeine but I'm tricking myself by drinking decaffeinated most of the time. I hope one day I can remove that too.
shagmin 5y ago
According to [0] peak marijuana usage was in the 70s. I don't think with a smaller/more stable subset of the population partaking there's going to be many more people saying "we should have known better" than there currently are. https://www.mlive.com/resizer/G7WZuDwdu5D2eCujzIi_RYGWYkc=/700x0/smart/advancelocal-adapter-image-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/expo.advance.net/img/86f966e7a2/width2048/84b_teen.jpeg https://www.mlive.com/resizer/G7WZuDwdu5D2eCujzIi_RYGWYkc=/7...
- zelon88 5y ago
  I wasn't there in the 70s, but from what I understand potency of the 70s wasn't nearly what it is today. I have no source for this, but I've been in countless circles with long time smokers who all correlate the same story; that modern day mids was literally the best quality Marijuana you could find in the 70s. So that's probably about 10% THC compared to 30% THC which is not uncommon today.
  - nickpp 5y ago
    If it’s a matter of dosage then who knows how many joints they smoked in the 70s vs how many hits today?
  - teaearlgraycold 5y ago
    I don't smoke cannabis nearly as much as I used to. When I was a daily user it didn't have any intellectual effects so much as emotional ones. I would have been baseline mildly depressed and weed made it so much worse. That's not going to be a surprise to any objective observer. When I do have it today I make sure to seek out the weakest stuff I can. It's annoying that you might just have one option below 15%. Of course edibles are a far superior option in legal states. Easy dosage and no damage to your lungs. I'd also suspect that the milder (but longer) highs are easier on the brain.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    When you smoke with people these days, they only take a couple of hits. In the 90s when we smoked it was joint after joint after joint. It's basically the cigarette filter thing; people know where they want to get, and they'll keep going until they get there, no matter how weak you make it. Which is what made filtered cigarettes worse for your lungs than unfiltered ones. The calculus would be different if you were talking about edibles, because they actually sneak up on and can surprise you.
ipaddr 5y ago
I worry more about the covid vaccines
rayiner 5y ago
I’m against legalization. I thought it was just going to be a humane alternative to putting people in jail. But instead we’ve just broken down the social norm against drug use. Parts of DC now smell strongly of weed during the middle of the day.
- mandmandam 5y ago
  Is that your strongest argument? A smell? If anything broke down the social norm against drug use it was the heroin and opioid epidemics.. Which started shortly after Afghanistan. Probably the trillions of dollars pumped into feeding terrorism instead of going on free school lunches and the like pushed people into drug use as well. Seriously, I don't know how people can miss the mark this far. Yet apparently many in DC do, and it's getting REAL OLD.
- throwaway7033 5y ago
  Be thankful it's just marijuana; here in Seattle, we're so enlightened that addicts using fentanyl and meth on buses (https://komonews.com/news/local/king-county-metro-drivers-frustrated-with-drug-use-harassment-on-buses)is https://komonews.com/news/local/king-county-metro-drivers-fr... a big issue.
eloff 5y ago
To be fair there are also studies showing alcohol has similar effects on the brain. I saw one just yesterday: "A large study of more than 36,000 high-quality MRI brain scans has found that drinking four units of alcohol a day – two beers, or two glasses of wine – causes structural damage and brain volume loss equivalent to 10 years of aging." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28735-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28735-5 I always said I would never smoke marijuana because my brain is my biggest asset and I wouldn't want to do anything to decrease its value to me. Now it looks like I need to take a good hard look at my alcohol consumption. I just can't square it with my values anymore.
- jl6 5y ago
  I don’t think it should come as a massive surprise to anyone that alcohol isn’t exactly good for you.
  - eloff 5y ago
    You'd be surprised. I don't know many people who understand it's actually a carcinogen. And I was unaware it's doing permanent damage to my brain. It's just so ingrained in society, many don't even question it at all. But it's one of the more dangerous drugs. It destroys a lot of lives.
rdiddly 5y ago
I see your point, but just want to draw a line between something you ingest willingly that affects only you, and something foisted semi-secretly on the entire public by a special interest (basically to make cars and/or fuel more marketable) despite their knowing, almost from the beginning, how toxic it was. (One of many great examples of humans using technology because they can, without giving due consideration to whether they should.) I would rather the law protected me from the actions of others, and let me be the one to worry about what I do to myself. [Edit: Which isn't to say there couldn't be a very persuasive weed marketing campaign or something, that influences people to use it and hides the negative effects. Just as there was a campaign to squelch public debate about the negative effects of tetraethyl lead. Nonetheless, being able to individually decide to reject inhaling lead, like you can with pot, would've been a welcome privilege.] Not sure what "current" generation means, by the way. I'm currently alive, and currently, I'm in the same generation I've always been in. (I'm not mad, just teasing you a bit.)
slg 5y ago
>I have a strong worries that our current generation will have a similar huge reckoning with... I thought that sentence was going to end with "Covid".[1] Research was just published yesterday which indicates that even mild cases have resulted in damage to the brain. Meanwhile, over the last few months we have just accepted that everyone is going to get it eventually. Who knows what the long term impact will be of us all giving ourselves a little brain damage? EDIT: It is funny that the HN community's commitment to moving on from the pandemic has gotten to the point in which linking to research that suggests maybe getting Covid is bad is downvoted. [1] - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04569-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04569-5
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- deleted 5y ago
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jimbob45 5y ago
It seems like the biggest and most present problem with marijuana is that most don't understand that smoking marijuana is just as bad as smoking cigarettes[0]. Of course, that's obvious - smoking anything, even herbal theater cigarettes, are extremely bad for your health[1]. However, after years and years of the pro-marijuana lobby claiming that marijuana has no negative side effects and can't kill you, it would make sense if teens today were confused by the logical contradictions. Until we transition over to non-smoking marijuana consumption, I don't see an easy for the anti-marijuana lobby to make any claim about marijuana that the pro lobby wouldn't be able to refute by simply pointing to the smoke as the root problem. I agree that the reckoning will come but it will come in the form of anti-smoking ads (in favor of edibles or whatever else) rather than anti-marijuana ads. [0]https://www.lung.org/quit-smoking/smoking-facts/health-effects/marijuana-and-lung-health https://www.lung.org/quit-smoking/smoking-facts/health-effec... [1]https://www.everydayhealth.com/stop-smoking/herbal-and-natural-cigarettes.aspx https://www.everydayhealth.com/stop-smoking/herbal-and-natur...
- mahogany 5y ago
  > It seems like the biggest and most present problem with marijuana is that most don't understand that smoking marijuana is just as bad as smoking cigarettes[0]. Where in that article does it say that smoking marijuana is just as bad as smoking cigarettes? Marijuana smoke is not good for the lungs and it contains carcinogens, but that doesn't mean it's as bad as tobacco. For example, another source[0] says: "Whether smoking marijuana causes lung cancer, as cigarette smoking does, remains an open question." [0] https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/what-are-marijuanas-effects-lung-health https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana...
erosenbe0 5y ago
Way bigger problem of super obese food-addict children who don't even have a chance to play normally and develop self-efficacy. High predictor of depression later on.

scythe 5y ago

Kids aren't smoking weed when they're eight. Or four, for that matter.

mark-r 5y ago
Second-hand smoke?
- sethammons 5y ago
  I was at my 3rd grader's outdoor field trip and saw a puff of vape come up from a trio of kids. Someone had gotten a small juul cartridge and they were puffing away on it. The dispenser makes it much easier to hide, but it is not a new phenomenon. My mom started smoking cigarettes when she was 10 years old.
- scythe 5y ago
  I doubt SHS would ever cause the effects described, unless the exposure was truly massive. The complaint about marijuana affecting intelligence re: brain development hinges on the central effects of THC itself, while lung cancer from SHS typically involves DNA damage caused by contaminants in the smoke (ranging in size from nitric oxide to benzopyrene). DNA damage is typically considered with a linear-no-threshold-model[1] because any incident of DNA damage can have long-term effects on cancer risk, but neurotransmitters likely do have a threshold for long-term damage, because the rate of neuronal receptor activation has a natural range of variation, and disturbances within that range are unlikely to cause any kind of long-term effect, because they simulate the natural conditions. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model - I should add that the way we deal with the LNTM in radiation protection is quite similar to the neuron model I just laid out: we look at the natural variation of radiation exposure and don't worry (much) about exposure less than that range.

lotsofpulp 5y ago

The societal risks are the same with additional worse effects for non participants with alcohol and they have been known for a long time. If society is OK with those risks, then I cannot see cannabis being an unacceptable risk in 50 years. Can throw in refined sugar too.

javert 5y ago
> The societal risks are the same and additional worse ones with alcohol I don't think this is correct, personally. (I'm pretty sure you'll find studies arguing for both sides, so we can only go on personal wisdom.)
- adamsmith143 5y ago
  It's not even comparable. You an ignore the fact that far more people use Alcohol regularly, that it has countless other deleterious health affects and just look at pure death rates directly attributable to Alcohol. It's just not even in the same universe. >(I'm pretty sure you'll find studies arguing for both sides, so we can only go on personal wisdom.) This is blatantly false. Find me 1 study that shows definitively that MJ is worse than Alcohol for society.
  - javert 5y ago
    You're being aggressive. Please stop. I wouldn't contest that more people die from alcohol than marajuana. That wasn't the issue under discussion. The issue is, which is worse for society. Part of why I find your comment so aggressive is because you're being very sharp with me, but you don't realize you aren't talking about the same thing. > This is blatantly false. Find me 1 study that shows definitively that MJ is worse than Alcohol for society. Having worked in academia as a researcher, I don't actually believe studies can reliably be understood by anyone other than those who conducted it and their immediate peers in the field. A weaker form of that, which I also agree with, would be, "studies are rarely definitive." But you're asking for a definitive study. That doesn't seem fair. Anyway, it isn't incumbent on me to do the work for you that you are asking me to do.

abcc8 5y ago

It might make more sense to first have a similar reckoning with alcohol. It is a far more dangerous intoxicant and exacts a large toll on individuals and society.

alex_sf 5y ago
We can do both.
- wutbrodo 5y ago
  Can we? Everything I understand about the public tells me otherwise.
  - slothtrop 5y ago
    Interesting to see where the U.S. stands in this list - https://www.abbeycarefoundation.com/alcohol/alcoholism-by-country-statistics/ https://www.abbeycarefoundation.com/alcohol/alcoholism-by-co...
  - coding123 5y ago
    It does seem weird to me that about 5-10% of a grocery store is bottles of alcohol.
    - giobox 5y ago
      Fluids consume large amounts of shelf space by volume regardless of what fluid it is, not much we can do about this, so a large amount of shelf space does not mean a large percentage of the store's total items, in theory. By percentage of total items, it's likely very small for most supermarkets. See also the large amount of shelf space typically required to stock bottled water and soft drinks.
      - dTal 5y ago
        The variety of alcohol on offer does seem a tad perverse, in a way that status quo bias renders difficult to perceive. How many brands of bottled water do you usually see? Half a dozen, tops? And much of the volume in that aisle is occupied by huge 16-packs and giant carriers. Meanwhile the average wine aisle has hundreds of different brands, nearly all no more than 75cl, and might even stretch to two aisles in a large supermarket. It dwarfs the available selection of any other category of product. And that's before we get into the bafflingly endless rows of spirits. Is this a healthy relationship with what is, in the final analysis, an intoxicating drug? If there were an aisle in every supermarket with 10 times as much cannabis as you'd currently find in the average dispensary, would we regard that as equally normal?

adamsmith143 5y ago

>We are already seeing studies that show regular marijuana use is correlated with permanent decreases in intelligence When used at very young ages. Important caveat. The other things you mentioned are highly speculative and I typically discount anecdotes as mostly useless.

legitster 5y ago
> I typically discount anecdotes as mostly useless This is fair. I mention it because it was only in hindsight that it was so obvious how many smokers were getting emphysema and lung cancer, and that these were not actually common diseases.
- adamsmith143 5y ago
  Well to be fair vapes and edibles are much more common now and that would greatly reduce those kinds of risks.

JaimeThompson 5y ago

Perhaps if the typical American was paid better and had more hope for the future then less would use such things to escape from reality.

jshen 5y ago
It’s more than that. High paid people in very demanding jobs also turn to it and drinking so they can “turn off” work for a bit.
sonicggg 5y ago
Of coursr, all the wealthy and successful people absolutely do not partake in recreational drugs.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  You missed "had more hope for the future"
somenameforme 5y ago
When saying things like this, I think you should intuitively consider the corollary of your sentence. If people are using drugs to "escape from reality" presumably because have insufficient money to do nicer things, then the implication is that people who have lots of money would use drugs at a substantially lower rate. And so this is pretty easy to test. I did a quick search for 'marijuana use by rate by income' and the first paper that I came upon [1] showed there is indeed quite a strong correlation between substance use and socioeconomic status - in other words, the richer or more privileged individuals were (in terms of coming from wealthy family backgrounds), the more likely they were to use drugs. So unless there is some confounding variable that we may not be considering, it seems fairly easy to reject the hypothesis that people are using drugs because of a lack of money. [1] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3410945/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3410945/
- JaimeThompson 5y ago
  >t seems fairly easy to reject the hypothesis that people are using drugs because of a lack of money. To most people hope doesn't mean more money, it means a better future. These are not the same.

Tenoke 5y ago

>We are already seeing studies that show regular marijuana use is correlated with permanent decreases in intelligence, memory loss, motivation, and mental health. I can maybe believe it but I am yet to see a convincing Meta-Analysis or at least a large RCT. In general, people seem to recover from a lot of drug usage if they stop for long enough and weed isn't one of the heavy ones. Can you share what studies you are referring to?

legitster 5y ago
The study in the linked article found that lead reduced the IQ of exposed Americans 3-6 IQ points. A New Zealand study found that persistent cannabis users had a 6-8 point decline, even if they had given up cannabis: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1206820109 https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1206820109 Here's a meta review that found a 2 IQ point drop across a wider range of usage types: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/intelligence-quotient-decline-following-frequent-or-dependent-cannabis-use-in-youth-a-systematic-review-and-metaanalysis-of-longitudinal-studies/26BEC9CBD2A39010C26100278F8CA813 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medici... There's a lot less known about cannabis at this point, but what we know so far isn't very positive.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  That's not actually what the study found. Further, cessation of cannabis use did not fully restore neuropsychological functioning *among adolescent-onset cannabis users*. They did not find a 6-8 point decline for folks who gave up cannabis if they started later in life. In fact they found no decline in IQ whatsoever for folks who started later in life - both when using it and after stopping. In contrast, within-person IQ decline was not apparent among adult-onset persistent cannabis users who used cannabis infrequently (median use = 6 d) or frequently (median use = 365 d) in the year before testing. > There's a lot less known about cannabis at this point, but what we know so far isn't very positive. ... for adolescents. Both your studies only show impact in youth.
  - staticassertion 5y ago

fkfkno 5y ago

>I have a strong worries that our current generation will have a similar huge reckoning with marijuana. I think "Cannabis" is the prefered term nowadays. The word "Marijuana" has negative cultural connotations which we would do well to escape when discussing this issue. The problem is that the research into the risks of exposure to both of these substances was/is not exactly at the top of the list due to various factors. That said, I'd take my chances with a bong over a car exhaust *or drinking water pipe. At least you have some choice over what goes into (and, consequently comes out) of the former.

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manuelabeledo 5y ago

> I have a strong worries that our current generation will have a similar huge reckoning with marijuana. There might be such a reckoning, just not at the same level or with the same impact. Water is simply a necessity, and marijuana is not. Quite literally 100% of Americans ingest water in some capacity and/or means. Also, brain development delay and interference, caused by contaminated water, would be present in children, who are not, by default, marijuana users.

deepsquirrelnet 5y ago
Cannabis will probably never be legalized for children, outside of some extreme medical conditions -- or CBD, which is not psychoactive. It is clear that THC is not good for a developing brain. It is also likely that cannabis is generally less harmful than alcohol or even acetaminophen, and unlike those, considered fairly non-toxic. Consider that cannabis metabolites can be detected in your body for up to a month after consumption. It's apparently not that high of a priority for your body to purge it. Cannabis does not need to be combusted. The resins will readily vaporize at temperatures well below the point at which the plant matter actually burns. I no longer consume alcohol, but occasionally consume cannabis. My personal decision comes from a lot of experience with both, the way my body feels after consuming them, and studied risks associated with each. I exercise responsible moderation in my consumption and strongly believe that cannabis is the safer choice. This conversation is more about the extent to which we need to protect adults from their own adult decisions, and/or protect the antiquated and partially racist underpinnings behind how and why cannabis was initially made illegal. To that end, I'm not sure it bears much, if any, similarity to lead exposure.

woodruffw 5y ago

I agree with some of this in the abstract, but I think it's worth noting that "regular use" in academic studies of marijuana usually entails dosing lab animals with quantities that a human being couldn't physically consume, or surveying the (much smaller) population of people with psychological addictions to marijuana. OTOH, and this is anecdotal, I worry about how potent a lot of "normal" marijuana has become and how rapidly we've normalized high-dose delivery mechanisms for it (like waxes and tinctures). It's hard to predict the future given how "primitive" marijuana consumption used to be, in contrast.

Scalestein 5y ago
I agree 100% with the potency concerns. Many of the studies showing negative impact were using standards like "10 joints a day" which was easy to dismiss as that was an unreasonable amount of weed for most people. Now with wax, tinctures and 20%+ THC strains becoming the normal it seems really easy for many people to be hitting those previously unrealistic dosages.
- version_five 5y ago
  I'm curious, because I have not heard of wax or tinctures, do you think those are things that more people will use, vs people who would have used some hard drugs anyway? What I mean is, there will always be some hard drug users, now from the discussion I understand some "hard" THC products exist, will this result in any kind of demographic change like the OP worried about, or is it just a new drug of abuse? Just because these things exist, I don't think it automatically follows that they will get used by most people, or even more people than would have found some other destructive thing to do in their absence
  - schrectacular 5y ago
    They are very common - "vape cartridges" are the preferred intake mechanism for a lot of people because it's much more discrete (almost no smell, can pass for normal vaping) and convenient (small size). And those cartridges can be upwards of 90% THC.

s_dev 5y ago

> But the risk in 50 years of people saying "we should have known better" seems really high. Is there any evidence this happens with alcohol and if there is what was societies response? I suspect it alcohol does similar damage and we tolerate it due to the perceived benefits.

WhompingWindows 5y ago

Marijuana needs to be reclassified off of Schedule I Status in the USA, so it can be more thoroughly studied. Schedule I category shouldn't include recreational drugs like marijuana, which has no overdose possibility and has limited withdrawal side-effects. This wrong classification, going back to ignorant viewpoints of the early-mid 1900's, has heavily limited our scientific understanding of marijuana's effects on health and society. Imagine if we weren't allowed to study alcohol freely, if we had to jump through a dozen hoops to become qualified to do one of the few alcohol studies. We might not have so much knowledge about alcohol's toxic effects, and we might not have the current picture of "Marijuana is slightly healthier than alcohol" if Marijuana had been as thoroughly studied.

KennyBlanken 5y ago
> This wrong classification, going back to ignorant viewpoints of the early-mid 1900's It "goes back" to Nixon needing a tool to criminalize the anti-war and racial justice movement. https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-rich... By the time Nixon came out with that policy, multiple commissions around the world had concluded that pot was largely harmless and should be decriminalized. People in his own administration - who he ordered to come up with a "damn strong statement" - concluded the same, infuriating him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_policy_of_the_Richard_Nixon_administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_policy_of_the_Richard... Reagan, however, was the one who really ratcheted up the criminalization aspect: https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs
- noasaservice 5y ago
  The anti-cannabis groups started in the 1930's with Hearst and loads of yellow journalism quote from https://gizmodo.com/anti-marijuana-laws-were-based-on-racism-not-science-1500321449 https://gizmodo.com/anti-marijuana-laws-were-based-on-racism... : ----------------- Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (an early predecessor of the DEA), was one of the driving forces behind pot prohibition. He pushed it for explicitly racist reasons, saying, "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men," and: "There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others." The main reason to prohibit marijuana, he said was "its effect on the degenerate races." (And god forbid women should sleep with entertainers!) ----------------- That tells me all I need to know about this whole situation. We would rightfully cancel/hold accountable someone saying that now. Why aren't we viewing the laws in the same light in which they were made?

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axiosgunnar 5y ago

Interesting. What about porn abuse?

deleted 5y ago
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quercetumMons 5y ago
Overblown.

BobbyJo 5y ago

>I have a strong worries that our current generation will have a similar huge reckoning with marijuana. > But the risk in 50 years of people saying "we should have known better" seems really high The problem with lead was that it was everywhere. Walls, gas, water, air. As long as society chose to use, we all had to ingest it. That's not so much the case with narcotics. I wouldn't expect anymore of a reckoning with MJ as there has been with alcohol.

dr_dshiv 5y ago
MJ definitely increases aspects of my intelligence. Said no one ever about lead.

WinterMount223 5y ago

Exposure to marijuana and marijuana derivatives is optional. Exposure to lead is almost never optional.

_-david-_ 5y ago
Second hand smoke is not optional. It is the same reason we banned smoking in various buildings.
- fkfkno 5y ago
  True, but this was for tobacco, and the ban was mainly to protect non-smoking workers (and more recently the patrons) in restaurants and bars who started suffering with long term health complications usually attributed to smokers. The lawsuits would have crippled the industry, so the change was largely financial in nature, such is the basis of most public health legislation. https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2013/08/01/secondhand-smoke-in-bars-and-restaurants-means-higher-risk-of-asthma-and-cancer/ https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2013/08/01/secondhand-smoke-in-ba... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29870518/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29870518/ For controls on residential buildings, we would need better standards in shared housing construction and perhaps also we could take a look at better airflow and particulate filtration methods. I expect it will be some time (and perhaps another airborne pandemic?) for that to be addressed seriously.

deutschew 5y ago

As a long time marijuana user I am leaning towards that view and I've ceased using it but largely "permanent" is wrong and its the same thinking that lead to war on drugs. In large doses, it can bring about negative effects especially in people with ADD but the bad parts are almost always gone after cessation. I don't think it It's that when you are in your teens and you start smoking marijuana, the risk is big but I see many grey markets happy to sell you marijuana to people still going to high school. I find both sides obnoxious, the Singaporeanesque fear mongering about "permanent damages" based on curated and manipulated data and the Western panacea attitude that it be used for everything. Trying to tie lead exposure to marijuana is just asinine.

antattack 5y ago
Smoking (anything) is bad for your lungs, throat too.
- mrits 5y ago
  Not a huge problem when we die from diabetes or heart disease first.
  - staticassertion 5y ago
    Something being bad for your lungs is presumably going to be very bad for your heart.
    - fkfkno 5y ago
      Marshmallow leaf is often used as an alternative for those seeking to quit tobacco, and does have known health benefits: https://www.real-leaf.com/blogs/realleaf-blog/smoking-marshmallow-plant-root-leaf-benefits https://www.real-leaf.com/blogs/realleaf-blog/smoking-marshm... Although certainly any combusted plant will produce tar, and this is well known to cause pulmonary issues which will indeed place more stress upon the heart.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 5y ago

sandworm101 5y ago

>> But the risk in 50 years of people saying "we should have known better" seems really high. Well, we are just about 100 years after alcohol was legalized. We have lots of data on how horrible it is for out bodies, how many accidents and premature deaths it causes. But I hear absolutely nobody in North America talking about curtailing alcohol in any way. (The UK medical bodies have spoken out against alcohol use in recent years.) In fact I see advertisements for alcohol virtually everywhere. So no, I do not believe we will have a reckoning in 50 years about pot.

serjester 5y ago
Anecdotally I know a good amount people that now smoke all day, every day now that we work from home. At least among the people I know, there's no stigma - they tell me it "helps them think". I don't think this is the case with alcohol without a lot of people calling you out for having a "drinking problem".
- BakeInBeens 5y ago
  Consuming cannabis everyday all day will also results in dramatically less consequences in your life than consuming alcohol the same way. The abuse factor of cannabis is really low all things considered and gets even lower if you avoid smoking.

rubyn00bie 5y ago

You’re really not telling the story correctly based on evidence you linked below, to quote: > Fig. 3 shows that, among adolescent-onset persistentcannabis users, within-person IQ decline was apparent regardlessof whether cannabis was used infrequently (median use = 14 d)or frequently (median use = 365 d) in the year before testing. Incontrast, within-person IQ decline was not apparent amongadult-onset persistent cannabis users who used cannabis in-frequently (median use = 6 d) or frequently (median use = 365 d)in the year before testing. So more specifically smoking weed while your brain is developing seems to be correlated to a decline in IQ later in life. While those who start smoking, even copious amounts, as adults don’t have a permanent decline. I am cannot find reference to support your claim that people are consuming it younger than before. If you’re going to cite studies, you could at least represent the findings honestly. Also, it’s pretty apparent you’re trying to sell a narrative to others to induce fear of marijuana… this is a post about lead poisoning after all. Quite the leap, IMHO, to compare it marijuana use… The paper you linked below and incorrectly summarized for anyone curious: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1206820109 https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1206820109

markus_zhang 5y ago

Unless it clearly provides any medium to long term benefit I guess I'm going to avoid it. Plus it is expensive. Same for alcohol amd cigarette, I avoid them as much as I can. The only thing I need is caffeine but I'm tricking myself by drinking decaffeinated most of the time. I hope one day I can remove that too.

shagmin 5y ago

According to [0] peak marijuana usage was in the 70s. I don't think with a smaller/more stable subset of the population partaking there's going to be many more people saying "we should have known better" than there currently are. https://www.mlive.com/resizer/G7WZuDwdu5D2eCujzIi_RYGWYkc=/700x0/smart/advancelocal-adapter-image-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/expo.advance.net/img/86f966e7a2/width2048/84b_teen.jpeg https://www.mlive.com/resizer/G7WZuDwdu5D2eCujzIi_RYGWYkc=/7...

zelon88 5y ago
I wasn't there in the 70s, but from what I understand potency of the 70s wasn't nearly what it is today. I have no source for this, but I've been in countless circles with long time smokers who all correlate the same story; that modern day mids was literally the best quality Marijuana you could find in the 70s. So that's probably about 10% THC compared to 30% THC which is not uncommon today.
- nickpp 5y ago
  If it’s a matter of dosage then who knows how many joints they smoked in the 70s vs how many hits today?
- teaearlgraycold 5y ago
  I don't smoke cannabis nearly as much as I used to. When I was a daily user it didn't have any intellectual effects so much as emotional ones. I would have been baseline mildly depressed and weed made it so much worse. That's not going to be a surprise to any objective observer. When I do have it today I make sure to seek out the weakest stuff I can. It's annoying that you might just have one option below 15%. Of course edibles are a far superior option in legal states. Easy dosage and no damage to your lungs. I'd also suspect that the milder (but longer) highs are easier on the brain.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  When you smoke with people these days, they only take a couple of hits. In the 90s when we smoked it was joint after joint after joint. It's basically the cigarette filter thing; people know where they want to get, and they'll keep going until they get there, no matter how weak you make it. Which is what made filtered cigarettes worse for your lungs than unfiltered ones. The calculus would be different if you were talking about edibles, because they actually sneak up on and can surprise you.

ipaddr 5y ago

I worry more about the covid vaccines

rayiner 5y ago

I’m against legalization. I thought it was just going to be a humane alternative to putting people in jail. But instead we’ve just broken down the social norm against drug use. Parts of DC now smell strongly of weed during the middle of the day.

mandmandam 5y ago
Is that your strongest argument? A smell? If anything broke down the social norm against drug use it was the heroin and opioid epidemics.. Which started shortly after Afghanistan. Probably the trillions of dollars pumped into feeding terrorism instead of going on free school lunches and the like pushed people into drug use as well. Seriously, I don't know how people can miss the mark this far. Yet apparently many in DC do, and it's getting REAL OLD.
throwaway7033 5y ago
Be thankful it's just marijuana; here in Seattle, we're so enlightened that addicts using fentanyl and meth on buses (https://komonews.com/news/local/king-county-metro-drivers-frustrated-with-drug-use-harassment-on-buses)is https://komonews.com/news/local/king-county-metro-drivers-fr... a big issue.

eloff 5y ago

To be fair there are also studies showing alcohol has similar effects on the brain. I saw one just yesterday: "A large study of more than 36,000 high-quality MRI brain scans has found that drinking four units of alcohol a day – two beers, or two glasses of wine – causes structural damage and brain volume loss equivalent to 10 years of aging." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28735-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28735-5 I always said I would never smoke marijuana because my brain is my biggest asset and I wouldn't want to do anything to decrease its value to me. Now it looks like I need to take a good hard look at my alcohol consumption. I just can't square it with my values anymore.

jl6 5y ago
I don’t think it should come as a massive surprise to anyone that alcohol isn’t exactly good for you.
- eloff 5y ago
  You'd be surprised. I don't know many people who understand it's actually a carcinogen. And I was unaware it's doing permanent damage to my brain. It's just so ingrained in society, many don't even question it at all. But it's one of the more dangerous drugs. It destroys a lot of lives.

rdiddly 5y ago

I see your point, but just want to draw a line between something you ingest willingly that affects only you, and something foisted semi-secretly on the entire public by a special interest (basically to make cars and/or fuel more marketable) despite their knowing, almost from the beginning, how toxic it was. (One of many great examples of humans using technology because they can, without giving due consideration to whether they should.) I would rather the law protected me from the actions of others, and let me be the one to worry about what I do to myself. [Edit: Which isn't to say there couldn't be a very persuasive weed marketing campaign or something, that influences people to use it and hides the negative effects. Just as there was a campaign to squelch public debate about the negative effects of tetraethyl lead. Nonetheless, being able to individually decide to reject inhaling lead, like you can with pot, would've been a welcome privilege.] Not sure what "current" generation means, by the way. I'm currently alive, and currently, I'm in the same generation I've always been in. (I'm not mad, just teasing you a bit.)

slg 5y ago

>I have a strong worries that our current generation will have a similar huge reckoning with... I thought that sentence was going to end with "Covid".[1] Research was just published yesterday which indicates that even mild cases have resulted in damage to the brain. Meanwhile, over the last few months we have just accepted that everyone is going to get it eventually. Who knows what the long term impact will be of us all giving ourselves a little brain damage? EDIT: It is funny that the HN community's commitment to moving on from the pandemic has gotten to the point in which linking to research that suggests maybe getting Covid is bad is downvoted. [1] - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04569-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04569-5

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jimbob45 5y ago

It seems like the biggest and most present problem with marijuana is that most don't understand that smoking marijuana is just as bad as smoking cigarettes[0]. Of course, that's obvious - smoking anything, even herbal theater cigarettes, are extremely bad for your health[1]. However, after years and years of the pro-marijuana lobby claiming that marijuana has no negative side effects and can't kill you, it would make sense if teens today were confused by the logical contradictions. Until we transition over to non-smoking marijuana consumption, I don't see an easy for the anti-marijuana lobby to make any claim about marijuana that the pro lobby wouldn't be able to refute by simply pointing to the smoke as the root problem. I agree that the reckoning will come but it will come in the form of anti-smoking ads (in favor of edibles or whatever else) rather than anti-marijuana ads. [0]https://www.lung.org/quit-smoking/smoking-facts/health-effects/marijuana-and-lung-health https://www.lung.org/quit-smoking/smoking-facts/health-effec... [1]https://www.everydayhealth.com/stop-smoking/herbal-and-natural-cigarettes.aspx https://www.everydayhealth.com/stop-smoking/herbal-and-natur...

mahogany 5y ago
> It seems like the biggest and most present problem with marijuana is that most don't understand that smoking marijuana is just as bad as smoking cigarettes[0]. Where in that article does it say that smoking marijuana is just as bad as smoking cigarettes? Marijuana smoke is not good for the lungs and it contains carcinogens, but that doesn't mean it's as bad as tobacco. For example, another source[0] says: "Whether smoking marijuana causes lung cancer, as cigarette smoking does, remains an open question." [0] https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/what-are-marijuanas-effects-lung-health https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana...

erosenbe0 5y ago

Way bigger problem of super obese food-addict children who don't even have a chance to play normally and develop self-efficacy. High predictor of depression later on.