3 ms·

I am not sure where to start with on this article. There are a lot of extraneous and tired points being trotted out that really clouds the underlying point. Es

I am not sure where to start with on this article. There are a lot of extraneous and tired points being trotted out that really clouds the underlying point. Essentially the point I took is some people could use serious help, and they get laughed at by society and the drug treatment programs they find because their problem is cannabis (and not say meth). I don't think this is a surprise or that profound. Drug treatment in the US has been generally 'jail' (and still is for most drugs, and for cannabis as well in many regions). Actual drug treatment in the US is something of a joke for any substance, whether you are taken seriously or not. Drug treatment programs are expensive, often not covered by health insurance (if you have health insurance), often not effective - and that is the tip of the iceberg. US medicine severely struggles for holistic treatments. Drug addiction treatment needs holistic treatment. For example, detox centers will help a person come down and get over the most intense part of withdrawal. This is super important for alcohol as that withdrawal can kill you. But, this is symptomatic of how US medicine works - treats the chemical and biology, but not the person. Read further on the updated rat-park experiment for why 'treating the person' is so important: https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/what-does-rat-park-teach-us-about-addiction https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/what-does-rat-park-tea... A couple of other notable points I'd like to raise: > “You smell it in the air when you’re sitting at a stoplight,” Courtney said. This made me laugh. Try to quit smoking tobacco... Try to give up alcohol. Both are _everywhere_ On a serious point, giving up any substance can be a real challenge, no matter what it is. > and the potency of the drug has been increased — This is such a boogeyman. Total amount of drug ingested is quantity times potency. Old school people made up the low potency with quantity. What is more though, there always was high potency strains available (just not as prevalent today). Thai sticks, hash oils, they have been around for a long time. So, the high potency stuff has been around, that is not new, and most people compensate for the high potency by ingesting less.

roughly 3y ago
> This is such a boogeyman. Total amount of drug ingested is quantity times potency. Old school people made up the low potency with quantity. What is more though, there always was high potency strains available (just not as prevalent today). Thai sticks, hash oils, they have been around for a long time. So, the high potency stuff has been around, that is not new, and most people compensate for the high potency by ingesting less. My supply back when I used to smoke was limited to “what my dealer had available.” There may have been better strains available, but I sure couldn’t get my hands on them. There’s also an issue of “minimum viable dose” - provided you have sufficient time and determination, you can get just as high with shitty weed as you can with the good stuff, but it’s an awful lot harder to get only as high with the good stuff as you did with the shitty stuff. I am pro-legalization and anti-drug war, but I hear this bromide about the enormously increased availability of high-potency THC products not leading people to consume more and I just wonder what world y’all are living on.
- seadan83 3y ago
  > There may have been better strains available, but I sure couldn’t get my hands on them. The point is those strains certainly did exist. You are right to point out they were not as prevalent though. > the enormously increased availability of high-potency THC products not leading people to consume more and I just wonder what world y’all are living on. This is not quite the same angle as I was getting at. I agree that larger supply generally does drive more usage. There is data that agrees with that too - studies regarding consumption in WA post legalization did find a statistically significant (but still somewhat marginal) increase in overall consumption (let me know if you'd like to see that for yourself, I can try to dig it up, IIRC it was about 10% more consumption). The angle I'm coming at is two fold. (1) One of the biggest harms (if not the primary harm) of cannabis consumption comes from the combustion of carbon. More carbon burned and inhaled means more harm. That is different from alcohol. For example, if I were to drink a shot of vodka, or a shot of vodka mixed with a pint of water, it's about the same harm either way because the harmful thing there is the alcohol itself. For cannabis, that is not the case. If we smoke more, it's more harm because of the carbon, regardless of whether we are getting more THC or not. This is almost obvious in some cases with cannabis, scrape a bong and smoke that - it's basically smoking charcoal and the THC output is very low; it's way worse than consuming magnitudes more THC but smoking far less [consuming magnitudes more THC may be unpleasant, but overall health wise you're going to be better off compared to smoking charcoal (aka resin)] (2) Generally if you give someone cannabis that is twice as strong, they will use about half as much (and perhaps maybe a bit more). This is generally true from my experience, there are exceptional individuals who will smoke as much as they have, always. Regardless of those exceptions, to illustrate, let's say someone is shooting for a 1.5 gram dose of THC per day (at 10% potency, multiply that by 10 for the plant weight, ergo 15 grams of plant weight per day - this is a heavy user). Let's say with greater supply they are now going to smoke 1.7 grams (10% increase, in line with the increase observed post legalization). For the sake of this napkin math, let's say they increase by 20% to 1.9 grams per day (so smoking 19 grams of plant matter total). Now, even at the increased usage, let's say they get some 20% grade weed, they still consume that 1.9 grams of total THC, but now the plant volume smoked is just shy of 10 grams. Even at higher usage, smoking higher potency, it's still a huge net benefit to smoke 10g of plant per day compared to 15g of plant matter per day. We can express this in math: T(otal quantity THC) = P(otency) * Q(uantity smoked) T = PQ In the above, Q is the thing that causes harm. If Q is limited because there is no supply or no cash, then we have an upper bound of Q due to that factor. Otherwise, 'T' generally has an upper bound, in my experience it is a pretty fixed value, which means if we increase 'P' (potency) we will decrease 'Q' (which is the total quantity smoked, and reducing the total quantity smoked is reducing the harm [at least the harm that is directly related to smoking cannabis, namely the inhalation of CO and other toxic elements that are by-products from the combustion of carbon).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

roughly 3y ago

> This is such a boogeyman. Total amount of drug ingested is quantity times potency. Old school people made up the low potency with quantity. What is more though, there always was high potency strains available (just not as prevalent today). Thai sticks, hash oils, they have been around for a long time. So, the high potency stuff has been around, that is not new, and most people compensate for the high potency by ingesting less. My supply back when I used to smoke was limited to “what my dealer had available.” There may have been better strains available, but I sure couldn’t get my hands on them. There’s also an issue of “minimum viable dose” - provided you have sufficient time and determination, you can get just as high with shitty weed as you can with the good stuff, but it’s an awful lot harder to get only as high with the good stuff as you did with the shitty stuff. I am pro-legalization and anti-drug war, but I hear this bromide about the enormously increased availability of high-potency THC products not leading people to consume more and I just wonder what world y’all are living on.

seadan83 3y ago
> There may have been better strains available, but I sure couldn’t get my hands on them. The point is those strains certainly did exist. You are right to point out they were not as prevalent though. > the enormously increased availability of high-potency THC products not leading people to consume more and I just wonder what world y’all are living on. This is not quite the same angle as I was getting at. I agree that larger supply generally does drive more usage. There is data that agrees with that too - studies regarding consumption in WA post legalization did find a statistically significant (but still somewhat marginal) increase in overall consumption (let me know if you'd like to see that for yourself, I can try to dig it up, IIRC it was about 10% more consumption). The angle I'm coming at is two fold. (1) One of the biggest harms (if not the primary harm) of cannabis consumption comes from the combustion of carbon. More carbon burned and inhaled means more harm. That is different from alcohol. For example, if I were to drink a shot of vodka, or a shot of vodka mixed with a pint of water, it's about the same harm either way because the harmful thing there is the alcohol itself. For cannabis, that is not the case. If we smoke more, it's more harm because of the carbon, regardless of whether we are getting more THC or not. This is almost obvious in some cases with cannabis, scrape a bong and smoke that - it's basically smoking charcoal and the THC output is very low; it's way worse than consuming magnitudes more THC but smoking far less [consuming magnitudes more THC may be unpleasant, but overall health wise you're going to be better off compared to smoking charcoal (aka resin)] (2) Generally if you give someone cannabis that is twice as strong, they will use about half as much (and perhaps maybe a bit more). This is generally true from my experience, there are exceptional individuals who will smoke as much as they have, always. Regardless of those exceptions, to illustrate, let's say someone is shooting for a 1.5 gram dose of THC per day (at 10% potency, multiply that by 10 for the plant weight, ergo 15 grams of plant weight per day - this is a heavy user). Let's say with greater supply they are now going to smoke 1.7 grams (10% increase, in line with the increase observed post legalization). For the sake of this napkin math, let's say they increase by 20% to 1.9 grams per day (so smoking 19 grams of plant matter total). Now, even at the increased usage, let's say they get some 20% grade weed, they still consume that 1.9 grams of total THC, but now the plant volume smoked is just shy of 10 grams. Even at higher usage, smoking higher potency, it's still a huge net benefit to smoke 10g of plant per day compared to 15g of plant matter per day. We can express this in math: T(otal quantity THC) = P(otency) * Q(uantity smoked) T = PQ In the above, Q is the thing that causes harm. If Q is limited because there is no supply or no cash, then we have an upper bound of Q due to that factor. Otherwise, 'T' generally has an upper bound, in my experience it is a pretty fixed value, which means if we increase 'P' (potency) we will decrease 'Q' (which is the total quantity smoked, and reducing the total quantity smoked is reducing the harm [at least the harm that is directly related to smoking cannabis, namely the inhalation of CO and other toxic elements that are by-products from the combustion of carbon).

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]