4 ms·

Could you elaborate?

• scythe 3y ago
  The Wikipedia article is a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_needed_to_treat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_needed_to_treat So e.g. assuming a fully causal association with bipolar disorder (unlikely due to the strong genetic influence on bipolar disorder) you need 25 people to stop smoking weed to prevent one case of bipolar disorder. You can also calculate it in terms of how many people do you need to imprison to prevent one case of bipolar disorder. This is particularly revealing when you look at studies giving an odds ratio of 2-3 for cannabis use associated with schizophrenia. The base rate for schizophrenia is <0.02% [1], so the NNT is >2500. You probably need to imprison hundreds of people to prevent one case of schizophrenia, again assuming the association is causal. The claim that these studies should impact marijuana legality is just plain bad math. 1: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=76ef8b1739dce5b548a12d9a7d8a686f6f5eaeb6 https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&d...