[dmz]

The wording is kind of interesting, in that it discusses earlier onset of psychosis, psychosis at an earlier age. Does this suggest that the folks would have become psychotic anyway, and reefer brought it on sooner? All of the test subjects were treated for psychoses, and the users got it earlier than the non-users.

Does this study really tell us that using pot will make you psychotic? No test subjects using marijuana but without a psychotic episode were studied.

If the message is that mentally ill people tend to self-medicate more than those not mentally ill, can I get a big 'well, duh!' from the studio audience?

Bottom line for me? Those against marijuana usage tend to gravitate towards the studies that demonstrate its harm, while those who are users tend to gravitate towards the studies that show the opposite.

Having come of age in the very early '70s (born in '58), it would just seem that I would know a LOT more people with psychoses, given the prevelance of marijuana usage back in the day (and continuing on to this day).

[TKDietz]

A couple of years ago I read about a similar study and my thought was that what was more likely than the conclusion that marijuana was causing so much psychosis was that people who are mentally ill gravitate toward alcohol and drugs. I started looking at SAMHSA’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health. They publish numbers for drug use and mental health issues for each state. I looked at the ten states with the highest per capita marijuana use, and the ten with the lowest per capita use and then looked at the mental health numbers for these states. I looked back several years and what I found was that the states with the lowest per capita marijuana use actually had higher than average per capita instances of serious mental illness and the states with the highest per capita marijuana use had lower than average per capita instances of serious mental illness. For instance, Utah usually has the lowest percentage of marijuana users, a good three times less than the states with the highest use, but consistently has among the highest percentage of people reporting serious mental illness. I don't think marijuana contributes to good mental health, but if it was really making so many people crazy we'd see a much worse mental health problems in states with the highest percentages of marijuana users.

I'd like to see more in depth studies dealing specifically with psychosis where they look at the percentage in each state experiencing psychosis in relation to the percentage who smoke marijuana. That's about the only way I can think of to test the validity of these studies. We can't really take 2000 people and give a 1000 marijuana and keep testing the other thousand to make sure they aren't using it, but that would give us a much better picture than these studies where they look at a few people with psychosis and determine which ones were smoking marijuana and draw conclusions from that. They say smoking marijuana brings psychosis on earlier, but it could very well be that people most predisposed to psychotic episodes are also most likely to gravitate toward drug use in an effort to counter the misery mental illness is bringing them. Those conducting this study concluded that up to 10% of mental illness in their area is caused by marijuana use. They're basing this on a shaky foundation of data. I'd like to see them break their area down into segments and look at the percentages of people experiencing psychosis in relation to the percentage in each geographic area that smoke marijuana. Then they'd have a much better idea of how much psychosis marijuana use is actually causing, if any.