Posted on 11/25/2019 5:13:25 AM PST by urtax$@work
This is an excerpt for discussion purposes, see article for full story.
More and more Americans are reporting near-constant cannabis use, as legalization forges ahead.
The proliferation of retail boutiques in California did not really bother him, Evan told me, but the billboards did. Advertisements for delivery, advertisements promoting the substance for relaxation, for fun, for health. “Shop. It’s legal.” “Hello marijuana, goodbye hangover.” “It’s not a trigger,” he told me. “But it is in your face.”
When we spoke, he had been sober for a hard-fought seven weeks: seven weeks of sleepless nights, intermittent nausea, irritability, trouble focusing, and psychological turmoil.......
Public-health experts worry about the increasingly potent options available, and the striking number of constant users. “Cannabis is potentially a real public-health problem,” said Mark A. R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at New York University. ......
For Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, the most compelling evidence of the deleterious effects comes from users themselves. “In large national surveys, about one in 10 people who smoke it say they have a lot of problems. They say things like, ‘I have trouble quitting. I think a lot about quitting and I can’t do it. I smoked more than I intended to. I neglect responsibilities.’ There are plenty of people who have problems with it, in terms of things like concentration, short-term memory, and motivation,” he said. “People will say, ‘Oh, that’s just you fuddy-duddy doctors.’ Actually, no. It’s millions of people who use the drug who say that it causes problems.”
Users or former users I spoke with described lost jobs, lost marriages, lost houses, lost money, lost time. Foreclosures and divorces. .....
(Excerpt) Read more at getpocket.com ...
Hot Tabasco: Concur, It does show the hypocrisy of the legislatures and the anti-smokers. When our state recently voted to legalize pot, there was nary a word from the anti-smokers. The same people that had in previous years led initiatives to stamp out tobacco products.
I had a wonderful Community College Prof back in the day, Tech Report Writing or some English course related that had a son possibly susceptible to schizophrenia and his reefer use did him in & he was dealing with resilience and seemed ok that his son was essentially disabled because of it. Perhaps he was trying to subtlety tell us don't do it kids....
I got to see the street urchan types in Colorado Springs hanging in the intersections about 5 yrs ago looking for handouts to hear they would take a "bud" in lieu of money. This will not end well for our culture....
“Doubles risk of adult schizophrenia onset.”
THC is a strong dopamine agonist, most anti-psychotic drugs work by being dopamine ANTagonists.
Enough THC will push a borderline person over their border. Enough THC will cause any person to hallucinate. It is just a matter of how much is enough for any given person.
THC is strongly contra-indicated for psychotics/schizophrenics, or those who are borderline.
When I picked up my kid from her college dorm recently I walked past the outside cigarette smoking area. One kid was there alone, shunned and shamed into smoking outside in the cold.
Then I walked into the dorm and walked the hallways and the entire place smelled like weed.
Yes it's ironic.
But cannabis is not benign, even if it is relatively benign, compared with alcohol, opiates, and cigarettes, among other substances.
“Something like 2,000 out of 50,000 people are susceptible to marijuana addiction.” (4%)
But a significant percentage of users (as discussed in the article), slide into the “stoner” level of regular heavy use. They are not “addicted” but they suffer observable harm.
As the article discusses, such regular heavy users form the bedrock of industry sales.
More than just genetic pre-disposition can lead someone into becoming a regular heavy user. Friends, or other influencers; or life circumstances can present vape pens.
Vaping THC typically produces a pretty rapid increase in tolerance. Those who start vaping THC regularly, typically ramp up their total dose pretty sharply over just a few weeks. It is pretty common for regular users to end up with a $100 a week habit, and the associated “Stoner” level of memory impairment and loss of motivation.
It doesn’t take long to change lives. While stoned, it is easy to let years slip away.
Welfare dependency and excessive use of the drug alcohol are linked, but we rightly don't see that as sufficient justification to ban alcohol. And substance bans have costs of their own: both the direct cost of enforcement, and the giving of a monopoly in the market for that substance to violent criminals, with all the ills that follow.
I am fairly convinced that the current epidemic of mentally ill people, including the ones who live on the streets, is the result of long-term and multi-generational drug use that's frying people's brains, especially when you consider today's pot is so much stronger.
I'm just saying that I, who leans a bit libertarian, am coming peeved at my fellow libertarians who make out legalizing pot to be more of a freedom issue than ditching the welfare state (what used to be one of our main goals).
IMHO getting rid of the welfare state is critical to truly legalizing drugs or anything else.
Is that their view, or are they just pragmatically investing more attention in the more winnable battle?
IMHO getting rid of the welfare state is critical to truly legalizing drugs or anything else.
Not sure what you mean by "critical;" we certainly ought not hold one liberty hostage to another, as no-legalization-until-welfare-ends does.
My opinion has always been that the Welfare State needs to go first. Get rid of it. Push the idea of personal responsibility, Make people stand on their own two feet. Government is not a crutch.
Then, as a second step, feel free to legalize drugs. If people can consume drugs and still stand on their own two feet, that’s fine with me, But if they get into trouble, I don’t want it to be my problem. I’m not going to rescue them.
To me, that SHOULD be the Libertarian position. In that order. Because if you switch #1 and #2 around, you will achieve the new #1 (legal drugs) but you will abandon all hope of ever getting the new #2 (ending Welfare).
the Welfare State needs to go first. [...] Because if you switch #1 and #2 around, you will achieve the new #1 (legal drugs) but you will abandon all hope of ever getting the new #2 (ending Welfare).
Nonsense - those people who before legalization were responsible enough to avoid marijuana use because it was illegal, will after legalization remain responsible enough to not use themselves into welfare dependency.
And since alcohol dependency is several times more prevalent than marijuana dependency, if legality means no end to welfare then that goal is dead already.
Exactly as I see it. And ending welfare enables us to end a whole host of other government problems.
For example, end welfare and people will be more liable to pick wise career choices instead of the ones government pushes us to (i.e. college oriented "careers" many of which don't work out well).
End welfare and people are more liable to not do drugs to begin with. (Look at how little drug abuse there was before the welfare state -- because people would see the few people in the gutter and not want to wind up like them).
End welfare and people will eventually go back to saving for their future like the greatest generation did -- less need for government "help" for senior citizens.
End welfare for farms (the farm subsidies that pay farmers to not grow food, ideally to prevent a food surplus which makes farmers go bankrupt) and produce won't be so expensive (thus less need for food stamps).
I figured out the Libertarians a long time ago. You have no interest in ending the Welfare State. You all just want to party.
Or give employers the right to hire/or not to hire pot users.
If you think hiring pot smokers is good for business, by all means, go for it. But by that same token a company should be able to exclude users just the same.
I don't consider myself a Libertarian, and I firmly support ending the Welfare State.
As far as I know, they already have that right - as they should.
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