The article is from 2019, so I wonder how high the rate of ER visits for cannabis dependence/abuse is now. From the article:Even those figures may be understated in view of the fact that in 2014 America’s “emergency rooms saw more than 1.1 million cases that included a diagnosis of marijuana abuse or dependence -- up from fewer than 400,000 in 2006.
Reefer Madness was spot on…and pretty well made for the 1930s
Oddly enough, health risks are not enough to dissuade younger users. What does work is to point out that marijuana *makes you stupid*.
The supposedly glorifying song, “Because I got high”, by ‘Afroman’, is instead about somebody whose life has been ruined by smoking marijuana. This actually makes *sense* to young users, and it is profoundly anti-marijuana.
If you think of all the fun, entertaining, educational and emotional stuff you can do, the alternative to *experience* is getting high, and sitting like a bump on a log as life passes you by. To be emotionally numb.
And this simple message makes a lot of sense to young people.
Duuudddeeee! You need to chill. Get a coupla’ bottles of Boones Farm wine (Tickle Pink or Strawberry Hill) and have some doobies rolled up.Turn on Cartoon Network. (Be sure and have a bag of Cheetos close) . Start drinking and smoking until the show starts not only making sense but seems insightful. Don’t forget you have an emergency bag of Cheetos when you get the munchies. After several hours of this, your stress and problems just dissipate. And it’s cheaper than therapy. I’ve saved you several hundred dollars there. You’re welcome.
No substance such as marijuana is with out harmful side effects. All drugs are. And I’m not in favor of legalizing hard rugs like cocaine or heroin How ever marijuana and compounds from it have certain medicinal benefits.
Alcohol has none. Legalize marijuana or outlaw everything again, booze, tobacco , gambling, seriously and we’ll live as the Puritans did . Legalize marijuana. Or out law every thing else and stop the moronic arguments of moral equivalence once and for all.
Does not matter what that thing is, it is going to cause problems. And if you are taking things that put you in an altered mental state on a regular basis you have enough problems that you do not need more.
Don’t let your mind post toastie regardless the vice
Being stoned all the time is just that
From SWIM
LOL I’m lying
I was stoned as a coot 71-85 24/7 unless sick like high fever
I managed to do quite a bit
But I learned at 27 I could do more less not high
No at 66 I’m thinking I’d like to get stoned again a little bit anyhow at nite
Most folks I know who aren’t drinkers smoke weed at nite and as they say
Chill lol
Some are 80 something
Who woulda ever thought back in 70-78 such things
Real geriatrics getting stoned lol
They tend to prefer edibles or vape
Doobs are too harsh for old lungs I guess
I know an old couple
Been married since before he went to Indochina
Couple glasses pinot
Cook dinner
Then twist one up and watch faux news or a movie
It’s a routine for them
He’s a retired builder and she’s former banking executive who cashed in (she’s tribe she’s no dummy)
Anyhow 60s Gen done got old
That describes 75% of the people I know from 25-85
Yes, ER visits due to pot ARE high… no pun intended. It is that no one cares or wants to shine a light on it.
My personal evidence.... NO prescription drug has worked for my crippling migraines. When I feel the ‘auras’ coming on one or two drags from a vape pen stops them in minutes saving me three or four days of misery. This has been reported by many people.
As for CBD...l There are strains of hemp almost completely devoid of THC. There is a large industry for CBD. I have personally witnessed CBD with trade amounts of thc suppress epileptic fits. In fact, a CBD drug has been approved and patented to treat child hood epilepsy. And as a anti-inflammatory CBD does work. I can’t speak for the lotions and ointments as I only say people who used it orally.
But the reality is, for all THC’s medical uses, people just want to get high. And any chemical that does that is going to cause problems when used in excess..
(I have a dog in the fight as I use to manufacture extraction and distillation equipment in the past during the big CBD boon. )
pong
Getting stoned is one thing while catching a buzz is another. Smoke or take too much and you can get uncomfortably high. Know your limitations and keep it private, even though it’s legal or at least decriminalized. Infrequent use doesn’t necessarily lead to chronic heavy use or abuse. People have to realize that not everyone who uses or enjoys marijuana feel the psychoactive effects at the same level. Those who’ve had a bad experience with it probably got too high and it scared them away after only two or three tries, which is when the stuff can make your head spin, make you cough and feel paranoid, etc. I’m not suggesting that they keep trying because it’s to each his own to decide whether to continue or to stop right there.
If the punishment for a crime, or legal infraction, is enhanced if the guilty was under the influence of ethanol or marijuana that could make people in general decide whether to use those chemicals indiscriminately. Going to a morgue to watch the autopsy of someone killed by alcohol or marijuana impaired car driver might he illuminating.
Enough of the “hold my beer” or “marijuana is no worse than alcohol” mentality. We need to take responsibility for the sequelae of our actions.
Edible cannabis products are a lot safer than alcohol but either is reasonable harmless in moderation. I turn 74 in January. I’ve got all the arthritis I want thank you. A good nights sleep is hard to come by. Two or three times a month I’ll eat a cannabis gummy (legal in my state) at bedtime and get six to eight solid hours of uninterrupted sleep.
I don’t use alcohol at all and haven’t for decades. Even as a young man it messed up my sleep.
I posted this because I’m concerned about a young man who is really trying his best to continue his sobriety after months in an intensive addiction program to fight cocaine use. With the anxiety (job stress - working to save money, baby-on-the-way) he’s smoking a lot of weed. There’s a belief that its non addictive and the article notes dependence and addiction. Recently he displayed some unusual paranoia, and of course I wondered if the pot he smokes is laced with something etc. And then this article cited ER visits from pot dependence/addiction.
I know that some FReepers descend on threads like these to post their boilerplate denunciations of ANY concern about weed. They blurt other things are worse, we still have alcohol etc. but the documented mental health and societal issues some of us post about are ignored.
There’s a vast, well-funded push to flood the US with fentanyl, meth etc. and there’s a push to legalize pot everywhere, and I believe they’re part of the same effort.
There are oceans of pro-pot articles purporting to ‘prove’ pot is good, and imply that the only problem are pot’s detractors who are bad, ignorant, prude, bigoted etc. Incredible amounts of money have been spent to ‘win’ the right to force every state in the nation to accept week like a glass of wine after dinner, so the society costs/losses continue to grow.
In this article the ER visits for pot addiction and dependence point to a massive issue which can only have gotten worse since the article was written. But there will be no discussion of that issue - instead there will be false attempts to equate alcohol with pot.
The societal impacts are very different - pot is not equivalent to alcohol. Just one example - the kids in states which legalize pot skip school more or are too high to function on school grounds. The pot lobby is way ahead of us - they arranged to have school resource officers NOT REPORT high, incapacitated students to police or parents, but instead keep them on campus until they ‘come down’. For that reason, there are some schools which have diving actual attendance to academic courses because while the students are there, they can’t function. What would a 15 year old rather do? Attend school and study geometry, or get high and sleep/snack it off?
This new policy enacted to conceal incapacitated pot users on campus protects the public from realizing what a horrible problem they have on their hands with minors incapacited minors focusing on weed instead of working toward graduating from high school. We are paying for student attendace (federal funding of schools) and dthat’s probably why they keep the kids on campus, but school policies protect the students from actually having to attend class, or notify their parents.
That ‘protect-the-pot-smoking teenager’ policy is new, even though alcohol has been around for a LOOOOONG time. The kids weren’t being kept on campus in large numbers ‘too drunk’ to function, but they ARE being detained at school for being too high to function. No one pro-alcohol worked like the pot lobby does to protect pot use in minors from being exposed.
Many factors contribute to the disparity of societal impacts, but using the high school example, alcohol requires more time/volume of intake and can be smelled on the breath easily, and can be determined through blood alcohol tests. Courts use blood alcohol tests to determine things like ‘public drunkeness’.
By contrast, pot users can consume less product with a bigger ‘high’. Weed now comes in many, many variants that don’t smell like traditional weed, and then add in vape devices with their concoctions and the corridors become a thick fog of odors that make it hard for me to breath.
Imagine the public outcry if highschools detained on campus significant numbers of students just there to get drunk. What might parental and public sentiments be surrounding the ‘don’t-notify-anyone=if-students-too-drunk-to=function.
This article details mental health issues re pot use, but the justifications ignore the point of the article. Comments posted attack the implied content of the article, based on having read only the title of the thread. Inevitably, some on any pot thread turn it into a debate on alcohol - that’s not an accident. The pot cartels distribute talking points - this thing is FUNDED to roll over any public awareness or objection, because ‘the spice must flow.”
Can they mix a little pot in with tobacco in cigarettes? That way the beneficial marijuana smoke can neutralize the ill effects of the tobacco smoke.
Read later.
The urge to create a utopia of one’s own construction, using the force of state-sponsored violence against those who disagree, is equally as prevalent in “freedom-loving conservatives” as it is among commies.