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To: exDemMom
I feel your pain and you are absolutely correct there will be consequences with legalization just as there have been severe consequences with making it illegal. Think of the consequences of illegal alcohol and the consequences of legal alcohol.

As far as the links to schitzophrenia... eh. Show me the schitzoids. I've known smokers who have smoked (probably daily) for at least 40 years and are hardly schitzophrenic. In fact I don't know 1 smoker who ever developed schitzophrenia. Yeah, that's not very scientific and I think maybe if someone has a propensity for schitzophrenia and then uses drugs that problem is going to be made worse, like it would for almost any drug. As far as I can tell though this is such a small, small minority but it serves to frighten. It does sadden me that legalization has used medical marijauna as a fig leaf. It's Orwellian word games. On the other hand those who take lots of perscription "medicines" are often fooling themselves too about why they need their "medicine".

37 posted on 06/23/2011 4:54:51 AM PDT by rhombus
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To: rhombus
Here are some selections from a PubMed search, keywords: marijuana schizophrenia. The quotes are taken from the abstracts.

Marijuana exposure during the critical period of adolescent brain maturation may disrupt neuro-modulatory influences of endocannabinoids and increase schizophrenia susceptibility.

BACKGROUND: Cannabis has been associated with transient psychotic states; however, the causal relationship between cannabis and schizophrenia continues to remain a matter of debate. Epidemiological and some biological studies hint at cannabis being an independent risk factor for schizophrenia; this has not been definitively proved.

Cannabis is one of the most commonly used illicit drugs, and despite the widely held belief that it is a safe drug, its long-term use has potentially harmful consequences. To date, the research on the impact of its use has largely been epidemiological in nature and has consistently found that cannabis use is associated with schizophrenia outcomes later in life, even after controlling for several confounding factors.

Some specific brain pathways are implicated in marijuana use in relation to the development of schizophrenia. Note that marijuana is not going to cause schizophrenia in individuals who don't carry any of the schizophrenia genes. I think that the only definitive answer is to set up a study in which the marijuana usage habits are compared between sets of individuals who carry the gene mutations normally associated with schizophrenia, and to determine if more of the marijuana users become schizophrenic than those who don't.

In my whole life, I have only known two schizophrenics; it is not a common disorder.

98 posted on 06/23/2011 7:00:59 PM PDT by exDemMom (Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)
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