Posted on 11/30/2018 7:03:52 AM PST by SeekAndFind
A new study looking at alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use among adolescents gives some interesting and helpful conclusions. Well, helpful conclusions if people will be willing to remove their cultural blinders concerning marijuana. Since the politically and culturally popular thing to do is to extol the virtues of the recreational use of marijuana, the study's sharp gateway-drug implications will most likely be a warning that is derided and unheeded.
Frankly, I don't really care if people smoke weed or not. To be clear, if asked, I'll warn against it. What bugs me, though, is that many who do choose to smoke weed deceive themselves (and others) about marijuana's potential for harm.
When I worked in a substance awareness program targeting eighth-graders, my co-workers and I could predict the pushback we would receive from the students: marijuana isn't addictive... marijuana doesn't cause any real, long-term, negative effects, blah, blah, blah.
While it's true that marijuana doesn't bring the same negative effects as, say, methamphetamine, it's not true that marijuana is completely devoid of any negative effects. For starters, it is addictive. Substances don't have to be physically addictive to be addictive. As my colleagues and I would tell the protesting students, shopping can be addictive.
A negative effect that comes from ingesting marijuana that many users (and non-users) scoff at is the drug's potential to be a gateway drug. However, the study linked to above concludes, "The implications of the more prominent role of marijuana in the early stages of drug use sequences are important to continue tracking."
The twenty-year study concluded that while cigarette and alcohol use among adolescents has decreased, marijuana use among adolescents has remained basically the same. What's interesting is that "the traditional gateway sequence is changing, with marijuana increasingly accounting for the first substance used among adolescents."
The study also acknowledges that adolescents who smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol have a greater risk of turning to marijuana. The authors of the study write:
Those who do engage in alcohol and cigarette use are increasingly a high-risk group for marijuana use. National data among adults with reconstructed life histories has demonstrated similar findings among todays cohorts of cigarette users, in that they are also more likely to have psychiatric disorders and other drug disorders compared with previous cohorts of smokers ( Talati et al., 2016, 2013). Such findings are in line with hypotheses about hardening of drug users.
The bad news for those adolescents who begin with marijuana as well as for those who are in a high-risk group for marijuana use due to their cigarette or alcohol use is that:
Marijuana initiation may also affect subsequent drug use through similar biological mechanisms that have been proposed for other substances; emerging evidence from animal models suggests that THC exposure early in adolescence influences reward sensitivity to other drugs including nicotine ( Dinieri and Hurd, 2012; Panlilio et al., 2013; Pistis et al., 2004), and that adult marijuana use who initiated in adolescence have impairments in memory and prefrontal as well hippocampal volume ( Batalla et al., 2013; Filbey and Yezhuvath, 2013). Existing epidemiological data suggest that marijuana use increases the risk of subsequent cigarette initiation, supporting the hypothesis that marijuana could be causally associated with subsequent polysubstance use ( Nguyen et al., 2018).
Thanks, learn sumthin’ new everyday. I thought stuffing a gob of it in a person’s face was about the only way to do it. Like I said, most of my knowledge comes from watching the older country fellas chawin their baccy way back when.
Fist bump. We are on the same page.
Well then, let's leave it at that, and not put anymore wind in the sails of the "conservatives" who love crackin' skulls that don't need to be cracked.
The Cope is the one habit I have that I'd love to give up, but that stuff has its claws into me big time.
One has to have a stereo... to be a type FRiend. They are ALL clinically and biochemically accurate.
You take offense at an accurate description of unmotivated layabouts.... in their mom’s basement at a keyboard or worse, working in IT?
Would your rather text book photos from clinical research (those that are cleared by copyright and anonymous study patients)? BTW these are descriptors used in diagnostic settings (with humour).
bfl
Did they smoke cigarettes? DrinK beer? Just went from nothing to pot to heroin?
As Walt Garrison used say, just a pinch between you cheek and gum and man it sure feels relaxin..
I'd rather mock the everloving shit out of your clownish 19th century PT Barnum writing style, which is the most contrived bullshit I've read on FR in a dog's age. After that, I can mock your point of view, Ignatius Reilly, because it's a watery gruel of tepid diarrhea.
Like it used to say on the top of the can: It satisfies..
My brother stills chews that pussy Skoal stuff... (hat tip Joe Dirt)
You have it.... plant estrogens that are called “isomers” or near copies structurally to animal hormones (in the case of soy... estrogen). But.... it’s so “heart healthy” (Sarc. ON Huge)— somehow feminizing is interpreted by some to be better for your heart-— well... not for a male! Dang estrogen shrinks other things too, while feminizing. Sort of like the effects of overdosing on anabolic steroids (body builders with shrunken weenies, so to speak).
Haven’t thought of that commercial for years. I remember when cigarette ads were banned from TV in 1970.
Great way to put it— they are “filling the gap” in the sin taxes... coming up with a new tax on pot. Since the taxes fuel their addiction to being politicians. Just look at the way the RINO politicians (like Mr. Tobacco “conservative” Tom Thillis of NC) vote— to support their propped up industry-— cigarettes.
Will say one thing— back in the HMO days there were presenters who stated they loved smokers— cause they paid a lot of premiums as they grew older and smoked, to die young and not represent a “pay-out” for their medical. A so called “ideal” insured. Pays a lot in, and dies young. Could say that maybe social security views them in that fashion, inside the pyramid scheme.
“I can quit any time that I want”, and they leave off “I’ve quit many times”..... heh, heh.
I can quit any time that I want, and they leave off Ive quit many times..... heh, heh.”
—
One of my buddies from my teenage years used to always say after finishing a cig, “Okay, I’m quitting cigarettes - until my next one.” (Which was usually within the same hour).
But I’ve also been smoking pot daily for recreation since I was a freshman in college back in the 60s. It is a habit, not an addiction. If you stop smoking pot, there are no cravings, withdrawals or DT’s like in alcohol and hard drug withdrawals. There is nothing.
..............
50 years of daily use. I’m just glad there’s no craving.
I've stopped smoking for several years at a time on a couple of occasions over that 50 years.
For reasons not connected to the pot itself. Job-related, extended traveling, couldn't find a source, etc.
No negative effects at all from stopping.
Whatever that means.
The whole concept of a gateway premiss is poppycock! People are going to do what they do because they choose to do it! Personal accountability is slowly being melted away from our society and replaced with one dimensional excuses. The end all be all of any particular causation is predicated on this or that.... This is complete nonsense!
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