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 today’s 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).
It leads to drinking beer.
“Whatever rationalization one conjures up to do pot, as a “no big deal” can also then be used to move on to other drugs.”
Nope. No drug is as safe, nonaddictive and non toxic as cannabis. Every drug you find OTC at the pharmacy is more toxic. It is really in a safety class by itself and a major threat to current drug profits.
Multiple studies show that cannabis is also the least impairing drug. Driving under alcohol or countless types of legal pills is far more dangerous.
Cannabis does not cause violence due to blackouts like alcohol or pills. Nobody has woken up in jail after a night of cannabis-fueled violent crime they do not remember.
It has practically no withdrawal symptoms even if used daily for decades. Not so with coffee, cigs or alcohol which lead to withdrawal sickness. Yet we sell these things at every gas station. People buy cigs instead of feeding their kids.
BY FAR AND IN EVERY WAY, cannabis is the lesser evil out of all these drugs sold 24/7 around us. Giving people this far safer and less-impairing alternative is 100% the right thing to do for all society
I was referring to smoking weed. I am addicted to Copenhagen snuff and have been since I was 16.
“Alcohol is MUCH MORE a gateway drug than weed”
It is? Gateway to what then? Many of the pot smokers I have run into in my life also used other drugs. Yet almost everyone I know has a drink now and then and many have never used other drugs. I know that’s anecdotal, but that seems to be pretty universal.
I have a drink every once in a while, but I have never smoked pot of used any other illegal drug.
You can’t do anything about it.
Addiction is a personal battle.
“Substances don’t have to be physically addictive to be addictive.”
Wrong. What you have would be called a habit. A true addiction your body and organs start shutting down without the substance. If that doesn’t happen then you have a habit. It’s habitual.
It’s like saying “buzzed driving is drunk driving.” No it’s not. Otherwise they would call it drunk driving. Words have meanings, and people need to stop calling things something they aren’t. Makes them look foolish, but appeals to the low minded ignorant commonly found on the left.
“I was referring to smoking weed. I am addicted to Copenhagen snuff and have been since I was 16.”
—
I see. You’re not using pot often enough to become addicted. Snuff is awful, it’s kind of an “ewww” type thing to me.
I enjoy a cigar about as often as you do the funny cigs, I’m not much on criticizing the reasonable, occasional tobacco product. But, snuff? The gawd-awful taste, the chewing, all the spitting - not for me, even as a rare vice.
“Obviously a person has to stop (whatever) if they can’t get it. It’s like claiming somebody stranded in the desert stopped drinking water “cold turkey”.”
Not the same. I’m explaining that abusers of any other drug including coffee will feel SICK if they dont get their fix. Exactly like someone without water.
While cannabis does not cause any withdrawal sickness. People simply enjoy it like they do chocolate or steak. And some people REALLY enjoy things. Hell, entire careers are built on these things.
You can abstain and not feel sick whenever you like. Therefore, you are not physically addicted.
Mental addiction is a very different thing. There are people who will binge on nearly anything and have psychological reactions when it is removed. To the point where it harms their health. Chocolate, fried food, soda, Netflix, video games, sex, gold, comics, speed, fame, etc, etc, etc ad infinium. If they are away from it, it will consume their thoughts. Even with zero physical addiction.
If you go this route of outlawing anything that is potentially mentally addictive, you’ll outlaw EVERYTHING pleasurable. Some people even “hurt themselves and society” by being too addicted to healthy things like exercize and books...
I don’t spit...
We had a working group of department heads trying to develop a personnel policy. The Finance Director was a very attractive woman but had a disgusting habit of chewing her fingernails and meat off the tips of her fingers. She was like a possessed zombie when it came to having to get that last piece!
When we got to the tobacco use portion of the policy she immediately pushed to ban chewing tobacco and gave me the “look”. I then told her to shove it up her ass and asked her if she had ever seen me spit, or seen chew wads in the waste basket and that perhaps we should have ban chewing fingernails and finger skin!
That, and to see what various people define as “conservatism”.
IMHO a true (Constitutional) conservative believes that anything not specified in the Constitution belongs to the realm of the states, *even if they vehemently disagree with how some states would handle it*.
Faux, or ‘social’ conservatives are perfectly happy to use the power of the federal government to enforce their morals, priorities, and belief systems given the chance (they also scream like stuck pigs when the morals or priorities the federal government chooses to enforce disagree with their particular paradigm of what America should be and how she should operate). Cannabis is, as you point out, a perfect issue for differentiating these two.
May want to rethink that more fat people use weed than alcohol and weed user have a higher lung cancer rate.
That’s funny.
Since I don’t use chaw, I really don’t know much about how you go about doing it. I’m pretty much going by seeing farmers using chaw and spitting when I was a kid.
I only tried it once with a friend and that was just to gross out somebody else, heh.
If you don’t spit, what happens to all the baccy juice?
All the states see selling alcohol and weed is tax $$$ and to hell to the people damage by them. Just sayin
Just a pinch is all I put in at at time. Snuff compacts real easy. It doesn’t juice up too bad, unlike leafy Beachnut. Which will drown you if you don’t spit.
So to answer your question, I chew on a few flakes at time until I’ve swallowed it all. You get the flavor without the mmess.
We’ve all known people who were meg-stoners. But you would be surprised at the number of conservatives who are also successful small businesses people who smoke regularly.
It wasn’t for me.
A - it’s easy to get. And B - once you start smoking it you realize the government has been lying to you about drugs. Which leads to C - not believing the government and trying other stuff. Maybe if the government didn’t lie so much...
As I said at the start, “as a conservative, I’m reluctant to restrict bad decisions by adults.” I’m entitled to think it’s generally a bad decision, and you’re entitled to disagree.
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