Posted on 04/08/2003 3:07:03 PM PDT by FairOpinion
A significant increase in cannabis smoking is leading to serious mental health problems among the young, two leading drugs experts said yesterday.
They warned that the effect of cannabis on the body was equal to cigarettes but was "far more dangerous" on the mind.
Prof John Henry, a toxicologist at Imperial College, London, said: "Regular cannabis smokers develop mental illness.
"There is a four-fold increase in schizophrenia and there is a four-fold increase in major depression and that is something very, very different to what cigarettes do to you."
Dr Ian Oliver, independent consultant to the UN Drug Control Programme, said cannabis on the market today was 10 times stronger than that smoked by the "flower power" generation of the Sixties. "The result is doped-up kids who lose all motivation to do anything except lie in bed," he said.
Doctors in Holland have given the medical condition its own label: "amotivational" syndrome. This, say medical practitioners in the field, simply means cannabis is creating a new generation of layabouts.
Last year the Government decided to reclassify cannabis from a class B to a class C drug after hearing recommendations that it was much less damaging than other drugs.
But there were fears that the reclassification would see an increase in smoking cannabis, and Prof Henry said that use of the "soft" drug was on the rise.
"There are 13 million cigarette smokers and the numbers are going down," he said. "There are 3.2 million cannabis smokers and the numbers are going up.
"There is no Government health warning against cannabis but there are all kinds of restrictions against tobacco. People who smoke cannabis ought to be aware that it has equal effects on the body to cigarettes and worse effects on the mind."
Prof Henry and Dr Oliver were speaking at the Royal Society of Medicine conference in London.
This claim is neither new nor well founded. From 'Drugs and Behavior' by William A. McKim:
There is no doubt that many young individuals have changed from clean, aggressive, upwardly mobile achievers into the sort of person just described at about the same time as they started smoking marijuana. What is not clear, however, is a causal relationship between the loss of middle class motivations and cannabis. Which comes first, the marijuana or the loss of motivations? This is not easy to answer. In fact, there may be no clearcut answer. To begin with, all we know about the amotivational syndrome is a result of a few case histories. These data cannot answer questions about: a) how common the syndrome is; b) whether the marijuana actually caused the change in behavior; or c) if the change is caused by marijuana, if it is best described as a change in all motivations, specific motivations, or something other than motivation, like ability or personality.
It does not appear as though the amotivational syndrome is all that common among marijuana smokers. In one survey[2] a sample of almost 2000 college students was studied. There was no difference in grade point average and achievement between marijuana users and nonusers, but the users had more difficulty deciding on career goals, and a smaller number were seeking advanced professional degrees. On the other hand, other studies have shown lower school averages and higher dropout rates among users than nonusers. In any case these differences are not great. If there is such a thing as amotivational syndrome, its affects appear to be restricted to a few individuals, probably the small percentage who become heavy users.
Laboratory studies provide additional information on the causal relationship between motivation and marijuana. The Mendelson[3] experiment, where hospitalised volunteers worked on an operant task to earn money and marijuana for 26 days, found that the dose of marijuana smoked did not influence the amount of work done by either the casual-user group or the heavy-user group; all remained motivated to earn and take home a significant amount of money in addition to the work they did for the marijuana. It seems clear that marijuana does not cause a loss of motivation.
[2] Brill, N.Q., & Christie, R.L. (1974).Marihuana and psychosocial adjustment. _Archives of General Psychiatry_, 31, 713-719.
[3] Mendelson, H.H., Kuehnle, J.C., Greenberg, I., & Mello, N.K. (1976). The effects of marihuana use on human operant behavior: Individual data. In M.C. Broude & S. Szara (eds.), _Pharmacology of marihuana_, vol. 2(pp. 643-653). New York: Academic Press.
You left out a crucial part: "... so long as they infringe on nobody's rights." Your making rules for FR would certainly infringe on the owners' rights.
'Mental illness causes cannabis'
Must... escape... reality...
Must... find... weed... to... smoke... with... Bill... Clinton...
Yes, this is the interesting question. I'm not sure exactly how to study it, though, because if one were to find young persons with a condition it wouldn't be right leave it untreated whilst one follows them to see if they self-medicate.
Monday, 7 April, 2003
"Dr Henry is planning to tell a conference at the Royal Society of Medicine on Monday that it appears likely that some cases of schizophrenia are attributable to the consumption of cannabis, rather than the alternative explanation that patients prone to mental illness are more likely to be drawn to use the drug."
You're spouting nonsense. One doesn't have to agree not to violate others' rights to be bound by that requirement---and nobody here advocates breaking any laws that protect individual rights.
That's sort of what happened to me. I ran away from a dysfunctional family at age 17, but somehow got into a top university, where I worked two or three jobs to make ends meet, while smoking pot every day. Four years later, I barely graduated magna cum lauda, and almost didn't get into a top tier law school; but I did, and stupid me, continued to smoke pot every day, while going to law school full time and working a part-time job 30 hours a week. Smoking pot, however, apparently killed my motivation because I only graduated number 12 in my class out of 196, and after putting in 18 hour days seven days a week, all I wanted to do was sleep in my spare time. When I graduated from law school and landed a job as an associate in a top firm, I probably should have stopped smoking pot, but I kept on toking. I was offered a partnership after five years, rather than the usual seven or eight years, but because I'm a lazy, schizophrenic pot smoker, I decided to quit the firm and start my own business so that I could set my own hours and spend more time with my wife and young children. At age 35, I was still smoking pot. It was also the age that I finally reached critical mass in the wealth department. At age 44, I still smoke pot from time to time. I'm now semi-retired (obviously because I'm a lazy pot smoking bum), travel when I want, and spend too much time fishing.
From WTF, who's only been here for about five months, I thinking he's "speaking" from his other end. Apparently that's where WTF's head is, anyway.
What happened? Banned for rudeness and vitriolic ad hominems? Or because you try to set the rules for Jim Rob's house?
In this case, there's no problem refuting your arguments, because you have none. You merely offer insults and give orders you're not entitled to give.
Apparently you haven't been to the Bronx lately. It's wonderful this time of year...
"Dr Henry is planning to tell a conference at the Royal Society of Medicine on Monday that it appears likely that some cases of schizophrenia are attributable to the consumption of cannabis, rather than the alternative explanation that patients prone to mental illness are more likely to be drawn to use the drug."
What was his evidence for this claim?
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