Unfortunately, the greater public - the government at least - hasn't been so keen on such things because the focus is more on keeping drugs a scary evil. Even current drug education is such, though thankfully it isn't so "Drugs are bad, mkay?" as it was during the 'just say no' heydays in the 80's and 90's.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18445737 [2] https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2017/10...
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29341895 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26930528
Others have already addressed the veracity of your links: But honestly, we already know of the dangers of tylenol. Liver damage with high use. But it isn't always so simple - it doesn't react with drugs as much as NSAID's do, and for some, it is really the only appropriate option for pain relief.
I'm not suggesting at all that it is safe for teens to vape THC either. I'm not sure where you got this information from my writing. Fact-based education would mean things like telling teens that it is probably best to wait until one is older to start smoking regularly, if one smokes regularly at all. At the same time, we could explain that it if one is going to make a habit of a drug, they could do worse. Alcohol and tobacco are both more difficult for most people to quit and alcohol tends to destroy lives at a greater pace (folks can still lead normal lives while stoned).
You can do all of this without proving that it is safer than lead in gasoline. I don't even know why this is mentioned as it isn't remotely the same category of things. Few folks are going to huff gasoline at the rates folks do other drugs.
The potential dangers of Tylenol/Paracet is not about liver damage. There is an unexplored correlation with behavioral disorders in pregnancy that is not entirely explained away by assuming that people with behavioral problems take more Tylenol. Yet in the widespread population Tylenol is basically considered completely safe, as safe as apple juice.
My point is that drug education is not trivial and is full of unfinished threads, and there is plenty of room for abusing the messages.
Lead in gasoline is my benchmark for how hard it is to know that a drug (atmospheric lead) is having a negative widespread effect in the population (violence and IQ reduction). In that case, it took decades before the data was there, and decades more to build political action on the issue.
Yes, drug education is a good thing, but we also have to know that messages can and must change when data comes back. At what point is the data strong enough to put in high school literature? For example, the research showing a correlation between chronic marijuana use and testicular cancer[1]; should we put that in the literature? It is impossible to say at this point whether that is causal or simply related to a behavior that occurs when using marijuana, or perhaps even hormonal (people that like marijuana have a body chemistry that also maybe produces testicular cancer)? We simply have no idea. So yes, drug education is good, and we need more research on the effects of marijuana, and I don't think we can really speak authoritatively on its risks relative to nicotine or even alcohol. (No, not everyone can lead a normal life while stoned. Learning is most certainly inhibited, and a normal life involves learning things.)
Last I remember from my psychology classes, it was 25 to 28. 21 feels like a number picked to reflect law and cultural norms, not the science. But my information is a decade out of date and there could have been new findings since.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/...
>Further myelination of subcortical and cortical tracts continues in the posterior to anterior direction well into the third decade of life, consistent with the time course of maturation of cognitive functions in children and adolescents.
Mish Shoykhet, Robert S.B. Clark, in Pediatric Critical Care (Fourth Edition), 2011
http://m.pnas.org/content/109/40/E2657.full (2012)
"Persistent cannabis users show neuropsychological decline from childhood to midlife"
In my opinion, this reinforces how important regulatory bodies are when it comes to things that we put into our bodies. If we choose to continuously gravitate towards giving citizens greater bodily autonomy, it is extremely important that we ensure people know what's going into their body and the risks associated with it.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780124166875/essentials-...
THC/Cannabinoids weren’t the issue, contaminants in the oil were.
Take alchohol for example. Teen drinking is a problem, but teen methonol poisoning isn't.
> a number of studies have found evidence of brain changes in teens and young adults who smoke marijuana. In 2013, Rocío Martín-Santos, MD, PhD, at the University of Barcelona, and colleagues reviewed 43 studies of chronic cannabis use and the brain. They found consistent evidence of both structural brain abnormalities and altered neural activity in marijuana users.
If anything, I’d say that marijuana use tends to make the brain more doubtful, even of itself. In real life this is a mostly positive trait, but it is punished by the IQ test I think.
I understand the mechanisms behind marijuana use, but what is the real effect on a person's life?
By the way your line of questioning implies an agenda. I don't have an issue with that, but thought I'd highlight that for you.
Do you think it's one of harm-reduction? Or legalization in pursuit of business opportunities? Or legalization for recreation? Or for medicinal use? Or is my agenda that I have another product in mind that solves all of these things without the side effects of marijuana?
Some people attempt a almost a fact based conversation that is an exploration of a topic. Others have an opinion they want to push on others. I don't even try to figure out what someone agenda is. I look that there is one and stop focusing too hard right there and then.
I also suspect, I'm not the only one who operates like this.
If I have an agenda, it is to limit emotion in communication and make things more fact based.
This communication is likely to fail.
To reiterate, many people don't care to figure out what the agenda is and just ignore those who has one. Here i'm using agenda to stand for the typical partisan politics or other "normative" behavior.
> Heavy marijuana use in adolescence or early adulthood has been associated with a dismal set of life outcomes including poor school performance, higher dropout rates, increased welfare dependence, greater unemployment and lower life satisfaction.
Show me the development of a teen in a society where open marijuana consumption is a non-issue to compare against.
[1] https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/mari...
I know IQ is on a curve so if I'm on the lower end and dope up I might not qualify for the military against had I not doped up by such a margin window.
For an average person, what can the person sitting next to me do +8 IQ that I can't? What can the person sitting in front of me not do at -8 IQ that I can?
Granted I've encountered "slow" and "fast" people in my life, but I have little idea how to relate that to an IQ number besides "higher" and "lower" like a water faucet for temperature.
This is a genuine, honest question.
A loss of 6-8 points puts you at about at about the 35th percentile -- meaning 65 percent of the people in the race will be running more faster than you. Or (back in real life terms) be that much more likely to get admitted to college, get a decent job / spouse, and so on.
That is, to the extent that definitions of IQ are valid and can be measured accurately, and so on. But given the amount of research that has gone into this -- and we know a lot more now that we did a few decades ago -- it seems the risks (of heavy cannabis use) are potentially quite serious.
(BTW, as to how one gets from "6-8 points" to "35th or 40th percentile": it has to do with how the IQ scale is defined. By the traditional scale approximately two-thirds of the population scores are between IQ 85 and IQ 115. Meaning (on a scale from 1 to 100) 15 points of IQ equals a difference of about 33 percent. So 6-8 points is about half that, or very roughly 15 percent).
Sometimes you really have to take a step back and realise that you're not as normal as you feel. You can spend your time on hackernews feeling very insecure and then apply 5% of what people talk about here and then the average person will treat you like you invented fire.
So when you think of your highschool class you shouldn't think 100, but rather 105. So even though 100 is the average of the population it can be on the lower end in a professional or academic setting.
These have all been me going cold turkey after heavy daily use for extended periods of time.
When you smoke i never dream. When you stop body overcompensates.
I've been smoking every day since I was 19 (currently 31), and my endocannabinoid system seems perfectly fine. Most of my peers have the same story, or have been smoking daily for longer. I think what you've been reading is incorrect. For future reference, I've noticed when people begin a sentence with "I am not a [lawyer|doctor|engineer]", they are typically incorrect.
That's a bit of a stretch.
These people aren't vaping -- and suffering the negative consequences of it -- simply because it's "a black market product that has shitty ingredients in it".
They're doing it (also) because THC is psychologically addictive. And because it also (when used chronically and excessively) seems to impair judgement and cognitive development.
So actually - while it's not just about THC -- the issue is inherently related to THC and its intrinsic properties.
Daily smoker here and I think I'd disagree slightly. We've been hearing for decades that "today's weed" is stronger than the 60's or whatever. But my understanding is that modern extraction techniques made this something of a reality now that oil is so widespread; I've been continually shocked to discover the number of people I meet who own vape pens. Most of them use it responsibly, but the stories this summer described people who vaped hash oil all day long. Even if the cartridges weren't tainted, my guess is that this is qualitatively different than smoking flower all day long.
Still not even same ballpark as the opiate explosion after I graduated high school.
If they're doing this a couple times during the day, then hitting it harder in the evening, it should be no big deal. Of course, there may be consequences to being stoned constantly, but that's true no matter what. The load on the lungs should be pretty tame; likely better than smoking. There's definitely the potential to become more tolerant though, due to the higher concentration, though.
I live in CA where it is becoming more and more regulated. I have a 'church' down the street where I can buy stuff at a steeeep discount (no tax, lower prices)... but I go to the regulated places the next town over (higher taxes, higher prices) that do lab testing and have their products sealed with a lab certificate.
As soon as I learned that the underground trap shops were buying, cleaning and refilling used cartriges with god knows what I stopped going to the churches.