> Regular use of anything, particularly if it's mind altering, is likely to cause harmful long term effects
Your argument that the study is bullshit is frankly no better.
What makes a teenager year old seek out pot/ alcohol/ whatever.
If a study about long term drug use doesn't address why people started smoking/ doing drugs, then a critical piece of the puzzle is missing.
He is trained as a medical doctor, but has learnt a lot about the psychology of addiction from his own experiences and those of patients. He worked in a drug treatment center in Vancouver and one of the things he often says is that of all the hard drug users he has seen, those who are female were all sexually abused as children.
His viewpoint is that addiction itself is not a problem - contrary to what the media would like you to believe - it's merely the minds way of dealing with whatever other traumas have been going on in your life. (When he talks about addiction he is not just talking about drugs, but all forms, including why you check HN every 20 minutes :D)
Applying that to this article implies this is just correlation, those who start smoking weed at a young age do it to cope with other traumas in their life, but they never deal with the trauma so move on to other coping mechanisms.
Mice who "underwent cognitive training [and] received rewards while exploring a training arena" reduced "one measure of drug-seeking behavior" in comparison with those who "remained in their home cages." The researchers conclude, right in the abstract, that "deprivation may confer vulnerability to drug-seeking behavior and that brief interventions may promote long-term resilience."
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00283...
I have yet to meet an alcoholic or drug addict that has an otherwise perfectly normal life. I don't mean "highly functioning alcoholic", I'm talking about your stereotype addict. So far all of them have had one thing in common: their life was not headed in a direction they desired, and they couldn't see (an easy enough) way to get moving in that direction. After that, any substance or excuse or anxiety was "just" a coping mechanism.
Not sure if this makes sense, just needed to say this I guess.
For instance, pretty much all the OTC pain relievers are bad for your kidneys and/or liver.
The question is if the positives out weight the negatives.
Getting a CAT scan imparts a non-zero lifetime increased risk of cancer, but if it finds something that would have killed you in the next 6 months...
Likewise, I'm sure cannabis has some long term negative effects, but it provides relief from pain, anxiety, nausea...
Same for alcohol.
Is there a more efficient stress reliever than alcohol? (No, exercise isn't always sustainable)
For me, the only non-medical stress reliever is reading light novels or even trash novels. For some weird reason, the shallow narrative style plus corny plots take my mind away from reality.
This was an affluent suburb of a Canadian city.
There are a lot of confounding variables around this paper.
“Don’t drink don’t smoke what do you do?”
Not cool if you don’t smoke pot.
What crap. I wish I had known that when I was younger.
Same, but in SoCal; it was easier to get high grade weed than it was to get beer, so most house parties were always well stocked with weed they seldom had alcohol unless they knew or were paying off certain places that sold them to minors in large quantities which carried lots of costs and risks, so a house party of 200+ guests would always be a challenge
Culturally weed was way more tolerated than alcohol as a result growing up, but still had a negative stigma as a 'losers drug of choice' despite its wide legal use, which is what made me gravitate toward hard alcohol as it had some exclusivity but also just better experience in a social setting than weed.
Flash forward a decade and I get involved in the hemp Industry and travel all over Europe and then return to the US (Colorado) where Hemp was starting to make inroads, and I realized a lot of the people in the Industry were former MJ (including my cofounder) and weren't 'lazy stoners with no ambition' as they were farmers as well as entrepreneurs, but they simply used a drug that I associated with decompression and relaxation in what I regarded a hyper competitive social setting like a conference or Industry party.
My point is that I think it varies culturally now that its been decriminalized and legalized in many parts of the World, and to be honest asking people if they want to smoke a bowl is just as common in some cities if they want a cup of coffee, and since I don't like caffeine and have a low THC tolerance I usually have to carry high CBD/CBN/CBG strains so as to no completely fall asleep due to the high THC strains most regular users smoke.
It's odd because in my teens and early 20s I felt that DARE indoctrination creep in and felt were were doing 'something bad' and we were going to get caught despite living and working in a legal state (CA or CO), but upon further analysis the truth is what I was putting into my body during a 2-3 Martini 'power lunch meeting' followed by a double espresso as a pick me up somewhere in between was way worse for me personally than if we had just took a drag from a joint outside before diving in and talking business and finalizing deals.
It's odd, and the stoner reputation is real in many cases, but I think a lot of it as in most sweeping generalizations, is conflated with a lot of misguided stereotypes.
I have been outpaced by 50+ year old couple with kids who drank and smoked weed on a regular basis as a a fit 20 something with no real responsibilities other than myself. Nothing I could do short of not sleeping made me as productive as that couple, even on an individual basis and I learned a lot about my own preconceived biases and confirmation biases. Most of it forced upon me by convention but also personal experiences that I'm glad to say I challenged and have become a better a person as a result.
But the problem with observational studies is real, especially here. Let's complain about that and also investigate childhood trauma and regular cannabis use.
Everyone watches TV but only a few of them become addicted to TV. Everyone eats but only a few become addicted to eating, etc. What makes the difference between normal and compulsive use is an inherent susceptibility.
Mate says that usually that increased susceptibility comes from developmental issues / mental health issues / trauma, etc.
A couple of alcoholics who have had to dry out the alcohol, and nicotine has gotten a lot of victims around here, but generally recreational drugs (particularly MDMA, Cannabis, and LSD) are a huge boon.
The biggest danger is the police, but they are reforming and relaxing.
People use drugs because they are good. They are not idiots
Drugs are fun. That is why people use them.
People have problems. When they have problems abnd use drugs they say they have drug problems. Maybe they do. But it is far more common for people to have no problems, just loads of fun.
Tripping on LSD with a thousand other people is magical experience.
It's not unheard of for someone to have the opinion that the consequences of drug's legal status is more harmful than the drug itself.
I doubt being sentenced to 10 years in prison over selling weed is going to be less harmful than any negative effects observed in this study.
There are other effects, effects on the brain and on sleep quality, for instance, that are not mentioned in this study. Effects on the lungs and cardiovascular system.
None of that has anything to do with 10 years in jail to me. Life sentences for possession are stupid and Boomer.
I mentioned it elsewhere, but where is the panic over prescription drugs and their harmful side effects?
This is a non story. Marijuana is popular because it's potent. Compare it to other legal drugs, the obvious being alcohol, and again tell me about the relative harm.
Drug use itself may harm, esp harder drugs, but drug use almost certainly correlates with the kind of decision making that would lead to things like hard drinking, relationship problems, and work problems in moderately severe cases.
Sometimes it's not the drug use that causes the problems, it's the problems that cause the drug use.
Not bashing folks who smoke weed here. I partake on occasion. But this study is bullshit.
“Overall, regular use of cannabis – more than weekly and especially daily use – was found to have harmful consequences, regardless of the age people began using it.”
Regular use of anything, particularly if it's mind altering, is likely to cause harmful long term effects. Particularly if it starts at young ages. That said, the study doesn't seem to even attempt to ask why these people were regularly smoking weed in their teens.