We should have had these kinds of studies nearly 100 years ago, but the Reefer Madness era bans stunted our science based knowledge of the plant. Within just a short time frame of the rules being relaxed, we've learned how to extract so many different compounds from this one plant from CBD, CBG, CBN, Delta-8, Delta-9, Delta-10, etc. We now know which compounds get you high, and which ones can be used without fear of testing positive.

There seems to be a mad rush on people being able to do research and be first to publish, so I'd expect some results to be questionable. However, isn't that exactly how it is supposed to work? Do a test, release the results, others verify/validate. If something comes up questionable, refine the test, release the results, verify/validate again.

Yeah. I'm not trying to die of cancer or have reduced mental capacity. I want these studies.

I know from my own anecdotal experience that d9 (reg THC) gives me incredible anxiety but d8 does not. My mental health is better than it was before I had access to it. I don't want to be a guinea pig, but we've been hearing fear, fear, fear for the last six decades.

Reefer Madness was released in 1936, so closer to eight decades. The rule changes in the 60s were more about racial, for lack of better word, control than anything.

Without wanting to sound all pot-head hippy, this plant seems to be pretty magical. If it turns out that the "good" stuff can be used by removing the one part that gets you high, then we've lost so much potential because of fearmongering. It's infuriating that in the 20th century into the 21st we were no better than the days of Capernicus for stopping science because of fear.

Science as a whole is under attack, from the right.

while i don’t disagree with you at all, it’s not just from the right. the whole anti-vaccination movement started on the opposite side of the political rainbow.

It started everywhere, for every liberal hippy mom there was a christian conservative mom home schooling their kid to avoid vaccine requirements of public schools.

This transcends politics, humans are dumb fearful critters.

yeah, agreed. that was the point i was trying to make to the parent comment — that this behavior isn’t exclusive to the “right” or “left.” it’s a people problem. or, more exactly, it’s a religion problem (not in the sense of spiritual faiths, but in the tendency for people to seek out and congregate around a shared system of beliefs.. and then stick to those beliefs beyond all reason).

It's not exclusive to right or left but we need to look at which side has the anti-science momentum going on. Which side has leaders who advocate injecting bleach to kill Covid?

I think there’s been a bit of an overcorrection about weed in the last couple years. Weed smokers have been on the defensive against a lot of bullshit (and untrue/hyperbolized) propaganda for almost a century, and thus a lot of them have gotten somewhat inoculated against any negative findings about cannabis, to a point where they will dismiss virtually anything that has even a remote chance of making weed look bad.

This is the default for any motivated reasoning where people are interested in a specific outcome (regardless of what's true): https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/too-good-to-check-a-pl...

It's hard work to fight against it, but the first step is recognizing it all over the place and in your own thinking.

Recognizing it and trying to correct for it is one of the core bits of the rationality community (imo).

I think it's also because many of us have seen extreme exaggerations on the dangers of cannabis that turned out to be wrong. It definitely take me years of using it to acknowledge the (lesser) negative effects after seeing how much of the negative things I was told about it as a kid were fake.

Just because others have made the same mistake in the other direction doesn't mean it's good to do the same thing in pursuit of a different conclusion.

Skepticism is good, but if you find yourself preferring one outcome over another then you should be extra critical of stuff that supports your preferred outcome because you're more likely to want to give it a pass.

Similarly you should be more willing to entertain stuff that goes the other way because you're more likely to incorrectly dismiss something that's actually true.

I'm not saying it's good, I'm just giving another potent reason beyond self-interest.

Yeah - I think we agree.

People like cannabis. Naturally they minimize any suggestion that it's not all good. I do the same with Lisp, smoked meats, and predestination. I see no mystery here.

It’s certainly not all good but I’d put it in a different league from alcohol, for example. Cannabis might cause elevated heart risk over a period of years. Alcohol can stop the heart of a healthy person in a single night of binge drinking.

Thank you for illustrating my point so nicely, in response to absolutely no assertions about cannabis.

Indeed, you made no assertions about cannabis; you made an ad hominem assertion that people only minimize any suggestion that cannabis (or smoked meats, or Lisp or anything else) is "not all good" because they like it; as if they could never use any objective tools, like data.

All that oceanplexian's response proved "so nicely" is that people will sometimes fall for ad hominem assertions and try to engage them.

Chill, man, maybe have a joint.

Someone in Seattle said this to me once when I was sitting on his front stoop. I was on the phone and saw him walk up and I jumped and hurried off his steps. I will never forget his words because I was high af at the time

You did imply plenty though, by putting it in the same category as _Lisp_.

All European preserved meats are categorically terrible for you. It doesn’t matter where the nitrates come from — celery or otherwise. We’re talking a 20% jump in cardiovascular issues so it’s not marginal.

That’s because you can’t have a rational discussion about cannabis online. Anything negative is dismissed, apologised away, compared immediately to alcohol or you are accused of providing anecdotes by the proponents.

This in itself dismisses the credibility of the proponents in my mind.

The funny thing is you don’t see this with alcoholics. They know what they’re doing is bad and admit it easily but can’t stop.

The funny thing is you saying "you can't have a discussion online" as we are having a discussion online and you are responding to someone who said what you were thinking.

I am completely open to the concept that cannabis consumption is not always healthy for people, depending on delivery method, quantity, and the state of mind of the individual.

I also, almost without qualification, will dismiss the health risks as a rationale for continuing its general prohibition. And (wait for it)... yeah, it's because there are myriad substances and behaviors that can cause harm, but we don't outright ban them.

So no, I'm not saying "don't tell me how it could be harmful" - especially as an occasional user, I want to know as real studies (and trusted anecdotes among friends) come about. Just don't use evidence of some adverse effects as a justification for prohibition, which politicians and puritans are quick to attempt.

To clarify a point on the latter, it’s a temporal thing. I used to be a proponent so there’s no Puritanism here.

In my 20s I knew people who used it. I used it myself occasionally. Hell I even dated a dealer once. No problems. Pro legalisation.

In my 30s some of those people drifted away or grew out of it. Apart from a few. They ended up burning their relationships for it due to it being tied intimately to their identity.

In my 40s now I’ve seen the last few people I know who used it suffering through mental health problems. On top of that there have been a few specific events including someone rolling a car onto my front lawn through my fence when speeding. They were prosecuted for drug driving.

I see a lot of people who haven’t tread this path yet and were where I was. This slow decline and the realisation that there are people who genuinely are unable to act rationally and put others at risk suggests that apart from medical use the net benefit to society is negative.

Now the real negative basis is mental health and at least here in the UK there isn’t the care or support for anyone already. Adding cannabis usage to that is a disaster waiting to happen.

Ultimately the long term study is something we’re not going to have the answers to for over 30 years as we see the impact on society. Hopefully by then it won’t be another fuck up like adding lead to gas.

But even ignoring that effect, most people smoke it and smoking is monumentally bad for you regardless of what you are smoking.

My two heaviest marijuana smoker friends are 100% sure that any study that mentions some detrimental effect from marijuana is part of a big-pharma conspiracy. Their argument is that "it's a natural herb, it's impossible for it to do harm".

The correct response: "So is hemlock".

"Care for some foxglove salad?"

Sounds like Tesla fanatics and the phantom ICE manufacturers they think are out to get them.

Pretty sure different companies competing in similar sectors aren't above stoking FUD about their competitors, no matter who they are or what industry they are in.

I heard Tesla fans speculate that coverage of Tesla's cars failing is driven by a secret cabal of short sellers and car manufacturers that are conspiring with the media, which apparently is also out to get Tesla.

Notice this more. When people have a side on a topic they tend to find every excuse for its shortcomings and easily believe every positive.

People seem to have a lot of trouble accepting that things they favor have negative aspects and things they don’t have merit. The world isn’t just good and evil, most of it is striking a balance between positives and negatives and we all need to get better at doing this objectively instead of picking a side and afterwards finding a justification.

I think that many of the commenters are pointing out that this study is poorly done in some key areas, which make any kind of conclusions based on it of little value.

We’re not going to get large scale randomized controlled trials for marijuana use any time soon.

We can definitely debate the methods.. but the findings from this growing body of evidence should probably be the ‘default’ stance, until we see more causal or controlled correlational evidence pointing the other way.

More specifically, whenever such an article hits the headlines most comments will gladly assume that the authors are insultingly ignorant about basic statistics and overlooked a glaring confusion between causation and correlation, which the commenter immediately spotted without even reading the article.

It’s common sense that inhaling smoke is bad for you. If you defy common sense, you’re unlikely to suddenly embrace the logic of a scientific study.

Every HN science article is commenters dismissing the results of the study.

I would think that people who disagree with an article would have more to say.