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Study Shows Marijuana Use In Teens Correlates To Decreasing IQ
retroworks writes "The BBC reports on a paper published in the U.S.'s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing a correlation between persistent, regular cannabis use and risk of lower IQ. The study finds the risk particularly correlates use of cannabis by teenagers who use the drug "four times a week year after year." The more people smoked, the greater the loss in IQ. Reviewers of the study at King's College Institute of Psychiatry states that the data and methodology are exceptional, but she also cautions that there may be another explanation, such as depression, which could lower IQ while stimulating marijuana use. The study does not mention or rule out 'nocebo' effects, i.e. just feeling stupid for spending your teens hanging out with potheads."
Tag news article 'Propaganda'
Drinking Wine or Beer 4 times a day year after year will reduce your IQ. Over use of ANYTHING will cause problems.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Updated for a new generation.
I was gonna go to class, before I got high
I coulda' cheated and I coulda passed, but I got high
I'm taking it next semester and I know why, (why man) 'cuz I got high
Because I got high
Because I got high
I'd say the biggest drawback to pot smoking in teenage years is a lack of ability to find and keep a job. Being a loaf isn't conducive to paying the bills, which is the skill teenagers need to learn first and foremost. Self-sufficiency is paramount to heading off to college, or work, or simply moving on in life and I'd wager is more important than grades, social status, or if they are pot-heads or not. Its possible to smoke weed and still have a reasonable income, but the desire to be self-sufficient needs to come first or the stoner mentality wins over.
I know what you're thinking. Did I forward 65,535 packets or 65,536 packets?
Does smoking pot as a teen lower your IQ, or are stupid teens more likely to smoke pot?
... bears shit in the woods, the pope is a catholic, ect ect.
Persuading the kids is another matter of course.
Those who started after the age of 18 did not have the same IQ decline.
"It's such a special study that I'm fairly confident that cannabis is safe for over-18 brains, but risky for under-18 brains."
-King's College professor Terrie Moffitt.
Bet they didn't see that one coming.
From the article: One member of the team, Prof Terrie Moffitt of King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, said this study could have a significant impact on our understanding of the dangers posed by cannabis use.
Quoted as saying: "It is such a special study that I'm fairly confident that cannabis is safe for over-18 brains, but risky for under-18 brains."
No kidding. So is alcohol. But this article's hype implies that all potential future cannabis users are under 18 and therefore cannabis is a dangerous substance.
Whatever you say, BBC.
Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
I think all things should be free to use as long as you're not significantly interfering with someone else's enjoyment. For example, the government should stop telling us e.g. that we can't use that empty house + land over there because it "belongs" to someone else.
People are free to kill their IQ, but should be discouraged. Putting potheads in jail is wrong because no-one is at risk of harm from potheads, not because being a pothead is somehow a grand expression of freedom. If they fail and harm themselves as a result, the state should treat them - with group freedom comes group responsibility.
Of course, your libretardian argument leads to the conclusion that drink driving is OK as long as you don't cause an accident - because, after all, money solves all problems, including the problem of dying or becoming a paraplegic.
All drugs should be legalised, there is no reason to hunt people down for smoking whatever they want, drinking whatever they want. There are already plenty of laws regarding actual acts of violence and negligence (like causing an accident while drunk or drugged). The government likes to have control over your body as well as over all of your actions. Do you think you should be free people, even free to kill your IQ or do you think you should be controlled by the state, told what to do, what not to do, thrown in jail if you refuse to comply?
Free people should make free choices for themselves as they wish. But the classification of something as a drug includes that you lose your free choice because of the addiction and influence.
Yes, jail for marijuana use is too much. No, not all drugs should be legalized.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
they are as dumb and dense as rocks
if you have nothing better to do in life than sit around and inhale a drug to "get high" and have psychodelic hallucinations then you're probably not destined for greatness
Just that nobody calls those users "stoners" who aren't stoned all day long but only enjoy a reefer now and then to relax.
It's like calling everyone a drunkard who drinks a glas of wine now and then.
Passed every exam at school with flying colours and had my first experience of failing an exam at university.
Of course that could also be explained by going into an exam hung over and sleep deprived. It's hard to say.
Study was run by a guy at Duke University in tobacco country. They have a vested interest in keeping pot illegal? Something to consider if you have any free brain cells. Not defending pot smoking, just sayin cigarettes are as bad or worse.
Breaking the law on a regular basis with a decent chance of being caught and treated harshly by the system probably correlates with a low IQ too, doesn't it?
Or you could stop being a busybody twat.
you're probably not destined for greatness
I say the same thing about people who have trouble writing basic English sentences, as well.
I don't respond to AC's.
"Do you think you should be free people, even free to kill your IQ or do you think you should be controlled by the state, told what to do, what not to do, thrown in jail if you refuse to comply?"
A free society doesn't mean you have freedom to do as you damn well please no matter what and screw everyone else. If you hadn't smoked so many joints you might understand this basic fact of human civilisation which has been true since probably before we came down out of the trees since even animals don't tolerate anarchy in their packs or herds.
Yeah, it's like they believe they have a wealth of historical context to draw on or something! Ridiculous.
If I had a dollar for every time my teenage pothead friends told me that weed was harmless, I'd be a very rich man.
Thing is, none of them did anything useful with their lives, or even had jobs. And now they're all completely drug-fucked wastes of space, to a man.
A spliff or two, now and again when you're old enough to handle it, might be okay. But when you're in your late teens, the stuff will destroy your mind -- because teens are inconsiderate, obnoxious douchebags, generally because the "not being a complete cunt" part of your brain is the last part of your brain to fully develop, and pot messes with its development.
Mod me down, potheads.
How far does that go? Can I invite all my friends into your house while you're at work? After all, why can't we use that empty house? It doesn't matter that it "belongs" to someone.
I'd argue the psychedelics specifically can actually broaden your perspective on the world. "It must be changing something about the internal communication in my brain. Whatever my inner process is that lets me solve problems, it works differently, or maybe different parts of my brain are used, " said Herbert, 42, an early employee of Cisco Systems who says he solved his toughest technical problems while tripping to drum solos by the Grateful Dead -- who were among the many artists inspired by LSD. "When I'm on LSD and hearing something that's pure rhythm, it takes me to another world and into anther brain state where I've stopped thinking and started knowing," said Herbert who intervened to ban drug testing of technologists at Cisco Systems.
I'm interested in your reasoning...
If someone kills their IQ, they effectively lower their "worth" to contribute to society. So, it is possible/probable to become a burden to said society. What then? Do we set up opium-type dens and let them have at? We'll have to feed them as well. Sounds like a form of retirement to me. So, let's say you get way and everybody can do anything. What are we to do with the extra burden?
I'm all for doing what you want... but I am also all for facing the consequences of your actions. If you knowingly do this, then you shouldn't get any relief from the consequences. Of course, this isn't exactly tied to the IQ aspect, just a general statement. I don't want to responsible for MORE other's poor decisions.
Because ignorant people think all illegal substances are basically the same thing?
"Dope" is heroin.
That's the THC psychosis talking.
The story was collapsed so the headline was so close to the previous story I saw Study shows Apple use by teens may cause lower IQ.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Wow, lots of AC's posting with no actual relevant discussion of the topic. I wish someone had the full study listed since the abstract doesn't mention any controls. It's pretty well established that IQ's can vary ~10 degrees in either direction throughout life from a baseline taken early on based on any number of factors, from physical activity to constant mental engagement (I know in PA they do initial IQ tests around 1st grade to get the baseline). I wonder if those factors are what is affected, vs a direct impact from exposure to cannabinoids (no one in the study seems to be the slice-and-dice-the-brain type, and everything is based on self-reporting).
Yes, jail for marijuana use is too much. No, not all drugs should be legalized.
Name the drug that you think should be kept illegal, and I will explain to you why it should be legalized.
Palm trees and 8
But what about all the alleged positive effects like eating a whole bunch and becoming a lazy fast ass and getting arrested...oh wait...
How many agents of chemical and biological warfare would you like me to list?
I don't know if you knew this or not but it's actually illegal. Oh and by the way, no, getting high to make yourself feel better about all your problems and pretending that it makes them go away is not healthy at any usage frequency.
Propaganda; n. Any material which proposes to sway a reader to form a conclusion that conflicts with your own.
+1 Hilarious!
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
If, for example, you haven't smoked pot in 30+ years, is there still any detectable impact on cognition compared to non-pot-smoking peers? Empirically, I'd have to say "No, there's no difference," but I'm a sample of one. Other factors may weigh in as well. An intellectually challenging environment (e.g. far too much programming) may negate some of the negative effects of pot smoking.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
"at work"?
No sig today...
IQ tests are incredibly subjective anyway, and have innate cultural biases. Essentially all an IQ test calculates is how good you are at the test. It has very little to do with "intelligence", however loosely defined.
about the shitty tests they use to establish IQ, the organisation responsible for giving the tests and to a large extent the society that thought it was a good idea to give any credence to IQ in the first place as a measure of anything.
If anything I'd say this correlates to increased intelligence..
(same guy here, my first account is limited because of trolls, like you)
That's good, because I come from a fairly rich family and - since it's not a governmental issue - I can just take over the land I want.
- it's not a government issue, it's a private matter. Just because 'you come from a rich family' doesn't change that fact that government shouldn't be involved in private disputes of this type.
That's good, because without group responsibility there is no government, and see above.
- quite the contrary, there is no such thing as 'group responsibility', there is only individual responsibility. The very idea of 'group responsibility' should be immediately taken with all sorts of prejudice. Should you pay a fine for somebody else's transgressions? Should you be thrown to jail for somebody else's crime?
Are not everybody paying for the other people's mistakes because of this ridiculous idea of 'group responsibility' at the very moment when the government steals from everybody to bail out the failed companies, like banks? What about all the subsidies that are given to corporations to do whatever they do, just because they have good access to the power in the government, isn't everybody made responsible 'as a group' for their behavior? You are a troll, though the moderators don't understand it.
If you hit somebody with a car, it's a private matter. People don't need government to have working competing criminal and judicial systems.
As to mass transit - the very concept of it was destroyed in USA with the government subsidizing the auto, gas and road building companies, when they stepped in to create that giant network of unprofitable (and thus unsustainable and unmaintainable in the long run) system of highways, that in reality was just a power grab and a huge heist.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Desomorphine?
Absence of proof != proof of absence.
If you leave it as you found it and make good on any damage, I couldn't give a fuck what you do with my stuff.
There are small communities (from traditional English villages to new age communes) which have open door policies like this. But capitalism with its modern cities and covetousness has pretty much fucked up this philosophy.
Singling one out vs. the plethora of others for cause and effect politically serves little real purpose. The real question is how the damage done by a drug being studied for a typical user compares with other common drugs on various levels. In that light, how do the most commonly abused "other" drugs, such as alchohol or tobacco compare in both health and lifestyle effects. Nearly everyone uses some sort of recreational drug at some level. Make a good choice. I've made mine.
I mean you would get the same result with various drug or even alcohol : active regular consumption of psycho active product during the formative years until adulthood has a chance to lower your IQ. So that does not seem very special.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
To.... sugar? You mean to say that the chemical that all of the cells in your body run off of, including your brain, is making you lose IQ? That is, sucrose is glucose + fructose, and the latter just gets converted.
What sort of pathway are you envisioning for this to happen? High sugar diets can lead to obesity, as they don't sate hunger proportional to their calorie load, and ultimately diabetes... but is there some sort of link between obesity or diabetes and IQ that I don't know?
Powell: "So, what are we doing?" Cheney: "Oh, crime." Powell: "Crime? Good, OK... crime..."
You do realize that we (the netherlands) have a much lower percentage of regular cannabis users than, say, the US, right?
I don't know if you knew this or not but it's actually illegal. Oh and by the way, no, getting high to make yourself feel better about all your problems and pretending that it makes them go away is not healthy at any usage frequency.
It's not illegal where I live.
But I agree that "getting high to make yourself feel better about all your problems and pretending that it makes them go away is not healthy at any usage frequency".
Just that there're lots of people who don't do this to make problems go away at all. It's basically a harmless bit of fun and relaxing to wind off after a day of work. What's wrong with that? It's the same with having a bit of wine or beer or whatever in the evening.
It's not about individual intelligence, it's about herd intelligence. If individuals lower their intelligence, the intelligence of the group goes down, and in a democratic society that is devastating. It's actually a problem in any society (except maybe a tyranny or dictatorship), but it's worse when individuals have the ability to influence society directly. Unless, of course, drug users would be willing to give up their vote, which I don't imagine is going to happen anytime soon (nor, indeed, would it be enough to counteract the effects completely.)
By lowering your intelligence, you aren't hurting other individuals, you are hurting your entire culture and their ability to make prudent and intelligent decisions, which in a way is worse than harming individual people, since the effects can last for generations.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Don't be pedantic. Also, a surprisingly large number of chemical weapons are used in civilian industries or as pesticides.
Palm trees and 8
- it's not a government issue, it's a private matter. Just because 'you come from a rich family' doesn't change that fact that government shouldn't be involved in private disputes of this type.
It changes a lot: it means I can pay security guards to stop you getting back into the house you thought was yours. Government's not involved, so good luck raising your own army.
Should you pay a fine for somebody else's transgressions? Should you be thrown to jail for somebody else's crime?
Communities and whole countries are made worse off all the time because of the actions of a few. This will always happen for as long as the actions of one person has an indirect effect on more than one other. Welcome to reality, and I'm sorry you're having such trouble coping with it.
Prison is a way of stopping those dangerous to society from causing harm to society. Fines are usually a dumb idea as implemented, although I guess they could be used to rein in the abusively powerful. Using either for mere punishment is fairly ineffective, as America should have learnt by now.
Are not everybody paying for the other people's mistakes because of this ridiculous idea of 'group responsibility' at the very moment when the government steals from everybody to bail out the failed companies, like banks?
I have no problem with the socialisation of losses. My issue is with the capitalisation of profit.
You are a troll, though the moderators don't understand it.
You are probably mentally ill, and the moderators do understand it. But this is irrelevant - what matters is that you make a crap argument.
If you hit somebody with a car, it's a private matter. People don't need government to have working competing criminal and judicial systems.
So, like I said, when I get drunk and hit you with a car, good luck stopping me before I do it again to your family.
You meant to type "I see that there are exceptions now" but it seemed to come out as "Don't be pedantic".
Looking at roman_mir's posting history, I'm fairly sure that a dictatorship is his preferred choice. Except he will call it "The Corporation" instead of "The Government".
Since the home-made mix is routinely injected immediately with little or no further purification, "krokodil" has become notorious for producing severe tissue damage
Notice how the very fact that it is being produced underground, rather than by legal, regulated sources is causing the problems here. The drug itself, in the absence of toxic byproducts and adulterants, is no more dangerous than other opiates (and it is safer than some).
So what useful purpose is served in making that drug illegal?
Palm trees and 8
here is the source i used: http://www.medpagetoday.com/Psychiatry/Addictions/34415 i would bet there is some external factor not controlled for.
So? The chances are, you are not "destined for greatness" no matter what you do. Why waste your life chasing for a winning lottery ticket rather than simply relax and enjoy what you can have? Besides that the lottery company - the 1% - have a harder time exploiting you if you don't buy into the lie, I mean.
Most people can never be great, because great means exceptional, and most people are average by definition. You are not exceptional and will never be great. And there's no shame in that, no matter how much you're trying to evoke it.
The stereotypical stoner mentality - "relax, take it eeeeasy" - is the antithesis of the rat race mentality, and almost impossible to exploit, so of course the people who benefit from having all the little hamsters spin their wheels fight pot. And since they are nasty people, they use nasty methods, to the point of calling their fight a War with capital W, complete with propaganda front to complement the armed forces and prison camps. And all that should really make you wonder if you should trust them to be quite honest.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Name the drug that you think should be kept illegal, and I will explain to you why it should be legalized.
Crystal Meth.
Bath Salts.
PCP.
I like this comment, it says most of the things I want to say.
Also there is that IQ tests are biased towards the educated. They claim to remove that bias but they ask you a lot of questions you can't answer if you haven't had certain maths, and then act like you're stupid because you don't know how to do that thing. Undereducation is woeful, but it's not the same thing as stupidity.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You think you are going to 'help the herd' by reducing individual liberties? So you are going to allow government to tell people what to do with themselves, how to live and allow it throw people to jail for doing things to themselves that government denies them, and this is somehow going to help society?
AFAIC that is the path to devastation, not allowing people to live their lives the way they choose, but allowing government to step in with such amazing powers over individuals. Yes, there always will be some people who will kill their brain cells.
Or do you think that alcohol improves cognitive functions somehow?
People will find a way to deny reality, your way of denying realty is to think that you can truly change people's desire to deny their reality in their preferred way and you think this is a good thing for the economy and society, to have such a powerful government that can do this.
What's the difference between government having this power and government having power to deny women abortions? What's the difference? There is no difference.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
I don't know, smoking sugar doesn't seem like such a good idea.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
It changes a lot: it means I can pay security guards to stop you getting back into the house you thought was yours. Government's not involved, so good luck raising your own army.
- good. Majority of people are not exactly richest on the planet, they'll have to come up with a solution to this that is market based. The solution may involve an occasional lynching of silly people, but that's alright.
Lynching of course is not the only way, people have set up competing, market based court and jail systems on their own many times, even in America.
I have no problem with the socialisation of losses. My issue is with the capitalisation of profit.
- talk about mental illness.
So, like I said, when I get drunk and hit you with a car, good luck stopping me before I do it again to your family.
- let me put it this way - I am not exactly without resources, you are not the only one with ability to raise hell.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
correlation does not imply.. um...
wait, wait...
The study showed that these same effects are absent when used by adults. To me, that says it should simply be something that is age restricted like cigarettes or alcohol.
Crystal Meth.
Methamphetamine is already legal by prescription and it is prescribed to both children and adults. Most of the harm caused by recreational methamphetamine is caused by toxic byproducts that are left over from poorly controlled and completely unregulated production processes, which is a direct result of prohibition; such things are not present the pharmaceutical grade methamphetamine that doctors prescribe.
Bath Salts.
You will have to be more specific, since that is a generic name for a number of stimulants that are also produced under poorly controlled and unregulated conditions. Yes, the media has been playing up the risk, but the stimulant psychosis is not news, and incidents involving caffeine seem to go unnoticed (or do you really think coffee should be illegal?):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19407709
The difference, of course, is that caffeine pills come with dosage information, their production is regulated, and you know that they contain caffeine. "Bath salts" come with no such information, and you have no idea what they contain -- it might be MDPV, but it could just as easily be caffeine, some unknown byproduct of MDPV synthesis, or something that is only known among drug researchers. Do you see the pattern yet?
PCP.
PCP is legal by prescription (same schedule as methamphetamine), for use as a painkiller. Recreational users have the same problems as recreational methamphetamine users: poor production, unknown dosage, etc. There is not much more to be said -- the problem here is not the drug, it is the law.
Palm trees and 8
He stated that murdering people with your car is a private matter. That's a red flag.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
I wonder if the IQs actually dropped or if they remained stable as the non smoking group in the study improved.
What gets you a 100 IQ at 10 years old doesn't cut it when you're 15.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
There's a strong argument to be made that drugs should be decriminalized due to the societal costs of keeping them illegal. As with Prohibition in the US, this only enriches the criminals and does little to decrease availability. Money is then spent on searching for illegal drugs, pursuing the distributors and users, putting them on trial, and keeping them in jail. Money that could be far better spent elsewhere. If even a fraction of the budget for drug enforcement were instead spent on educating people about the dangers of drugs, and research to provide safer alternatives, society would benefit greatly. If the profit motive were removed from drugs, what would happen to the gangs and cartels? They wouldn't all disappear, but they would certainly be greatly reduced. There's no good reason the laws regarding distribution and use of marijuana shouldn't be similar to those for tobacco and alcohol. Drugs with more severe effects or higher levels of addiction should have more controls, but there should still be some method to obtain them legally. At least if use/possession were decriminalized, users could seek help without fear of punishment.
Problem is, leaving something as good as how it was found is subjective. Ever seen the controller on a game console set up in an electronics store? Which of the thousands of people who used that controller ought to be responsible for replacing it in my house? That's an extreme example, however I _have_ friends who somehow managed to wear out their Super Nintendo controllers to the point of failure. My standards for how I treat my property and what I consider to be inconsequential levels of wear and tear are likely different than yours. Semi-related to the topic at hand, does coming into my house and smoking pot count as 'leaving it as good as it was found'? You might even agree with me that stinking up my house detracts from my ability to enjoy my own home, but not everyone would be so courteous. Close knit communities are keen to be wary of outsiders who may not share their standards of courtesy when making use of their property. The diversity of people and attitudes in the US is one of its greatest strengths, but it's also why I'm not leaving my door unlocked any time soon.
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
I know you're talking about drug use, but I can't help thinking that you could be making the same argument for outlawing Fox News, reality television, or NASCAR.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Did you know you can't prescribe Ritalin to teens & children in the country it's manufactured because of it's potential side effects like psychosis or for the lay person; goes into school buildings and starts shooting. The number of shootings are on the rise with the number of medicines prescribed.
"You notice you never hear any positive drug stories on the news? Thats fucking strange because ever experience I've had on a drugs has been positive. I hear stories about some kid on LSD who jumped out the window because he thought he could fly. I say "GOOD!" thin out the gene pool. Aww, what? He's an idiot. If you think you can fly, try taking off from the ground. It's what ducks do. You don't see ducks lined up to catch the elevator."
- Bill "MOTHERFUCKING" Hicks
Other noted pot smokers: Carl Sagan, Johnny Cash, Rick Rubin, Rodney Dangerfield, George Washington Carver, Thomas Jefferson, Bill Clinton, George Clinton, Jeremy Piven, Larry Flynt, Oliver Stone, Snoop Dogg, Willie Nelson, Jimmy Kimmel, Micheal Phelps, Tony Bennet, Seth Rogan, Damn every comic, musician & artist worth a shit ever most likely.
It's not about individual intelligence, it's about herd intelligence. If individuals lower their intelligence, the intelligence of the group goes down, and in a democratic society that is devastating. It's actually a problem in any society (except maybe a tyranny or dictatorship), but it's worse when individuals have the ability to influence society directly. Unless, of course, drug users would be willing to give up their vote, which I don't imagine is going to happen anytime soon (nor, indeed, would it be enough to counteract the effects completely.)
By lowering your intelligence, you aren't hurting other individuals, you are hurting your entire culture and their ability to make prudent and intelligent decisions, which in a way is worse than harming individual people, since the effects can last for generations.
Right - what's good for the Party is good for you, Winston.
War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.
We've always been at war with EastAsia.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Well, Stan, the truth is marijuana probably isn't gonna make you kill people, and...it most likely isn't gonna fund terrorism, but...well, son, pot makes you feel fine with being bored and...it's when you're bored that you should be learning some new skill or discovering some new science or...being creative. If you smoke pot you may grow up to find out that you aren't good at anything!
-Randy Marsh
The problem with that, inherently, is the Tragedy of the Commons.
Imagine a 'Boston Common' scenario where four sheep farmers share a plot of grazing land. Each farmer can use the land to graze his sheep. Soon, the common is completely grazed clean as farmers use the land as much as possible to out-compete their neighbors - because if Farmer Joe takes more than he needs, there won't be enough for Farmer Tom - therefore Farmer Tom needs to consume as much as he can before Farmer Joe takes it all. If the common is fenced off in four equal portions, the common stays green as farmers budget the land, each to his own need, because he knows the land will be there for him in the future - no need to over-consume the resource.
In other news, both drug use and low IQ are correlated to poverty.
"Dope" is heroin.
Meth, if you're from the midwest.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I don't care about your parties, I don't even live in your country anymore (assuming you are in USA), so why don't you come up with a more meaningful argument than ridiculous ad-hominem.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Propaganda: MARIJUANA LOWERS IQ
The difference is in how this is presented. A scientific presentation cannot possibly say that marijuana is a causal factor until at least all of the following are addressed:
There are a lot of things that can cause the results the scientists saw -- which is good news for them, since it means they have plenty of questions to answer. Unfortunately, the media will see this, ignore the part about heavy users, spend no time discussing confounding factors, and jump right on the "marijuana is bad" bandwagon. Typical, unsurprising, propaganda-driven approach.
Palm trees and 8
Yeah the trouble is that I have lived in a remote farming area with common ground and there was no tragedy because 1) there are regulations to stop abuse; 2) before the law even thinks about stepping in, all your neighbours will put a stop to your abusive behaviour.
"Tragedy of the commons" assumes people are stupidy short-sighted and selfish - all people except those who raise this poor argument, that is.
The only thing you've proven is that you're willing to judge others. As I always say, when one person attempts to judge another, it says a lot more about the person doing the judging than the person being judged.
yeah.. jobs for one. this study was about teens though?
thing is, it's those deadbeat pot users you notice - they got nothing to lose so they can act like deadbeat pothead bums, so it's those guys who end up spreading the idea that it's not that harmful to smoke pot(which doesn't do much favors for pots public image). but if you go into a bus with 30 people then there's a good chance that at least 5-10 guys there are occasional users - you just can't tell it from how they look.
at least I've never heard of anyone getting pot-poisoning though. alcohol on the other hand...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
If they fail and harm themselves as a result, the state should treat them - with group freedom comes group responsibility.
I know we want to have our cake and eat it too, but social programs aren't sustainable if personal behavior isn't regulated to some degree. It's sad to have to do it, but you just can't afford to piss off the responsible productive citizens who pay for it all by giving them nothing while they carry the burden of those who happily harm themselves. Unless, of course, you're willing to resort to soviet style emigration restrictions to prevent the inevitable human capital flight.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
You have one anecdote. We have all of history.
'Tragedy of the commons' wasn't just made up. It is an explanation for a repeatedly observed phenomenon.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Alcohol and ecstasy are known to cause brain damage directly.
In 1980's, my life was pretty terrible. I lived in a poor post-industrial city where hope dwindled. I lived on a street where the bikers were fighting with the block punks. I have seen people beaten and bloodied. I have seen someone's jaw broken with a three foot stick. I have seen someone choke someone unconscious. I have seen someone seizure from a beating. I have known two people who were scarred from being dragged down the street at the end of a rope. As a teen, I knew quite a few others who were abused both brutally and sexually. It seemed that every day something was going wrong. When someone pulled a blackjack on me it took 22 minutes for the police to arrive. My house was broken into twice. I have been the victim of violence several times, including sexual.
I remember one night when all us bad youths were sitting in an old bus hulk. We were listening to "Hell is for Children" from Pat Benatar. Everyone looked elsewhere as we chanted along with the song. Yes, we were high, and perhaps because we were, we survived, I survived.
I remember when I first saw the a computer a person could actually own. Oddly, it was a Tandy Model 1. Later on, I bought a Color Computer 2, and I loved that thing. It had 256x192 graphics, in 4 colors. I love computer graphics, and started writing lots of programs for it, because that's what computer users did back then.
My point is, having been though what I have, it is doubtful that I would been able to relax enough to do that, in the environment I was in. For me, pot is a gateway drug that led to some computer programming, Photoshop use, working at dot-com, working at a major computer game company, it led to CAD, and writing a provisional patent, and some other things.
When people talk about drugs, I feel that they do not talk about the benefits. IM(not so)HO, in every way, pot is a better anti-anxiety than benzodiazepines. It is less physically addictive, and it does not make you as clumsy as it does.
~
I am generally so angry about the US's anti-drug policy that it is indeed hard to evaluate things objectively. The US Government has been lying to its people for so long on about drugs it will be hard for any rational person to believe anything, case in point: Reefer Madness.
When people lied and said that pot was always terribly addictive and so was heroin, those people who saw the truth that pot is not so addictive, and they thought that heroine was not addictive, and so they tried it.
I also remember during Regan's rein, when he tightened the borders. Drugs like pot became rare and expensive. Pot was $20 for a half-ounce before that and cocaine was expensive and scarce. In just a few years, pot became scarce and cocaine was plentiful. The people in the inner cities might not ever became familiar with harder drugs if it was not for the Drug War, the war on people. Why? Back when domestic sensimilla was still an "exotic" there was a lot of inexpensive Mexican and Columbia pot. Tightening the borders created a condition where only the smallest and most valuable drugs were moved through. The drug war made crack almost as cheap as pot.
True or not, the test will probably become a weapon in the conservative drug war. Even if the test is true, pot is much safer than driving a car, which claim more teenage lives than anything else.
Please remember that in the US, an anti-rave act was passed with a fouled test. The test was supposed to represent MDMA, but instead it was meth. The funny thing is: lots of people take meth as adderall. (I have seen what meth does to people, and I don't like it.)
In the US, we have other issues: we as country, think that alcohol, the blood of Christ is the only drug that should be allowed. There's are so many people making money from the war against drugs, that stand to lose that we cannot see things in a rational way. Anhieser-Bush and Phillip Morris tobacco were members of a Drug Free America. Pot was made illegal to control Mexican Americans. To me, the war on drugs is the war on US Citizens.
Pot smoking led to computer use and it has made me intolerant the drug war : )
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Nice strawman. One of the functions of government has always been to promote behavior beneficial for society, and prevent behavior that is detrimental to it. How else can you argue that science and evolution should be taught in the (public) classroom and not creationism (young-earth creationism, specifically)? Because the former is good for society (well educated populace), while the latter is not. That is why government offers education in the first place and requires children to be educated. Because it is necessary for a well-formed society, which is in turn required for a well-formed government.
Also, if that's your best argument for legalization of marijuana ("because otherwise it's like living in 1984!") then you can expect reasonable people to simply ignore you.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Yes. Society has always done this.
- yes, and society has always paid for this by destroying its economy because it destroyed individual freedoms.
because people wouldn't choose to do stupid things
- there is no such thing as 'ideal universe', we live only once, it's our prerogative to go through life as we see fit, it's nobody else's business.
Alchohol is different, of course, because it doesn't tend to have lasting effects even if you drink some every day
- alcohol is much worse than pot, drunk drivers kill more people in a year because they are drunk than all refer addicts on this planet throughout the history of humanity because they are high.
I do think the government should have the power to deny women abortions, because I think abortion is murder
- I didn't realize the depth of what I was dealing here with, so never mind.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
When I lived in a small town, I saw plenty of weed with sand in it... you assume competition where there might not be much, or even any. But yeah, sugar I mostly recall from being in "pot".
Eugh.
Meth on the west coast too. It changed sometime in the last 20 years.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It is an observation for an occasionally observed phenomenon by economists with a particular political bent interested in confirmation bias.
It's as useful as observing that sometimes stuff involving more than one person goes wrong. Yes, it does. What is the theory, though? IOW, what is the falsifiable statement being made?
I support anything that makes other people's kids dumber and lazier. It will improve my daughter's chances by reducing the competition. Even if I screw her up as long as everyone else is worse she will still look good. She may grow up to be a misanthrope though.
.... I STILL haven't smoked enough to have become dumb enough to be happy in this world. Maybe I should have used alcohol or brownnosing? These seem to work extremely well, up to the point of all critical thinking stopping completely. No such luck with THC as of yet :/
As far as I'm concerned, this study really doesn't matter -- even if it *is* right from a methodology and execution perspective, which I'm kind of questioning based on my reading of the news article about it where the only comments were from the Partnership for a Drug Free America, and the fact that it involves self-reporting from surveys.
Regardless, at a gut level, it seems risky to *encourage* teens to use mind-altering drugs, be it pot, booze or Adderall (it's funny, we never hear these people want to run studies showing the risk of putting developing brains on anti-depressants or stimulants).
But all of this seems to miss the point -- it seems like people opposed to marijuana legalization point to studies like this with a "SEE!!! IT"S BAD FOR YOU!" attitude, as if the only result that would rationalize legalization is the impossible one (for pot or anything else), where chronic, daily smoking of pot results in nothing more serious than an urge to drink more water.
This won't happen, and it's tiresome to see these kinds of studies used as some kind of justification for continuing a criminal justice empire costing billions of dollars a year that undermines the constitutional rights of everyone that has utterly failed to accomplish its goal.
Just think how well you would've done if you *hadn't* been a pothead all these years!
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
for me I was straight edge, angry and a d student. My career goals wee to become a construction worker. THen i started to smoke pot, which led me to acid, which made me think and realize I should set higher goals for myself, so I went to college, got a bachelor became and A student while being and avd pothead and moved to hollywood where I make more money than most people but less then great programmers. Weed helped me to look at other avenues of thought than to just look at the world with blinders on.
Good comeback, but it's kinda sad the way people assume that capitalism = hard work while socialism = lazy.
A socialist spirit is initially far more difficult for the smart man: you have to look after yourself and everyone around you. But you end up with a far more enjoyable community.
Capitalism is by definition the application of laziness to economics: instead of working, you accumulate capital and get wealthy by investing it rather than doing your own labour. It actually works fairly well sometimes, but it's certainly not the product of a hard work ethos.
Disclaimer: I am pulling this out of my ass.
I could conceive of pathway along the lines of an addiction to sugar causing a person to offset their protein and fat intake in favor of sugar intake. This could lead to the brain having less raw materials for actual construction even though it has plenty energy to work at the full capability of what is there.
Two groups, one shares a pool of a limited resource the other owns a limited resource equal to a share of the pool. Repeat until statistically significant.
If the shared resource is a well taken care of as the owned resource the 'tragedy of the commons' is falsified. Find one example in history with a group larger then 10.
I'll go out on a limb and say that the bigger the group that shares the resource the sooner it is depleted or ruined.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It's paywalled (except for the abstract), so maybe not.
It's a good study, way better than most studies of this type, BUT... not a slam-dunk.
1) There were 1,037 subjects, but only 124 were "regular users" of cannabis at any timepoint. (Authors defined "regular use" as 4x/week or more). And the authors basically found that "non-regular users" (4x/week) didn't have any significant decline of IQ compared to non-users. The whole paper hangs on the rather small subset of 124 heavy smokers.
2) When you're measuring neurocognitive deficits in pot smokers, it's important to ensure that none of the test subjects have smoked weed in the last week. Otherwise you don't know if you are measuring permanent impairment vs. effects of acute intoxication/hangover. They did NOT exclude recent pot smokers (last day/last week) from the primary analysis. They DID perform a separate analysis where they excluded recent smokers, and they still found some deficits-- but the deficits were less pronounced, and more importantly, the sample size was smaller. Instead of hanging their conclusions on 124 heavy smokers, they actually hung their conclusions on (124-X) heavy smokers (and the value of X was not reported!)
3) I also noticed that the heavy smokers appear to have had a lower premorbid IQ. That doesn't necessarily invalidate the main finding, which is that the heavy smokers experienced a decline in IQ of about 6 points, whereas the light/non-smokers retained the same IQ. But it does suggest that there are a lot of confounding variables. They tried to control for certain confounders, like comorbid substance addiction and years of education, but you can't control for everything.
4) The "premorbid" IQ was measured at age 13, and the authors seemed to just assume that age 13 was "before the onset of cannabis use". Ain't necessarily the case. Heavy potheads tend to start early.
Let's see that would mean that they are basing these statistics on a sample of 50 people, okay perhaps, other factors not studied may have influnenced this small sample size like say depression, personality type, motivation levels etc... how can you apply these statistics universally?
It's all about the possibilities!
If there's no conceivable reason why somebody would want to ingest a substance to begin with (such as the fact that it's poisonous enough to be used as a weapon) then it shouldn't be counted as a drug.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
is that pot use is higher amongst people of lower or higher IQ. The best programmers I've ever worked with were heavy potheads. OTOH, pot use is high with stupid lowlifes I've known. Non-pot use is heaviest in people in the average IQ range (i.e. 100 +- 15)
My own experience (which really proves nothing statistically) is: I've smoked weed since I was 15 (I am now 57). I outscored everyone in my school on the Ohio Psych by at least 40 points. Maybe I'd be a super-genius if i'd never used but I doubt it.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
Scientific conclusion: heavy TV use amongst teenagers is correlated with decreasing IQ.
Propaganda: TV LOWERS IQ
The difference is in how this is presented. A scientific presentation cannot possibly say that TV is a causal factor until at least all of the following are addressed:
What can cause IQ to change over time? As someone else pointed out, it is entirely possible that sitting around doing nothing all day will lower IQ, and so TV's role may just be in discouraging teenagers from participating in activities that maintain or increase their IQ. TV can increase appetite (couch potato?) -- it is possible that eating too much junk food lowers IQ.
There may be a particular trait that attracts some teenagers to watch TV heavily, which also causes them to have lower IQs later in life.
Teenagers who watch TV may be participants in a subculture that involves other activities that cause lower IQ.
TV may be produced using shit or mostly shit that is also absorbed when the TV is watched, and that might cause lower IQ.
TV may contain commercials that cause lower IQ; maybe other methods of watching will not have such an effect (rectally?).
There are a lot of things that can cause the results the scientists saw -- which is good news for them, since it means they have plenty of questions to answer. Unfortunately, the media will see this, ignore the part about heavy users, spend no time discussing confounding factors, and jump right on the "TV is bad" bandwagon. Typical, unsurprising, propaganda-driven approach.
Yes, jail for marijuana use is too much. No, not all drugs should be legalized.
Name the drug that you think should be kept illegal, and I will explain to you why it should be legalized.
Drugs which severely impair judgement and have strong physically addictive properties should probably remain illegal. Examples include cocaine/crack, heroin, and methamphetamine. I don't judge the morality of users of these drugs, but the common good is served by keeping them illegal.
On the other hand, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, and cannabis are classic examples of drugs which should be legal, in my opinion.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
I don't care about your parties, I don't even live in your country anymore (assuming you are in USA).
Therefore, your opinion regarding US drug laws and policies are moot.
Who rattled your kennel, anyway?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
"if you have nothing better to do in life than sit around and inhale a drug to "get high" and have psychodelic hallucinations then you're probably not destined for greatness"
Both Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman used marijuana
"Dre don't get as high as me.... I'm Cheech and Chong" - Snoop Dogg
Nice strawman. One of the functions of government has always been to promote behavior beneficial for society, and prevent behavior that is detrimental to it. How else can you argue that science and evolution should be taught in the (public) classroom and not creationism (young-earth creationism, specifically)?
Because evolution is a proven scientific fact, unlike the speculation that smoking pot == lower IQ. Or have we forgotten that correlation != causation? Hard to imagine we have, considering how often the phrase is mentioned here.
I could also get into the statistical relevance of allowing a certain subset of society fall out in order to make room for others to excel, but I won't.
Because the former is good for society (well educated populace), while the latter is not.
As stated above, the real reason is because one (evolution) is a verifiable fact, whereas the other (creationism) is unverifiable hocus-pocus. Their effect on the general populace is immaterial (besides, if you think schools are incapable of teaching creationism as though it were fact, you have never been to either A) catholic/baptist/other religious school, or B) Texas).
That is why government offers education in the first place and requires children to be educated. Because it is necessary for a well-formed society, which is in turn required for a well-formed government.
Yea, and look at how well all that is working out for us. As I recall, the mandatory school day was put in place to prevent kids from being forced to work in factories, as it was back during the Industrial Revolution. The intellectual advancement of society in general was more of a side effect; also, it can be argued that public schooling, with regards to collective intellect, is a bell curve - there comes a point where more schooling (or rather, several years of rehashing American History between 1780 and 1900) is detrimental, as students will become bored with the repetitive classwork, and grades will slip.
Also, if that's your best argument for legalization of marijuana ("because otherwise it's like living in 1984!") then you can expect reasonable people to simply ignore you.
That post of mine had far less to do with pot than it did with your assumptions about "the greater good" - a fact I assumed reasonable people would be able to see without having it pointed out to them.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
If the controller was not broken/worn down when you found it, leaving it broken/worn down is not 'leaving it as good as it was found'. If the house was not permeated with pot-smoke when you found it, leaving it permeated with pot smoke is not 'leaving it as good as it was found'. If everyone leaves everything as good as it was found, there will be no need for anyone to replace controllers or etc.
TV has a 2 minute slot to tell you the news and keep you from switching the channel at the same time... scientists spent years analyzing boring data to bring you this interesting factoid... and now for our commercial break!
Huh? Most drugs ARE poisons enough to be used as a weapon. The goal is to take just enough that it affects your body in the desired way, but not enough that you die. Sometimes people do that wrong and die of an "overdose."
Weed is not included in that "most drugs." In fact it would be easier to die from coffee than weed, not to mention how easy it is to die from cigarettes, alcohol, and all prescription drugs...
If they fail and harm themselves as a result
Huh? Then too bad for them.
But your comment affected me in some indirect way - with group freedom comes group responsibility.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
it's because they're smoking pot instead of studying, texting their weed connections during class instead of listening to the teacher, etc.
I'd like to see a study done on pot-smoking, homeschooled teens, who smoke weed but still spend a reasonable amount of time learning... though I imagine pot-smoking homeschooled teens (which are actually homeschooled and not just giving an excuse to drop out of school) are kind of rare.
Drugs which severely impair judgement and have strong physically addictive properties should probably remain illegal.
I'm going to have to disagree. The people that use them can severely impair their own judgement if they want.
but the common good is served by keeping them illegal.
What common good? The one where people ignore the laws that restrict them and use the drugs anyway? The one where police bust into the wrong homes and murder families because of the drug war?
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
I had a roommate who used to light up every night after work. One of the smartest and most driven people I've ever known. Never drank, either. Just liked a couple hits after work.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
One of the best posts in this story.
IMHO, most of the war on marijuana has historically been about keeping low end laborers laboring, instead of just being subsistence workers for themselves. This was applied to Mexicans and Blacks in the pre-civil rights era, and likely a large part of the reason it was opposed when it became more mainstream in the 1960s.
I don't doubt for a minute that there's more than a little of that mindset remaining, especially considering so much of what is considered valuable in this country relates to financial gain and material accumulation.
In this example I would say that marijuana lowers motivation and drive of these teenagers. Motivation and drive are very important facets in learning. Essentially if you don't give a crap about anything, you wont take time to learn it or be interested in it. So essentially you have a bunch of people who aren't interested in anything and therefore don't learn anything and as such they appear to have lower IQs, even though it's entirely possible for them to still be smart...
A flaw of the IQ test not being a absolute measure of intelligence and pot smoking casing a change in personality rather then physiology.
Drugs which severely impair judgement and have strong physically addictive properties should probably remain illegal.
I'm going to have to disagree. The people that use them can severely impair their own judgement if they want.
Of course you are. If you read very carefully all the way to the end of the sentence (that's the bit with the period at the end) you'll see that I said "impair judgement AND has strong physically addictive properties". Hardened addicts are a danger to the welfare of all those around them, thus...
but the common good is served by keeping them illegal.
What common good? The one where people ignore the laws that restrict them and use the drugs anyway? The one where police bust into the wrong homes and murder families because of the drug war?
... my assertion about the common good. The fact that the concept of a common good is outside your pantheon isn't terribly surprising, but sometimes we can significantly improve the health, safety and well-being of the many by narrowly curtailing the rights of a few. It's a delicate balance, and I won't claim to have all the answers, but a chaotic free-for-all society is no society at all.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
"Correlation is Not Causation"
You're not going to wind up smoking four times a week without some bad shit going on in your life. It's perfectly possible to be a healthy person and smoke roughly once or twice a week, but once you get much more than that, common sense will tell you other things are going on. Perhaps depression? Maybe personal issues that weed provides an escape from?
This study isn't that meaningful. Socioeconomic background needs to be discussed, as does home environment, and other areas of mental and physical health.
Saying that smoking weed four times or more a week is correlated with a drop in IQ is meaningless, because we don't know the concept. I will say that from my personal anecdotal evidence, when people smoke that much, there is something else going on.
Or, here's a possibility. You're a pissed off kid. Your crazy parents are making you take an IQ test. The type of guy who smokes a lot of weed is also the type to fill out random bubbles and generally not give a fuck about an IQ test.
This needs to be studied with well-funded, open-minded research.
If you read very carefully all the way to the end of the sentence (that's the bit with the period at the end) you'll see that I said "impair judgement AND has strong physically addictive properties".
I'm going to have to disagree.
but sometimes we can significantly improve the health, safety and well-being of the many by narrowly curtailing the rights of a few.
Your idea of "safety" can go the way I hope organizations like the TSA will go for all I care.. I'll live in a less 'safe' environment if it means not curtailing the rights of a few in most circumstances.
but a chaotic free-for-all society is no society at all.
Cool, because not a single person here is suggesting they want one!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
I'm going to have to disagree.
That was their choice to make, and they can suffer the consequences. I don't have any problem with putting people who commit actual crimes in prison, and if they're drug addicts, rehabilitation, but that is all.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
- if you're going to post AC to insult people, roman_mir, at least make your sentence style and impotence less obvious.
Err, OK, used to be a common scenario for me: extended family. ~12 people eating, sharing food from a buffet setup.
We all manage to eat a fair share. There are even leftovers for the fridge.
Initially dividing out onto plates would and does lead to a huge amount of wasted food as each person wants to eat a different amount of a different thing.
Assuming you aren't a total idiot or insane*, you'll only pay security guards to take over someone's house if their house is worth paying the security guards. Outside of law enforcement and the military, violence for hire to the extent that there's a good chance someone will try to kill them is usually quite expensive, so it's almost certainly not going to be worthwhile unless the house is incredibly valuable. In such a case, they are in usually going to be just as rich or more than you are, so they will be just as capable of hiring a private army.
*if this is the case, you and your money will soon part.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
uhh, I meant DAMN!
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
So, if it takes thousand people to wear down the controller to the point that it no longer works, and I have the misfortune to be the thousandth one, I should be the one who pays the full price of the controller and the 999 people before me should pay nothing?
You got my argument exactly backwards: I didn't say that drugs weren't poisons, I said that poisons (without any effects that would make someone want to take them) shouldn't be classified as drugs.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Is that including or excluding tourists?
IQ, sure, yes.
How about Emotional intelligence? Sexual intelligence? Creative intelligence? Kinesthetic intelligence? Sensorial intelligence? Spiritual intelligence. ...
I suspect MJ has a positive impact on all of these. Would you rather be Bobby Fischer or Richard Feynman? The smartest guy in jail is ... still in jail. How about a balanced life instead?
Becoming the first Type A in your class to heart attack is no badge of honor. Leave that for another.
Light up, now.
I quoteth: "Dope: Illegal drug trade, commonly heroin, however, it may refer to cannabis, cocaine, opium, methamphetamine or other illegal drugs depending on exact region and time-period"
Don't be so ignorant as to think your region's slang is the same as mine.
Nor so ignorant as to mistake a joke for anything else but a joke.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Now, I didn't read the original paper, so perhaps AP got enough wrong (hardly unlikely) to lead me to the wrong conclusion. I believe that you can never be sure how to interpret a study's findings unless you read the original study itself. But the story as published by the mainstream news services seemed so counterintuitive -- and the burden of proof is edged a little higher here by the fact that the study was partly financed by US & UK national governments -- that I'd assign it at most minor probative value.
So unless I get the urge to seek out and study the original findings, I think the most reasonable response is to consider this to be one minor piece of evidence that will have credibility only if corroborated by other, independent, research. There's likely not much to worry about here.
They didn't control for television, or other vegetative, non-engaging, non-activities...
Um. Name any great artist that we revere. Nine out of ten have indulged in drug use at some point in their life.
It was over 16 years ago and I bought a quarter pound at a time, $400-$500 a qp. Divide it into multiple bags, put them in the freezer. You build up a tolerance and it takes more and more to get high. I didn't have to smoke all the time, I used a rolling machine and made huge joints. Must be a lot stronger than it used to be if you can't smoke an ounce a week.
And, of course, no mention is made of other factors, only whether or not marijuana was in use. Well, the same can be said of alcohol. Or caffeine. Or a host of other substances. I'm sure the "study" only shows a correlation, not causation. When they can prove that it's more harmful than any legal substance, I'll still say it's up to the individual to decide what to do with his/her body. And I'll agree to limits on use by minors when everyone agrees that abortion can't be done on a minor. It's about the sovereignty of the person over his or her own body. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Exactly how they found pot heads who weren't also on booze , Tobacco and / or other substances is beyond me.
And I'll agree to limits on use by minors when everyone agrees that abortion can't be done on a minor. It's about the sovereignty of the person over his or her own body. Nothing more. Nothing less.
This bit is offtopic bullshit but that's life.
Wolja Future Tombstone: Shit happened then I died
obama must have been like the smartest man on earth before he smoked.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
But poisons and drugs are the same thing, is what I was saying. Pretty much all poisons are either used as drugs are used as an ingredient to drugs.
I'm saying that if any of those thousand people wear down the controller 1/1000th, they are not leaving the controller as they found it.
*or are used as an ingredient
In that case, do you ever leave anything the way you found it, if you use it? Pretty much anything physical can wear down.
I don't believe you, mostly because I can list quite a few substances that are poisonous, yet nobody would want to use them as a drug: bleach, ammonia, lye, a wide variety of herbicides and pesticides, etc.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Just think how well you would've done if you *hadn't* been a pothead all these years!
Are you trying to imply that he would have accomplished more if he hadn't been exposed to marijuana? From where do you derive that assumption?
"All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, and meaningless in another sense."
getting high to make yourself feel better about all your problems and pretending that it makes them go away is not healthy at any usage frequency.
Perhaps, but that's not all marijuana does. Marijuana can also be used to enhance creativity, increase productivity, improve focus, increase stamina, and improve cognitive functions in certain ways. It can be used to treat depression, anxiety, pain, epilepsy, and psychosis. It can do all sorts of useful things, in fact -- it's all in how you use it.
"All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, and meaningless in another sense."
This is why I do not go around using controllers that belong to other people, unless it is agreed upon and/or I contribute some money to the future maintenance of the controller/machine (in the case of arcade machines).
Every one of those are used as ingredients to street drugs.