Mark Kleiman does an excellent job responding to the latest schizophrenia scare with his post: Cannabis and schizophrenia: Scare stories are not policy arguments
If I had a young friend with a family history of schizophrenia or who had experienced schizophrenic symptoms, I’d advise that person to stay away from cannabis. Why take unnecessary chances? But the evidence of an actual causal link is fairly underwhelming; it’s very hard to tell whether early cannabis use might reflect attempts at self-medication for pre-clinical symptoms rather than being an actual precipitating cause.
At the population level, we have what seems to me like strong negative evidence on the question whether increasing the availability of cannabis will lead to a measurable increase in the number of people with disabling levels of schizophrenia.
We’ve been actually fairly fortunate on this side of the pond that most policy leaders have not fallen for the schizophrenia scare as a significant anti-legalization argument. But then again, we don’t have the Daily Mail.
What we have is the Kevin Sabet:
Why isn’t this getting more play? Doc at Yale School of Medicine: Pot-Smoking & the Schizophrenia Connection http://t.co/1c1TF9dBCY via @WSJ
Funny, we must have read this at the same time. I wanted to hear his take on the article from your Econ post. I left this, then came back here: “First, I’d like to say, Hi, it’s me again. Second, there are now two reasons for my returning and actually posting. Having read the entry above, I agree with your take on incidence of schizophrenia and cannabis use, but for one observation I have from sixteen years as a clinical psychologist. People with a serious thought disorder are experiencing symptoms LONG before those symptoms become evident. Even to their family and closest friends. Many schizophrenics self medicate with cannabis. So it is likely that their cannabis use to self medicate will pre date the appearance of obvious symptoms. Schizophrenia is a complex disease, with many different manifestations and a complex and difficult to sort out set of individual symptoms. It is difficult to accurately diagnose, and there are many different form it can take. So simply observing that the use of cannabis occurred before the onset of a clinical diagnosis is not only insufficient for a cause effect assignation, it is impossible to say definitively whether the cannabis use occurred before or after the patient began having distress.
I understand you feel there are harms associated with cannabis use. “The author of the WSJ piece solemnly announces, “The claim that marijuana is medically harmless is false.†No sh*t, Sherlock! Nothing is harmless.†I have heard that in the past. Just seems a little unsupported. Usually, I will hedge, and take the position that perhaps cannabis use is not for everybody. But I would love it if somebody could actually point out some “harmsâ€. Seventy years of intensive and (for the last forty) government supported research have failed to conclusively find any negative medical effects. The major “harms†associated with cannabis use all seem to be caused by it’s prohibition.
Second, and the primary reason for this post is to get your reaction to this. http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2013/Powelldrugs.html
Perhaps you’ve seen it, perhaps you have not. But I’m interested in your take. After all, economics are an important consideration in the crafting of policy.”
And here’s Mark’s thoughtful, substantive response:
(BTW, did you know he’d written a book? I had no idea.)
I’m not surprised. Another one of Mark’s blind spots in drug policy is in the elasticity of illicit drug use. He has convinced himself that illicit drug demand is elastic (ie, highly responsive to price) so that a small increase in price results in a large reduction in demand.
It is, of course, necessary for him to believe this or much of what he proposes, which has to do with controlling use through price, would be worthless.
The truth is that recreational drug demand is highly inelastic, as demonstrated in the paper.
I fully agree, and it holds with my observations.
That’s a huge piece not to get. And he Just Doesn’t Get It.
Plus, he has a magical way of being an insufferable prick WHILE Just Not Getting It. That makes it Oh so much FUN to present him with arguments he has to belittle and pretend to ignore. The discomfort is almost palpable.
To add to your elastic demand comment, I believe Mark subscribes to “single distribution theory” aka the Ledermann hypothesis, which was supposed to describe the relationship between overall alcohol consumption and harm. They are applying that theory to drugs. It seems to be rage among “public policy experts,” because people like themselves, with their specialized expertise, are a necessary part of the solution.
http://www.adamsmith.org/sites/default/files/research/files/ASI_SAPM.pdf
A couple of excerpts:
“According to this theory, “the top X% of consumers always consume Y% of the total alcohol market. Therefore, to reduce the consumption by the top X%, total alcohol consumption has to be reduced.†If true, the Ledermann hypothesis suggests that policies aimed at reducing alcohol consumption across the general population will affect heavy drinkers via a statistical deus ex machina, and so policies aimed at heavy drinkers themselves are not required. Lowering average consumption will be enough.”
“The Ledermann Hypothesis appeals to temperance and public health campaigners because it offers a relatively simple solution to the problems of heavy drinking and alcoholism. If the answer lies in reducing alcohol consumption at the population level, campaigners need only to lobby for higher prices and restricted availability which, ceteris paribus, would be expected to lead to less alcohol being consumed
per head of population. The complex psychological and societal factors which lead to alcoholism and alcohol-related violence can thus be side-stepped, and the responsibility for these problems can be passed to politicians and the drinks
industry.”
Yeah, innit just like him to dismiss any argument he can’t win? He’s not going to take it seriously…because then, well, he’d have to respond, wouldn’t he?
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He’d have to accept reality if he thought it through.
Let’s not forget the so called acceleration of the onset of Schizophrenia. There aren’t many, if any prohibasites that try to palm off the absurdity of cannabis as a causal factor of schizophrenia. After being shown just how easy it is to disprove that particularly inane claim they decided to go with the claim that it causes people destined to become schizophrenic to suffer that fate years earlier than had they not allowed cannabis in their life. Much more likely is that getting themselves involved with the criminal justice system or even interaction with the head shrinkers years before they would have been otherwise. Without external stimulus people have to be visibly demonstrating symptoms before they’re steered into the office of a
witch doctormental health professional and that accounts for the “earlier” onset IMHO.(Please keep in mind that there’s a significant difference between a parasite and a sycophant. Starting with about 50 IQ points.)
Here’s my response to No-Kluman’s response to DC:
The question before us is, “What policy would minimize total damage, net of the benefits of responsible use?†Continued prohibition in some form – at least the prohibition of commerce – might turn out to be the answer to that question; at least, Jonathan Caulkins and Keith Humphreys both think so, and they’re two of the most thoughtful and knowledgeable people around on this issue.
To quote a renowned deep-thinker’s robustly detailed and devastatingly convincing rebuttal: “Thanks, I need a laugh today.”
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Francis, really? I’ve noticed that when people like that are showing up in the press it’s a damn good bet they’re trying to sell books. A lot of 3rd party candidates for example. Why does some nutcake that ends up getting 338 votes run for POTUS? It’s not always true, but they get their name out to the public and specifically to people likely to buy their book. They get campaign contributions to cover at least part of the cost of traveling on what is actually a book selling tour.
Take Roseanne Barr for example: Roseannearchy: Dispatches from the Nut Farm by Roseanne Barr (Sep 11, 2012)
Gary Johnson: Seven Principles of Good Government: Gary Johnson on Politics, People and Freedom: Insights from the 2012 Libertarian… by Gary Johnson (Aug 1, 2012)
The major party candidates wait until after the election, and until after their term expires when the campaign gets the candidate elected. George W Bush for example: Decision Points by George W. Bush (Oct 18, 2011)
Wow, I thought everyone knew all these people were out there selling something. The advent of books read to you on tape has particularly benefited the prohibitionist press because it’s harder to sell books when such a huge percentage of your potential customers are functionally illiterate.
But I must say Mr. Sabet’s Amazon page is just plain precious: Reefer Sanity: Seven Great Myths About Marijuana by Ph.D. Kevin Sabet
I’ve never before seen anyone use Ph.D. as a title.
Duncan, oh I was just having a little fun at Mark’s expense. I seem to recall him pimping his books pretty hard last time he showed up here on the couch.
Francis,
Yes, I remember it well.
I wonder why he hasn’t been back? If I didn’t know better, I would guess he’s embarrassed at having lost his cool in public and gotten called out for it, but I’ve seen little evidence that Dr. “Always Right” has much sense of shame.
I do enjoy that comment thread and have gone back to re-read it several times. I’ve been tempted to post a link to it on the RBC whenever Mark justifies nuking a comment based on it’s lack of civility. But I dunno, it just seems like it would be a little rude to air his dirty laundry as a guest on his forum.
….plus, we have a skunk, (an adolescent, still a little guy) who has moved into our backyard. Anybody got a good name for a skunk? I’m leaning toward “Kush”.
me too… he/she stopped by the house last night to get a drink from the dog’s water bowl. It’s hot here (96º two days in a row) so all the doors were open. The dog’s water bowl sits on the sidewalk out the front door. The dogs don’t take kindly to critters drinking from their bowl. The local family of blue jays thinks it’s their personal bird bath and that really pitheth off the dogth.
Suddenly my daughter’s pup bolted out the door, I smelled skunk, yelled for the dogs and my son’s old gal comes slinking around the corner, recipient of a glancing, considering-it’s-a-skunk-not-too-bad bit o’ spray. She got to spend the night in the laundry room… the pup, totally untouched. Isn’t that the way? The instigator gets away with no damage. My junior and now-maturing Kush baby smells far better!
And still hot tonite, but no open doors, ’cause the skunk was in the driveway leading back to the hay barn cutting short my usual sunset walk w/ the dogs.
I couldn’t of smoked enough pot last night to cover the stank o’ that skunk hanging around last nite. Pepe’ Le Pew ideed…
Okay. I gotta say. You need to keep the domesticated animals clear. And it helps to maintain a respectful distance yerownself. BUT they are PRODIGIOUS consumers of slugs. And that is good. Also, if ya LEAVE THE DAMN THINGS ALONE, they’re cute, and fun to watch. And they mostly don’t give a shit about slow moving humans, so if you learn their “personal distance” (varies from skunk to skunk) they are great critters to have around.
All of the critters are good. Just need to learn their ways.
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Do you recall the story about the drunk who kept a pet skunk and took it with him anytime he went out driving drunk? If he got pulled over he’d stimulate the skunk into spraying and the cops would send him on his way as soon as he rolled down his window.
I do think it’s an urban myth but very amusing nonetheless. It wouldn’t work for anyone with a sense of smell, no doubt. Sure, it would chase away the cop but you’d be less than a step behind him.
If you just wanted to catch slugs and dispose of them they’re very partial to peanut butter. If I left my squirrel traps out at night the slugs would eat the bait and the traps would be just infested with slugs if I looked at them around 1 or 2 A.M. I’ve also heard that they’re attracted to beer and will drink until they drown in it if you leave a bowl out for them.
…but he’s frikkin’ CUTE!
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Well he wouldn’t like you very much if you were constantly making him spray. The skunk does that when he perceives a threat of danger. I don’t think you’d think him cute when he develops full blown PTSD.
Tomato juice works wonders to negate the smell.
He hasn’t sprayed anybody! So far….
And he’s been pretty good at keeping to him/herself. Far as I’m concerned, it can stay if it wants. I have had worse neighbors.
because of the nature of the oils in the skunk spray, the first step is to let the pet air out for 12 hours or so. Tomato juice is useless unless you like your pet smelling like tomato juice. Wash with a mild detergent (like Dawn) mixed with baking soda. If it’s just a bit of spray on the dog, leave ’em outside and they’ll stop stinking in a day or two.
I’ve been thru this 4 times in 7 years… gettin’ it down. Both dogs know to avoid skunks (both have had previous interviews) but sometimes pooches have minds of their own. The fact they have to sleep alone in the laundry room is a prospect they don’t like.
As to slugs… my city friends are amazed I don’t have slugs. It’s ’cause I have geese and skunks and ‘coons and possum for neighbors.
I just found a somewhat different response to that WSJ article -(I’m sure there’s a better/preferred way to share this link -but I’m not up to fussing with it. Sorry, please edit away if need be)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2013/07/02/a-really-good-reason-not-to-legalize-pot/
by a right-winger with a blog named “Right Turn – Jennifer Rubin’s take from a conservative perspective” in the Washington Post – or rather on the WP website.
Also of Note Kev-Kev is making the rounds with that *Schizo-scare* piece, I found him shoveling the same story,(retweeting it) over on the Marijuana Majority’s Twitter feed:
You’d think he gets paid to go after marijuana legalization advocates or something, that and/or the MarijuanaMajority’s recent articles (and our collective ‘Momentum’ in general) have him scared.
AND he’s hawking a link to his new book (to be released… IDK soon-ish? on amazon titled “reefer sanity”
Dammitt, the whole concept ticks me off! I suppose there are prohibs throwing money at their screens to get copies…
Meanwhile, I don’t think I EVER had a greater desire to throw a fist through my screen – over a tweet – by a twit – like that bastard/parasite!
Schizophrenia is a serious thing & seeing Kevin (and/or the guy who wrote the WSJ article) trying to link it to cannabis use with the most tortured “correlation=causation”, and the *statistical bastardization* of research linked to mental illness…
IDK, I’m so damn pissed-off by this, And = NOT so much by the guy writing the article… It’s the way Kevin is “making the rounds” on twitter/and blogs trying to make sure Everyone susceptible to this sort of nonsense-“science” sees it!
Sorry, again, But this is exactly the kind of thing that makes being a ‘sober cannabis legalization advocate’ is so fraking hard, back in the day day – I’d go smoke and calmly go on with my evening – these days relaxing after reading this kinda crap is a much bigger hurdle…
I have to calm down with some music & maybe a short game, THEN go do whatever else = And there’s no reason for it to be this difficult, there’s a perfectly fine *God-given plant* that deals with this quite well. There are also meds that essentially accomplish the same thing – and I’m going to go take some right now.
[It’s a damn shame I’m (essentially/effectively) forced to choose between the two… there are other *personal* factors but not that I’m gonna get into online.]
Aha, there’s the reason PROFIT! I knew I’d misplaced it somewhere around here. *smirk*
B. Snow..relax. It’s a non issue, and maybe smoking isn’t such a bad idea. (unless your employer sees it differently).
We’re on it. He’s already late, and he forgot his ammunition. Heh. They’re getting no no “mileage” out of this.
They pushed that so out of context that it needs no response.
Notice how every few years the prohibs dredge up the same tired old memes? Is it some sort of “Wheel of Fortune” arrangement, where they spin the equivalent and when it stops, that’s their meme for the month?
I haven’t seen it for a loooong time, so I am waiting with bated breath for the latest version of (replete with hyperventilating headline-screaming): “Pot makes men grow boobs!”
They haven’t tried the alien angle yet. How about “Greys secretly plot to undermine American youth with mary-ju-wanna!” (Or has the Enquirer already done that one?)
Hey, don’t laugh; the Commie angle on particular that bilge sure helped Anslinger, so why not blame ET?
Oh, and Rubin’s been taken to the reality woodpile before, and received a sound drubbing.
They must be masochists, as they can’t adequately defend themselves when we arrive, ‘loaded for bear’ with the facts. We’ve had to evolve into ideological snipers, expert marksmen who cannot afford to waste a single shot, thanks to the ‘evolutionary pressures’ they subjected us to. They’ve gotten, as my Marine Da used to say “fat, dumb and happy’ riding the gravy train, and have atrophied their debate muscles so much, they can’t stand on their own two feet factually.
They make it so easy, I used to feel guilty at taking them on…until I recall how many of us they’ve destroyed in their lunatic crusade.
…they can’t even come up with new bullshit, guys.
They’re from the same camp that argued that LSD did chromosomal damage and such.
Hold up! Samuel T. Wilkinson make’s a good point:
In other words: people who can’t even manage to get a job or live independently can figure out how to circumvent 21st century drug policy (and score cannabis).
That is how useless our drug policy is.
A bit of a mis-characterization? Just because someone may suffer from cognitive impairments that prevent them from conforming to a broken, misanthropic system that bleeds the life out of many so few can feast like gods, does not require one to be unable to function or be incapable of great cunning in order to survive! Further, people are biased against anyone that is different, conditioned to fear the mentally ill by the media who are generally marginalized and prejudged. It is way easier to score cannabis than get a job for a lot of people.
What really gets me is how so many politicians can claim they prohibit drugs to protect these supposedly vulnerable citizens from addiction yet the weight of these policies fall mostly upon these same groups.
did we just hear Kleiman tell Sabet to ‘STFU, you’re making an ass of yourself‘… or was that just a good bowl? ’cause that’s what I’m seeing in Pete’s post.
And totally off-topic, anybody seen the Lone Ranger yet? Thumbs up or down?
Have yet to see latest The Lone Ranger movie but am intrigued when I read the review at HuffPo http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-ryan/the-lone-ranger-review_b_3530610.html?ir=Entertainment
Haven’t seen it yet, but plan to do so. Heard tonight that the actors (including Johnny Depp) did their own stunts; judging by the trailer, that’s pretty damn awesome. Depp is such a great actor, completely takes on the personality of the character he’s playing (and he ain’t hard to look at, either), I’d see any live action film in which he is playing a major character.
my daughter turned me on to Johnny Depp. I love the guy’s work.
He was friends w/ Marlon Brando and knows his native issues. In another outstanding Charlie Rose interview they recalled Brando’s Oscar for the Godfather… that was about the time Brando was involved w/ Grampa Semu and paid the balance on the Redwind Foundation community’s mortgage (Redwind is an inter-tribal center deep in the hills east of Atascadero, CA).
The scenes in the dunes in Pirates of the Caribbean were filmed in my old stomping grounds on the central coast, the Guadalupe Dunes.Probable one of the best places on the planet to do shrooms. I’m looking forward to the day I get to smoke a bowl with Mr Depp and have a nice stoned, chat.
mmm… have to share this as well, fwded from friend and (former?) LEAPster J Mike Jones (Dani Tuji):
When, oh, when will these liars and BS artists be dragged into court and made to testify under oath as to the veracity of their claims?
Being swat on the snout with a perjury charge will serve as a warning to other prohibs that the lies they’ve promulgated all these decades will no longer be tolerated. Since all they have going for them are these unchallenged lies (many based on racial bigotry going all the way back to the early 20th century), they will continue their mendacity with impunity, obstructing progress at every turn.
And, given the continued operations of the likes of Kevin, without him holding down anything more than the kind of job he’s had for almost two decades – that of bullshite artiste – you have to wonder who’s funding him.
I propose the answer is that we still are funding him, through taxpayer-supplied ‘grants’ via the ONDCP.
As is the latest trend, the ONDCP, having been caught too many times in one scandal after another, have ‘outsourced’ their dirty work of lying to the public in order to maintain prohib rice bowls to the ‘private sector’…which in reality is the same old incestuous relationship between a useless government office and the symbiotic (and sycophantic) ‘industries’ dependent upon said agency remaining in existence.
In short, it is the same old propaganda shell-game the GAO found ONDCP guilty of…while Kevin was there (as if he ever left). Some investigation is in order.
We can breathe easier,,Hillary won’t be running next election,,seems they found a brain tumor in her last colostomy.
I found a group that reports pot causes people to become gay,,now I got to worry about that too,,I been looking for a gate for 40 years because they told me pot was a gateway drug,I just didn’t realize it was a pink gate.
Carlton Turner was forced to resign after Newsweek magazine excoriated him October 27, 1986, in a large editorial sidebar. His resignation was a foregone conclusion after being lampooned in the Washington Post and elsewhere as no other public figure in recent memory for his conclusions (in public addresses) that marijuana smoking caused homosexuality, the breakdown of the immune system, and, therefore, AIDS.
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Now if Mr. Sabet were to state that his particular stripe of insanity was the result of cannabis use I’d be terrified.
Duncan20903
If the proliferation of logical fallacies was punishable by law, Mr. Sabet would be in the klink for the rest of his days.
Kevin Sabet never provides any examples of his “marijuana link to schizophreniaâ€. It’s left to the public to imagine what that might be, and the lay public is likely to assume a cause and effect relationship.
Some of the latest research on the topic, dated 14 November, 2012, notes that a particular mutation of the Atk1 gene can create a reaction to marijuana use within the schizophrenia paradigm, since the respective chemistries of the chemical and the disease appear to act on some of the same brain centers. But this only underpins the problem as genetic.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-11/e-arg111412.php
It’s not totally clear what Sabet’s response to this situation is. Does he justify the continued criminalization of all marijuana users simply because a percentage of schizophrenics, who themselves represent a small percentage of the overall population, might be vulnerable to having their mental health compromised biochemically?
Certainly, arresting proto-schizophrenics and tagging them with a criminal record does no one any good. Ignoring the proven genetic basis for schizophrenia doesn’t help either.
It’s difficult to understand why Sabet is so obsessed with only the adverse interactions between marijuana and schizophrenia, unless he’s promoting the false assumption that pot smoking causes schizophrenia, which at this point in the research is not a sustainable interpretation.
Pete, thanks for saying something nice about Mark. 😉
I think he is right on target to keep public treatment impact on the table, and that it is not good for our society to let BigCanna get away with shifting away all social consequences the same way BigBacco and BigBooze have done.
If the case numbers of schizo had risen any in the last 4 decades while there has been a definite increase in marijuana users then I would be interested in more research by anyone but our government or it’s agencies,,we already know the government buys targeted science through NIDA searching for any kind of harm in marijuana and after spending billions over the last 40 years their harms list for marijuana are filled with studies that report “could be caused by” or “possibly linked with” and no “smoking gun”,,only calls for more study.
Agreed.
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If there were any such thing as “Big Canna” you might have a point. Since “Big Canna” or “Big Merrywanna” or whatever clever name you attach is fantasy land nonsense it’s irrelevant. I can make a much better and much more real argument over the harms of “Big Prohibition”.
yeah… BIG Prohibition has all kinds of neat and ever-so-violent toys, and the testosterone rushing thugs to employ them.
It can be truly stated that BIG Canna is a … ready?… grass roots movement.
So you don’t think there will ever be a BigCanna, and you support legalization. How do you reconcile those two exclusive beliefs while living in a capitalist society?
It’s easier to head off a problem then to fix it after the fact. And that point, fundamentally, is what Mark Kleiman stands behind.
Something you may have missed. “Big Canna” goes by the names “Zeta’s” “Sinaloa” and “La Familia”.
“Big Canna” is alive and well and operative right now. They have Partners in the Big Banks (HSBC and Wells Fargo pop immediately to mind). They have revenues in the Billions, they have their own Armies and their own SUBMARINES fer crissake. They also take care of trade and monetary disputes by killing and mutilating the other parties. So Pococurante, if you’re afraid of somebody like General Mills, or Con Agra cornering the market and advertising to children (not gonna happen), I’d suggest your concerns are somewhat misplaced.
What’s the matter, Kev? Starting to get lonely?
Oh, and to answer your question, it might have something to do with the increasing difficulty of foisting the same recycled and discredited bullshit on a public that’s growing more informed re: the truth about cannabis, more skeptical re: drug war propaganda, and more generally fed-up with the nonsense of prohibition BY THE DAY. And if you think you’re lonely now, just wait.
You know things are changing fast when they print my LTE in the Baptist Standard: http://www.baptiststandard.com/opinion/texas-baptist-forum/15259-letters-baylor-baa-a-vineyard
Every since those pastors supported I-502 because of the racial application of marijuana laws the Baptist have been very silent about marijuana in their periodicals.
ouch! That letter’s a butte Malcolm… right purty too. San Antonio eh? A tad hotter than the Netherlands?
Thanks Allan! It’s actually been the longest, coldest, darkest, wettest, winter/spring that many of us can remember. It’s only these last few days that the streets are again full of people and bicycles, the canals full of ducks and little boats, and the cafes are spilling out onto the plazas with people hungrily soaking up the long-lost sunlight.
Yeah,,I saw that too and was wondering why if he was that close he didn’t try for a meet up or at least a chat,,then I remembered it was that sneaky Malcolm,,he wasn’t in San Antonio
I knew this was going to happen,,several federal prosecutors are trying to get youtube to remove all videos portraying illegal activities,,,there goes some good grow videos.
Well lets wait until it actually happens, shall we? They don’t get everything that they ask for you know.
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Well what do you know? Because of the recent “scientific” study of 2 groups of 19 people which purports to prove that we’re a bunch of useless couch sitters I thought of the time when they claimed that another “scientific” study which purportedly proved that cannabis suppresses the immune system and therefore can’t be medicine. Of course about 5 minutes after that was published sombody asked about the family of immuno-suppressant drugs and their significant utility in human medicine, promptly blowing that argument out of the water. Never mind the fact that the allegations of inhibiting the immune system were later proven false. I believe that more is always better, but that sometimes less is more. E.g. more intelligent people is better, and less prohibitionists = more intelligent people.
Now the recent study that says we’re lazy, slothful and good for nothing layabouts hangs its hat on cannabis as a dopamine antagonist. It sure seems written in a way to get people to infer that lower levels of dopamine are bad, mmm-kay? So I looked up dopamine antagonists, also a family of useful drugs to see which conditions for which they’re indicated. You know, conditions for which lower levels of available dopamine are a good thing. Well for crying out loud:
Does anyone have any idea which brain chemical causes prohibitionists to so frequently contradict themselves and unable to notice that they did so? I avoided doing so for a long time but recently realized that prohibitionists are such morons that it doesn’t matter, now I tell them that I think that they’d get a lot better mileage from their hysterical rhetoric if it were to at least bear a passing resemblance to reality. Of course all it makes them do is to call me an Obama jock strap sniffer or something equally precious. Yes one of them called me that recently, there’s no way I could have thought that up. Prohibitionists are stranger than fiction.
“”Does anyone have any idea which brain chemical causes prohibitionists to so frequently contradict themselves and unable to notice that they did so?””
IMADOPE
Actually then marijuana was lowering the dopamine as a medicine would that big pharm sells.
Drugwar Lies Linked to Schizophrenia
Major League Baseball’s Unsuccessful War on Drugs
The Hypocrisy of the NFL
Women and Drugs: The Final Drug War Taboo?
Never make fun of an over weight girl with a lisp,,,she is probably thick and tired of it.
Legislators have introduced over 500 bills in state and federal legislatures concerning women only in the last 10 years and none targeting just men.
To even out the balance I suggested sperm counts for all men from age 20>40,,any with a low sperm count would be castrated,,no need for men to carry a couple of useless nuts around.
Kevin Sabet’s PhD is in Misanthropology, right?
With a double major in double talk.
Patchwork of murky laws emerges as more states OK use of marijuana
BY TOM TRACY
Catholic News Service
http://tinyurl.com/k5zmt4e
The Catholic Church has largely stayed neutral in the debate, with church leaders focused on other battles related to religious liberty and efforts to legalize same-sex marriage, according to several Catholic theologians, policy advisers and academics, some of whom favor of marijuana’s potential health benefits in suitable cases and with controls.
“It would be pure speculation why there has been very little reaction, but usage is already so widespread that it came and went here with little attention,†said Greg Magnoni, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Seattle. “snip”
The churches are changing their stance on marijuana a lot faster than congress,,this gives me hope that eventually the Bible Belt will swing away from their position or at least shut the fuck up.
speaking of economics, news from washington state: http://tinyurl.com/l99bmtb.
Beat me to the punch, by quite a long time. I was going to mention the allowing of outdoor grows, glad to see it.
I’m wondering, though, how the hell they are going to tag each individual plant from 8″ so they can track it through the whole growing/processing/retailing network, without introducing something that might be harmful to either the plants or the people eating/smoking/vaping the finished product.
Perhaps a microchip in the stalk but an 8″ plant may not have a thick enough stalk to get over having a chip being pushed into it.
The real problem they will have is telling illegal marijuana from legal unless they have the genetics on every strain the licensed growers are producing. And I don’t know what mapping the genetics for a strain costs but lab costs for mapping confiscated marijuana may get real expensive.
I guess we will find out if the DEA is going to target outdoor grows now.
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Mendocino County used zip ties. But that was just for the purpose of proving that the County got its money, and they’ve never heard of re-vegging a cannabis plant.
I thought the same thing on indoor grows when I saw them on some outdoor grows in a news cast.
Such a crock. No one is tagging hops plants, or the food grains used to make distilled spirits. More Rube Goldberg to satisfy the dragged-kicking-and-screaming-to-reality prohibs.
No matter; in time their schemes will prove unworkable. But not until after many more lives destroyed and tax dollars squandered.
Had I been the one who wrote I-502, it would have read something like this:
“This initiative repeals ALL previous State laws concerning marijuana cultivation, commerce, possession and use.”
That would have effectively ended all criminal and civil penalties for any marijuana activity. I’m hoping that someone WILL write and enlist signatures for the petition to get such an initiative on the ballot, soon, though I would actually prefer that it not be limited to only marijuana but extend to ALL currently prohibited drugs.
Orthodox Rabbi Says Medical Marijuana Is Kosher
english: Lyb rby,
Rqs gʼandzşʼa ʼádÊ»r qʼannʼabys bʼad ʼyz qʼáşʻr… “MʼarydzÅŸwʼanʼa” ʼyz ʼa zyyÊ»r bʼalydzÅŸÊ»rʼant, bygʼatyd, stygmʼatyyzyng bʼazwwÊ»rd wwʼás hʼt qyyn lʼadzÅŸyqʼal ʼárt ʼyn mÊ»dysynʼal ʼádÊ»r rÊ»lygyÊ»z tÊ»rmynʼálʼágyÊ». ʼwmwwysndyqyyt ʼyz gÊ»tyng ẕw zyyan ʼa nÊ»bÊ»k ʼantÅŸwldyqn nʼák 15 yʼr pwn pʼarʼanÊ»n ʼynp̄ʼármʼaẕyÊ» ʼwyp dy pʼabryq. Qʼawntlʼas lyybrÊ»ryz ʼwn sÊ»ntrʼalyyzd nyyaÊ»s. Dy msm nʼár wwy wmwwysndyq myt kÊ»dlyynyng dy” b” wwʼárt. ʼyẕt rÊ»dn wwÊ»gn sá¹—lytyng kÊ»rz. WwÊ»n dÊ»r rwẕ zÊ»nÊ»n sm, ʼazwy zyyan dy prwkt. Mʼkn mÅŸptym ʼwyp dy prwkt, nyÅŸt bʼzyrt ʼwyp dy rwẕ ʼyz nyÅŸt qʼáşʻr. NyÅŸt á¹—wnqt dy ẖkmh pwn sʼálʼámʼan yÊ»dÊ»r. Rby dy hmqdÅŸ qtwrÅ£ ʼyz gÊ»wwÊ»n qʼanÊ»h bʼásm, kʼaÅŸyÅŸ. Wy wwyy!
On Indications of the Hachish-Vice in the OT
“From time to time, I say that the suppression of medical marijuana is murder. This is not quite correct. It is actually mass murder. It has caused the deaths of countless thousands of people.”
~ the Financial Times Limited, 1998
(Ed. note: The FT is the London equivalent of the Wall Street Journal. This drug could be patented, so it is of interest to the financial community.)
On that link by the way, the best part is Mark’s comments here:
“Yes, Pete, we know: you will fight to the death any attempt to present a complex situation in terms that don’t fit your simple mind or cater to your hatreds.”
HAAAA!!!!