As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick • Hacker News Board

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#401

Post by micromacrofoot » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 7:51 PM UTC

ineptech wrote: post #342

photochemsyn wrote: post #19

This line has been reliably trotted out every few years since the 1990s at least: But experts say today’s high-THC cannabis products — vastly different than the joints smoked decades ago — are poisoning some heavy users, including teenagers. The issue is that people adjust their consumption accordingly, just as with alcohol - drinking one liter of beer, everyone knows, is not the same as drinking one liter of vodka.…

Yeah, I'm calling BS. 1) That line has been trotted out continuously because weed potency has been going up continuously. In the late 90s, good weed was anything above 4-5% THC; the store near my house currently has nothing below 23%. For your beer/liquor analogy to work, you'd have to live somewhere where the bottle shop only sells triple IPAs and fortified wine, and Coors is in the soft drink section. 2) I don't be…

All my life the only people I've heard going to the ER for weed are the people who got too high (usually via edibles) and just freaked out and called 911. I wonder if there are any physical indications of this illness, or if it's a name they've given to something they can't quite figure out.

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#402

Post by yw3410 » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 7:53 PM UTC

Volundr wrote: post #379

worker_person wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching your child being content to work at Taco Bell for the next 50 years is not something to be proud of. Regardless of contentment.

Why not? My first job was Wendy's and honestly... It's not the least satisfying job I've had. My unwillingness to do it now has more to do with having become accustomed to the luxury that comes with a software developer salary than anything negative about fast food (same reason I won't go back to being a security guard, which was hands down the best job I ever had). I feel like there's a strong argument to be made th…

What did you enjoy about being a security guard?

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#403

Post by edmundsauto » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 7:55 PM UTC

marginalia_nu wrote: post #272

blowski wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same argument with all consuming vs producing. It's why there was a moral panic in the 1800s over Jane Austen style fiction, in the 1930s over radio, and so on. Being addicted to cannabis is not really any different to playing computer games 12 hours a day, doing endless marathons, watching sports, investing, or many similar activities.

Some of those moral panics did lead to action though. Hard drugs, alcohol, gambling, duels; a lot of this stuff is if not banned then at least restricted and regulated.

That’s not a clear win, as in some cases the cure proved worse than the disease. And was co-opted for goals around discrimination.

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#404

Post by elil17 » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 7:56 PM UTC

Over the past century, Americans have switched from eating whole foods containing many nutrients in one package to eating processed foods where each nutrient is extracted from a different plant and then recombined. The resulting food is dirt cheap and incredibly appetizing.

Something equivalent is happening in the cannabis industry. Cannabis is a mixture of THC and various other compounds which potentiate it. Without those other compounds, the THC doesn't have the same psychoactive effects. Cannabis producers are growing high THC breeds, extracting the THC, and then adding in then extracting the other compounds from other breeds, other foods, or synthetic sources. The result: dirt cheap drugs that are more enticing to consumers.

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#405

Post by sleepdreamy » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 7:59 PM UTC

_j5l3 wrote: post #310

sleepdreamy wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simply false. I'm not going to discuss pricing here but, with Dabs and several forms of in-take you do not need to spend 100/day to be stoned all day. I live in a recreational state(Lived here for 13 years while it could ruin your life). In the past this might hold true but no longer.

At the peak of my own usage, I smoked around an ounce every 3 days while (pretending to be) working from home. $40/eighth + taxes a pretty average price in the Bay Area, so that works out to almost exactly $100/day. That's pretty extreme, even for heavy smokers, but far from impossible.

An OZ every 3 days is pretty insane I'm gonna be honest. You must've been rolling everything to go through that. Using pieces helps a lot. Hope you're doing well

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#406

Post by rs999gti » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 7:59 PM UTC

lacker wrote: post #57

The real danger with cannabis is not that it'll make you sick or have some nasty side effect like this article describes. The danger is simply that you will like it, you'll end up using it every day, all different times of the day, and it won't really hurt your health as much as it will make you live your life in a somewhat dopey, detached, less-intelligent way. As time goes on it won't feel "fun" it'll just feel "no…

> The danger is simply that you will like it

I like bourbon and gin, but I don't drink both everyday.

As they say, "everything in moderation."

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#407

Post by daveslash » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 8:02 PM UTC

monktastic1 wrote: post #396

daveslash wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I used the same schpeel (or something similar), with my kid when we found out she was smoking at 15. You know ~ it's not heroine or cocaine, but it can make you content to just do nothing, when you'd be happier doing something . Sometimes "do nothing" is exactly what we need in this crazy, hectic, busy world. Sometimes it's good to be bored. But keep it in check. Also, I have no problem with adults partaking, b…

FYI, spiel :)

Thank you.

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#408

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 8:04 PM UTC

mesofile wrote: post #119

lacker wrote: post #57

The real danger with cannabis is not that it'll make you sick or have some nasty side effect like this article describes. The danger is simply that you will like it, you'll end up using it every day, all different times of the day, and it won't really hurt your health as much as it will make you live your life in a somewhat dopey, detached, less-intelligent way. As time goes on it won't feel "fun" it'll just feel "no…

I thought the way that South Park put it (in the voice of Randy Marsh) many years ago was just about perfect: “Well, Stan, the truth is marijuana probably isn't gonna make you kill people, and ...it most likely isn't gonna fund terrorists, 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 creat…

[deleted]

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#409

Post by photochemsyn » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 8:04 PM UTC

ineptech wrote: post #342

photochemsyn wrote: post #19

This line has been reliably trotted out every few years since the 1990s at least: But experts say today’s high-THC cannabis products — vastly different than the joints smoked decades ago — are poisoning some heavy users, including teenagers. The issue is that people adjust their consumption accordingly, just as with alcohol - drinking one liter of beer, everyone knows, is not the same as drinking one liter of vodka.…

Yeah, I'm calling BS. 1) That line has been trotted out continuously because weed potency has been going up continuously. In the late 90s, good weed was anything above 4-5% THC; the store near my house currently has nothing below 23%. For your beer/liquor analogy to work, you'd have to live somewhere where the bottle shop only sells triple IPAs and fortified wine, and Coors is in the soft drink section. 2) I don't be…

1) Concentrated hash was widely available in California in the 1980s, and the strength of locally grown strains then was little different than it is today. Perhaps this was not true in East Coast or other regions of the USA. There was an active import market from Asia at the time as well, not just from Mexico.

2) If people want low-concentration cannabis (though why anyone would want to fill their lungs with soot and ash is beyond my comprehension), it's easy enough to grow your own and cure the leaf material for the purpose instead of the flower material - the cannabis shops simply don't find this profitable, nor do the growers.

3) Back in the 1980s and 1990s, there were definitely cases of people getting sick and having to go to the ER, although then it was from eating too many pot brownies. It was definitely a fairly common occurence, just the source was not gummies or resin from cannabis shops.

Personally I don't think alcohol or cannabis have many positives, and I like having a nice clear memory and a fog-free thinking process so I avoid them more and more as I get older, but these kind of articles are just so reminiscent of Nancy Reagan's 'think of the children' pearl-clutching nonsense. If people's kids are so pressured that they turn to drugs and alcohol for relief as teenagers, that's more of a symptom of bad parenting (typically too much high-pressure expectation nonsense, if not actual abuse) than anything else.

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#410

Post by fzeroracer » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 8:04 PM UTC

lostmsu wrote: post #271

fzeroracer wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Like, films such as Reefer Madness were created at the height of the anti-marijuana propaganda drive fueled by strongly racist rhetoric to stamp out minorities. That drive and rhetoric dictated US policy for over 50 years, resulted in increasing penalties against marijuana users and leads up to the current day where it's still classified as Schedule I drug. Your framing of the situation is just remarkably wrong…

Your comment kinda demonstrates his point though. He made a comparison, and you pointed out that what he compared weed consumption to is crazy. And you said absolutely nothing about weed consumption itself which is required to understand the validity of the comparison. And not providing that part is exactly demonstrating the lack of self-awareness.

His comparison was between your average smoker arguing for legality vs an entire institution that was setup to criminalize and demonize them for decades, then calling them equally a problem. What exactly here would change the validity of the comparison?