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How to get 7th graders to smoke

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Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#251

Post by Sirizarry »

Retric wrote: post #154
imchillyb wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> …2019 on deaths in three areas that have previously been linked to cannabis use but are still poorly understood: motor vehicle accidents, suicide and opioid overdose. For each cause of death, the researchers compared trends in deaths in states with legal markets with those in states that had comprehensive medical cannabis programs and similar trends in death rates prior to implementing markets… The study did not li…

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8195290/ Findings show that meta-analyses and culpability studies consistently indicate a slightly but significantly increased risk of crashes after acute cannabis use. These risks vary across included study type, crash severity, and method of substance application and measurement. Some studies show a significant correlation between high THC blood concentrations and car cr…

I’m understanding here that cannabis is linked to a higher RISK of crash fatalities not linked to crash fatalities themselves? That’s a very important distinction.

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#252

Post by hollywood_court »

bongodongobob wrote: post #244
hollywood_court wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew it was working for me when I didn't want anyone to ever see me smoking. I definitely didn't want my child to see me smoking. But first it was coworkers or in-laws and such.

I feel the same, I don't have any kids, but my friends do. Feels like shit. Any other advice or recommended reading? Smoker for 27 years.

Associate the habit with someone you don’t like. That’s how I stopped all of my bad habits. Smoking, drinking, herb, going to the bar, eating like crap, not exercising, etc. I just associated each habit with someone I didn’t like or respect.

Then I took a long had look in the mirror and told myself that I was better than that person and that I could make better decisions.

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#253

Post by Retric »

Nursie wrote: post #248
Retric wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even people like you who seem to think they are above addiction. Personal experience but Alcohol, Tobacco, opioids etc and never felt the pull. I tried smoking for a little under a year but didn’t really care for it. Used to drink fairly regularly but just kind of got bored with it to the point a found out beer eventually goes bad in your fridge. > Is rare Ok that may be personal bias in terms of use. I remember on…

> Personal experience but .. Sure, and that's your personal experience. If we were going by my personal experience we would get a different picture - that tobacco was highly addictive (though easy enough to quit in the end) but there was no issue at all with cocaine. Yet when we look at the harm profile of cocaine, we can see it's comparatively pretty bad and pulls people into spirals of addiction and self-destructio…

> No offence, but this is why the plural of anecdote is not data. Your sample bias here is extreme - people who were idealogically inclined to take acid daily as an almost pseudo-religious sacrament are not a representative sample.

Case studies are a major source of data in science. People exposed to extreme radiation doses from accidents play a significant role in our understanding of the consequences of said exposure and ways to treat it.

If the people I knew were able to handle that kind of LSD use then I would have a different opinion because LSD would be safer. Is 1% the use 1% as dangerous? Now that’s where you need controlled studies because the effect size diminishes, but feed 50 rats 1 gram of substance Y and they all die and that’s strong evidence on it’s own no need for statistical analysis.

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#254

Post by Retric »

Sirizarry wrote: post #251
Retric wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8195290/ Findings show that meta-analyses and culpability studies consistently indicate a slightly but significantly increased risk of crashes after acute cannabis use. These risks vary across included study type, crash severity, and method of substance application and measurement. Some studies show a significant correlation between high THC blood concentrations and car cr…

I’m understanding here that cannabis is linked to a higher RISK of crash fatalities not linked to crash fatalities themselves? That’s a very important distinction.

No it’s really not, the same thing is true of alcohol use and car crashes because sober people still crash or lung cancer from smoking etc.

Suppose you have a study of 10k people split 5k:5k between smokers and non smokers. In the non smokers group you get say 10 cases of lung cancer and the smokers group you get 200. It’s really tempting to say the individual smokers got long cancer from smoking, but the base rate isn’t 0 so you don’t know who was screwed either way. Perhaps if nobody smoked in that total population there would have been 19 cases of lung cancer or perhaps 22.

Thus only thing you can say is smoking increases RISK of lung cancer not link it to specific cases.

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#255

Post by red-iron-pine »

Retric wrote: post #114
evilsnoopi3 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally only one of the drugs you mentioned can kill you due to withdrawal. Hint: it's not LSD or tobacco. Alcohol is an _extremely_ harmful drug.

Harm is based on all risks not just the metrics that make what you care about look better. 60% of American adults drink regularly so extreme edge cases happen, but they aren’t anywhere close to the risks from car accidents etc. Risk of death is significant, but we’re talking under 0.1% per year.

Some absurd number, like 70% of domestic violence, 25% of sexual assaults, 30% of regular assaults, around ~40% of murders, ~15% of robberies, and ~50% of injurious or fatal car accidents occur when people are under the influence of alcohol.

that very few are overdosing isn't the issue.

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#257

Post by fho »

nicoburns wrote: post #111
Retric wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people underestimate many illegal drugs because they don’t know long term users. Alcohol and Tobacco have minimal short term health risks. Most people throw up rather than OD on Alcohol. Obviously driving while fucked us is dangerous, but the same is true of a lot of drugs. Driving stoned is an underappreciated risk. LSD arguably the poster child for safe illegal drugs, but still physically risky due to peopl…

LSD is absolutely NOT the poster child for safe illegal drugs: Something like cannabis, MDMA, or amphetamines would be. I think all of those have a decent claim to being safer than or comparably safe to alcohol. Tobacco, as you say isn't particularly bad in the short term. But it is particularly addictive, so you end up with a large proportion of addicts / long term users for whom the longer term effects apply.

With weed I am mostly concerned with the second order effects. I know a handful of long term users (mid-30s to mid-40s with decade long use) and the pattern that I see is that all of them just don't care about their life.

They just never really had the drive to improve their situation in life to the point where it often is easier to get high instead of confronting problems.

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#259

Post by Retric »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #255
Retric wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harm is based on all risks not just the metrics that make what you care about look better. 60% of American adults drink regularly so extreme edge cases happen, but they aren’t anywhere close to the risks from car accidents etc. Risk of death is significant, but we’re talking under 0.1% per year.

Some absurd number, like 70% of domestic violence, 25% of sexual assaults, 30% of regular assaults, around ~40% of murders, ~15% of robberies, and ~50% of injurious or fatal car accidents occur when people are under the influence of alcohol. that very few are overdosing isn't the issue.

True, social harm is definitely high, on the other hand ~62% of US adults drink. The expected rates of all of those things aren’t 0.

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#260

Post by Nursie »

Retric wrote: post #253
Nursie wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personal experience but .. Sure, and that's your personal experience. If we were going by my personal experience we would get a different picture - that tobacco was highly addictive (though easy enough to quit in the end) but there was no issue at all with cocaine. Yet when we look at the harm profile of cocaine, we can see it's comparatively pretty bad and pulls people into spirals of addiction and self-destructio…

> No offence, but this is why the plural of anecdote is not data. Your sample bias here is extreme - people who were idealogically inclined to take acid daily as an almost pseudo-religious sacrament are not a representative sample. Case studies are a major source of data in science. People exposed to extreme radiation doses from accidents play a significant role in our understanding of the consequences of said exposu…

> feed 50 rats 1 gram of substance Y and they all die and that’s strong evidence on it’s own no need for statistical analysis.

Your theoretical study there tells you about substance toxicity, but it tells you very little about the real-world dangers of substance Y to rats.

Would rats choose to consume substance Y at all? How often and how compulsively? What are the effects on rats at the levels they choose to consume, rather than the effects on them at levels the scientists chose to dose them with? If most rats would choose to eat 1mg of Y, at most once a year, and that level doesn't seem to harm them, then that 50mg test has shown you nothing at all.

Substance Z doesn't kill at 50mg, in fact it's safe up to 1000mg, is it less harmful? Well that depends. If the rats compulsively gobble every bit of it they can find and then drop dead after a month, we can say that Z is much worse.

Imagine you worked in an alcoholic rehab centre. You have first hand evidence all around you of the horrific damage alcohol wreaks on its users. Many of them have liver problems, are aged by the booze and their tough lives. Some are battling cancers caused by the drink, others have severe mental impairments. Your impression of drinkers is likely very skewed.

That's what you're doing with your sample of LSD users. With alcohol you're explicitly excluding the equivalent group in your assessment - "You can reasonably safely consume a lot of alcohol without issue, as in 1-3 beers a night for a decade" - when we can be confident that the group of alcohol addicts is larger as a proportion and suffers from all sorts of issues you're happy to ignore.

This way of thinking is so common I'm considering naming it the "it's just a beer" fallacy. Most people who have a beer or two don't become alcoholics. Most people who drop acid once or twice don't become your dads friends. To gauge relative harm we need to figure out what 'most' means and what the consequences are across users. You don't get to select a moderate drinker and an extreme outlier acid-head and say "see! this one is worse!". That's not a valid comparison.

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