Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory: Marijuana Use and the Developing Brain

hhs.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 352 posts

Re: U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory: Marijuana Use and the Developing Brain

#281

Post by ozzmotik »

jimbokun wrote: post #153
telaelit wrote: post #150

When I was 16 I started smoking weed almost everyday until I was 20, I took a break until I was 22, and now I live in a legal state and I enjoy a joint or two on the weekends. I haven't had any problems whatsoever. I work as a software engineer and I got all As throughout school. I realize this might not be the case for everyone, but that has been my experience.

So sounds like its Russian Roulette, some adolescents may not suffer many ill effects, and for others it will be really bad. So probably better not to take that chance.

well i mean you can frame any question of probability as russian roulette if you were determined to. the difference is, you go into russian roulette where absolutely dying is a guaranteed possible outcome, whereas what you were responding to exists more on a spectrum of possibilities, all subject to different risk factors external to this metaphorical game of russian roulette. im js that in terms of the game parameters, i think it's difficult to map something with so few to something with so many effectively.

Re: U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory: Marijuana Use and the Developing Brain

#282

Post by jotm »

strlen wrote: post #275
sharadov wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, you can smoke a joint and go hike/ride a bike or you can sit your ass on the couch and be toking up bowl after bowl!

Don’t ride a bike: first motor and response times are impacted, second (at least in California) you absolutely can get a DUI on a bicycle.

People drive high. I can't believe how many times I've heard "I can drive just fine, it's not like alcohol".

Cannabis changes my perception of time and significantly affects my attention. I would never drive in that state, or even cross the street, I'm sure I'd get hit by a car... I don't think other people are that different.

Re: U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory: Marijuana Use and the Developing Brain

#283

Post by yoz-y »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #116
umvi wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Legalizing it will drastically mitigate the ability for minors to get a hold of any I can't tell if you are joking or not (sorry). But I simply don't believe this. Why would legalizing it make it harder for minors to get ahold of it?

When one is underage, it is easier to get illegal drugs than legal ones. The legality makes different sorts of barriers and different sorts of penalties for selling to a minor. I'm not sure it mattered if you were (are) selling pot to a 18 year old rather than a 30 year old - you were still selling pot. You would get in trouble for giving an 18 year old alcohol, though, but not the 30 year old. And a bunch of things…

> When one is underage, it is easier to get illegal drugs than legal ones.

I just don't buy this. When I was a kid it was trivial to ask somebody to buy us alcohol and cigarettes. Almost everybody I knew drank underage and at least a third of the kids smoke. Compared to this getting weed was always 'an event' and I did not get to try it until much later.

Re: U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory: Marijuana Use and the Developing Brain

#284

Post by _f9cu »

nenadg wrote: post #45

I smoked weed heavily from my ~16 to ~18. And I stopped because it was so overwhelming experience that I could not stand any more. I couldn't function normally and had really tough trips, thinking about so many end results in the same time. Minutes took hours and basically it was an agony, while everybody had pretty joyful time laughing. Now, I'm 38. I'm functional (so far), I have family with kids. I haven't develop…

Creative mind gets its originality. It made you what you actually are and got rid of influenced knowledge.

Re: U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory: Marijuana Use and the Developing Brain

#285

Post by silvat »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #236
habosa wrote: post #98

Reading the comments here is a bit disappointing. There are a lot of legalization advocates seeming to take the position that because weed is mostly fine for most people it's always fine for everyone. It's not. Anyone here who has a friend who smoked too much when they were young (and we all have that friend) knows that weed, like so many things in life, can be dangerous when you use it too much or when you shouldn't…

That friend was already a deadbeat, with or without the weed. The weed didn’t make them that way. Deadbeats are often attracted to weed, as are many others who want to self-medicate. The deadbeat examples are just more readily available, because the upstanding successful folks are aware of this misconception and the stigma. They tend to keep quiet about it, except among their own. As I get older, I keep discovering “…

You're characterization of these people simply as deadbeats trying to avoid responsibility is both extremely insensitive and simple minded. How deep a person can gets caught up in addiction is usually a reflection of their emotional health. They're not trying to escape responsibility, they're trying to escape being alive.

Re: U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory: Marijuana Use and the Developing Brain

#286

Post by Haga »

sharadov wrote: post #261
donw wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That requires clear and honest guidance as to where those boundaries might lie, though. Broadly speaking, I am pro-legalization of Pretty Much Everything, on the basis that proper education and appropriate treatment programs for heroin users are better for society than jail time. But that comes with the need to implement pragmatic, evidence-based policies for how we approach drug use as a society. A lot of neural dev…

That's the libertarian approach, which says legalize everything, tax everything. Am with you on it, although am not sure, how that would work with hard drugs ( cocaine,mushrooms,LSD, ecstasy,heroin). Again within hard drugs - cocaine is vastly different from doing LSD. A single dose of LSD in a bad setting could mess your psyche up for life. What you are doing is choosing the better of two evils.I would rather buy a…

Drugs are one of the stomache is not allowed to digest the stomach moments of a free society. If a substance rewrites your free will, should you be allowed to vote on it post rewrite? Or should the old ship of Theseus specify conditions for the i validation of the opinion of its future self?

Re: U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory: Marijuana Use and the Developing Brain

#287

Post by adrianN »

sitkack wrote: post #228
yhoneycomb wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not even anecdotal. The relative risk for developing schizophrenia for cannabis smokers vs non cannabis smokers is 2.3. This means that you are 2.3 times more likely to develop schizophrenia if you smoke cannabis. Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4988731/ With that said, I think it should be legal. I just think people shouldn’t downplay the risks.

Schizophrenia is an imbalance in the polyphony of minds occupying our heads. Our minds and bodies take training to pilot properly. If we want to have agency, we need to be methodical and purposeful in what we do and don't vastly surpass our current limits. You can't go squat 400 lbs w/o training. The same goes for mind altering substances.

I don't think anybody knows what Schizophrenia is exactly.

Re: U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory: Marijuana Use and the Developing Brain

#288

Post by technothrasher »

appleshore wrote: post #149
newsreview1 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate this honest statement. I work daily with individuals with mental disabilities including psychosis, memory dysfunction, and perceptional disturbances, and can certainly agree from what I have subjectively seen. (Though also longitudinally as I have viewed medical records extensively over years and years of research). I have witnessed secondhand that higher doses and earlier use of THC are more likely to p…

Society itself seems like a driver of psychosis. In school, they rarely teach critical thinking nor warnings of cognitive biases. People then grow up in a rather unfair world and system. Next they get easily persuaded by a clever YouTube video or concept. Now their anger has a revelation and a fascination.

Neither lack of critical thinking skills nor disenchantment with the world leading to fantasy prone thinking have anything to do with psychosis.

Re: U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory: Marijuana Use and the Developing Brain

#289

Post by bregma »

bduerst wrote: post #59
bregma wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think a publication from a place with a URL 'drugabuse.gov' is going to be a reliable source of unbiased information?

Which of their cited sources are wrong? https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/mari... Specifically, these peer reviewed science articles: * https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22831980 * https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26886046 * https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15866551

Citing a source doesn't make your message unbiased.

There is a saying "even the devil can quote scripture."

Re: U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory: Marijuana Use and the Developing Brain

#290

Post by bregma »

nostrademons wrote: post #69
bregma wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think a publication from a place with a URL 'drugabuse.gov' is going to be a reliable source of unbiased information?

It's a division of the NIH and the article cites a peer-reviewed paper in Biological Psychiatry , so yes, I do think that this is a reliable source of unbiased information. The original study carefully describes its methodology (which is as sound as any neuroscience paper I've read), and was done in London, so you can't argue that the researchers are biased by American government attitudes toward drugs: http://www.my…

> ...was done in London, so you can't argue that the researchers are biased by American government attitudes toward drugs

Ah, my naive little cultural hegemonist. Sounds like you've live all your life in America. Have a Coke, turn on some Hip Hop, and watch your Mickey Mouse.

Post reply on HN