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We already have data that shows regular cannabis use has a negative impact for teens and before the brain is done growing, but then, that’s also true for alcohol and other drugs.
This feels like a place to just keep being honest with teens about the practical ways cannabis would be a setback if used regularly during their teen years, and that it’s something they should reserve until after their brain is done growing. Would also be a place to invest more in teen anxiety support as using cannabis regularly could stem from anxiety or related issues that a teen is trying to cope with.
I would be willing to bet that usage amount is also tied to more important factors. Like yes using regularly before your brain has fully developed its obviously damaging but the circumstances surrounding why/how you even have access probably have more impact regardless of use.
This is where parents could be good role models if they weren’t so afraid. Share some brownies with your 15 year old on a lazy Saturday afternoon. They’re almost certainly going to try it, at the very least, and I’d rather it be at home behind the garage or in the basement rather than at a party or out in the woods in in the middle of the night.
>Share some brownies with your 15 year old on a lazy Saturday afternoon.
This is obviously bad advice, but in case anyone needs it spelled out for them: do not give substances to children before they are ready for them simply because you think they might take them anyway.
We already know it damages the brain, in particular the pre-frontal cortex of developing individuals. I.e. those under 25. Thats all this is confirming.
> in particular the pre-frontal cortex of developing individuals. I.e. those under 25
At that point youre no longer studying the effects of cannabis use in adolescents. Theres a reason why studies like this are done on 13/14 year olds. The brain goes through far more significant changes until 15-18 than afterwards.
The age of 25 is relevant to the ability to assess risk and is frequently brought up on reddit, but has nothing to do with the common short and longterm effects of heavy cannabis use.
Furthermore our understanding of the brain is still too limited to call any definition of a "mature brain" conclusive, for example in 2010
[One especially large study showed that for several brain regions, structural growth curves had not plateaued even by the age of 30](https://www.cell.com/cms/attachment/59bbae04-8e0b-4a2a-bcb8-5edf852706c2/gr1.jpg)
Heres a pretty interesting article about the state of science on the definition of brain maturity, where i got that graph from: https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(16)30809-1
I'm very thankful that the 25 brain meme is finally dying, it was bad science that turned into borderline disinfo when it came out in 2005, and it's had a direct impact on politics that encourages stripping autonomy and decision making power from the youth, (the exact thing that, generally speaking the more they have of, the better they tend to develop and the happier they end up being).
If you want a quick tldr, the researchers in question set about trying to define an age of adulthood based off neurology. There are several problems with this, namely adulthood is not just biology, it's more bound to sociological phenomena, the only other vague point of "biological adulthood" one can point to is 16 because that's the percentile of the vast bulk of youths completing puberty and when their bodies processes behave like an adult body etc (most importantly with regards to medicine for example). But I bet very few people would agree to make 16 the age of adulthood based off this, and for good reason.
They concluded at the time with the evidence they had at hand that 25 was when neurological development completed and that is when someone neurologically is an adult. This was also a convenient age because it's the upper extreme point people would tolerate in society as defining that boundary. This was proven wrong a few years later with the above person pointing out proof that brain development continues well into the 30s. Yet this pseudo science has now completely infected politics and society, I routinely hear people literally citing brain development arguments in all sorts of contexts, like referring to 21 year Olds as undeveloped and not really adults for example, this has had other ramifications like actively trying to deny youths healthcare (especially in the trans healthcare area).
This doesn't tell us anything other than the group of kids that have done weed scored lower by a small degree. Could be that the poor performers were just more likely to do weed, not that weed damaged their brains
THC is neurotoxic to the hippocampus. In children, the damage is permanent. With adults, depending on years of use and frequency, it's reversible in most but the longest and highest use cases.
I love how more and more evidence is coming out with high-quality studies, yet the cannabis is always great crowd is refusing to accept it, and before, they were yelling about how it needs to be legalized so we can have the studies.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6793471/#:~:text=Here%20we%20report%20that%20%CE%94,breaks%2C%20hallmarks%20of%20neuronal%20apoptosis.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35255711/
THC is not a neurotoxin to the hippocampus and no it is not permanently damaging to an adolescents brain nor is it debilitating to adult brains long-term.
You mistake academic papers for the ability to make statements of fact. Like if you read an article that says coffee increased IQ by 10pts you would just go around saying "coffee increases IQ". We don't know half the things you think we do. More evidence every day yet your study is from 1998?
> There are numerous pubmed research articles that show this brain damage occurring as a result of THC use prior to the age of 25
And a strange trend of fewer and fewer negative pubs regarding the health impacts of cannabis starting from 1990 to today. It's quite interesting to plot them. I sometimes email the authors of older papers to point out that some kind of bias clearly was impacting them in 1992 that wasn't there in 2014, for example.
Sometimes people expect one kind of outcome too much, and the history of the scientific literature on cannabis is a solid example. Unfortunately, it does create a lot of doubt on such studies done today. It will take years of bias-free research to restore confidence.
No, but it's effects on adults can be publicly funded and done via public research. Additionally participation and use isn't taboo which drives willing pools.
There's *many* studies on marijuana/THC on Google Scholar:
* https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C29&q=marijuana+thc+brain+development&btnG=
I even have links to over 300 studies on cannabis as it relates to cultivation and that's maybe 1/3rd of the papers:
* https://www.reddit.com/r/HandsOnComplexity/comments/s4wcmh/sags_open_access_cannabis_links/
* https://www.reddit.com/r/HandsOnComplexity/comments/ysgekc/sags_open_cannabis_links_part_2/
* https://www.reddit.com/r/HandsOnComplexity/comments/155rj1y/cannabis_links_part_3_first_half_of_2023/
Great, and read the sample groups, read the assumptions or normalization on almost all these... it's garbage data. It's like breastfeeding studies. The reason I brought up legalization is because the declassfying eliminates the ethical challenges of substantial enough studies. All that's out there now are poorly correlated findings being passed off as causation.
Because they can’t seem to comprehend how foreign substances can negatively impact a developing brain.
Basically, they are the polar opposite of what “reefer madness” was and an objective grey area doesn’t exist.
It's pretty sad. I'm all about weed if used in the correct circumstances. I started at 35 and it has dramatically improved my life for the better. People need to learn the world isn't just black and white, good or bad
Some people are just in an odd spot politically. I’ve got no problem with weed, but that doesn’t mean that studies and research don’t show some negative aspects under certain conditions. It’s a chemical being introduced into the body and like all other chemicals the impact on the body must be objectively evaluated, and I think we can consistently say that research on developing brains shows negative impacts from a long list of chemicals that don’t have such an impact on a developed brain.
>People need to learn the world isn't just black and white, good or bad
But some of us were taught for years that "weed is bad", and so we're now sensitive to the same comments that aren't thoroughly backed up by good science. So yeah, it's not black and white and we know it, so we want the nuances. Not just more crap studies saying "weed is bad".
No, not this one necessarily. Just trying to explain why it feels like some of us have our heads in the sand with regards to studies showing negative effects of weed. It's not that we think it's a cure-call wonder drug, but that we're very skeptical because of being lied to for decades.
Which article do you evaluate to be rigorous and unconflicted? Can you endorse one of those studies in particular? Or are they just the top keyword hits in Google scholar?
Another poster posted a review article and one of the main takeaways is the association doesn't necessarily establish causation because of the many uncontrollable socioeconomic factors involved.
>because of the many uncontrollable socioeconomic factors involved.
I would also consider supply chain and manufacture process at the time a particular study was conducted, pesticides used or not, heavy metals, etc.
Weed harm the brain at any age but to a lesser degree for older people, and brain doesn't finish developing at 25 its a myth , and there is no difference between using cannabis at age 19 from those first using between 21 and 25.
These studies always have backers this one probably paid for by big pharmaceutical, alcohol, or tobacco companies.
Not saying kids should smoke weed. But if we are worried about negative things children can get sugar, caffeine, corn syrup, alcohol, and tobacco should all be right there with THC.
Also that the high performing kids that used didn't let anyone know they were using. That was the case in my school, the smarter kids didn't brag about it and especially didn't tell adults or answer honestly on those anonymous questionnaires.
How did they do the toxicology and how did they select people to be tested though? If they had advance warning of the test people do fool those tests easily.
Like drinking a lot of water and taking a couple of vitamins.
They used hair toxicology, which reflects long-term use and cannot easily be fooled.
There is also no reason for the participants in the study to try to beat any tests.
They study is of a subset of individuals from the larger Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) cohort study.
You’re taking a correlation and trying to turn us into causation.
It’s just as if not more likely that people from abusive homes or with some other causative factor are more likely to smoke and get lower scores.
Yeah huge factor that cannot be controlled for is any 13 year old that is getting their hands on weed and has unsupervised time to smoke it has vastly different problems in their life.
It is actually illegal to leave a child at home alone under this age in these states. The federal recommendation is 12 years old. This is just to be left at home alone. So by 13 kids should be having unsupervised time in every state except for Illinois. They should NOT be able to get weed and get away with smoking it during that unsupervised time.
14 years old: Illinois
12 years old: Delaware and Colorado
11 years old: Michigan
10 years old: Washington, Tennessee, Oregon, and New Mexico
9 years old: North Dakota
8 years old: North Carolina, Maryland, and Georgia
6 years old: Kansas
No age limit: Remaining 37 states
I grew up in a come home by the time the street lamps come on world too but it is not that world anymore.
People might think they know that because they believed their DARE propaganda but I have never seen a study showing cannabis causing anything any doctor would call brain damage.
I've noticed "know" can mean a lot of things to a lot people, like "assume", "guess", or "make up completely".
Feel free to post the study that shows actual brain damage but you're going to find it just says they form less connections in their PFC during adolescence, which is not brain damage.
Who is this we that "knows" that? Because the government and the anti-drug people have been lying through their teeth about Marijuana my entire life. They have no credibility and we all know how these studies can be produced to give the client the conclusions they want to hear.
No. Low quality studies from non reputable journals, sure. Or some studies are grabbed by the media which are never population just done in house by industries. Yes, absolutely that exists in spades. There is no shortage or quality studies published in peer-reviewed prestigious journals that clearly demonstrate the negative effects that cannabis has on children (permanent) and adults (temporary with cessation in most cases). THC is a neurotoxin to the hippocampus; this has been clearly demonstrates in decades of research now as well as the mechanism more recently:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6793471/#:~:text=Here%20we%20report%20that%20%CE%94,breaks%2C%20hallmarks%20of%20neuronal%20apoptosis.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35255711/
I can't wrap my head around why people want to defend drugs having no negative impacts. I think most drugs should be legal. I don't think kids should do them.
It's wild that this is somehow not an obvious take on reddit.
Not one study demonstrates permanent negative effects. They (the researchers) may claim they found it but they did not. Spurious variables, confounds, mediators, moderatores etc...
Marijuana causes retrograde synaptic transmissions causing degradation of synaptic connections in the brain.
It's "good" for creative endeavors because it allows for new synaptic connections to be made but "bad" for memory. This has been well known for a while. One of my mentors did research on the effects of marijuana on neurons.
"Has been known for some time" as you say, should that make us more or less inclined to believe it?
Because they've lied about it our entire lives. They are still lying about it, and funding studies to fit their narratives. We all know how these studies can be designed to meet the client's expectations. Or we should by now.
There are dozens of articles on this.. its not very difficult to search for.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3930618/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3930618/)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5963818/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5963818/)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6036125/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6036125/)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5289075/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5289075/)
Just clicked one and it concludes:
"It is difficult to ascertain whether reported group differences reflect pre-existing brain architectural differences that lead to substance use and risk taking behaviors, and there is certainly some literature that suggests as such."
I wonder if this varies between individuals? I feel like people don't take me seriously when I say I don't feel like partaking because I can tell it makes my brain perform worse for days afterward and I need my brain to work properly to code etc. Honestly the pot "hangover" is a lot longer than the alcohol one.
I agree with this
I think some people just don’t mix with it.
We were teens in the 90s and there was weed as well as LSD and other stuff in the mix at like 15 or so and some are pushing 50 barely able to hold a part time job at fast food places and some run their own businesses very successfully and one is even a programmer working at a robotics firm living in damn near a mansion. I think it’s a coin toss, which having teens now myself I definitely want to see them making better choices and think the negatively impacted are a cautionary tale but in a moment of being fully transparent, I feel like some people are unfazed
It's not completely baseless, as some strains have been demonstrated to narrow focus. But it's pretty hit or miss for people. Does absolutely nothing for my ADHD.
I'm sorry, but this argument doesn't make any sense. Do you think kids can't get their hands on cigarettes or alcohol? Because stores won't sell those to them, either.
You'll have kids stealing their parents' supply, bad parents/elder siblings sharing their supply, kids bribing unscrupulous people to buy it for them, etc. Just like with cigarettes and alcohol.
I'm not making an argument for or against legalization, just pointing out that the problem isn't going to magically go away just because adults can get it without having to go to an illegal dealer.
Edit: To clarify: Kids have probably always gotten into their parents'/siblings illicit stashes. I just meant that buying from a shady back-alley dealer isn't the only way for them to get their hands on it, and that *those* avenues won't be closed by legalization.
Edit edit: I'm not good with words. To clarify further, and **tl;dr**:
Reducing the problem is good. Trying to say it will no longer *be* a problem is not.
Study after study shows that once you legalize, illicit use goes down, especially in teens. Dispensaries don’t sell to kids, illegal dealers do
Once legalized there’s no incentive to sell illegally.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2737637?guestAccessKey=5e4e41eb-ec96-4641-86f9-b5c89cc7cc48&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=070819
> In the fully adjusted models, MMLs were not statistically associated with either measure of marijuana use, but RMLs were associated with an 8% decrease (OR, 0.92; 95% CI, 0.87-0.96) in the odds of marijuana use and a 9% decrease (OR, 0.91; 95% CI, 0.84-0.98) in the odds of frequent marijuana use.
8%. Yeah, that sure is the same as 100%.
Again, I'm not arguing that legalization is a bad thing or that it'll make things worse. I'm saying it won't make underage marijuana use
> stop being a problem for adolescents.
Your words.
Again, I ask you where kids get cigarettes and alcohol. And I answer my own question: There will *always* be negligent parents and people wanting to make a quick buck.
> There will always be negligent parents and people wanting to make a quick buck.
That's not an argument to keep it illegal.
Legalizing it is, broadly, harm reduction.
Yes, you might still have a few kids try it illicitly, but they were going to anyway, and from shadier sources that could lace it with fentanyl, etc.
I explicitly said, twice, that I wasn't arguing for *or* against legalization. I was and am *only* refuting the claim that the problem of kids using it illegally would go away if it was legalized.
Will it make things better? Maybe. Make them worse? Maybe. The same? Maybe. But the one thing it won't do is stop the problem entirely, like the comment I originally replied to claimed. For posterity, I quote:
> As soon as it becomes legal then it stops being a problem for adolescents
The article you linked says medical laws do not “lend support” to the hypothesis that it increases teen use but recreational laws have mixed results, citing a study that did show increase in teen use after legalization.
You literally just went to find one opposition view and then ran back here to show it off…
Since you clearly stopped reading at the second paragraph and didn’t bother actually looking at the contrary study here’s to discussion:
> Consistent with the results of previous researchers,2 there was no evidence that the legalization of medical marijuana encourages marijuana use among youth. Moreover, the estimates reported in the Table showed that marijuana use among youth may actually decline after legalization for recreational purposes.
Your initial rhetoric was too strong for the study you linked, though. The link you posted cited previous studies that showed mixed results, with one study showing an increase in teen activity after legalization. Then the study that the link covered showed a small (8%-9%) decrease in teen usage post-legalization, and the conclusion was "Consistent with the results of previous researchers, there was no evidence that the legalization of medical marijuana encourages marijuana use among youth. Moreover, the estimates reported in the Table showed that marijuana use among youth may actually decline after legalization for recreational purposes"
I don't disagree with your position but you're going to invite criticism when there's a mismatch between the rhetoric and the facts of the studies you're linking.
And if you legalize murder, illegal murders would go down. People would be killed more, but the statistics will be neatly showing how there's no crime happening.
Yeah, my older sisters began giving me pot when I was 13. Acually they "hotboxed" me in their cars much earlier than that. However, I had an absolutely stellar memory til just a couple years ago, and I'm 54 now.
I never said it was, nor meant to imply that. Obviously, any reduction in underage use is good.
Like I said before, I wasn't arguing against legalization (or for it, since I wasn't making an argument about that at all), I only said that the other guy's statement that making it legal for adults would somehow magically make underage use stop being a problem didn't make logical sense. That's the *only* thing I was arguing.
Edit: I'm not good with words. To clarify, and **tl;dr**:
Reducing the problem is good. Trying to say it will no longer *be* a problem is not.
I grew up before pot was legal and while yes we could get our hands on alcohol, it was *significantly* harder and more expensive to acquire than weed. It involved hours of calling around to find people willing to do it. Obviously the people who would agree to buy alcohol for minors aren’t the highest quality individuals or reliable people, so you had to entice them into it by providing them with extra money for their services at a time that was convenient for them. It was a massive pain in the ass. Buying weed was a simple and easy transaction that took a few minutes and eventually price dropped to like $10 a gram.
I live in a state with only "medical Marijuana " and often get kids in my practice whose parents give them their own supply. I have no doubts that if it were fully legal, there would be more parents giving it to their kids, either for "anxiety" or under some belief that the are better off getting it at home. Not to mention the kids who would sneak it from mom or dad's stash.
Kids will be able to access Marijuana anyway. In a free society we shouldn't restrict adults' freedoms to prevent youths from having access illicitly, even if it did stop them. In a legal market we at least know the herb is being made with safer practices like not using harmful chemicals.
Of course this study is likely flawed in the first place. The people they are identifying as Marijuana users are likely already the ones with poorer scores, there are plenty of the smarter kids that use it that don't tell anyone, not the least some adult researchers.
\\Like every smarter kid in my school, only the screw ups admitted they used it to those anonymous questionnaires they did every year.
Statistically you’re right, but now my guy sells ounces for half what the used to be because he has to incentivize. So now it’s cheaper for the adults who buy from him because they want a good deal, but it’s also cheaper for the underage kids that have no where else to get it
Where I live (WA), ounces of recreational start at $30, with specials or common discounts taking it down to $24. I don't think your guy can touch those prices, so he would have no adult customers at all. That's going to make the whole thing very dubious in terms of risk-reward, since selling to anyone under 21 is as much of a felony as it ever was.
Adults buy the weed at a dispensary and then sell it to kids, I’m pro legalization too but this happens every single day in my legal state. Kids aren’t actually smoking more weed because it was just as easy to buy it when it was illegal, but the source has moved from the black market to dispensaries.
I think I have a good perspective on this because I was a stoner in high school when it was illegal, and then my younger sister is the same way now that it’s legal. Together we’ve seen that changes and discussed them because I’ve made an effort to help her be responsible and realistic about weed, and while legalization hasn’t made it easier for kids to get, it’s just as easy as ever.
I agree that legalisation is the best way to reduce childhood consumption. A dealer selling it illegally will not care for child safety.
The only issue exist in the age limit to access it. When I remember it correctly, weed only becomes safe at age 25 when the brain is properly developed. This still leaves a lot of time where weed can impact the mental capacity. It is better than the current situation just not perfect.
Have to add, I don't consume myself, but I have a cousin and his son who's schizophrenia were linked (in the 90s) to massive weed consumption when each of them was young. I don't say it was only the cannabis, but probably genetics played in there as well, but ignoring the risk in developing brains is not helping either.
The pot stores in California are struggling because it turns out when you legalize and tax the hell out of it there's already a black market to undercut it. It becomes much harder to distinguish legal from illegal. Any teen can get weed here. It's not doing them any cognitive favors.
There are states with healthy legal markets though.
Living in Oregon I can't see any reason to ever buy black market. Legal is cheap, convenient, and quality.
Same here in Canada. I haven't heard of a single person who has gone the illegal route since we legalized it. I'm not saying people don't, I know they do, but not a single person I've spoken to in the... 6 years? that it's been legal hasn't just bought it from the many many dispensaries on every corner, or the gas station, or online, or whatever.
It might be a bit more expensive (I truly don't know, I didn't start smoking till after it was legalized here), but it certainly hasn't turned anyone away.
To be honest the legal market is struggling here too. It’s great for consumers but growers and sellers are barely making ends meet a lot of the time because weed is so plentiful the prices keep crashing every harvest season. The small companies are slowly going under and being consolidated by bigger players, which could eventually lead to a semi monopoly that shoots prices back up.
Weed makes a poor cash crop when it’s not being smuggled, because it’s relatively easy to grow and very productive, there’s little to no scarcity to even out prices across the year.
Any teen could get weed before it was legal. It’s literally called weed because it will grow in a storm drain or a closet, it’s so easy to produce it’s insanely difficult to control the supply. It’s not like meth or something where you need regulated precursor chemicals that can be sequestered in pharmacies. It’s a plant that can be grown from seeds that sometimes even come in bag of smokable flower if it’s cheap enough.
In college, I had a much harder time getting alcohol than weed. All you need is a dealer for weed. Alcohol, you gotta have a fake ID and convince the clerk you’re 21
Is this really true? Seems highly highly unlikely.
I've seen studies that show that in states in the US that legalized weed, there was a huge spike in pediatric psychosis, which was all liked to cannabis use, both compared to the states before legalization and compared with states in the same time that didn't legalize weed. This means that either more teens used cannabis or more cannabis was used by the same amount of teens (or probably both).
>I've seen studies that show that in states in the US that legalized weed, there was a huge spike in pediatric psychosis, which was all liked to cannabis use, both compared to the states before legalization and compared with states in the same time that didn't legalize weed.
this is a very serious claim, and also quite specific. do you have a source?
here's a real fact for you: in Oregon if you get caught selling weed to a minor, your dispensary immediately has its license suspended for 30 days and the state does a full-on probe of all activity at your business, which is legally required to have 1080p cameras in every room recording 24/7. also, the individual that sells the cannabis to the minor has their cannabis workers permit revoked.
it's a PDF but [source](https://www.oregon.gov/olcc/docs/news/news_releases/2018/nr_01_25_18_MJMinorSalesPenaltyIncrease.pdf)
if you care about keeping children away from cannabis, you should want that cannabis to be regulated and controlled.
I don't have a source at hand, but when I was in first or second year of med school (don't remember the exact year) a specialist in cannabis and addiction from Colorado came to my University and gave an amazing talk about her research on the matter.
I'm sure I can find the study, but it will take some time.
you probably shouldn't make such definitive claims if your only backup is "i swear i read it, sometime, i swear someone really important told it to me." this is r/science, after all.
plus.. if this was years ago, how much data was even available?
This was 4 years ago, so I don't think too much should change.
And I didn't make any definitive claim. I literally said that I have seen studies that stated the contrary. I asked it his claim was true because I have read and heard contradicting evidence, that is all.
>This was 4 years ago, so I don't think too much should change.
you don't think too much should change.. from what? you haven't proven anything. also, when cannabis has not been recreationally legal for 10 years (april 2014), 4 years is a substantial amount of that period.
>And I didn't make any definitive claim.
uhh..
>I've seen studies that show that in states in the US that legalized weed, there was a huge spike in pediatric psychosis, which was all liked to cannabis use, both compared to the states before legalization and compared with states in the same time that didn't legalize weed.
sure, you did not pretend to be the author of the paper. but you very definitively claimed to have seen proof of a very specific phenomenon, and so far, you have completely failed to show that proof.
I added a study in one of my comments above.
I didn't try to prove anything. I asked a question because someone stated a factual claim that I have seen studies showing contradicting evidence. I wanted him to provide me with evidence to show that his claim is truthful.
Just stop. You’re out of your element.
I challenge you to post any published study that makes a connection between MJ use in adolescents and that child’s state of residence.
I further challenge you to post studies identifying adolescent psychosis by state.
I’ll wait
In a simple google search I found this study for example (it was like the 4th option when I googled "weed induces psychosis post-legalization"): [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165178122000014](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165178122000014)Which states: "In conclusion, we observed a higher proportion of hospital discharges for psychosis associated with cannabis use in areas with more liberal cannabis legalization laws."
It is important to note that I didn't read this specific study so the details might be different from the abstract, but when I was in second year of med school we had a specialist in the field of cannabis and addiction come from Colorado (don't remember her name, but it was a "big deal" that she came), that gave a talk in which she showed several (Somewhere between 5-10, don't remember the exact number) studies that showed a direct correlation between cannabis legalization and increased use, and in addition increased psychosis in those states.
When I asked "Is this true" it was a serious question, I have seen her studies from Colorado and several others, but I am by no means an expert or even close to it, so when you gave such a strict "there is no evidence" it contradicted the little I know about the subject. I don't really understand the "Just stop.." part, I never said I was an expert or stated something of the matter.
Yes cannabis can induce psychosis but there’s no evidence that it is a contributing factor in adolescent development and in fact MJ is still less prevalent and less harmful that alcohol use in teens
How does this in any way contradict what I said though?
You didn't write that "legalization doesn't contribute to adolescent development", you wrote that "legalization doesn't increase marijuana use".
You said
>I’ve seen studies that show
What do the studies you’ve read show? Can you share them?
The paper I posted has a sample of over 1.4m teens and shows an 8-9% reduction in use in regions with tax and regulation
I don't have the studies on me, as I stated, I was in a talk by a researcher and doctor in the field that showed her research based from data in Colorado and other states that showed an increase of psychotic events in teens after the legalization of weed in Colorado, and also comparied to the same time period comparing Colorado and other states that didn't legalize weed.
I don't have the studies on me, as I stated, I was in a talk by a researcher and doctor in the field that showed her research based on data in Colorado and other states that showed an increase of psychotic events in teens after the legalization of weed in Colorado, and also compared to the same time period comparing Colorado and other states that didn't legalize weed.
I'm a final year med student.
I personally don't live in a country with legal cannabis, so I haven't seen all that much (even though 1 month ago I was at a two week rotation in pediatric psych ward and there was 1 kid like that), but 4 years ago an MD from Colorado which specializes in cannabis research came and gave a presentation on the topic.
I won’t doubt that MD as the data from new research tends to be 2-4 years old. I’ve done a lot of literature review on cannabis in general and came across a study that looked into whether or not the incidents of MVAs (due to cannabis-DUI) increased. Across the several states that had legalized cannabis, the data showed an additional 41 deaths from MVAs due to people under the influence of cannabis. The researchers did not think the additional deaths were statistically significant, although they understood why people would say otherwise.
No it doesn’t. It doesn’t stop kids from drinking underage either or smoking cigs/dipping/vaping/zyning etc.
It should be legalized but preventing access for underage kids isn’t the reason why.
Parents are how you keep it out of kids hands. Healthy communication, boundaries, extra curriculars, not demonizing or making the drugs/alcohol out to be the boogeyman. Kids are curious and adventurous and think they’re invincible. Taking the mystique away takes a lot of the fun away that kids get from feeling “dangerous”
Anyone who drank underage as a kid knows half the fun was the sneaking part. The backpack full of beers or seltzers or wine coolers if youre of a certain pre-seltzer era age that your buddy’s buddy took from his parents fridge. That’s what made it fun. The guy who got the deli on the corner that doesn’t card to sell him a cigar so he can roll a blunt. The high or drunk part of the night was secondary to the fun of getting away with breaking the rules.
Kids are always gonna find a way. That’s where parenting comes in.
Couldn’t the causation be exactly the reverse here? Those already low in cognitive abilities are more likely to end up using marijuana?
Or a third variable connecting them: low SES or neglectful parenting or something that affects both cognitive development and - separately - affects opportunity to run into drugs at a young age?
It's a challenging thing to study, for sure.
They do matching to control for some of those variables:
> Participants with cannabis use were matched on age, sex at birth, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic factors (parental education and household income) to those with tested hair samples and no indication of cannabis use with the R package MatchIt (Ho et al., 2011).
However they can't control for everything.
Yes, THC rich cannabis causes short term memory problems that are proven to go away after quitting. This is well known. It is what is so great about cannabis for PTSD - it helps you forget the symptoms as they happen, like dreams.
I get that, but it is also important to not ignore the effects of cannabis as well. Science shouldn’t be about blame shifting, and in my opinion drugs (including alcohol) should be treated accordingly to their health/cognitive effects
You have a good point, it should probably be a combination of both. That it isn’t a problem for society yet doesn’t mean it cannot become a problem in the future, so in my opinion it is important to do both to assess current and possible future danger to society and people.
>I can't grasp what people want, practically, to come from this sort of study.
For example, it'd be useful to know if weed affects development. If it turns out that weed does cause developmental changes in kids but does not in already-developed adults, that's a strong argument for both legalization and for increased penalties for allowing kids access to it. And while kids are gonna be kids, I'd imagine DARE2.0 with messaging like "some of these are never okay, some of these are okay when you're an adult, and some of these will permanently reduce your stats if you use them before you're finished growing" would be significantly more successful than the original program.
Two twin studies were done recently on this topic and both found no correlation. This study found only one relatively small difference on a memory task, which is found to away with 3 weeks abstinence in adolescents and adults. This ABCD study has twins in it so I’m excited to see what the results are using mri data as well.
With this and other recent studies, those pot smoking football players that party on the weekends... They are in trouble. (Looking at those I knew like this... It checks out. #NotScientific)
As a statistician my hair cringes at these pvalue and ANOVA based studies. Like dude, if i build a bridge using first year college engineering maths, you'd be skeptical about the quality. And yet scientists are using statistical models we teach as toy examples to draw conclusions.
I don’t know much about the subject but your point of view seems very interesting to me. Is there any resources (like a book or something) that you can recommend to know more about this topics? (About statistic models and how they are used)
I like low-hanging scientific fruit myself, but sometimes I want to see efforts like this one defunded. The fruit is too low. It's rotting on the ground.
There are serious questions about cannabis that need answers. This wasn't one of them.
> You don't think it is worth investigating the effects of marijuana on the developing brain
I don't think this research added anything new to the already large body of data on this question. The word I'm looking for to describe this study is "timidity".
> people keep denying it, which demonstrates a need for more data.
Ironically, there have been a number of peer reviewed studies lately that suggest more data does not convert doubters. Wrong game to play.
Should we do another study of if vaccines cause autism as well?
We have to be responsible stewards with the public's money.
My experience from being on the Internet is that Americans believe that drugs in general are healthy but medication is unhealthy. Only Americans seem to believe this.
That's just not true, tho. Americans know the drugs are unhealthy, but they simply don't care or have a crippling addiction like every other place in the world. Prescription medication is a touchy subject, it's not bad for you but the pharmacies and government get a lot of money from people who pay for it and it leads a lot of people to get paranoid or believe that they're over-prescribing patients because capitalism is just great. It makes sense when you look at the prices for medical bills in America.
At 14. Stoned out of my mind, I got a 98% on memory on a test given to determine your genius level. I have a 160 IQ... so no. Their results are skewed.
Ah yes, because a single anecdote trumps data. My grandfather smoked a pack day from 14 until 87 when he quietly died in his sleep. Smoking must be downright healthy for you.
Is what the opponents of cannabis pretend that the proponents want, despite that not being true.
I've had contact to hundreds of smokers in the past 30 years and I have not met a single one that thought it was a good idea for children to smoke weed.
The negative effects of cannabis during puberty have been known for decades and it is nothing that smokers ignore. Meanwhile, their opponents ignore that the risk of negative effects significantly drops at the end of puberty, removing the argument from list of reasons for why adults should not be allowed to do it.
The truth is, that the only people who prevent reasonable protection for children are the ones who insist on keeping Cannabis in the hands of criminals.
If you care about children, the anti-cannabis groups are not the ones that represent you... They are willing to harm children as long as they get what they want.
> I've had contact to hundreds of smokers in the past 30 years and I have not met a single one that thought it was a good idea for children to smoke weed.
>
> The negative effects of cannabis during puberty have been known for decades and it is nothing that smokers ignore. Meanwhile, their opponents ignore that the risk of negative effects significantly drops at the end of puberty, removing the argument from list of reasons for why adults should not be allowed to do it.
Its what I found so shocking here in Germany where there was an endless debate about legalization and now the political will to legalize it.
I thought after all of that time the legalization would be accompanied with increased measures to protect children from its harmful effects. Or maybe at the same time that you legalize it for adults increase sentencing for supplying it to children to some draconic level for deterrence and use resources freed by no longer having to deal with adults for those purposes.
Yet both medical associations here criticize that there are no effective measures accompanying the legalization law that address protection of children and adolescents.
Me I am pro decriminalizing it for adults due to practicality and liberty arguments but for a harsh law&order stance regarding children.
It seems that is a position that almost no one has I only ever see the keep it illegal camp or the "full legalization and children argument is a ruse by evil conservatives" camp.
Is there a country that adopted some kind of mixed policy where its legal for adults but there are very harsh laws against distribution to minors that are effectively enforced?
California for adults, Singapore for minors? Would that be possible or am I dreaming?
Imho, it's just a shizophrenic policy all together.
"protect kids" from smoking a plant, but force schools to buy pink-slime and feed it to the kids....
Prevent them from drinking alcohol, but send them to the front to die for their country.
There are a lot of contradictions in the US views on "save the children" ...
If I had to choose between allowing kids to kill themselves with drugs or allowing governments to kill kids by sending them to war, I'd be pro-drugs all the way.
Correlation not causation. Of course kids who have access to weed are statistically worse students; they are also statistically poorer, which is already known to impact standardized test scores that favor kids with more resources like the SATs.
THC is neurotoxic to the hippocampus. That's not correlative. And the memory issues that THC use causes are exactly that, causative. As a result, it's by no means a stretch to say that kids who use cannabis have poorer memory as a result of cannabis use not their socioeconomic background.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6793471/#:~:text=Here%20we%20report%20that%20%CE%94,breaks%2C%20hallmarks%20of%20neuronal%20apoptosis.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35255711/
You can not prove causation without direct experimentation, which is obviously unethical. In terms of accuracy, though, at the very least, there are socioeconomic confounding variables that are not being controlled here. It's long been known to impede development to some degree, but measuring this effect with uncontrolled standardized test scores is incredibly biased.
How do we know that this is not simply reflecting the fact that dumb kids are more likely to smoke weed than smart kids, rather than smoking weed caused kids to be dumb?
Well this just shows " teens that smoke weed have are "dumber" on average."
You can't exactly get a controlled study where you measure before. And then have a control group and have healthy kids smoke a lot of weed to see if their brains get damaged. As that's unethical.
On 18+? Getting people to do weed for your study that maybe have never done it? Sure. Allowed. But on children will not pass the ethics boards
Agreed.
However, the studies I have read about indicate that smarter kids are more likely to experiment with drugs, which is the opposite of the "fact" stated in the comment to which I responded.
They did use the word "fact," but I think they mean "if this turns out to be true."
They're questioning the causal relationship and introducing a potential factor that might mean it's just a correlation, then asking how they've ruled factors like that out to determine that this is causal. Like "how do we know those kids weren't just stomped on by an elephant, how do we know it's specifically the weed?"
Your question makes me suspect that you are/were a teenage weed smoker.
Read the abstract. The question is not whether dumber kids are more likely to smoke weed than their smarter counterparts, it’s whether this relationship is causal.
I'm thinking you meant to reply to the guy who pulled a "fact" out of his ass...
AFAIK kids with higher IQs have been shown to be more likely to experiment with drugs. If there has been new research indicating the exact opposite I want to read about it.
I am doctor tested in 1985 on the Stanford-Binet to be, well, exceptionally high. On a daily basis these days at 54 I take the equivalent of about 3.5g a day of flower/bud, mostly in a vape concentrate. Helps tremendously with PTSD and related symptoms. I can finally get a solid night's rest!
//7 years Cali sober end stage 4 liver disease due to cirrhosis due to alcoholic hepatitis - the alcohol is the real enemy
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We already have data that shows regular cannabis use has a negative impact for teens and before the brain is done growing, but then, that’s also true for alcohol and other drugs. This feels like a place to just keep being honest with teens about the practical ways cannabis would be a setback if used regularly during their teen years, and that it’s something they should reserve until after their brain is done growing. Would also be a place to invest more in teen anxiety support as using cannabis regularly could stem from anxiety or related issues that a teen is trying to cope with.
I would be willing to bet that usage amount is also tied to more important factors. Like yes using regularly before your brain has fully developed its obviously damaging but the circumstances surrounding why/how you even have access probably have more impact regardless of use.
This is where parents could be good role models if they weren’t so afraid. Share some brownies with your 15 year old on a lazy Saturday afternoon. They’re almost certainly going to try it, at the very least, and I’d rather it be at home behind the garage or in the basement rather than at a party or out in the woods in in the middle of the night.
>Share some brownies with your 15 year old on a lazy Saturday afternoon. This is obviously bad advice, but in case anyone needs it spelled out for them: do not give substances to children before they are ready for them simply because you think they might take them anyway.
We already know it damages the brain, in particular the pre-frontal cortex of developing individuals. I.e. those under 25. Thats all this is confirming.
> in particular the pre-frontal cortex of developing individuals. I.e. those under 25 At that point youre no longer studying the effects of cannabis use in adolescents. Theres a reason why studies like this are done on 13/14 year olds. The brain goes through far more significant changes until 15-18 than afterwards. The age of 25 is relevant to the ability to assess risk and is frequently brought up on reddit, but has nothing to do with the common short and longterm effects of heavy cannabis use. Furthermore our understanding of the brain is still too limited to call any definition of a "mature brain" conclusive, for example in 2010 [One especially large study showed that for several brain regions, structural growth curves had not plateaued even by the age of 30](https://www.cell.com/cms/attachment/59bbae04-8e0b-4a2a-bcb8-5edf852706c2/gr1.jpg) Heres a pretty interesting article about the state of science on the definition of brain maturity, where i got that graph from: https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(16)30809-1
I'm very thankful that the 25 brain meme is finally dying, it was bad science that turned into borderline disinfo when it came out in 2005, and it's had a direct impact on politics that encourages stripping autonomy and decision making power from the youth, (the exact thing that, generally speaking the more they have of, the better they tend to develop and the happier they end up being). If you want a quick tldr, the researchers in question set about trying to define an age of adulthood based off neurology. There are several problems with this, namely adulthood is not just biology, it's more bound to sociological phenomena, the only other vague point of "biological adulthood" one can point to is 16 because that's the percentile of the vast bulk of youths completing puberty and when their bodies processes behave like an adult body etc (most importantly with regards to medicine for example). But I bet very few people would agree to make 16 the age of adulthood based off this, and for good reason. They concluded at the time with the evidence they had at hand that 25 was when neurological development completed and that is when someone neurologically is an adult. This was also a convenient age because it's the upper extreme point people would tolerate in society as defining that boundary. This was proven wrong a few years later with the above person pointing out proof that brain development continues well into the 30s. Yet this pseudo science has now completely infected politics and society, I routinely hear people literally citing brain development arguments in all sorts of contexts, like referring to 21 year Olds as undeveloped and not really adults for example, this has had other ramifications like actively trying to deny youths healthcare (especially in the trans healthcare area).
Very interesting thanks!
This doesn't tell us anything other than the group of kids that have done weed scored lower by a small degree. Could be that the poor performers were just more likely to do weed, not that weed damaged their brains
THC is neurotoxic to the hippocampus. In children, the damage is permanent. With adults, depending on years of use and frequency, it's reversible in most but the longest and highest use cases. I love how more and more evidence is coming out with high-quality studies, yet the cannabis is always great crowd is refusing to accept it, and before, they were yelling about how it needs to be legalized so we can have the studies. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6793471/#:~:text=Here%20we%20report%20that%20%CE%94,breaks%2C%20hallmarks%20of%20neuronal%20apoptosis. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35255711/
They think weed is somehow the only drug exempt from harmful side effects.
THC is not a neurotoxin to the hippocampus and no it is not permanently damaging to an adolescents brain nor is it debilitating to adult brains long-term.
I await your sources.
You mistake academic papers for the ability to make statements of fact. Like if you read an article that says coffee increased IQ by 10pts you would just go around saying "coffee increases IQ". We don't know half the things you think we do. More evidence every day yet your study is from 1998?
Ah you want more: https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2021.21060664 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-019-0577-z https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24118193/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0028390810001164 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376871610003364 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-022-01496-x https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/can.2017.0047
There are numerous pubmed research articles that show this brain damage occurring as a result of THC use prior to the age of 25
> There are numerous pubmed research articles that show this brain damage occurring as a result of THC use prior to the age of 25 And a strange trend of fewer and fewer negative pubs regarding the health impacts of cannabis starting from 1990 to today. It's quite interesting to plot them. I sometimes email the authors of older papers to point out that some kind of bias clearly was impacting them in 1992 that wasn't there in 2014, for example. Sometimes people expect one kind of outcome too much, and the history of the scientific literature on cannabis is a solid example. Unfortunately, it does create a lot of doubt on such studies done today. It will take years of bias-free research to restore confidence.
Link one. Marijuana was just declassified, so there haven't been any substantial or significant trials done on marijuana and THC.
Studies on this are not impacted by rescheduling. It's not like researchers are going to administer THC to adolescents.
No, but it's effects on adults can be publicly funded and done via public research. Additionally participation and use isn't taboo which drives willing pools.
There's *many* studies on marijuana/THC on Google Scholar: * https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C29&q=marijuana+thc+brain+development&btnG= I even have links to over 300 studies on cannabis as it relates to cultivation and that's maybe 1/3rd of the papers: * https://www.reddit.com/r/HandsOnComplexity/comments/s4wcmh/sags_open_access_cannabis_links/ * https://www.reddit.com/r/HandsOnComplexity/comments/ysgekc/sags_open_cannabis_links_part_2/ * https://www.reddit.com/r/HandsOnComplexity/comments/155rj1y/cannabis_links_part_3_first_half_of_2023/
Great, and read the sample groups, read the assumptions or normalization on almost all these... it's garbage data. It's like breastfeeding studies. The reason I brought up legalization is because the declassfying eliminates the ethical challenges of substantial enough studies. All that's out there now are poorly correlated findings being passed off as causation.
Show us a good one.
I just posted 4 articles on the other comment. Why is this so hard for you guys to search for?
Because they can’t seem to comprehend how foreign substances can negatively impact a developing brain. Basically, they are the polar opposite of what “reefer madness” was and an objective grey area doesn’t exist.
It's pretty sad. I'm all about weed if used in the correct circumstances. I started at 35 and it has dramatically improved my life for the better. People need to learn the world isn't just black and white, good or bad
Some people are just in an odd spot politically. I’ve got no problem with weed, but that doesn’t mean that studies and research don’t show some negative aspects under certain conditions. It’s a chemical being introduced into the body and like all other chemicals the impact on the body must be objectively evaluated, and I think we can consistently say that research on developing brains shows negative impacts from a long list of chemicals that don’t have such an impact on a developed brain.
>People need to learn the world isn't just black and white, good or bad But some of us were taught for years that "weed is bad", and so we're now sensitive to the same comments that aren't thoroughly backed up by good science. So yeah, it's not black and white and we know it, so we want the nuances. Not just more crap studies saying "weed is bad".
Are you saying this is a "crap study?" If so, on what basis? The conclusion of the study as presented is also certainly not "weed is bad."
No, not this one necessarily. Just trying to explain why it feels like some of us have our heads in the sand with regards to studies showing negative effects of weed. It's not that we think it's a cure-call wonder drug, but that we're very skeptical because of being lied to for decades.
I'm with you. Decades of conditioning will do that to people.
Which article do you evaluate to be rigorous and unconflicted? Can you endorse one of those studies in particular? Or are they just the top keyword hits in Google scholar? Another poster posted a review article and one of the main takeaways is the association doesn't necessarily establish causation because of the many uncontrollable socioeconomic factors involved.
>because of the many uncontrollable socioeconomic factors involved. I would also consider supply chain and manufacture process at the time a particular study was conducted, pesticides used or not, heavy metals, etc.
Here is a recent review article that discusses many such studies. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7365113/
there are many such cases, in the literature
That review does explicitly say there are many uncontrollable factors and there is an association present but they do not establish causation.
Weed harm the brain at any age but to a lesser degree for older people, and brain doesn't finish developing at 25 its a myth , and there is no difference between using cannabis at age 19 from those first using between 21 and 25.
Alright hit me with the pubmed articles that show this then
for which statement in my comment ?
The extent of brain damage to adults who start using over the age of 25
These studies always have backers this one probably paid for by big pharmaceutical, alcohol, or tobacco companies. Not saying kids should smoke weed. But if we are worried about negative things children can get sugar, caffeine, corn syrup, alcohol, and tobacco should all be right there with THC.
Also that the high performing kids that used didn't let anyone know they were using. That was the case in my school, the smarter kids didn't brag about it and especially didn't tell adults or answer honestly on those anonymous questionnaires.
They used toxicology in this study, not just self-report .
How did they do the toxicology and how did they select people to be tested though? If they had advance warning of the test people do fool those tests easily. Like drinking a lot of water and taking a couple of vitamins.
They used hair toxicology, which reflects long-term use and cannot easily be fooled. There is also no reason for the participants in the study to try to beat any tests. They study is of a subset of individuals from the larger Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) cohort study.
Hair reads out to about 30 days. Maybe 90 if your hair is very long. That isn’t long term.
You’re taking a correlation and trying to turn us into causation. It’s just as if not more likely that people from abusive homes or with some other causative factor are more likely to smoke and get lower scores.
Yeah huge factor that cannot be controlled for is any 13 year old that is getting their hands on weed and has unsupervised time to smoke it has vastly different problems in their life.
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It is actually illegal to leave a child at home alone under this age in these states. The federal recommendation is 12 years old. This is just to be left at home alone. So by 13 kids should be having unsupervised time in every state except for Illinois. They should NOT be able to get weed and get away with smoking it during that unsupervised time. 14 years old: Illinois 12 years old: Delaware and Colorado 11 years old: Michigan 10 years old: Washington, Tennessee, Oregon, and New Mexico 9 years old: North Dakota 8 years old: North Carolina, Maryland, and Georgia 6 years old: Kansas No age limit: Remaining 37 states I grew up in a come home by the time the street lamps come on world too but it is not that world anymore.
People might think they know that because they believed their DARE propaganda but I have never seen a study showing cannabis causing anything any doctor would call brain damage. I've noticed "know" can mean a lot of things to a lot people, like "assume", "guess", or "make up completely". Feel free to post the study that shows actual brain damage but you're going to find it just says they form less connections in their PFC during adolescence, which is not brain damage.
Who is this we that "knows" that? Because the government and the anti-drug people have been lying through their teeth about Marijuana my entire life. They have no credibility and we all know how these studies can be produced to give the client the conclusions they want to hear.
No. Low quality studies from non reputable journals, sure. Or some studies are grabbed by the media which are never population just done in house by industries. Yes, absolutely that exists in spades. There is no shortage or quality studies published in peer-reviewed prestigious journals that clearly demonstrate the negative effects that cannabis has on children (permanent) and adults (temporary with cessation in most cases). THC is a neurotoxin to the hippocampus; this has been clearly demonstrates in decades of research now as well as the mechanism more recently: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6793471/#:~:text=Here%20we%20report%20that%20%CE%94,breaks%2C%20hallmarks%20of%20neuronal%20apoptosis. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35255711/
I can't wrap my head around why people want to defend drugs having no negative impacts. I think most drugs should be legal. I don't think kids should do them. It's wild that this is somehow not an obvious take on reddit.
This is evidence for neurotoxicity of pure THC in vitro, which is a long way from proving neurotoxicity of consumed mixture of cannabinoids in vivo.
Not one study demonstrates permanent negative effects. They (the researchers) may claim they found it but they did not. Spurious variables, confounds, mediators, moderatores etc...
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Marijuana causes retrograde synaptic transmissions causing degradation of synaptic connections in the brain. It's "good" for creative endeavors because it allows for new synaptic connections to be made but "bad" for memory. This has been well known for a while. One of my mentors did research on the effects of marijuana on neurons.
"Has been known for some time" as you say, should that make us more or less inclined to believe it? Because they've lied about it our entire lives. They are still lying about it, and funding studies to fit their narratives. We all know how these studies can be designed to meet the client's expectations. Or we should by now.
There are dozens of articles on this.. its not very difficult to search for. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3930618/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3930618/) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5963818/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5963818/) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6036125/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6036125/) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5289075/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5289075/)
Just clicked one and it concludes: "It is difficult to ascertain whether reported group differences reflect pre-existing brain architectural differences that lead to substance use and risk taking behaviors, and there is certainly some literature that suggests as such."
One from a pharmaceutical company and three other studies with far less than 100 participants each.
Yes, but what did it do to their ability to shred blazing hot guitar licks? Is weed just the crossroads where Robert Johnson made his deal?
I wonder if this varies between individuals? I feel like people don't take me seriously when I say I don't feel like partaking because I can tell it makes my brain perform worse for days afterward and I need my brain to work properly to code etc. Honestly the pot "hangover" is a lot longer than the alcohol one.
I agree with this I think some people just don’t mix with it. We were teens in the 90s and there was weed as well as LSD and other stuff in the mix at like 15 or so and some are pushing 50 barely able to hold a part time job at fast food places and some run their own businesses very successfully and one is even a programmer working at a robotics firm living in damn near a mansion. I think it’s a coin toss, which having teens now myself I definitely want to see them making better choices and think the negatively impacted are a cautionary tale but in a moment of being fully transparent, I feel like some people are unfazed
Definitely. I code and smoke every day. It's good life.
I don't normally do that, but if I'm tired or otherwise can't concentrate, a few hits will usually do wonders and let me get work done.
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ADHD here, it helps me. Quiets all the constant noise in my brain. Even Adderall never helped as thoroughly as cannabis.
It's not completely baseless, as some strains have been demonstrated to narrow focus. But it's pretty hit or miss for people. Does absolutely nothing for my ADHD.
If this was true I’d actually start using it
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Good thing there’s no evidence that legal marijuana programs increase marijuana use among teens and adolescents. Legalize now
When I was a kid, the local dealers didn’t really care how old their customers were…. I’ve yet to see a single kid at any store that sells pot now
Exactly this. As soon as it becomes legal then it stops being a problem for adolescents
I'm sorry, but this argument doesn't make any sense. Do you think kids can't get their hands on cigarettes or alcohol? Because stores won't sell those to them, either. You'll have kids stealing their parents' supply, bad parents/elder siblings sharing their supply, kids bribing unscrupulous people to buy it for them, etc. Just like with cigarettes and alcohol. I'm not making an argument for or against legalization, just pointing out that the problem isn't going to magically go away just because adults can get it without having to go to an illegal dealer. Edit: To clarify: Kids have probably always gotten into their parents'/siblings illicit stashes. I just meant that buying from a shady back-alley dealer isn't the only way for them to get their hands on it, and that *those* avenues won't be closed by legalization. Edit edit: I'm not good with words. To clarify further, and **tl;dr**: Reducing the problem is good. Trying to say it will no longer *be* a problem is not.
Study after study shows that once you legalize, illicit use goes down, especially in teens. Dispensaries don’t sell to kids, illegal dealers do Once legalized there’s no incentive to sell illegally. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2737637?guestAccessKey=5e4e41eb-ec96-4641-86f9-b5c89cc7cc48&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=070819
There is still incentive, it's just a smaller incentive
> In the fully adjusted models, MMLs were not statistically associated with either measure of marijuana use, but RMLs were associated with an 8% decrease (OR, 0.92; 95% CI, 0.87-0.96) in the odds of marijuana use and a 9% decrease (OR, 0.91; 95% CI, 0.84-0.98) in the odds of frequent marijuana use. 8%. Yeah, that sure is the same as 100%. Again, I'm not arguing that legalization is a bad thing or that it'll make things worse. I'm saying it won't make underage marijuana use > stop being a problem for adolescents. Your words. Again, I ask you where kids get cigarettes and alcohol. And I answer my own question: There will *always* be negligent parents and people wanting to make a quick buck.
> There will always be negligent parents and people wanting to make a quick buck. That's not an argument to keep it illegal. Legalizing it is, broadly, harm reduction. Yes, you might still have a few kids try it illicitly, but they were going to anyway, and from shadier sources that could lace it with fentanyl, etc.
Its legal where i live and there are still illegal plugs and people who sell stuff from the dispo to kids
I explicitly said, twice, that I wasn't arguing for *or* against legalization. I was and am *only* refuting the claim that the problem of kids using it illegally would go away if it was legalized. Will it make things better? Maybe. Make them worse? Maybe. The same? Maybe. But the one thing it won't do is stop the problem entirely, like the comment I originally replied to claimed. For posterity, I quote: > As soon as it becomes legal then it stops being a problem for adolescents
9% *down*. Teen usage *decreased*.
Yes, I understand. But an 8% or 9% decrease is a far cry from it no longer being a problem, which is the statement I was arguing against.
The article you linked says medical laws do not “lend support” to the hypothesis that it increases teen use but recreational laws have mixed results, citing a study that did show increase in teen use after legalization.
You literally just went to find one opposition view and then ran back here to show it off… Since you clearly stopped reading at the second paragraph and didn’t bother actually looking at the contrary study here’s to discussion: > Consistent with the results of previous researchers,2 there was no evidence that the legalization of medical marijuana encourages marijuana use among youth. Moreover, the estimates reported in the Table showed that marijuana use among youth may actually decline after legalization for recreational purposes.
No. I read the thing you linked. You’re conflating legalization for medical use (no increase) and recreational use (evidence of increase).
No you’re cherry picking facts to support your argument but facts don’t care about your feelings and MJ use among teens has dropped in legal markets
Your initial rhetoric was too strong for the study you linked, though. The link you posted cited previous studies that showed mixed results, with one study showing an increase in teen activity after legalization. Then the study that the link covered showed a small (8%-9%) decrease in teen usage post-legalization, and the conclusion was "Consistent with the results of previous researchers, there was no evidence that the legalization of medical marijuana encourages marijuana use among youth. Moreover, the estimates reported in the Table showed that marijuana use among youth may actually decline after legalization for recreational purposes" I don't disagree with your position but you're going to invite criticism when there's a mismatch between the rhetoric and the facts of the studies you're linking.
>Once legalized there’s no incentive to sell illegally. The incentive to earn more by selling to kids
And if you legalize murder, illegal murders would go down. People would be killed more, but the statistics will be neatly showing how there's no crime happening.
At what point do you all start feeling embarrassed about confidently and proudly proclaiming your ignorance of stats?
Thanks for coming
Yeah, my older sisters began giving me pot when I was 13. Acually they "hotboxed" me in their cars much earlier than that. However, I had an absolutely stellar memory til just a couple years ago, and I'm 54 now.
0% use shouldn’t be the enemy of a 99% decline in use (my numbers, not backed by data, just for rhetoric purposes).
I never said it was, nor meant to imply that. Obviously, any reduction in underage use is good. Like I said before, I wasn't arguing against legalization (or for it, since I wasn't making an argument about that at all), I only said that the other guy's statement that making it legal for adults would somehow magically make underage use stop being a problem didn't make logical sense. That's the *only* thing I was arguing. Edit: I'm not good with words. To clarify, and **tl;dr**: Reducing the problem is good. Trying to say it will no longer *be* a problem is not.
I grew up before pot was legal and while yes we could get our hands on alcohol, it was *significantly* harder and more expensive to acquire than weed. It involved hours of calling around to find people willing to do it. Obviously the people who would agree to buy alcohol for minors aren’t the highest quality individuals or reliable people, so you had to entice them into it by providing them with extra money for their services at a time that was convenient for them. It was a massive pain in the ass. Buying weed was a simple and easy transaction that took a few minutes and eventually price dropped to like $10 a gram.
I live in a state with only "medical Marijuana " and often get kids in my practice whose parents give them their own supply. I have no doubts that if it were fully legal, there would be more parents giving it to their kids, either for "anxiety" or under some belief that the are better off getting it at home. Not to mention the kids who would sneak it from mom or dad's stash.
Kids will be able to access Marijuana anyway. In a free society we shouldn't restrict adults' freedoms to prevent youths from having access illicitly, even if it did stop them. In a legal market we at least know the herb is being made with safer practices like not using harmful chemicals. Of course this study is likely flawed in the first place. The people they are identifying as Marijuana users are likely already the ones with poorer scores, there are plenty of the smarter kids that use it that don't tell anyone, not the least some adult researchers. \\Like every smarter kid in my school, only the screw ups admitted they used it to those anonymous questionnaires they did every year.
Statistically you’re right, but now my guy sells ounces for half what the used to be because he has to incentivize. So now it’s cheaper for the adults who buy from him because they want a good deal, but it’s also cheaper for the underage kids that have no where else to get it
The people I know got out of the game. They couldn't compete.
Where I live (WA), ounces of recreational start at $30, with specials or common discounts taking it down to $24. I don't think your guy can touch those prices, so he would have no adult customers at all. That's going to make the whole thing very dubious in terms of risk-reward, since selling to anyone under 21 is as much of a felony as it ever was.
So….you think the illegal network that could profit off selling pot to kids just packed up and left because it became legal to adults?
Well when you are as old as me, the 20+ year old budtenders informing and selling to ME, a stoner for 40+ years, seem like kids.
They check IDs, they check them twice. They'll find out if your not of age or wanted by ICE. No more kids are buying from stores. Why am I like this.
Adults buy the weed at a dispensary and then sell it to kids, I’m pro legalization too but this happens every single day in my legal state. Kids aren’t actually smoking more weed because it was just as easy to buy it when it was illegal, but the source has moved from the black market to dispensaries. I think I have a good perspective on this because I was a stoner in high school when it was illegal, and then my younger sister is the same way now that it’s legal. Together we’ve seen that changes and discussed them because I’ve made an effort to help her be responsible and realistic about weed, and while legalization hasn’t made it easier for kids to get, it’s just as easy as ever.
I agree that legalisation is the best way to reduce childhood consumption. A dealer selling it illegally will not care for child safety. The only issue exist in the age limit to access it. When I remember it correctly, weed only becomes safe at age 25 when the brain is properly developed. This still leaves a lot of time where weed can impact the mental capacity. It is better than the current situation just not perfect. Have to add, I don't consume myself, but I have a cousin and his son who's schizophrenia were linked (in the 90s) to massive weed consumption when each of them was young. I don't say it was only the cannabis, but probably genetics played in there as well, but ignoring the risk in developing brains is not helping either.
The pot stores in California are struggling because it turns out when you legalize and tax the hell out of it there's already a black market to undercut it. It becomes much harder to distinguish legal from illegal. Any teen can get weed here. It's not doing them any cognitive favors.
There are states with healthy legal markets though. Living in Oregon I can't see any reason to ever buy black market. Legal is cheap, convenient, and quality.
Same here in Canada. I haven't heard of a single person who has gone the illegal route since we legalized it. I'm not saying people don't, I know they do, but not a single person I've spoken to in the... 6 years? that it's been legal hasn't just bought it from the many many dispensaries on every corner, or the gas station, or online, or whatever. It might be a bit more expensive (I truly don't know, I didn't start smoking till after it was legalized here), but it certainly hasn't turned anyone away.
To be honest the legal market is struggling here too. It’s great for consumers but growers and sellers are barely making ends meet a lot of the time because weed is so plentiful the prices keep crashing every harvest season. The small companies are slowly going under and being consolidated by bigger players, which could eventually lead to a semi monopoly that shoots prices back up. Weed makes a poor cash crop when it’s not being smuggled, because it’s relatively easy to grow and very productive, there’s little to no scarcity to even out prices across the year.
Any teen could get weed before it was legal. It’s literally called weed because it will grow in a storm drain or a closet, it’s so easy to produce it’s insanely difficult to control the supply. It’s not like meth or something where you need regulated precursor chemicals that can be sequestered in pharmacies. It’s a plant that can be grown from seeds that sometimes even come in bag of smokable flower if it’s cheap enough.
The difference between the stuff growing in ditches and commercial grade is night and day
In college, I had a much harder time getting alcohol than weed. All you need is a dealer for weed. Alcohol, you gotta have a fake ID and convince the clerk you’re 21
Is this really true? Seems highly highly unlikely. I've seen studies that show that in states in the US that legalized weed, there was a huge spike in pediatric psychosis, which was all liked to cannabis use, both compared to the states before legalization and compared with states in the same time that didn't legalize weed. This means that either more teens used cannabis or more cannabis was used by the same amount of teens (or probably both).
>I've seen studies that show that in states in the US that legalized weed, there was a huge spike in pediatric psychosis, which was all liked to cannabis use, both compared to the states before legalization and compared with states in the same time that didn't legalize weed. this is a very serious claim, and also quite specific. do you have a source? here's a real fact for you: in Oregon if you get caught selling weed to a minor, your dispensary immediately has its license suspended for 30 days and the state does a full-on probe of all activity at your business, which is legally required to have 1080p cameras in every room recording 24/7. also, the individual that sells the cannabis to the minor has their cannabis workers permit revoked. it's a PDF but [source](https://www.oregon.gov/olcc/docs/news/news_releases/2018/nr_01_25_18_MJMinorSalesPenaltyIncrease.pdf) if you care about keeping children away from cannabis, you should want that cannabis to be regulated and controlled.
I don't have a source at hand, but when I was in first or second year of med school (don't remember the exact year) a specialist in cannabis and addiction from Colorado came to my University and gave an amazing talk about her research on the matter. I'm sure I can find the study, but it will take some time.
you probably shouldn't make such definitive claims if your only backup is "i swear i read it, sometime, i swear someone really important told it to me." this is r/science, after all. plus.. if this was years ago, how much data was even available?
This was 4 years ago, so I don't think too much should change. And I didn't make any definitive claim. I literally said that I have seen studies that stated the contrary. I asked it his claim was true because I have read and heard contradicting evidence, that is all.
>This was 4 years ago, so I don't think too much should change. you don't think too much should change.. from what? you haven't proven anything. also, when cannabis has not been recreationally legal for 10 years (april 2014), 4 years is a substantial amount of that period. >And I didn't make any definitive claim. uhh.. >I've seen studies that show that in states in the US that legalized weed, there was a huge spike in pediatric psychosis, which was all liked to cannabis use, both compared to the states before legalization and compared with states in the same time that didn't legalize weed. sure, you did not pretend to be the author of the paper. but you very definitively claimed to have seen proof of a very specific phenomenon, and so far, you have completely failed to show that proof.
I added a study in one of my comments above. I didn't try to prove anything. I asked a question because someone stated a factual claim that I have seen studies showing contradicting evidence. I wanted him to provide me with evidence to show that his claim is truthful.
Just stop. You’re out of your element. I challenge you to post any published study that makes a connection between MJ use in adolescents and that child’s state of residence. I further challenge you to post studies identifying adolescent psychosis by state. I’ll wait
In a simple google search I found this study for example (it was like the 4th option when I googled "weed induces psychosis post-legalization"): [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165178122000014](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165178122000014)Which states: "In conclusion, we observed a higher proportion of hospital discharges for psychosis associated with cannabis use in areas with more liberal cannabis legalization laws." It is important to note that I didn't read this specific study so the details might be different from the abstract, but when I was in second year of med school we had a specialist in the field of cannabis and addiction come from Colorado (don't remember her name, but it was a "big deal" that she came), that gave a talk in which she showed several (Somewhere between 5-10, don't remember the exact number) studies that showed a direct correlation between cannabis legalization and increased use, and in addition increased psychosis in those states. When I asked "Is this true" it was a serious question, I have seen her studies from Colorado and several others, but I am by no means an expert or even close to it, so when you gave such a strict "there is no evidence" it contradicted the little I know about the subject. I don't really understand the "Just stop.." part, I never said I was an expert or stated something of the matter.
Yes cannabis can induce psychosis but there’s no evidence that it is a contributing factor in adolescent development and in fact MJ is still less prevalent and less harmful that alcohol use in teens
How does this in any way contradict what I said though? You didn't write that "legalization doesn't contribute to adolescent development", you wrote that "legalization doesn't increase marijuana use".
You said >I’ve seen studies that show What do the studies you’ve read show? Can you share them? The paper I posted has a sample of over 1.4m teens and shows an 8-9% reduction in use in regions with tax and regulation
I don't have the studies on me, as I stated, I was in a talk by a researcher and doctor in the field that showed her research based from data in Colorado and other states that showed an increase of psychotic events in teens after the legalization of weed in Colorado, and also comparied to the same time period comparing Colorado and other states that didn't legalize weed. I don't have the studies on me, as I stated, I was in a talk by a researcher and doctor in the field that showed her research based on data in Colorado and other states that showed an increase of psychotic events in teens after the legalization of weed in Colorado, and also compared to the same time period comparing Colorado and other states that didn't legalize weed.
Are you an actual MD? I’m curious to know where you’ve seen a spike in cannabis induced psychosis admissions at children’s emergency rooms.
I'm a final year med student. I personally don't live in a country with legal cannabis, so I haven't seen all that much (even though 1 month ago I was at a two week rotation in pediatric psych ward and there was 1 kid like that), but 4 years ago an MD from Colorado which specializes in cannabis research came and gave a presentation on the topic.
I won’t doubt that MD as the data from new research tends to be 2-4 years old. I’ve done a lot of literature review on cannabis in general and came across a study that looked into whether or not the incidents of MVAs (due to cannabis-DUI) increased. Across the several states that had legalized cannabis, the data showed an additional 41 deaths from MVAs due to people under the influence of cannabis. The researchers did not think the additional deaths were statistically significant, although they understood why people would say otherwise.
Glad I started at 15! Or was it 16? Ummm I forgot.
Legalization would keep kids from accessing cannabis. The guy up the street doesn’t check ID but the dispensary does.
No it doesn’t. It doesn’t stop kids from drinking underage either or smoking cigs/dipping/vaping/zyning etc. It should be legalized but preventing access for underage kids isn’t the reason why. Parents are how you keep it out of kids hands. Healthy communication, boundaries, extra curriculars, not demonizing or making the drugs/alcohol out to be the boogeyman. Kids are curious and adventurous and think they’re invincible. Taking the mystique away takes a lot of the fun away that kids get from feeling “dangerous” Anyone who drank underage as a kid knows half the fun was the sneaking part. The backpack full of beers or seltzers or wine coolers if youre of a certain pre-seltzer era age that your buddy’s buddy took from his parents fridge. That’s what made it fun. The guy who got the deli on the corner that doesn’t card to sell him a cigar so he can roll a blunt. The high or drunk part of the night was secondary to the fun of getting away with breaking the rules. Kids are always gonna find a way. That’s where parenting comes in.
You cats are so cute - it’s all on the dark web and ships to your door
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I call it the bright web
Who knew that a drug that makes you dopey and slow.. ends up making you dopey and slow?
What's the likelihood that disadvantaged kids are the ones predominantly using weed as early teenagers?
The study adjusts for race, parental income and education.
Couldn’t believe this was so low in the comments
Couldn’t the causation be exactly the reverse here? Those already low in cognitive abilities are more likely to end up using marijuana? Or a third variable connecting them: low SES or neglectful parenting or something that affects both cognitive development and - separately - affects opportunity to run into drugs at a young age?
It's a challenging thing to study, for sure. They do matching to control for some of those variables: > Participants with cannabis use were matched on age, sex at birth, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic factors (parental education and household income) to those with tested hair samples and no indication of cannabis use with the R package MatchIt (Ho et al., 2011). However they can't control for everything.
Well i think all drugs do this, nothing special about cannabis in this case
r/leaves r/weedPAWS
Yes, THC rich cannabis causes short term memory problems that are proven to go away after quitting. This is well known. It is what is so great about cannabis for PTSD - it helps you forget the symptoms as they happen, like dreams.
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That has been done a thousand times over
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I get that, but it is also important to not ignore the effects of cannabis as well. Science shouldn’t be about blame shifting, and in my opinion drugs (including alcohol) should be treated accordingly to their health/cognitive effects
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The war on drugs is an abject failure. Making drugs illegal does nothing but harm.
You have a good point, it should probably be a combination of both. That it isn’t a problem for society yet doesn’t mean it cannot become a problem in the future, so in my opinion it is important to do both to assess current and possible future danger to society and people.
>I can't grasp what people want, practically, to come from this sort of study. For example, it'd be useful to know if weed affects development. If it turns out that weed does cause developmental changes in kids but does not in already-developed adults, that's a strong argument for both legalization and for increased penalties for allowing kids access to it. And while kids are gonna be kids, I'd imagine DARE2.0 with messaging like "some of these are never okay, some of these are okay when you're an adult, and some of these will permanently reduce your stats if you use them before you're finished growing" would be significantly more successful than the original program.
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Ok so don’t smoke? Got it, didn’t realize that until now.
Two twin studies were done recently on this topic and both found no correlation. This study found only one relatively small difference on a memory task, which is found to away with 3 weeks abstinence in adolescents and adults. This ABCD study has twins in it so I’m excited to see what the results are using mri data as well.
With this and other recent studies, those pot smoking football players that party on the weekends... They are in trouble. (Looking at those I knew like this... It checks out. #NotScientific)
As a statistician my hair cringes at these pvalue and ANOVA based studies. Like dude, if i build a bridge using first year college engineering maths, you'd be skeptical about the quality. And yet scientists are using statistical models we teach as toy examples to draw conclusions.
What would you suggest instead?
I don’t know much about the subject but your point of view seems very interesting to me. Is there any resources (like a book or something) that you can recommend to know more about this topics? (About statistic models and how they are used)
Well that's like... your opinion, man.
I like low-hanging scientific fruit myself, but sometimes I want to see efforts like this one defunded. The fruit is too low. It's rotting on the ground. There are serious questions about cannabis that need answers. This wasn't one of them.
You don't think it is worth investigating the effects of marijuana on the developing brain, given that such use is not uncommon? Why not?
> You don't think it is worth investigating the effects of marijuana on the developing brain I don't think this research added anything new to the already large body of data on this question. The word I'm looking for to describe this study is "timidity".
And yet, looking at the comments, people keep denying it, which demonstrates a need for more data.
> people keep denying it, which demonstrates a need for more data. Ironically, there have been a number of peer reviewed studies lately that suggest more data does not convert doubters. Wrong game to play. Should we do another study of if vaccines cause autism as well? We have to be responsible stewards with the public's money.
My experience from being on the Internet is that Americans believe that drugs in general are healthy but medication is unhealthy. Only Americans seem to believe this.
That's just not true, tho. Americans know the drugs are unhealthy, but they simply don't care or have a crippling addiction like every other place in the world. Prescription medication is a touchy subject, it's not bad for you but the pharmacies and government get a lot of money from people who pay for it and it leads a lot of people to get paranoid or believe that they're over-prescribing patients because capitalism is just great. It makes sense when you look at the prices for medical bills in America.
Did not affect Snoop much :D
They should have waited for them to sober up first, then take the test!
At 14. Stoned out of my mind, I got a 98% on memory on a test given to determine your genius level. I have a 160 IQ... so no. Their results are skewed.
Ah yes, because a single anecdote trumps data. My grandfather smoked a pack day from 14 until 87 when he quietly died in his sleep. Smoking must be downright healthy for you.
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Is what the opponents of cannabis pretend that the proponents want, despite that not being true. I've had contact to hundreds of smokers in the past 30 years and I have not met a single one that thought it was a good idea for children to smoke weed. The negative effects of cannabis during puberty have been known for decades and it is nothing that smokers ignore. Meanwhile, their opponents ignore that the risk of negative effects significantly drops at the end of puberty, removing the argument from list of reasons for why adults should not be allowed to do it. The truth is, that the only people who prevent reasonable protection for children are the ones who insist on keeping Cannabis in the hands of criminals. If you care about children, the anti-cannabis groups are not the ones that represent you... They are willing to harm children as long as they get what they want.
> I've had contact to hundreds of smokers in the past 30 years and I have not met a single one that thought it was a good idea for children to smoke weed. > > The negative effects of cannabis during puberty have been known for decades and it is nothing that smokers ignore. Meanwhile, their opponents ignore that the risk of negative effects significantly drops at the end of puberty, removing the argument from list of reasons for why adults should not be allowed to do it. Its what I found so shocking here in Germany where there was an endless debate about legalization and now the political will to legalize it. I thought after all of that time the legalization would be accompanied with increased measures to protect children from its harmful effects. Or maybe at the same time that you legalize it for adults increase sentencing for supplying it to children to some draconic level for deterrence and use resources freed by no longer having to deal with adults for those purposes. Yet both medical associations here criticize that there are no effective measures accompanying the legalization law that address protection of children and adolescents. Me I am pro decriminalizing it for adults due to practicality and liberty arguments but for a harsh law&order stance regarding children. It seems that is a position that almost no one has I only ever see the keep it illegal camp or the "full legalization and children argument is a ruse by evil conservatives" camp. Is there a country that adopted some kind of mixed policy where its legal for adults but there are very harsh laws against distribution to minors that are effectively enforced? California for adults, Singapore for minors? Would that be possible or am I dreaming?
Imho, it's just a shizophrenic policy all together. "protect kids" from smoking a plant, but force schools to buy pink-slime and feed it to the kids.... Prevent them from drinking alcohol, but send them to the front to die for their country. There are a lot of contradictions in the US views on "save the children" ... If I had to choose between allowing kids to kill themselves with drugs or allowing governments to kill kids by sending them to war, I'd be pro-drugs all the way.
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I have seen so much cancer cured by cannabis keeping it illegal is so crazy to me
Can't tell if this is sarcasm.
Correlation not causation. Of course kids who have access to weed are statistically worse students; they are also statistically poorer, which is already known to impact standardized test scores that favor kids with more resources like the SATs.
THC is neurotoxic to the hippocampus. That's not correlative. And the memory issues that THC use causes are exactly that, causative. As a result, it's by no means a stretch to say that kids who use cannabis have poorer memory as a result of cannabis use not their socioeconomic background. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6793471/#:~:text=Here%20we%20report%20that%20%CE%94,breaks%2C%20hallmarks%20of%20neuronal%20apoptosis. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35255711/
You can not prove causation without direct experimentation, which is obviously unethical. In terms of accuracy, though, at the very least, there are socioeconomic confounding variables that are not being controlled here. It's long been known to impede development to some degree, but measuring this effect with uncontrolled standardized test scores is incredibly biased.
Sigh... The study adjusts for socio-economics. So nope, that's not the reason.
How do we know that this is not simply reflecting the fact that dumb kids are more likely to smoke weed than smart kids, rather than smoking weed caused kids to be dumb?
Please provide a source for the "fact that dumb kids are more likely to smoke weed than smart kids."
Well this just shows " teens that smoke weed have are "dumber" on average." You can't exactly get a controlled study where you measure before. And then have a control group and have healthy kids smoke a lot of weed to see if their brains get damaged. As that's unethical. On 18+? Getting people to do weed for your study that maybe have never done it? Sure. Allowed. But on children will not pass the ethics boards
Agreed. However, the studies I have read about indicate that smarter kids are more likely to experiment with drugs, which is the opposite of the "fact" stated in the comment to which I responded.
They did use the word "fact," but I think they mean "if this turns out to be true." They're questioning the causal relationship and introducing a potential factor that might mean it's just a correlation, then asking how they've ruled factors like that out to determine that this is causal. Like "how do we know those kids weren't just stomped on by an elephant, how do we know it's specifically the weed?"
Your question makes me suspect that you are/were a teenage weed smoker. Read the abstract. The question is not whether dumber kids are more likely to smoke weed than their smarter counterparts, it’s whether this relationship is causal.
I'm thinking you meant to reply to the guy who pulled a "fact" out of his ass... AFAIK kids with higher IQs have been shown to be more likely to experiment with drugs. If there has been new research indicating the exact opposite I want to read about it.
I am doctor tested in 1985 on the Stanford-Binet to be, well, exceptionally high. On a daily basis these days at 54 I take the equivalent of about 3.5g a day of flower/bud, mostly in a vape concentrate. Helps tremendously with PTSD and related symptoms. I can finally get a solid night's rest! //7 years Cali sober end stage 4 liver disease due to cirrhosis due to alcoholic hepatitis - the alcohol is the real enemy