Young puff on pot at their peril

[Radic]

greetnz

no

theres no chance

check this from 2008 this study proves cannabis does not cause mental illness

http://www.hempembassy.net/forums/Medical-Cannabis/2008-European-study-clears-cannabis-of-schizophrenia-rap/8,1699,0,0,0,0,0

Study clears cannabis of schizophrenia rap

 

 

No greater risk than general non-tokers

 

 

 

By Tim Worstall •

 

 

 

Posted in Policing, 6th November 2008 13:19 GMT

 

 

 

Regular readers will recall the confused mess that is this government’s cannabis policy. There has been a drop in cannabis consumption since it was downgraded from Class B to C, but nevertheless they want to put it back up to Class B again. Yes, we know all about the argument that what you ingest is entirely your business, it being your body and all that but morals are always trumped by politics.

 

 

 

In the comments section to our last piece the general consensus was that the policy was driven either by a craven servility to the Murdoch press or, as a daring alternative, a bending to Daily Mail woo woo. The general consensus however was that it was Puritanism, that awful fear that someone, somewhere, might be enjoying themselves and that this situation cannot be allowed to continue. We’re arguing over whose Puritanism, not whether.

 

 

 

There was one vaguely respectable argument that could be put forward on the prohibitionist’s side, that of cannabis induced schizophrenia. This has been increasing even as the general incidence of schizophrenia has been stable (or even falling, depending upon who you ask). That the rise was on the order of 500 people a year means it’s not a very important point, not when compared to 3 million regular tokers, but there are still those who will buy the argument that people should be stopped from harming themselves, even if the risks are very low.

 

 

 

There is certainly a correlation, but we should still want to know about causation before we take any further action. For it is possible, and it is a view advanced by some (like myself last time), that those who are about to become schizophrenic dose themselves on cannabis as they are known to on alcohol and any other substance that comes to hand to still the voices. Or perhaps there’s a milder version, that cannabis induced psychosis isn’t in fact cannabis induced at all, but is simply coincidental: that it’s an early marker of schizophrenia rather than something brought on by cannabis itself.

 

 

 

When we try to test this we also want to be very careful indeed about our sample groups. We really don’t want to be making the mistake that the World Health Organisation has been making with HIV testing in sub-Saharan Africa. Testing pregnant women to give you the incidence of a sexually transmitted disease in the general population really ain't all that clever: you’re testing the one group of the population where you have actual proof that they’ve been partaking in unprotected sex. It might be useful to get an idea of scale, but it's just not going to be all that accurate.

 

 

 

Fortunately, all of this is just what some scientists have done (sadly, the full paper is not online for free access). We know that there is a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia (more accurately to three different conditions that we'll, for convenience sake, group together here). If we’re lucky we can also find a decent data set which we have indeed got, some 2.25 million Danes born between 1955 and 1990, and we know both their own treatments for either cannabis induced psychosis or for those varied schizophrenic type diseases. We can also track their familial relationships and see which of them did or didn’t suffer in these manners. Excellent, we can now try to test our correlation. Do people who have had cannabis induced psychotic episodes then go on to develop schizophrenia at a higher rate than their genetic predisposition (as evidenced by their familial incidence of schizophrenia) would lead us to believe they would?

 

 

 

Well, looking at the 609 who had treatment for such pot induced freakouts and those 6,476 who were treated for the full blown nastiness, well, umm, no. Formally:

 

 

In terms of estimated rate ratios, persons who develop cannabis-induced psychosis are as predisposed to schizophrenia spectrum disorder and other psychiatric disorders as those who develop schizophrenia spectrum disorder without a history of cannabis-induced psychosis.

 

So at this point we can say that, no, that bad trip on some heavy shit does not lead on to schizophrenia. There’s no difference in incidence.

 

 

 

But the paper’s authors go much further:

 

 

 

Altogether, these findings, in addition to those of previous studies, indicate that cannabis-induced psychosis may not be a valid diagnosis but an early marker of schizophrenia.

 

 

That is, that the very idea of that bad trip is itself wrong. The disease is already there, simply wrongly diagnosed as being cannabis induced. And finally we get:

 

 

Rather, the degree of hereditary predisposition in individuals who receive treatment of cannabis-induced psychosis closely mirrors that in those who develop schizophrenia with no history of cannabis induced psychosis. The results agree with those of other studies that show that cannabis predominantly causes psychotic symptoms in those persons who are predisposed to develop psychosis or show signs of psychosis in the absence of cannabis use.

 

This goes a great deal further than my or anyone else’s original supposition, that pot consumption might cause problems only for those who are already predisposed to mental health problems. If it were simply this then we could deal with legalised pot simply by placing warnings upon it, as we do with nuts and nut allergies (umm, 'nut' possibly isn’t le mot juste there). But this finding goes further. There seems to be no evidence that cannabis consumption increases the incidence of these mental diseases at all. Incidence is the same for those who have had the "cannabis induced" version as it is in the general population, adjusting for the risks we perceive from the incidence of such problems in their immediate families. That there’s actually nothing to do with cannabis at all, that it just so happens that some who are becoming schizophrenic, something which is often marked by short episodes before it fully takes grip, happen to have been puffing 'erb when such episodes hit.

 

 

 

Thus there really is no logical leg for the government to stand upon in its reclassification of cannabis: there's not in fact one reason against the legalisation of the damn stuff and the increase in liberty and freedom that would result.

 

smoking cannabis ,

causes No greater risk of mental illness than general non-smokers population

is that clear nuff

 

irey guidance

[smashed1]

greetnz

if you dont have a endocannabinoid system please dont inhale

cannabis is for all the rest

cannabis is proven to cause a homoeostatic rebalance of the endogenous endocannabinoid system

cannabis provides the opportunities, the mind, body and spirit needs to heal,., for every one who has a endocannabinoid system

cannabis therapy is safe and effective for everyone

 

guidance

 

hi radic, i saw a docco other day not about pot , an they had abit abit this endocannabinoid (why do they have to use big fkn words ) they said use pot helps your endocanna systm kill the stuburn cancer cells that dont wanto die off when there suposeto,

so the endocanna from smoking adds to your natural endocanna an they said its the only thing to add to it an then it kills the old cancer cell that want die?? or something like that does that sound write radic ?? an it said pot is only thing that has endocannabinoid in it ?

[Radic]

greetnz smashed

cannabinoids

from smoking adds to your natural endocanna an they said its the only thing to add to it an then it kills the old cancer cell that want die??

yes i have used hash oil to kill my friendz skin cancer

np

endo means naturally occuring in the body, your body makes endo tings .,.,.,endo is short for endogenous (sorrie bor the words just keep getting bigger from here)

seen

cannabinoids we all know and love THC CBD CBN ect last count,.,.there is over 420 different cannabinoids naworrie.,., they are still finding new ones

 

endocannabinoids occur naturally thru out the body and are the tings that fit into the receptor sites that cannabis so lovingly does

 

they named these tings (the reseptor sites and endocannabinoids) after cannabis because it was cannabis that showed the endocannabinoid system to us

we didnt even know it existed before we studied how cannabis affects the body<----very resent

 

hope that helps clear tingz up for you

[sew850i]

cannabis provides the opportunities' date=' the mind, body and spirit needs to heal,., f[i']or every one who has a endocannabinoid system[/i]

 

Radic.. isn't every human body born with the endocannabinoid system??

[SpunOutStoner]

Here are some quotes by experts regarding the study that "proves" pot causes psychosis... YAWN... The fucking media in the country is so fucking biased, and the mindless sheep they believe everything they read, because they "trust" the media.

 

"It is distinctly possible, in fact likely, that folks who experience initial symptoms turn to cannabis in an effort to control them, then end up having a psychotic break of some sort earlier simply because they had their first symptoms earlier," said Mitch Earleywine, an associate professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Albany, who is also a marijuana policy expert. "This predicament makes it look as if cannabis preceded the psychotic symptoms when, in fact...folks with worse symptoms who are more likely to have an early break might simply be more likely to turn to cannabis."

 

Associate professor in the department of psychiatry at Emory University, and CNNHealth's mental health expert doctor. "Does smoking cannabis early in life make you vulnerable to getting early psychosis or is the first manifestation of psychosis to do drugs and alcohol, or is it both?"

 

Oh and if anybody read that large research of over 800,000 medical records that concluded that increase population marijuana usage is NOT associated with an increased incidence of schizophrenia (the largest such study ever done), well I must be really stupid to not believe that marijuana causes psychosis. That doesn't mean however, that I think nutcases that think they are jesus christ should be using marijuana or any other drug... I am not concerned about marijuana driving people nuts, call me stupid.

 

The truth is the medias obsession with trying to associate marijuana with the tiny percentage of the population that are complete raving, nutcases in biased and unbalanced.

 

It is pathetic when you consider how much more dangerous and addictive both alcohol and tobacco are, which are of course entirely legal. Shit I have been clinically diagnosed with depression, and I can tell you that marijuana does not have any negative effect on me (except the occasional feeling of anxiety when I consume too much), yet alcohol and tobacco SEVERELY aggravate my mental health problems. Alcohol makes me go absolutely nuts, and nearly killed me. Nicotine withdrawal also makes me go absolutely nuts, and become extremely depressed and / or aggressive.

 

Marijuana was very useful in helping me escape from alcoholism, I will defend a persons right- especially an adult- to be able to legally use marijuana until my death.

Edited February 13, 2011 by SpunOutStoner

[Radic]

greetnz

 

Debunking the "new" schizophrenia "evidence"

 

Michael R. James writes: Re. "Why pot really is making kids sick: the new scientific line" (yesterday, item 9). The article by Sophie Cousins was too emphatic in accepting the conclusion from the newly published study. Schizophrenia (SZ) is a terrible disease particularly as it afflicts adolescents and young adults but these strenuous attempts to place blame on a single environmental factor seems misguided.

 

Readers should understand that this paper has not generated new primary data but is instead a meta-study of previously published data. A meta-study attempts to extract analyses of greater statistical significance from as many published studies as can be found to meet specified eligibility criteria. Meta-studies are used when there is confusion or conflicting conclusions from individual studies, usually over a long period of time. They are often employed, or resorted to, when statistical power of individual studies is inadequate. Thus, by definition the hypotheses being tested are not easy to prove and the phenomena being examined are complex and poorly understood. Disease of mental health fit this bill to an extreme.

 

 

 

Clearly any attempt to increase power by pooling data from different studies is itself susceptible to problems, perhaps none more so than in mental health research. The meta-study must attempt to establish rules that pool appropriate data and exclude incompatible data. In this case, of 443 relevant published papers examined 354 of them were excluded from the meta-study. So 80% of papers were excluded for the various reasons given by Large et al. For example only those were retained that reported time of onset of psychosis rather than time of first treatment. These exclusions were an attempt to remove potential confounding issues that may have previously hidden significant associations. But excluding 80% of data raises the risk of ascertainment bias or publication bias, notwithstanding the authors’ statement “There was no statistical evidence of publication bias.†Statisticians try to take care of such nuisances but this scientist hardly ever believes their claims.

 

 

 

Personally I am not going to be persuaded by studies like this. There are too many other possibilities, for example an ascertainment bias caused by susceptible teens being over-represented in the drug user group (or starting earlier, or smoking more). There are contrary studies suggesting that cannabis use may actually ameliorate psychosocial effects in SZ. I also find the effect described (cannabis use advances disease onset by 2.7 y) suspiciously high especially since it comes from all users, not, say, high users. The authors reported that heavy use caused a greater effect but was not statistically significantly separable from light users; there is almost the hint in the paper that single use may be enough!

 

 

 

More worrying is how enthusiastically politicians and some in the medical profession will grasp onto conclusions like this. Indeed, there is the money to perform these kinds of studies because cannabis is the third most commonly used addictive drug, not because it is the third most harm inducing drug. (That honour will lie with drugs like Prozac or Stilnox and other prescribed behaviour-modifying drugs our society is overdosing itself on.) Like the hysteria over ecstasy (on average one death per year compared to 12,000 alcohol-related deaths (2006 data, all ages) or log orders lower than youth alcohol consumption or dozens of other things kids use or do) the harm from cannabis is self-evidently not easy to find or we wouldn’t need to spend so much research money searching for it.

 

 

 

And as a Crikey commenter noted "about 20 people under 25 experience early onset of schizophrenia and have smoked marijuana at least once" are not compelling numbers. Total abstinence is not going to make much difference to SZ prevalence—maybe none if, as is likely, all such people will still suffer SZ a few years later -- or have much public health impact at all really.

 

 

 

But even if we give the benefit of the doubt to such studies or the hypothesis, I doubt anyone seriously believes the "solution" is more draconian prohibition. And good luck on counseling kids on preventive measures for a disease which less than 1% of them will suffer. If anything these studies suggest that decriminalization and regulation of the product (THC levels etc) would be the way to go. But then commonsense never applies

 

 

Dr Matthew Large you know the truth

yet you support the BS

chances are

one day you will suffer from a aliment that cannabis can cure

did you know.,., the father of prohibition died of cancer and is now buried in the most spat on grave in the US

trivia.,., or is it??

[buzz lighthead]

,.,.there is over 420 different cannabinoids naworrie.,.,

 

 

Is that a Coincidence theres 420 cannabinoids?? heh heh

[Sig]

this and many studies like this aren't BS as such...(hear me out ). They are just quotes wrongly. What these studies actually conclude is that while the brain is development (ages 0 - 17ish) drugs that alter the brains chemical pathways including that of cannabis can have permanent effects unlike the purely temporary ones adults experience. These effects can indeed make you more susceptible to psychosis and schizophrenia IF you already have a genetic predisposition towards it.

 

This dose not only apply to cannabis, it is almost all drugs including the legal ones. This kind of knowledge has been known for a long time now and is why parents should educate and watch (take responsibility) for their children until they reach the age of 18 and become an adult. At that stage the danger has passed and they are now able to make a conscious and educated decision whether to take the drug or not.

 

The government should have no say in this process except to prevent/limit as many drugs as possible to those under the age of 18 that would not otherwise have benefits that outweigh the negatives in each case.

[Tsigle]

I really should stop reading this stuff. The more I read the more I want to go into the ABC and bitch-slap everyone personally stating their names before I do it.