Cannabis increases psychotic illness Options

[trojan_libido]

Its funny how these in depth studies are required to understand the effects of cannabis use. Since the percentages of perceived problems are so low, maybe we should divert our attention elsewhere. Cannabis makes you lazy and dreamy, if this is destabilizing your mind, stop it!

Since we have to dig so deep to find possible correlations and problems with cannabis use, its clearly not a dangerous drug. Take heroin for instance, everyone who knows anything about heroin knows it will destroy the person. It will create a theiving zombie shell of the person you once knew. We don't need a study done to tell us this, so shouldn't we take the opposite as true?

No direct evidence for cannabis causing psychosis; evidence that cannabis may destabilise a troubled mind if that person is already predisposed (would love to know what classifies a person as having a predisposition to schizophrenia).

What really really annoys me, is this god damn media beast that keeps encouraging huge opinion shifts in people. Some lad in the UK who was addicted to horror films, collected knives and was generally weird, slashed up two of his friends. He smoked "super skunk" and that is all the media in the UK went on about. Complete BS, and I hate every middleclass moronic sheep that eats this kind of news up.

"Its a class B, no C, no wait B, ah shucks C". Complete political tool, nothing to do with truth and justice. Yes super skunk has much higer THC levels than cannabis did 20-30 years ago, thats what selective breeding does for us, but it doesn't create psycho slashers! If anything it'll leave you paranoid and lazy.

Now lets look at Alcohol as a comparison. If you went and drank lager every night, you probably wouldnt be doing it alone. Millions of people in the UK will drink every night without others really batting an eyelid. Now change their lager for vodka, and suddenly the problem is visible to all. This change will destroy the person, yet its all very legal and socially acceptable. What is the difference between that and alcohol?

Weed = Lager, Skunk = Vodka. Let me make my own choices thanks Mr. Government. I dont need you or Mrs. GoodyTwoShoes telling me whats right and wrong.

Its pretty easy to see who supports the legalisation of cannabis and who doesn't, but I'd like to know what people actually think about the issue, rather than what study they've found and posted.

Personally I think cannabis should be legal, because quite frankly its enslavement of a persons mind to not allow a person to do what he or she wants when no harm comes to others. We live in the free world...how?

I also think smoking it should be discouraged. Smoking adds a dangerous factor that just wouldn't be present in a cooked product. Our society should change to incorporate this into our lives, and we shouldn't fear telling our children exactly what cannabis is and does. At the moment its a bit of a joke drug in our culture, an attitude that is worse than the drug itself.

[Hey Hey]

No direct evidence for cannabis causing psychosis; evidence that cannabis may destabilise a troubled mind if that person is already predisposed (would love to know what classifies a person as having a predisposition to schizophrenia).

The types of responses here are saying something? My intention was to flag a possible relationship between cannabis use and schizophrenia due to my interest in causes of schizophrenia. Users seem to be paranoid (pun) about being criticized for use!

But, to you point "would love to know what classifies a person as having a predisposition to schizophrenia". This is obviously sort of .. rhetorical? I think everyone who has looked up the condition will know the following:

Is Schizophrenia Inherited?

It has long been known that schizophrenia runs in families. People who have a close relative with schizophrenia are more likely to develop the disorder than are people who have no relatives with the illness. For example, a monozygotic (identical) twin of a person with schizophrenia has the highest risk – 40 to 50 percent – of developing the illness. A child whose parent has schizophrenia has about a 10 percent chance. By comparison, the risk of schizophrenia in the general population is about 1 percent. http://www.healthyplace.com/Communities/Th...nimh/causes.asp

So then, a predisposition to schizophrenia means a genetic predisposition. Not entirely proven, but look at the statement above again - what do YOU think?

Now comes the problem of knowing one's genes and looking further back than just one or two generations (so mental health characteristics of one's relatives beyond then is more difficult to establish, particularly as diagnostic methods and reliability have changed). That gives us our background 1% (1 in 100; one in every small village). I don't think there is any evidence of regular new mutations providing any part of that cohort, but at some point there must have been one of course.

There's your predisposition. Easy really. A bit like the predisposition for cardiovascular disease, certain cancers and so on. It runs in families and we commonly don't know much about our distant geneology. Adoptees have even more difficulty.

Then it can get a bit more complicated, because some people use the terminology loosely and include things like lifestyle as potential predispositions, but this should really be characterised as one of the many environmental influences that our genes have to operate within. This is related to the old "nature versus nurture" issue, that in most cases is actually "nature in association with nurture", i.e. not one or the other, but both having a role.

But ... don't let's forget how savage an illness schizophrenia can be. Just today in the UK News there have been details of a schizophrenic mother, having been released early from hospital, stopped taking her medication and subsequently killed her children (the 10 year old boy was bludgeoned with a claw hammer and the 3 year old girl suffocated with cling-film). She had thought they were exchanged at birth and were not her own. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6925390.stm

[Joesus]

HOW DANGEROUS IS MARIJUANA
COMPARED WITH OTHER SUBSTANCES?
Number of American deaths per year that result directly or primarily from the following selected causes nationwide, according to World Almanacs, Life Insurance Actuarial (death) Rates, and the last 20 years of U.S. Surgeon Generals' reports.
TOBACCO 340,000 to 450,000
ALCOHOL (Not including 50% of all highway deaths and 65% of all murders) 150,000+
ASPIRIN (Including deliberate overdose) 180 to 1,000+
CAFFEINE (From stress, ulcers, and triggering irregular heartbeats, etc.) 1,000 to 10,000
"LEGAL" DRUG OVERDOSE (Deliberate or accidental) from legal, prescribed or patent medicines and/or mixing with alcohol - e.g. Valium/alcohol 14,000 to 27,000
ILLICIT DRUG OVERDOSE (Deliberate or accidental) from all illegal drugs. 3,800 to 5,200
MARIJUANA 0
(Marijuana users also have the same or lower incidence of murders and highway deaths and accidents than the general non-marijuana using population as a whole. Crancer Study, UCLA; U.S. Funded ($6 million), First & Second Jamaican Studies, 1968 to 1974; Costa Rican Studies, 1980 to 1982; et al. LOWEST TOXICITY 100% of the studies done at dozens of American universities and research facilities show pot toxicity does not exist. Medical history does not record anyone dying from an overdose of marijuana (UCLA, Harvard, Temple, etc.).


UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Drug Enforcement Administration
In The Matter Of MARIJUANA RESCHEDULING PETITION
Docket No. 86-22
OPINION AND RECOMMENDED RULING, FINDINGS OF FACT, CONCLUSIONS OF LAW AND DECISION OF ADMINISTRATIVE LAW JUDGE FRANCIS L. YOUNG, Administrative Law Judge
DATED: SEPTEMBER 6, 1988

Section 8 of Judge Young's "Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and Decision."

Page 56 & 57 http://mojo.calyx.net/~olsen/MEDICAL/YOUNG/young

3. The most obvious concern when dealing with drug safety is the possibility of lethal effects. Can the drug cause death?

4. Nearly all medicines have toxic, potentially lethal effects. But marijuana is not such a substance. There is no record in the extensive medical literature describing a proven, documented cannabis-induced fatality.

This is a remarkable statement. First, the record on marijuana encompasses 5,000 years of human experience. Second, marijuana is now used daily by enormous numbers of people throughout the world. Estimates suggest that from twenty million to fifty million Americans routinely, albeit illegally, smoke marijuana without the benefit of direct medical supervision. Yet, despite this long history of use and the extraordinarily high numbers of social smokers, there are simply no credible medical reports to suggest that consuming marijuana has caused a single death.

6. By contrast aspirin, a commonly used, over-the-counter medicine, causes hundreds of deaths each year.

7. Drugs used in medicine are routinely given what is called an LD-50. The LD-50 rating indicates at what dosage fifty percent of test animals receiving a drug will die as a result of drug induced toxicity. A number of researchers have attempted to determine marijuana's LD-50 rating in test animals, without success. Simply stated, researchers have been unable to give animals enough marijuana to induce death.

8. At present it is estimated that marijuana's LD-50 is around 1:20,000 or 1:40,000. In layman terms this means that in order to induce death a marijuana smoker would have to consume 20,000 to 40,000 times as much marijuana as is contained in one marijuana cigarette. NIDA-supplied marijuana cigarettes weigh approximately .9 grams. A smoker would theoretically have to consume nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana within about fifteen minutes to induce a lethal response.

9. In practical terms, marijuana cannot induce a lethal response as a result of drug-related toxicity.

Cannabis & Pregnancy - Great news for heavy users!

Pediatrics, February 1994, Volume 93, Number 2, pp. 254-260
American Academy of Pediatrics

Comparing the heavily exposed and the non-exposed infants, the Brazelton clusters on day 30, showed that the offspring of heavy-marijuana using mothers had significantly higher scores on:

- the Orientation cluster

- the Autonomic Stability cluster

- reflexes

- habituation to auditory and tactile stimuli, and to animate auditory stimuli

- higher degree of alertness

- capacity for consolability

- less irritability

- had fewer startles and tremors

- better physiological stability at one month

- required less examiner facilitation to reach an organized state

- more socially responsive

- the quality of their alertness was higher

- their motor and autonomic systems were more robust

- they had better self-regulation

- they were more rewarding for caregivers than the neonates of non--using mothers at one month of age

From the Schools of Nursing, Education and Public Health, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Received for publication Sep. 21, 1992; accepted June 30, 1993.

"THE EMPEROR WEARS NO CLOTHES"

Jack Herer &Captain Ed (R.I.P.)
(Two of the most important people of the last century.)
In this book is documented all kinds of mind-blowing long-suppressed facts about Humanity's best
friend "The Cannabis Plant". Hemp or Cannabis as it is scientifically referred to is the fastest growing
biomass source on Earth. Biomass is a cheap and efficient source of fuel. As a matter of fact, if we
were to farm only 6% of the country's available farmland with hemp we could meet all of the
country's Industrial energy and transportation needs. Hemp is 26 times stronger than cotton and lasts
10 times longer. We can produce 4 times as much paper from Hemp as we can from trees at one
fourth the cost and 1/5 the pollution and it is 10 times stronger and lasts ten times longer. It is a fact
that Betsy Ross made our first flag "Old Glory" from Hemp fiber. Also, our Constitution and
Declaration of Independance were printed on Hemp paper. The soldiers clothes during the
revolutionary war were made from Hemp. The second most prescribed medicine in the United
States for 150 years for over 100 different medical illnesses was a Cannabis extract and it is alot
stronger when taken in concentrated form. This means that all the children in America for 150 years
were brought up as DRUG USERS from birth. Or, it just means simply, that we had a better
understanding of herbs and their medicinal usage 100 years ago than we do today. So who has
REALLY lost their mind, people who smoke pot, or the "NORMALS" ?

The drug war is nothing more than an excuse to suppress consciousness and use the ignorant in our
society to create laws for the New World Order to use to crack down on all of our rights !! According
to a Feb. 1938 article in Popular Mechanics the invention of a new machine called the decorticator,
would once again put Hemp in the dominant position in the fiber and textiles industry over cotton by
speeding up the harvesting methods in use at the time. At this same time Dupont held a patent on a
synthetic compound used to break down wood pulp to make paper. To make paper from Hemp didn't
require any chemicals. In order for Dupont to profit from these chemicals, they had to see to it that
Hemp was out-lawed. Andrew Mellon sat on the board of Dupont and Mellon's nephew was
Harry Anslinger, the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics at the time. William Randolph Hearst
owned many big newspapers and working together they whipped up a smear campaign of "Yellow
Journalism" in America, spreading propaganda that the African-Americans and Mexicans were
smuggling in a new killer dope weed that would lure white women to fall prey to the seduction of the
"Negro", while under the influence of Jazz music. Racism and fear were used to outlaw
something that was used by every man, woman, and child in America. It wasn't until after the
marijuana tax act was passed that the American Medical Association realized that "marijuana", a
slang term for hemp was in fact "Cannabis", our second most prescribed medicine. This is when
"Reefer Madness" began.

NO ONE HAS EVER DIED FROM USING CANNABIS / MARIJUANA !!!

The many benefits of Hemp include, but are not limited, to the following : Hemp utilizes the sun more efficiently than
virtually any other plant on the planet, reaching 10-20 feet or more in a single short growing season. It can even be grown in
almost any climate or soil condition on Earth. Hemp is softer than cotton, warmer than cotton, more water absorbant than
cotton, has three times the tensile strength of cotton and many times more durable. 50% of all chemicals used in American
agriculture today are used on cotton and Hemp requires no chemicals or pesticides to grow.

Cannabis makes the very best Canvas paper for Art. For centuries, most all of the world's great art used Cannabis Paper.
The Dutch word for CANNABIS is CANVAS. Hemp seed oil makes the best oil for paints and varnishes. Up until about
1800, Hemp seed oil was the most consumed lighting oil in America and the world. Hemp is a fuel source. Hemp is the
fastest growing biomass source on Earth. Biomass can be converted to methane, methanol or gasoline at a fraction of the
cost of oil, coal or nuclear energy. Instead of using fossil fuels, which have been in the Earth for millions of years and pollute
the planet while removing it and shipping it around the world, we could be "HARVESTING OXYGEN" by growing a plant
source which produces oxygen while it is growing, then when we burn it and produce carbon dioxide, the cycle is balanced.

As a medicine, Cannabis has been used for centuries and continues to be used today for all kinds of ailments including :
stress, rheumatism, asthma, delerium tremens, migrain headaches, pms cramps, glaucoma, nausea, tumors, and anorexia.
Cannabis / Hemp / Marijuana seeds are the highest source of complete vegetable protein on the entire planet. Soybeans
contain a higher percentage of protein but the composition of the protein in Hemp allows more of it to be used by the body.
65 % of the protein in Hemp seeds is in the form of globulin edestin. The high edestin content combined with albumin,
another globular protein contained in all seeds means the readily available protein in Hemp seeds contain all the essential
amino acids in ideal proportions to assure your body has the necessary building blocks to create proteins like disease
fighting immunoglobulins--antibodies whose job is to ward off infections before the symptoms of sickness set in. Hemp
seeds are also the highest known source of Essential Fatty Acids. Essential, meaning (We Couldn't Live Without Them).
These Linoleic and Linolenic acids are responsible for the luster in your skin and hair. They also clear the arteries and
rebuild the immune system. Plastic Plumbing Pipe (PVC) can be manufactured using renewable Hemp cellulose as the
chemical feedstocks, replacing non-renewable petroleum based chemical feedstocks. The seed oil is a machine grade
quality lubricant and can be used to run engines and replace petro-oils completely.


perhaps the misinformation hiway is meant to steer the public away from certain truths. Maybe the Schizophrenia idea is a layover from the reefer madness thinking.

[Hey Hey]

HOW DANGEROUS IS MARIJUANA
COMPARED WITH OTHER SUBSTANCES?

Totally off-topic and not relevant to the matter in hand. The topic is to do with marijuana and a possible association with schizophrenia.

[Joesus]

Now a new study from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York has shed light on the reason for the link between marijuana and schizophrenia. With several groups of adolescents as their subjects, they used a special type of MRI called diffusion tensor imaging to compare the brains of those with and without schizophrenia, both users and non-users of marijuana. They found that heavy use of marijuana caused the type of abnormalities in certain areas of the brain as were found in the brains of the subjects with schizophrenia, and these abnormalities were the most pronounced in schizophrenic subjects who regularly smoked marijuana. The abnormalities occur in a brain pathway related to language and auditory functions which is still developing during adolescence.

Thus if a young person is genetically at risk for schizophrenia, the research suggests, the use of marijuana can cause the same kind of damage the schizophenia would cause, which could bring on the illness when it might otherwise have not have emerged, cause earlier onset, and/or worsen the condition.

[Joesus]

HOW DANGEROUS IS MARIJUANA
COMPARED WITH OTHER SUBSTANCES?

Totally off-topic and not relevant to the matter in hand. The topic is to do with marijuana and a possible association with schizophrenia.

My aplogies. You have suggested the information you supply is close to your personal interests.

The information you suggest is but one of many ideas about marijuana and its effects.

If in fact the media is displaying more fear based information to make marijuana more demonic in nature it will steer the public away from any beneficial facts and the controversies surrounding marijuana.
If you wish to steer this thread only toward you personal interest then I suggest you post at the beginning of the thread, that this is to be only about my interests in relative ideas that marijuana may be connected with inducing schizophrenia in those that may be genetically predisposed to schizophrenia. That way you can publicly announce that you are intolerant of anyone meeting your standards when posting a response.
I would respond accordingly.

[trojan_libido]

I wrote without a 2 min research for sure, thanks for the info HH. The fact risk goes up 1.41% instead of 1% is my reason for disliking the outcome of the research.

[Hey Hey]

HOW DANGEROUS IS MARIJUANA
COMPARED WITH OTHER SUBSTANCES?

Totally off-topic and not relevant to the matter in hand. The topic is to do with marijuana and a possible association with schizophrenia.

My aplogies. You have suggested the information you supply is close to your personal interests.

The information you suggest is but one of many ideas about marijuana and its effects.

If in fact the media is displaying more fear based information to make marijuana more demonic in nature it will steer the public away from any beneficial facts and the controversies surrounding marijuana.
If you wish to steer this thread only toward you personal interest then I suggest you post at the beginning of the thread, that this is to be only about my interests in relative ideas that marijuana may be connected with inducing schizophrenia in those that may be genetically predisposed to schizophrenia. That way you can publicly announce that you are intolerant of anyone meeting your standards when posting a response.
I would respond accordingly.

Were you always like this - uneducable? I have asked you before to stick to the topic. If you don't like being guided by moderators on a forum, feel free to leave.

[Hey Hey]

I have deleted the last post by Joesus and closed the topic, having not been able to convince him that his persistent diversions away from topics, particularly in the context of personal arguments, are a poor way of conducting discussions. Thank you to contributers who have made well considered and valuable comments.