CNN, that bastion of sensational and acontextual news media, has reported that Marijuana use can increase the risk of psychosis by up to 40%. I quote from the article, boldface my own: The new review suggests that even infrequent use could raise the small but real risk of this serious mental illness by 40 percent.
However, the article goes on to say:
The researchers said they couldn't prove that marijuana use itself increases the risk of psychosis, a category of several disorders with schizophrenia being the most commonly known.
So what's really going on here? The article goes on to say that over time, researchers observed that habitual marijuana users are more likely to develop a psychotic disorder. But they have not proven causation: they have only proven correlation. For example, instead of marijuana causing psychosis, it is possible that people who are more likely to be psychotic are simply self-medicating with pot. Marijuana users might be more likely to come from families where that sort of self-medication is common. Indeed, the correlation could be the reverse: psychotic people could be more likely to smoke marijuana. But instead of emphasizing the hypothetical nature of this relationship, CNN reports this story as though causation has been factually proven, which is either a case of journalistic incompetence or barefaced lying.
There is another possibility. What we have here is a classic case of the news media sensationalizing a minor, possibly nonexistent threat to get readers to feel uneasy. Just re-read the article: notice how it is written to provoke concern and fear. When the news makes people uneasy and anxious, they will feel unhappy. But because the news is sponsored, people will eventually see the commercials, which will be happy or at least less fearsome than the news: the underlying message is that only through consumption can we be truly free of this fearful world. This is the essence of Fnord. It's a silly, bizarre theory concocted by a drug-addled author in the 1960's, but in a frighteningly bizarre way it does explain a lot of behavior in the modern media.
Hm, I like how they never actually discuss how the findings were concluded. I had always assumed that the correlation between pot and schizophrenia was concluded because when marijuana use began to gain popularity, doctors also began diagnosing schizophrenia.
Regardless, this little nugget is what got me:
"Two of the authors of the study were invited experts on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs Cannabis Review in 2005. Several authors reported being paid to attend drug company-sponsored meetings related to marijuana, and one received consulting fees from companies that make antipsychotic medications."
--Mike
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Drug companies are running medicine. It's unbelievable. They totally buy doctors. They'll make up a new diagnosis out of commonly felt, minor ills that people have lived with harmlessly for millenia, and then they'll market a pill to people to make money off of perfectly normal aches and pains. It's a weird world.
(if you can't see the fnords they won't eat you)
And you can go to jail for selling Marijuana which is clinically unable to kill you while the people who sold Vioxx and Adavan are still walking free. It's a sick, sick world.
--Mike
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Not only that whats just as bad is how cigarettes are proven to kill people same with alcohol but less. The drug's you see on tv are extremely dangerous they have crazy side effects. Marijuana hasn't killed anyone not on its own if there's any death with weed in someones systems they are failing to probably tell you about the prescription drugs or whatever else the person may have taken. The Netherlands know what the difference between hard and soft drugs are. I'm sure we could learn something from their laws on the plant. The other thing people smoking it need to make sure of is whatever your smoking out of doesn't have any bad effects like from plastic or pvc, it's why a lot of people choose to roll their own, use vaporizers or glass pipes. There's a lot of other drugs out there on the shelves of stores much more dangerous then pot.
I did a speech for class about medicinal ganja use. In my research turns out that 85 percent of all new drugs are "me too" drugs--same as the old ones with different names and higher prices.
People shouldn't be worried about the gas companies--they should be worried about the drug companies.
"Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity--and I'm not so sure about the universe"
-Albert Einstein
" Drug companies are running medicine. "
There's a documentary by Gary Null that majorly touches on this:
"The Drugging of Our Children"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=pssR-NL_LNE
"Advisory Counsel on the Misuse of Drugs"
Shouldn't it just be the "use of drugs"? It seems rather telling of the authoritarian and moralistic nature of the counsel that their name should immediately judge some use wrong and other use right.
Recreational drug use is not misuse in any way. How else is one supposed to use marijuana. The way our world is currently arranged any medical benefits from marijuana use are side effects to its most common purpose. Objectively though there is no such thing as a side effect, only unwanted or annoying effects.
This is just another poorly run study meant to dredge up numbers to scare the public by people who can't imagine that people should enjoy any form of recreation other than the ones they, themselves, enjoy.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memento mori, mahalo.
"Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real-estate above principals."
If you smoke marijuana, there is a 93.7% chance that you aren't being the person they want you to be.
If you smoke marijuana, you might not think that there is anything to life other than gearing yourself towards success and being dependent on mass marketed media for a.) what to think, b.) having an idea about what other people think or c.) the information you need to feel like a real person.
Notice how in the very first paragraph of the CNN article, being "psychotic" is automatically assumed to be dangerous. Not that it isn't, potentially or even desirable.
Here's a news flash- 40% of People Do Drugs Because of the Psycho-active Effects of Drugs
I basically feel that in an ideal world marijuana use would be fine but the world needs all of the functioning brain cells it can get to handle its problems, so as an individual I would advocate against marijuana use. CNN, who on the other hand has to try to pass itself off as a reputable news source that presents facts in the form of news stories advocates against marijuana usage because the number crunching machines at Clear Channel have decided that marijuana is bad for its bottom line.
Fr33 2 b
Restoring Faith In Humanity One Acquaintance At A Time
I have this strange feeling that you pulled that 93.7 number out of your ass. I smoke marijuana because I like how it makes me feel, and it's nice to be with friends who do the same. It's more of a social thing (for me) than anything else.
Marijuana has minimal effect on brain cells. It's the oxygen deprivation (which can also be achieved by smoking cigarettes or just holding your breath) which kills brain cells, though not nearly in the quantity that your health teacher would like you to think that it does.
Most people don't do drugs to escape their reality or whatever; it's just a nice feeling, in the same vein as an orgasm.
--Mike
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Let me see, hmm, should I make a crack about how you must be smoking the weak shhhtuff, naw then you’d get real defensive. Not going to remark how a dope smoking laissez faire capitalist like you got a doubly offended by my advocacy against marijuana, which was only to make the point that advocacy should be done as an individual endeavor, a point which somehow I guess you missed and you were offended because of your stance (assup) regarding the laissez faire capitalist ethics of a media source. Point out that I said functioning aw forget that.
I’ll just settle for pointing out the gaping contradiction in your “it’s just a nice feeling” statement. Take a second.
One –thousand one, do you see it?
When you use anything to medicate, mediate, moderate or modify your feelings you are actively escaping reality.
Fr33 2 b
Restoring Faith In Humanity One Acquaintance At A Time
"Escape" implies flight or an inability to deal with reality. Drugs simply alter the way you (or rather me, since it seems obvious that you don't do drugs) view and feel about reality. You do a drug and see the world through the filter of that drug. The connotation of "escaping reality" is a construction of language and a popular culture that views recreational drug use as a sin or an indulgence.
The idea that drug users use drugs only to escape their reality is as accurate as the idea that those who don't do drugs are desperately clinging to theirs.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memento mori, mahalo.
"Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real-estate above principals."
We've certainly gotten far off track from Deepfnords point of how the media, in this case CNN.com scratches the surface of an issue in a few different places and the scratch that bleeds forth which ever droplets of propaganda they think best suits is what makes it as journalism.
That said I decent to admitting that I seem to have initiated a debate which has decrapitated into issues of semantics. Where as you and possibly Mike would state that marijuana usage doesn't necessarily constitute escaping reality and I would argue that it does. The median ground here would be that it does somewhat. Namely what a person feels. Feelings aren't hard and fast components of reality but they are a part of reality. Unlike most of the rest of reality feelings actually change into entirely something else when you apply any sort of "filter". By applying this "filter" a person effectively escapes reality.
But ask yourself this- What do you feel when you're stoned? I mean besides resentment for someone who harshes your buzz.
LOL
Fr33 2b
Restoring Faith In Humanity One Acquaintance At A Time
How about this: you have little to no understanding of drug culture or drug use. I attempted to give you another perspective on drug use based on actual experience with actual drug users who DO NOT use drugs to escape reality. Drugs can be used for therapy or entertainment or utilitarian or medical purposes. Certainly drugs can be used to escape reality, but it isn't the only reason people do drugs.
I tried to inform you. You essentially ignored my information and clung to the standard DARE approved public education view of drug use.
You have essentially told me that any alteration to the filter through which I view reality is me escaping reality. IT isn't always running away, sometimes it is running to and sometimes it really is just altering. "Altering" is much different from "escaping." I'd also like to know where you draw the line between alteration and escape? Are drugs escape and telling jokes not? What about art? Movies? Books? What is the base "reality" all us desperate drug users are escaping? My point being that the idea of "escape" is half baked and generally ignorant and judgemental.
Quit harshing my buzz. Go out, get stoned and telling me how you felt. Tell me if you felt like you were escaping. I already told you that I don't use drugs for "escape." You didn't believe me. Maybe if you do some drugs and see other uses than escape you'll understand where I am coming from.
Until then, I say to you, "Zieg Heil!"
Res ipsa loquitur.
memento mori, mahalo.
"Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real-estate above principals."
"Are drugs escape and telling jokes not? What about art? Movies? Books?"
maybe it's eating food, meditating, and taking pain killers too! gasp!
What the hell do you mean by functioning? The only kind of non-functioning brain cell is a dead one. Marijuana doesn't kill brain cells any more than holding your breath. Therefore, you're no more likely to have "malfunctioning" brain cells than anyone else. Q.E.D.?
And what the hell does laissez faire capitalism have to do with any of this? I'm attacking the validity of the report, not the people writing it.
When you fuck or masturbate, are you actively escaping reality? Get real. When you go to sleep, you are escaping reality.
--Mike
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"When you go to sleep, you are escaping reality."
exactly.
Hi Fr
Would you mind posting where you got your statistics from?
I've never smoked marijuana, and I have heard a lot of statistics regarding marijuana (and other drugs) and their side effects; but I've never heard of numbers such as the ones you've posted here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Dream as though you'll live forever, but live as though there's no tomorrow" --James Dean
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/fanaile-essence
Hello To You Fanaile Essence,
I'm sorry but I thought it would have been painfully obvious that like mike aka embryowassup observed that I well did like he said. The 40% part was a reiteration from the article, again, which seemed painfully obvious.
Fr33 2 b
Restoring Faith In Humanity One Acquaintance At A Time
"If you smoke marijuana, you might not think that there is anything to life other than gearing yourself towards success and being dependent on mass marketed media for a.) what to think, b.) having an idea about what other people think or c.) the information you need to feel like a real person."
how bout we take out "if you smoke marijuana" and simply replace it with "if you're a person in today's society" because there are plenty of people who DON'T smoke marijuana who fall into the description you gave.
i believe fanaile essence is mainly talking about the 93.7 percent....i'm curious to know where you got this as well.
Mj has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years. There are written descriptions of the effects of mj dating back to the dark ages. Now, my simple logic says that if anything last for a long time then it must have some benefit to its surroundings. Things don't live if they piss everything else off.
However when it came time to start an econmoy in this country those good old folks(i say this cuz it happened a long time ago, not saying old people started america) choose things like cotton, tobacco over mj. Don't you think our founding fathers/sisters could have just as easily choosen to grow fields of mj instead of tobacco? Well they didn't and with time and religion mj and anything else that alters your preception of reality is taboo.
I was sitting with this guys and we started talking bout the reason everybody hated mj. Then in a spark of genius one of them pointed out that the church doesn't like anything that can change your mood the way drugs do unless its god. Now that isn't in a study and it isn't written down anywhere but i like that answer. The church and religion don't like anything that can do something god has trouble with.
Corruptio Optimi Pessima
Actually, they did grow hemp for a long time. Hemp production was actually encouraged during WWII. However, this is industrial hemp, which has nothing to do with the THC bearing cannibus sativa. If you were to smoke the buds of an industrial hemp plant, you'd just get a massive headache. Marijuana was outlawed sometime in the 1940's along with a few other drugs.
So far, the only dogmatic justification for the religious villification of drugs is the whole "the body is a temple" thing.
--Mike
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The government-paid-for movie "Reefer Madness" was made in 1936 to terrify teenagers into not using cannabis(like those weird driving movies that are supposed to be gorey yet are nothing compared to real movies) Then in 1937 marijuana was outlawed at the federal level.
Fun fact though, what did religious people try and stop consumption of and fail miserably less than a decade earlier? Alcohol. Could marijauna just have been the next step? Who knows....da da daaaa.(Thats the creepy sound made in movies fyi.) I think our world would be a lot better if they had succeeded in preventing alcohol sales than banning mj.(They in this instance is the government not religious people.) Just in terms of deaths and alcohol related problems.
Corruptio Optimi Pessima