Smoking marijuana can lead to insanity?

[CatWoman]

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/09/19/reefer_madness/index.html

The return of reefer madness

The U.S. drug czar's office is running ads implying that smoking marijuana can lead to insanity. But pushing dubious science is no way to persuade teenagers not to do drugs.

Sept. 19, 2005 | Parents who read the New York Times or Newsweek this past summer could be forgiven for freaking out when they came across a full-page ad warning them about the effects of marijuana on their teenagers. If the kids were off somewhere sparking up a joint, the federally funded message seemed to say, they were at risk for severe mental illness. Were those parents hallucinating, or was Reefer Madness, long since debunked, suddenly a real problem to be reckoned with?

[Ron Green]

1. Ohh..... that must be what happened to me.

[benburch]

2. Look what it did to me!

Proof! :evilgrin: :wtf:

[BloodyWilliam]

3. How about an ad on how the drug war can lead to retardation?

Or is this one of those cases where cause and effect are blurry?

[Wizard777]

43. Actually it causes Short Term Memory Loss According to the Pentagon.

The Pentagon did a study on troops returning from Iraq. They are finding that the stress of War is creating changes in the hippocampus. The result is short term memory loss. Anyone that has any knowledge on the drug war knows that one of the major priorities is to put more stress and pressure upon users than any one person could handle. The laws demands you be striped of your job and can also strip you of your personal property. You are made pariah. Wbery social ill is placed at your door step. You might even have masked cops kick in your door and put guns to you and your childrens head. This is the paramilitary Search and Destroy mission. In the War on Drugs who knew the most dangerous part would be the war? War is supposed to be a big happy party. War is a vertible panacea. It will cure any of societies ills. To think that a few laws designed to protect people from snake oil salesmen would end up tossing America into the snake pit.

[henslee]

4. Of course it can. Obviously you never watched Reefer Madness.

[Coexist]

77. Reefer Madness - you read my mind!

what a movie.

[TrogL]

5. Logical fallacy

Many people smoking marijuana are already barking mad. They have not established the causitive link.

[barb162]

6. drinking too much water can kill you

eating too much can lead to a heart attack

[phusion]

7. Did anyone see the recent commercial?

Someone's grandma has to eat dinner alone because her grandchild got stoned and missed the date.

:eyes:

[Craig3410]

10. Yeah.

Smoke ganja and your gramma will eat ALONE!

They're scraping the bottom of the barrel.

:rofl:

[anarch]

13. that gets funnier every time I see it

I know...I am a bad person.

[LincolnMcGrath]

15. What if grandma is your hook up?

Them ain't all flowers n tomatoes in that greenhouse.

[meegbear]

20. Yep, God bless Nana's glaucoma medicine

[demily]

29. My reply to that commercial

Grandma's house is the best place to go high because she makes awesome food! :rofl:

[phusion]

55. My thoughts exactly!

:rofl:

Welcome to DU :hi:

[RagingInMiami]

72. Well if Grandma would bake cookies like she used to do

Then the stoner probably wouldn't miss the date cause he will have the munchies and will look forward to it.

[SteppingRazor]

8. As an unrepentent dope fiend, I take serious offense...

I'm perfectly sane, dammit! :crazy:

[ChairmanAgnostic]

35. yeah, this topic drives me crazy.

Nuts, I say! Just like that general in the battle of the bulge.
(one of which I am currently battling)

[flyingfysh]

9. Yes it can. Here's proof

George Bush

[Misunderestimator]

31. No, that's cocaine.

[Marnieworld]

11. Your tax dollars at work America

Can I get pregnant from toilet seats too? :eyes:

[jmowreader]

58. Well, yeah, but I can think of better places to get laid

"I got it off a toilet seat, doc."

'Well, that's one hell of a place to take a lady!'

--USS VD: Ship of Shame

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

12. Yes. Yes, it can.

:evilgrin:

[Zhade]

56. Nope. That was the coke.

Too bad he didn't stick with weed, he'd probably have turned out to be decent.

Coke killed off his empathy, assuming he ever had any.

[meganmonkey]

14. Nancy Reagan is what almost drove me to insanity

I was much crazier before I started regularly smoking the good herb.

Nancy Reagan convinced me that marijuana was so evil that when I was about 12 years old and I came across some in my dad's underwear drawer I thought I was supposed to call the cops. I was seriously about to dial 911 when my older sister - who was totally straight-laced - told me it was no big deal and lots of people do it.

Of course, when I was about 16, I went back to said underwear drawer to see if there was any weed to pinch ;)

[walldude]

17. What were you doing in your dads underwear drawer?

I have 3 kids.. should I find a new hiding place? :evilgrin:

[meganmonkey]

19. LOL

I knew someone would ask that - I almost explained in my first post.

I went through a phase where I wore men's v-neck undershirts almost everyday. I was missing some of them and thought maybe they got put in his drawer.

And yes, you should find a new hiding place! ;)

[DoYouEverWonder]

23. Definitely

That is the best place to look for the secret stuff.

[butterfly77]

49. lol

Ha Ha Ha...

[knowbody0]

16. smoking pot renders the smoker

very difficult to program, (catapulted propaganda rejected immediately) that's all.

[MadisonProgressive]

18. I just had a scary thought

What if all DU'ers are pot smokers and we are insane and the Freepers are sane?

[hootinholler]

86. You mean we could be

Like an atom in the handle of a giant shovel?

FAR OUT!

:rofl:

-Hoot

[Bob3]

21. It must be true I keep imagining we are in an unnecessary war

and that an addle brained idiot who can't button his own shirt or speak a single complete sentence is the president. On top of that I'm hallucinating that all our allies have left us, that incompetent political hacks run important government agencies, that the man behind the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor is still at large and there are voices voices voices coming out of the radio and tv telling me that not only is this okay but that this is good. I must be mad to keep thinking this right?

What do you mean it's really happening? I'd rather it be the result of that time I tired dope. Really - it would be far worse if it was real.

[mtnester]

22. I would say cocaine causes it rather than the blunts

because look at everything Bush has done.

What the White House wants you to see:



What is reality:



And just what nutjob put the people of Iraq and us into this? Pot smokers or cocaine snorters?

[Name removed]

24. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Rowdyboy]

25. I understand that Bush has cut funding against methamphetamines and

increased funding against marijuana. This is so far past stupid as to approach insanity. There really is a drug problem in this country but marijuana is not the problem.

[fujiyama]

68. Hmmm....

Repukes like to deny the real problem. Could it be that's because meth is a problem largely in rural areas in red states? Bush doesn't want to piss off his base now does he?

That's consistant on every issue. This administration denies reality on every issue, whether Iraq, Katrina, the budget defecit, Global Warming, and just about everything else. These RWers despise science (except in the manufacturing and creation of weapons).

[edbermac]

26. I only get insane when smoking weed and playing the piano...

Faster....FASTER!.....PLAY FASTER!!!!

[H2O Man]

27. Without seeing the commercial,

and as a person who thinks pot should be absolutely and totally legal for adults, I would think that it is still fair to say that use of pot has a correlation with experiencing the symptoms of the schizophrenic and bipolar disorders. This does not imply smoking pot causes mental illness. But it does mean that there are groups of people who should not smoke pot. Because the major mental illnesses noted tend to show up in the teen years, use of marijuana is often associated with the symptoms of psychosis that lead to hospitalization.

There are a number of illnesses (diabetes, for but one example), that tend to require those who have it to limit or exclude their intake of certain substances. I think it is fair to say that marijuana, while generally safe, can have consequences for certain groups of people.

[comsymp]

30. Re: "I think it is fair to say that..."

I have no doubt that your diabetes analogy is absolutely right. Some people definitely don't need to smoke.

I, however, believe that for others, smoking dope can keep you from going insane.

[H2O Man]

62. I think that

there is no question that pot has medical value. I think that it is also used by thousands of people to relax, to create, to laugh, and to enjoy music (note: The Beatles, aka White Albums, make far more sense when listened to after consuming marijuana). The government has no right to say that people can't smoke/eat it. In fact, even if it's "bad" for you (cigarettes), government should butt out of whatever people do in the privacy of their own homes/back yards/etc.

[CanSocDem]

28. I think it was in the 60's....

...that this notion was last popular. I remember a cartoon of the time showing two cops 'walking the beat'.....one says to the other, "I smoked pot once...made me want to rape and kill".

My apologies to the author for forgetting his/her name. It was a classic.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

32. The Reich Wing always confuses Causation with Correlation when needed.

People with mental illness are more likely to self-medicate than people without. I bet you could run the same study with alcohol and get a higher correlation.

[Wizard777]

53. It's because they are Jewish. No wait! It's because they are black.

Drug Addiction is the new Fronteer in Republican race relations. They have created a class of people that it's okay for blacks and whites to come together to target for abuse. Deny them employment, infringe their rights, take their property, and sumarily kill them. Drug addicts are the new niggers of the new world order. They are the fourth world. People that can't be trusted with their own brains. You tell them that there are WMD's in Iraq and no matter how much you don't show them the WMD's. They still can't see them. They won't except the rational that a phoney excuse for mass murder is the best excuse of all. The puritan republicans have found new savages to enslave in the name of civilzation.

Yeah Yeah I know using drugs is a choice. Like being Jewish or a Democrat. Do you think we ought to start fighting for their Freedom now? Maybe wait until democracy is the new disease of the mind. Like Judeaism was a disease upon the minds of the German youth. Welcome to America! Your free to think what ever the government tells you to.

[Blue_In_AK]

33. Still crazy after all these years. :-) n/t

[MrSlayer]

34. Bark! You rectangle driven hippopotamus, I certainly feel orange.

The tulips have sensed the climate of wolves getting near! Repent!

[Twist_U_Up]

36. My theory

Marijuana creates a separate brain when you are stoned. (kinda like creating a new folder on your computer) Early in a stoners smoking stature (life) the brain is infant like; simple things and ideas appear to be difficult and the stoned person has impared movement and gets paranoid easily etc.

The more the person gets stoned the more advanced the stoner brain becomes. It grows like a child does, and becomes more experienced until a point when it matures and skills are enhanced past the level of a normal stone free mind.

My theory of marijuana brain enhancement along with long term research concludes that smoking marijuana can make you smarter and better at almost everything than not smoking marijuana.

So in conclusion I recommend getting stoned often because practice makes perfect.

[Gnostic]

37. And alcohol does'nt?

Why do these same bozos who keep coming out with these psuedo-science reports on how bad the evil weed is not do a similar study on alcohol? We all know alcohol is FAR worse on the body, as well as highly more addictive and destructive to the senses, so why not a report on that? Is it because the alcohol lobby would'nt be pleased? How about a report on all the prescription garbage medications the pharmaceuticals want to push down our throats at great expense? You know the ones, those meds that keep finding their way into courtrooms with lawsuits and plaintiffs who got seriously damaged by them. The pharmacueticals do NOT want weed legalized because they would'nt be able to push their over-priced crap down our throats anymore making billions in the process....why, we could all just GROW our own! Can't have THAT, now can we? Especially after Georgy's awesome attempts to protect the pharmacuetical's profits by banning importations! That's our Georgy!

Oh, and let's not forget all the cops, lawyers, judges, jails and prisons who would all of a sudden be looking for funds and REAL jobs once the criminalization of marijuana gravy train expires! Oh my! Just think of all those fine DEA agents and cops who would have to find an actual JOB. Yikes!

[slackmaster]

38. The Moon is trying to kill us!

:wtf:

[txaslftist]

39. Dude.... .... ... ... what?

[Pepperbelly]

40. That's right! I'm CA-RAZY about that stuff. nt

[spacelady]

41. Call me Crazy, but

Sincerely,

Crazybutt

[Berserker]

48. Yes and

you grow man tit's Remember that?

[triguy46]

42. It drove me to a nightmare life....

solidly lodged in the middle class, a horror of horrors. I didn't think it could happen to me! Now, I'm hooked on air conditioning, eating out, getting the kids through college. If only I hadn't used the killer weed.

[CabalPowered]

52. LOL!

Thanks for the laugh.

[Zhade]

57. NICE!

NT!

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

44. in the '70's they said it would cause males to grow breasts

[jmowreader]

59. Well, there is a causative effect

Many morbidly obese men have large breasts.

Cannabis use causes the munchies.

Repeated attacks of the munchies can cause you to become morbidly obese.

If you become morbidly obese you may develop large breasts.

Therefore! Smoking marijuana can cause males to grow breasts.

Which PROVES beyond a shadow of a doubt that the government was absolutely correct. The fact that they had to go around their ass to get there is immaterial.

[Wizard777]

60. Ahhh the old THC Titties. What they did in the courts was worse.

I had a friend that was a thief. He didn't use drugs. He got high on the adrenalin rush of stealing. He got caught. He went into court and blamed the theft on his pot smoking to get a lighter sentence. So much of the criminal correlation is manufactured. If you raise their drug crime numbers they reward you by reducing your sentence numbers. This is nothing more than purchased data that will say exactly what you want it too.

[Jawja]

45. Well I must be

crazy as hell, then. :crazy:


Hi, ya, Cat!! :smoke:

[Thtwudbeme]

46. Just look to the Lounge......

nt

;)

[guinivere]

47. Woof! Bark! Brownies, anyone?

:smoke: :silly:

[Ksec]

50. I wasnt insane but I did get paranoid

Back when I was a toker/ Thats why I quit.

[Wizard777]

70. You weren't paranoid. The cops really were out to get you.

Now if it were complettely legal and you still snuck around afraid the cops would get you. THEN you would be paranoid. Anything else is just legal self defense.

[K-W]

80. Paranoia comes with all illegal/stigmatized activities.

Although it certainly doesnt help to be high when you are paranoid.

[warrens]

51. Junk science

Everything Repukes say is scientifically wrong. What to do? Throw out the science and pay some shill to get you the findings you want.

[Zhade]

54. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

I really hope there's no one here stupid enough to believe that shit.

[Gnostic]

61. There are

maybe not here on this site, but there are PLENTY of others in this country who do actually believe and swallow every bit of that propagandistic war on drugz crap. Hook, line and sinker. The same types that tend to vote people like Georgy boy into office. The same types that probably own the company you work for, and the land your apartment building sits on and the factory that made your car and the media that tries to control your thought....and of course your local keystone kops and kourts.

[Zhade]

65. Well, Rupert Murdoch now owns the company I work for, so, yeah.

NT!

[sniffa]

63. 97% of ALL crimes are marijuna reLated

[shadowknows69]

64. 97 percent of mine are

B-)

[dethl]

66. Uhh, maybe if its laced...

With a much harsher drug, like coke or pcp.

EDIT: Grammar

[expatriate]

67. Dunno about marijuana, but

if they spent some time working in a nursing home that has a lot of people suffering from alcoholic dementia, a severe, permanent mental illness caused by chronic alcohol abuse, they might think twice about that legal drug.

I've seen a lot of cases of dementia caused by chronic abuse of drugs, prescription and illegal - but harder stuff than marijuana. Haven't ever heard of a case of someone with dementia caused by marijuana use alone.

[killbotfactory]

69. Carl Sagan was clearly insane

What with the whole evolution thing. NUTSO!

[H2O Man]

71. Sagan's habit

of dressing up like Walt Disney and torturing small animals to the beat of African guitars has indeed been connected to marijuana flashbacks. It was an almost Dr. Jenkie/ Mr. Hide the bottle reaction to the LSD dust sprinkled on the first "joint" he snorted. He murdered Art Lumpletter's daughter on that day.

[NorthernSpy]

73. even mild sleep deprivation is known to trigger hallucinations...

... in susceptible people.

How come there's no War on Sleep Deprivation?

Besides, people who develop psychotic disorders often try various things to improve their mental functioning as their premorbid condition slips toward outright sickness. They try drink, pot, drugs, talking to friends, crisis hotlines, little rituals, organized religion: anything you can imagine. If the drugs you took to soothe your growing fears caused your illness, then maybe lighting candles in church to help save your darkening inner world also caused your illness. I mean, we all know that correlation IS causation, after all...

:eyes:

[hootinholler]

87. As a person with a sleep disorder...

That's a war I could get into.

-Hoot

[pepperlove]

74. An abvious statement

considering the reefer resident.

[LeftHander]

75. And Prozac, Zoloft are good for you...

take your legal, expensiv, well marketed happy pills....

[htuttle]

76. "I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs, or insanity for everyone,..."

"... but they've always worked for me." - HST

[SteppingRazor]

79. That's "drugs, alcohol, violence and insanity..."

not "sex, drugs, and insanity..."

If there's one thing I know, it's my avatar :evilgrin:

[HughBeaumont]

78. Right, but smoking cigarettes is basically OK.

Not that I support smoking ANYthing, but the fact that marijuana is STILL illegal, while tobacco usage continues to be responsible for a yearly body count that matches the population of Toledo, is farging idiotic.

[K-W]

81. Especially given the supposed criteria of the drug schedules

Supposedly drugs are guaged on medicinal value, addiction, and harmfulness.

THC: Barely addictive (no more so than fatty foods), of tremendous proven medical value, extremely safe.

Nicotine: One of the more addicitive substances known to man, of no real medical value, carcinogenic and extremely toxic.

[HughBeaumont]

82. Not ONLY of tremendous MEDICAL value . . .

but industrial value, environmental value, etc . . . sadly, even weed that has so low a THC content that you can't get HIGH off of it is illegal too, and that's simply silly. That's a whole potential economic sector they're saying NO to. It must be pretty bad to SOMEone up on high (no pun intended) if they're turning down an exploitative avenue for profit.

Here's where the catch is, though (because really, do government subsidized industries give a shit about their human cost?):

THC = Barely addictive (about a 21% propensity, down near caffeine) = not nearly the potential for return business as -

Nicotine = addictive propensity near crank and meth = starting young by marketing to kids (preying on their developing glandular systems and replacing vital endorphins) = HUGH potential for lifelong return business = more cancer business for Big Med/Big Pharm.

[Touchdown]

83. I know it leads to laziness, poor erections, mess making...

and half-assed clean up attempts, an incessant need to believe that long, scraggly, tangled, unkept hair is "anti-establishment"...even in 2003, the need to watch very crappy movies like Half Baked on my $3000 TV instead of Forrest Gump, which he says is pro-establishment propaganda, and a tendency to drink MY LAST GUINESS ON St. Patric's Day. Just ask my ex-boyfriend.x(

[Book Lover]

84. Yeah, look at all those insane Rastafarians (nm)

[leftofthedial]

85. and it will make yout genitals shrivel up and fall off

and it will cause you to become a cannibal

and you'll forget your mother's name!

and your house will fall down.

And all your friends will hate you.