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Comment by ogre_codes | Hacker News Reader

Everyone I knew who used weed regularly in high school and college had ghosts. Either issues with depression, neglect, and lot of abuse.

Sometimes it's not the drug use that causes the problems, it's the problems that cause the drug use.

Not bashing folks who smoke weed here. I partake on occasion. But this study is bullshit.

“Overall, regular use of cannabis – more than weekly and especially daily use – was found to have harmful consequences, regardless of the age people began using it.”

Regular use of anything, particularly if it's mind altering, is likely to cause harmful long term effects. Particularly if it starts at young ages. That said, the study doesn't seem to even attempt to ask why these people were regularly smoking weed in their teens.

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> this study is bullshit

> Regular use of anything, particularly if it's mind altering, is likely to cause harmful long term effects

Your argument that the study is bullshit is frankly no better.

I think they pointed out that based on their experience, it's probably not even possible to separate correlation from causation cleanly and I think I agree. Even though I never smoked I spent a lot of time around people who did and I could have told you even at age 14 before they took their first puff that they were, on average, much more likely to exhibit some of the things the study listed as "findings" like "more likely not to have a job", etc.

This is more or less the nugget.

What makes a teenager year old seek out pot/ alcohol/ whatever.

If a study about long term drug use doesn't address why people started smoking/ doing drugs, then a critical piece of the puzzle is missing.

I think GP’s underlying point is that the study is observational and can only determine correlation not causation.

I think he's trying to say the stronger statement that not only does correlation != causation, but he also believes there are known confounding factors that weren't accounted for.

That's ok, it's not like I'm paid to do this.

If anyone wants to learn more about this, or is struggling with this themselves, I'd highly recommend looking up the talks of Dr Gabor Mate.

He is trained as a medical doctor, but has learnt a lot about the psychology of addiction from his own experiences and those of patients. He worked in a drug treatment center in Vancouver and one of the things he often says is that of all the hard drug users he has seen, those who are female were all sexually abused as children.

His viewpoint is that addiction itself is not a problem - contrary to what the media would like you to believe - it's merely the minds way of dealing with whatever other traumas have been going on in your life. (When he talks about addiction he is not just talking about drugs, but all forms, including why you check HN every 20 minutes :D)

Applying that to this article implies this is just correlation, those who start smoking weed at a young age do it to cope with other traumas in their life, but they never deal with the trauma so move on to other coping mechanisms.

We've experimentally reproduced a similar effect in mice [1].

Mice who "underwent cognitive training [and] received rewards while exploring a training arena" reduced "one measure of drug-seeking behavior" in comparison with those who "remained in their home cages." The researchers conclude, right in the abstract, that "deprivation may confer vulnerability to drug-seeking behavior and that brief interventions may promote long-term resilience."

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00283...

There's a famous series of studies from the 1970s about this. Basically, rats stuck alone in metal cages with access to unlimited morphine will consume a hell of a lot more drugs than those in "Rat Parks" with other rats and things to play with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

Although purely anecdotal, I strongly agree with that point of view. Alcohol, drugs, and other kind of addictive things, for a great part turn into addictions with negative impact on people's lives, when they are a coping mechanism.

I have yet to meet an alcoholic or drug addict that has an otherwise perfectly normal life. I don't mean "highly functioning alcoholic", I'm talking about your stereotype addict. So far all of them have had one thing in common: their life was not headed in a direction they desired, and they couldn't see (an easy enough) way to get moving in that direction. After that, any substance or excuse or anxiety was "just" a coping mechanism.

Not sure if this makes sense, just needed to say this I guess.

Almost any drug will have harmful effects over a long enough time scale.

For instance, pretty much all the OTC pain relievers are bad for your kidneys and/or liver.

The question is if the positives out weight the negatives.

Getting a CAT scan imparts a non-zero lifetime increased risk of cancer, but if it finds something that would have killed you in the next 6 months...

Likewise, I'm sure cannabis has some long term negative effects, but it provides relief from pain, anxiety, nausea...

> The question is if the positives out weight the negatives.

Same for alcohol.

Is there a more efficient stress reliever than alcohol? (No, exercise isn't always sustainable)

It depends on the person. Alcohol triples my anxiety, while it has the opposite effect on my roommate.

For me, the only non-medical stress reliever is reading light novels or even trash novels. For some weird reason, the shallow narrative style plus corny plots take my mind away from reality.

I grew up in a place where nearly everyone smoked weed. It was more associated with your ability to socialize than any kind of psychological issue.

This was an affluent suburb of a Canadian city.

This study followed "Australian high school students aged 15 in 1992." It was only last year that a single territory passed laws legalizing "possession and growth of small amounts of cannabis for personal use" [1].

There are a lot of confounding variables around this paper.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_Australia

Sounds like cigarette smoking in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and in some places even in the 80s.

“Don’t drink don’t smoke what do you do?”

Not cool if you don’t smoke pot.

What crap. I wish I had known that when I was younger.

I listened to hardcore music and danced very aggressively in the straight edge scene!

> This was a affluent suburb of a Canadian city.

Same, but in SoCal; it was easier to get high grade weed than it was to get beer, so most house parties were always well stocked with weed they seldom had alcohol unless they knew or were paying off certain places that sold them to minors in large quantities which carried lots of costs and risks, so a house party of 200+ guests would always be a challenge

Culturally weed was way more tolerated than alcohol as a result growing up, but still had a negative stigma as a 'losers drug of choice' despite its wide legal use, which is what made me gravitate toward hard alcohol as it had some exclusivity but also just better experience in a social setting than weed.

Flash forward a decade and I get involved in the hemp Industry and travel all over Europe and then return to the US (Colorado) where Hemp was starting to make inroads, and I realized a lot of the people in the Industry were former MJ (including my cofounder) and weren't 'lazy stoners with no ambition' as they were farmers as well as entrepreneurs, but they simply used a drug that I associated with decompression and relaxation in what I regarded a hyper competitive social setting like a conference or Industry party.

My point is that I think it varies culturally now that its been decriminalized and legalized in many parts of the World, and to be honest asking people if they want to smoke a bowl is just as common in some cities if they want a cup of coffee, and since I don't like caffeine and have a low THC tolerance I usually have to carry high CBD/CBN/CBG strains so as to no completely fall asleep due to the high THC strains most regular users smoke.

It's odd because in my teens and early 20s I felt that DARE indoctrination creep in and felt were were doing 'something bad' and we were going to get caught despite living and working in a legal state (CA or CO), but upon further analysis the truth is what I was putting into my body during a 2-3 Martini 'power lunch meeting' followed by a double espresso as a pick me up somewhere in between was way worse for me personally than if we had just took a drag from a joint outside before diving in and talking business and finalizing deals.

It's odd, and the stoner reputation is real in many cases, but I think a lot of it as in most sweeping generalizations, is conflated with a lot of misguided stereotypes.

I have been outpaced by 50+ year old couple with kids who drank and smoked weed on a regular basis as a a fit 20 something with no real responsibilities other than myself. Nothing I could do short of not sleeping made me as productive as that couple, even on an individual basis and I learned a lot about my own preconceived biases and confirmation biases. Most of it forced upon me by convention but also personal experiences that I'm glad to say I challenged and have become a better a person as a result.

A lot of science is dismissed here with a "sample size too small" complaint. That's usually invalid... power depends on sample size and effect size together.

But the problem with observational studies is real, especially here. Let's complain about that and also investigate childhood trauma and regular cannabis use.

That is exactly what Dr. Gabor Mate says in this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66cYcSak6nE

Everyone watches TV but only a few of them become addicted to TV. Everyone eats but only a few become addicted to eating, etc. What makes the difference between normal and compulsive use is an inherent susceptibility.

Mate says that usually that increased susceptibility comes from developmental issues / mental health issues / trauma, etc.

Everybody I know has fun using drugs.

A couple of alcoholics who have had to dry out the alcohol, and nicotine has gotten a lot of victims around here, but generally recreational drugs (particularly MDMA, Cannabis, and LSD) are a huge boon.

The biggest danger is the police, but they are reforming and relaxing.

People use drugs because they are good. They are not idiots

Are you trolling or serious?

Totally serious.

Drugs are fun. That is why people use them.

People have problems. When they have problems abnd use drugs they say they have drug problems. Maybe they do. But it is far more common for people to have no problems, just loads of fun.

Tripping on LSD with a thousand other people is magical experience.

Are you? Just take the comment at face value.

It's not unheard of for someone to have the opinion that the consequences of drug's legal status is more harmful than the drug itself.

I doubt being sentenced to 10 years in prison over selling weed is going to be less harmful than any negative effects observed in this study.

> less harmful than any negative effects observed in this study.

There are other effects, effects on the brain and on sleep quality, for instance, that are not mentioned in this study. Effects on the lungs and cardiovascular system.

None of that has anything to do with 10 years in jail to me. Life sentences for possession are stupid and Boomer.

Glib reply really does not do justice to the harm of the war on drugs.

I mentioned it elsewhere, but where is the panic over prescription drugs and their harmful side effects?

This is a non story. Marijuana is popular because it's potent. Compare it to other legal drugs, the obvious being alcohol, and again tell me about the relative harm.

I find it hard to believe that a study can conclusively establish these relatively subtle effects when it took many decades to causally connect tobacco smoking to cancer.

My favorite theory is that people who use drugs demonstrate: 1) much more openness and 2) much less conscientiousness (in the form of breaking the law, being rebellious, etc). than average.

Drug use itself may harm, esp harder drugs, but drug use almost certainly correlates with the kind of decision making that would lead to things like hard drinking, relationship problems, and work problems in moderately severe cases.

I know people that don't have those tough backgrounds. They've smoked a lot and now in their late 60s. Mostly successful people and maybe it's just old age but they have signs of significant cognitive decline. Is an anecdote not data but it scares the crap out of me.

The study may be bullshit but the findings may still be accurate. We’ll know in 20 years after a plethora of better studies are completed, the impetus of which is the legalization all over the USA.

Fully agree with you here. I remember it being drilled into my head in middle school science class that "correlation does not imply causation," which seems to have been forgotten or ignored when writing these headlines.

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