[DanBC]

The correlation between drug use and schizophrenia is very clear.

There's considerable debate about the causality.

Does psychosis cause people to smoke more cannabis? (It causes people to smoke more cigarettes).

Does cannabis cause people who would not have had psychosis otherwise to get it?

Or does cannabis just bring out an underlying psychosis that the person probably would have experienced anyway?

It's probably a bit complicated, with circular stuff going on.

While I'm strongly in favour of legalisation of all drugs I am a bit worried when some of the legalise crowd refuse to accept that there might be health risks. (I'm also frustrated when the anti crowd refuse to accept that the situation is probably a bit more complicated than "drugs make you mad")

[kolinko]

Speaking of smoking cigarettes - there is an excellent paper outlining all the neuropsychiatric diseases where smoking may be actually a method of a self-medication.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f961/639e2a998d275f3e8f8f4c...

[_98fj]

> Or does cannabis just bring out an underlying psychosis that the person probably would have experienced anyway?

Leaving generic psychosis aside, when talking about schizophrenia this is a weird argument. Schizophrenia tends to worsen with every episode. It's of paramount importance to prevent any of them.

Having the first episode triggered by smoking cannabis with age 17 is worse than having the first episode brought on by a different cause with 25.

[Edit: I just realized I assumed causality here, which I have no proof for. But I do think that schizophrenic episodes are triggered by stressful thought-pattern and drug-use is one situation where those can occur.]

[_98fj]

> I am a bit worried when some of the legalise crowd refuse to accept that there might be health risks.

Concerning cannabis I'm mostly worried about the motivational problems it brings along (It seems to massively impair dopamine production in the brain). We are already a society to lazy to prevent it's own demise due to climate change.

[kahnpro]

Or is it that people who have schizophrenia often belong to social classes that are more likely to use drugs?

If poor people are more likely to use drugs, and poor people also have a higher incidence of schizophrenia, you could arrive at this correlation even if marijuana and psychosis are entirely unrelated.

[mistersquid]

Marijuana use actually may be more strongly correlated to higher socioeconomic status than lower.

A quick Google search for "drug use by socioeconomic status" turns up a 2012 article titled "Socioeconomic Status and Substance Use Among Young Adults: A Comparison Across Constructs and Drugs" [0] which concludes, in part

  > Findings based on three indicators of family background
  > SES—income, wealth, and parental education—converged in
  > describing unique patterns for smoking and for alcohol and
  > marijuana use among young adults, although functional
  > relationships across SES measures varied. Young adults with
  > the highest family background SES were most prone to alcohol
  > and marijuana use.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3410945/

EDIT: Change lede.

[Broken_Hippo]

Poor folks aren't more likely to use drugs: It seems that drug abuse is actually pretty common through society, but with poor folks using the least - mostly because drugs cost money.

Poor people are more likely to get caught for using drugs, however, simply because of living spaces. You and a couple friends wanna get high? Low income, you might be in a car, on the corner, or in an alley. Higher income, you might be in your basement or pretty private backyard.

[forgetsusername]

>I am a bit worried when some of the legalise crowd refuse to accept that there might be health risks.

What do potential health risks and legalization have to do with one another?

[DanBC]

Some people say cannabis must be legalised because there are zero health risks, and if you suggest that there might be health risks they'll say you're opposed to legalisation and spreading state anti-drug propaganda.

[Malician]

Oh, yeah. Everything that does anything has a risk in the right context and dose for the right person. And marijuana can obviously have some pretty potent effects.