this is a false equivalency for two reasons: marijuana is not physically addictive, and THC doesn't have near the same capability to incapacitate people that heroin does.
As a lifetime medical patient, this is not entirely true. There are plenty of physical withdrawal effects. The primary one being headache and hypertension. Another one is lack of dreaming/REM sleep (as cannabis usage depletes your melatonin/serotonin levels, which effects your REM sleep.)
"THC doesn't have near the same capability to incapacitate people"
THC-Vivarin will hit you so hard I'd be surprised if you could remain standing despite the fact it only lasts for about 15 minutes.
"There are plenty of physical withdrawal effects. The primary one being headache and hypertension."
i don't know what you've been smoking, but as a daily "practically 24/7" smoker myself, i've never experienced any of these when i leave the country and go without cannabis for weeks (or months) at a time. for background: i smoke first thing when i wake up, and i pretty much take a hit from the bong every 30 mins as i work from home. my work and lifestyle allows for such frequent consumption. point i'm making is, i'm a very heavy smoker so i'm a reasonably good gauge for addictive potential.
every 6 months, i take a tolerance break by visiting family in another country. guess what happens when i go cold turkey during these visits? absolutely nothing. no shaking, no foaming at the mouth, no physical withdrawal whatsoever. do i get a little bit irritated if i think about how i can't get weed? sure. but if i choose not to think about it? i don't even notice anything different at all.
regarding the lack of dreaming, yes that may be true. however, as someone who also works out every day at the gym, i felt absolutely no difference in physical recovery nor mental recovery at all.
i think the point i'm making is: whatever "withdrawal" you're experiencing is entirely in your own head. you want to believe it's there, so it's there.
"i'm a very heavy smoker so i'm a reasonably good gauge for addictive potential"
Every human's body chemistry is different, so no, you are not a good gauge. To boot, I consume WAY MORE than you - I go through about 5-6 grams of concentrate a day. Get your leg replaced with titanium and plastic composites and see if your consumption doesn't jump up to really high levels due to chronic post-operative pain.
"every 6 months, i take a tolerance break by visiting family in another country."
Tolerance breaks simply aren't on the menu for me.
"i think the point i'm making is: whatever "withdrawal" you're experiencing is entirely in your own head"
Except I go to a doctor and they can physically measure everything, right down to my blood pressure, when I'm in withdrawal, and then watch everything change after I take a hit, so no, it's REAL.
Again, licensed MEDICAL patient. State card-carrying. I go to real doctors while you rely upon your own anecdotes.
THC-Varin (stupid autocorrect on my phone from prior post) (AKA THC-V)is a highly-psychoative, hard-hitting THC homologue that is highly stimulating with very short duration of effect. High levels of this are present in African and Asian sativa strains. If you've ever taken a hit of stuff that got you high immediately, chances are you just had a quick THC-V dose from the strain. It lasts about 15 minutes, then fades away, leaving the normal delta-9 THC to do its thing for the next few hours.
Most good studies on THC are on adults/ developed brains. I'm not sure it's established yet that marijuana wouldn't cause a "physical" addiction if used in adolescence.
It might be / hopefully is fine, but people shouldn't assume that just because cannabis is fairly harmless in adults it is also established to be safe for youth.
This. It is incredibly irresponsible to run the equivalent of clinical trials on your child. She pointed out a single medical study of cannabis for children that was a bust. Clinical trials are highly controlled and dosage is tiered for safety. Cowboy drug trials are dangerous and stupid. I don't care if it's cannabis, crack or aspirin. And she tested the cookies on herself to see if they were ok? Did she realize she was giving her child the equivalent of multiple times the dose?
I hope for her sake and her sons the long term effects on children are ok and that she isn't giving 10x the required therapeutic dose because she whipped it up in her kitchen.
>Just because it's natural and everyone's doing it doesn't mean it's safe: hemlock is natural, "everyone" used to smoke cigarettes
But nobody is actually arguing that it's safe because it's natural. You don't have to, the data is conclusive: it is nigh on impossible to die of marijuana usage no matter what your age is. There are few other substances in a home that that can be said of.
Whatever you think the long term side effects would be it would seem pretty damn hard for them to outweigh the unceasing agony of this child's existence without marijuana. And as has been said numerous times before, everything major has already been ruled out so long term effects are not going to be catastrophic on the level of regret when you consider how much this child's quality of life has been improved.
Marijuana is used by millions of people and is probably safer than aspirin. Granted if you're breathing weed smoke instead of air 24/7 you probably won't fare too well but that's not what's happening here: small amounts, carefully tested on adults, of a substance scientifically believed to be safe. (which cigarettes never were on this order)
How about the 7 years of benefit? How about a child with a chance to grow up, who didn't have one before?
This was a desperate act, by a desperate parent who had been abandoned by a medical industry that's happy to lose a generation of sick children because hey! process.
The problem is that this drug is used worldwide as excuse to put in jail a lot of people also. Health issues aren't the only issues here to adress. This boy has now a bullseye painted publicly on his back and will be targeted in a few years by several kind of predators.
On the other hand, this "just put them to sleep all day" is a particularly outrageous "solution" for autistic children, that often are very smart and sensitive people and deserve to be respected and loved, as any other children.
On the other hand, marijuana has been used to treat those symptoms. It may be your friend had some other problem that was being masked by the prolonged marijuana use.
Or one of the other many reasons why there can be correlation without causation.
I've been physically addicted to alcohol and opiates, and also a long term daily marijuana user (currently over a year of sobriety from all drugs). THC has no physical withdrawal symptoms.
And I've been drinking alcohol every weekend the last 15 years. Your alcoholism is a myth because otherwise I would need alcohol right now. It doesn't really work that way.
I was drinking at least a fifth (750ml) of 40% abv spirits every day, doing at least 250mg+ oxy or equivalent in heroin, or smoking a gram or more of weed a day. Alcohol and opiates are physically addictive with very real withdrawal symptoms. Falling asleep was somewhat difficult for a couple days when I ran out of weed. Marijuana is not physically addictive.
I love all these fallacious arguments by analogy. Just name the side effect of weed that you think is problematic, don't try to use some elaborate bait and switch to equivocate.
As a lifetime medical patient, this is not entirely true. There are plenty of physical withdrawal effects. The primary one being headache and hypertension. Another one is lack of dreaming/REM sleep (as cannabis usage depletes your melatonin/serotonin levels, which effects your REM sleep.)
"THC doesn't have near the same capability to incapacitate people"
THC-Vivarin will hit you so hard I'd be surprised if you could remain standing despite the fact it only lasts for about 15 minutes.