- Joined
- Aug 24, 2006
- Messages
- 2,152
stridge said:That study is pretty suspect - Even Fox (or Faux, as we to say) News reported this:
"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."
The red flags are pretty obvious - junk science has been a friend to the pot villanizers from the very beginning.
So, obviously, the drug companies have a pretty huge financial stake in keeping weed as demonized of a substance as possible. Their lobbying power is tremendous, and there really isn't much of a financial base for the common-sense/legalization crowd, so it's a tough battle.
Another thing to keep in mind about the study is that it completely ignores the fact that it has been proven that people who are prone to mental illness (inculding the forms of 'psychosis' in question) are more likely to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol than people who don't suffer from any mental disorders, which necessarily compromises any sample group they're going to be able to find. Frankly, the study says very little about the safety of smoking pot and leans heavily toward the propagandist side of things. Setting out to discover some link between psychotic episodes and smoking already carries a heavy whiff of bias at even the hypothetical stage.
The one good side to this study is that the reaction to it has been overwhelmingly indifferent or even better, dismissive. The attempt by PR gurus working fro drug companies to try and pump the story as some sort of definitive comment on the safety of pot fizzled badly and really just attracted a lot of criticism. For instance, some pointed out that the much-hyped "link" between smoking and psychosis only amounts to scientists claiming that in a nation of 60 million, they believe a whole 800 episodes of psychosis may be preventable. Wow, a true public health emergency.
Anyway, don't be too rattled by this, the popular trend is still moving towards legalization, it's just a slow process for such a massive shift in the popular public perspective.
I like your sense. How long do you think it will take before legalization, or at least federal decriminalization?