Paranoia, leftism, and "legalized" marijuana

[scjbash]

I take surveys about marijuana usage with a pretty big grain of salt.

A few years back, the phone rang, and the voice on the other end said: "Hi, I'm calling you from <spoketofastformetocatchthenameoftheorganziation > and we're conducting a survey about firearms safety."

I nearly broke the phone hanging up so fast. I've got zero interest in talking to a random stranger about whether I own guns, how many, or how I store them.

Note that owning guns (for the moment) is unambiguously legal. If I smoked weed, and some random stranger wanted to take as "survey" about my habits, my response would be pretty much the same.

It's also been proven that calling at certain times of the week can change the outcome of phone surveys. If this survey was done Monday - Friday, 9am - 5pm, a larger portion of the productive users may be at work. That's going to skew the results because of who is available to take the survey. Throw in the fact that people lie and you end up with what's a pretty useless survey IMO.

[ssb]

Not being the forum pothead, I may be completely misinformed here, but I was under the impression that a fairly sizable amount of consumption has shifted to means other than smoking (ie, vapors, edibles, etc), particularly in the states that have attracted weed tourism since hotels don't want them smoking in their rooms. Are their any educated guesses out there for how the methods of consumption break down percentage wise?

I don't know anything about hard numbers.

We brought some of our counterparts in from Colorado to speak about their experiences with marijuana-impaired drivers, and the picture they painted wasn't pretty. The dosing control -- or rather, the lack thereof -- with some of the alternative delivery setups causes a lot of issues, particularly with marijuana tourists and those who otherwise don't use it frequently ("hey, this isn't working... let's eat more"). You're also seeing problems with the THC race, more specifically chasing higher THC content in some of these products while leaving out the CBD or otherwise having it at lower levels (CBD is an antipsychotic and THC can act as a psychotic).

The impression that I got is that the edibles, infused drinks, and vapes are advertised towards non-smokers. I also saw it advertised in a pseudo-medical fashion to persons who would otherwise probably wouldn't be using it and by persons who almost certainly aren't qualified to give that advice. My recollection is that the video we saw of a weed shop had the majority of its sales floor devoted to non-"flower" products, but that's a sample of one and -- of course -- gub'mit propaganda.

The recreational states continue to be a test-bed for this stuff. My hope is that we get some sort of best practices out of their experiment before it ends up happening here (I think it's just a matter of time), because the impression I got from Colorado prosecutors is that it's a bit of a clusterfuck at present -- lots of unanswered questions as to how we address certain issues.

[Totem Polar]

Never owned a one. Go figure.

I just pulled that particular maker out of my hat... that said--and despite my tongue-in-cheek ribbing--it's never too late. You're still plenty young enough to grab a few on the used market.

Hmmm, no it’s not. Here is a great article explaining why you need about 1,000 people to conduct these types of polls.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...l-of-only-100/

Again, if you don’t like it feel free to go to the CDC website a look at all the published data on pot usage in the US. You’ll see essentially identical numbers.

Mildly tangential, but one only has to look back as far as the last presidential election to realize that the premise of that article is sometime wishful thinking, disguised as statistics. *All* those polls of 1k people were wrong; the young turk's online viewer poll of 34k respondents was much more predictive of the current POTUS, and they largely stood alone in the face of all the "respected polling organizations."

The difference between opinion poll theory and opinion reality is that in theory...

JMO.

[Baldanders]

Actually, I agree with you on the bolded part. However, an enormous buzz corresponds to THC plasma concentrations of 11ng/dL which is roughly the what at average adult will get smoking one 10mg cannabis joint back in the 1990s. That plasma concentration from 1 joint resulted in a performance deterioration roughly equivalent to being at the legal limit of 0.08% alcohol (Figure 1).

http://casr.adelaide.edu.au/T95/paper/s16p3.html

If we are talking today’s genetically engineered pot that is 2-3X as potent (3.3 vs. 8.8%) as the 90s era stuff, then we are talking about BAC equivalents much HIGHER than 2-3X the legal limit since the performance degradation curve was steeper for THC at higher doses.

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...ma-was-high-s/

So yes, people who smoke pot want an enormous buzz which is the functional equivalent of being between too tipsy to drive and shitfaced drunk in terms of BAC equivalents. That means we need to compare regular pot users, not to guys like me that have 1-2 drinks per day (BAC 0.02-0.05%), but instead to people who routinely get their BAC between 1-3X the legal limit (0.08-0.24%) - we call them alcoholics. From a prevelance perspective, those numbers roughly equate since about 8% of adults have an alcohol use disorder and 14% routinely use pot and there is some comorbid overlap.

Where we really part ways is in this narrative that pot has become some alternative to alcohol for people who want to take the edge off a little. First, a joint does a lot more than take an edge off as previously described. Second, this fallacy that pot is an alcohol alternative for “a lot of people” is pure crap. Only 14% of Americans smoke pot on a regular basis which is even smaller than the number of Americans who think that Bernie Sanders would make a great POTUS. In addition, the evidence is not that these 14% of Americans are using pot as an alcohol alternative. Where are you getting that notion? Quite the contrary, regular users of pot are MORE likely to abuse alcohol (and possibly other drugs) than people who only drink in moderation.

Weinberger AH, Platt J, Goodwin RD. Is cannabis use associated with an increased risk of onset and persistence of alcohol use disorders? A three-year prospective study among adults in the United States. Drug Alcohol Depend. February 2016. doi:10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2016.01.014

You think most alcohol is consumed to "take the edge off?" When I have been in jobs where I sold booze, it certainly gave me the impression that most alcohol is consumed to get quite fucked up by people who do so every night. (Not the same thing as saying everyone who drinks does it to massive excess)

A big difference between THC and alcohol is that regular THC use causes massive downregulation of cannibinoid receptor sites, creating an enormous tolerance to its effects quite quickly for chronic users. Tolerance to alcohol is much more limited, especially to its effects on motor co-ordination. A dose of THC that would leave most P-F members with their dick in the dirt may be a dose a daily smoker can barely feel.

Again, my perception of pot use is that it looks really different depending on the socio-economic class you look at. If you come off as hardcore anti-pot kind of guy, you can be sure any sucessful pothead is doing his or her best to stay the hell off your radar screen.

I don't promote cannibis use, but my experiences have made it hard to see it as very different from alcohol, with the major difference between the two for me is that chronic drunks seem way quicker to resort to violence or loud, abusive behavior when they are pissed off than potheads. Sure, plenty of people do both. I didn't mean to imply that pot is reducing alcohol abuse in a big way.

[Baldanders]

On a related note, walked into the boy's bathroom at school last week to the pungent smell of herb with a burning doobie visable and two white dipshits staring blankly at me, mouths agape...

Yippee, I got my first "bust."

Morons. Most students have figured out the faculty bathroom is often occupied and my kidney-stone prone self drinks 2-3 liters of water a day, meaning I'm in the student john a lot during class changes.

[Sensei]

Mildly tangential, but one only has to look back as far as the last presidential election to realize that the premise of that article is sometime wishful thinking, disguised as statistics. *All* those polls of 1k people were wrong; the young turk's online viewer poll of 34k respondents was much more predictive of the current POTUS, and they largely stood alone in the face of all the "respected polling organizations."

The difference between opinion poll theory and opinion reality is that in theory...

JMO.

I’m always curious as to why people think the polling was wrong in the last presidential election. The aggregate polling data predicted a 3.3% margin for Hillary in the final week of the election; her real margin was 2.1% - well within the margin of error.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ep...tein-5952.html

Even the individual polls were within the margin of error with the exception of Monmouth. In other words, 90% of those polls that you didn’t like accurately predicted what they were designed to measure - national opinion. The problem was that the Electoral College, not national opinion, determines the POTUS. Those polls were never designed to pick-up small, regional variances in places like PA and WI that are statistically insignificant in the poll but massively significant to an outcome determined by an Electoral College instead of national opinion.

This surprise could have been avoided had people focused more on the polls coming out of the swing states instead of national opinion polling. Bill Clinton apparently saw some disturbing trends coming out of PA and WI in the final 3 weeks and begged Hillary to divert resources to the areas. Instead, she closed her campaign offices thinking that those small, 1,000 person polls were inaccurate...

Don’t blame the tool for the outcome when you chose a hammer to do a wrench’s job.

[Sensei]

You think most alcohol is consumed to "take the edge off?" When I have been in jobs where I sold booze, it certainly gave me the impression that most alcohol is consumed to get quite fucked up by people who do so every night. (Not the same thing as saying everyone who drinks does it to massive excess)

A big difference between THC and alcohol is that regular THC use causes massive downregulation of cannibinoid receptor sites, creating an enormous tolerance to its effects quite quickly for chronic users. Tolerance to alcohol is much more limited, especially to its effects on motor co-ordination. A dose of THC that would leave most P-F members with their dick in the dirt may be a dose a daily smoker can barely feel.

Again, my perception of pot use is that it looks really different depending on the socio-economic class you look at. If you come off as hardcore anti-pot kind of guy, you can be sure any sucessful pothead is doing his or her best to stay the hell off your radar screen.

I don't promote cannibis use, but my experiences have made it hard to see it as very different from alcohol, with the major difference between the two for me is that chronic drunks seem way quicker to resort to violence or loud, abusive behavior when they are pissed off than potheads. Sure, plenty of people do both. I didn't mean to imply that pot is reducing alcohol abuse in a big way.

Great, thanks for sharing that. I’ll keep that pearl in my back pocket. Cheers.

[Baldanders]

I’m always curious as to why people think the polling was wrong in the last presidential election. The aggregate polling data predicted a 3.3% margin for Hillary in the final week of the election; her real margin was 2.1% - well within the margin of error.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ep...tein-5952.html

Even the individual polls were within the margin of error with the exception of Monmouth. In other words, 90% of those polls that you didn’t like accurately predicted what they were designed to measure - national opinion. The problem was that the Electoral College, not national opinion, determines the POTUS. Those polls were never designed to pick-up small, regional variances in places like PA and WI that are statistically insignificant in the poll but massively significant to an outcome determined by an Electoral College instead of national opinion.

This surprise could have been avoided had people focused more on the polls coming out of the swing states instead of national opinion polling. Bill Clinton apparently saw some disturbing trends coming out of PA and WI in the final 3 weeks and begged Hillary to divert resources to the areas. Instead, she closed her campaign offices thinking that those small, 1,000 person polls were inaccurate...

Don’t blame the tool for the outcome when you chose a hammer to do a wrench’s job.

The last election showed most Americans don't understand statistics worth a damn. Trump was showing about a 30-33% chance of winning in most polls, IIRC. Giving him the same chance of winning as a Russian Roulette player has of loosing with two full chambers in a six shooter. Would anyone but a suicidal fool take those odds?

Not a veiled commentary on the Orange Overlord, I promise.

[jetfire]

Re: legal weed and alcohol. The major spirits brands have all seen off-premise sales decreases in every state that has legalized weed.

[Sensei]

Re: legal weed and alcohol. The major spirits brands have all seen off-premise sales decreases in every state that has legalized weed.

It’s hard to tell. There have been 39 studies - 16 support substitution, 10 support complementarity, 12 support neither, and 1 supports both.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/27249324/

We will probably know a lot more when more states come on line with legalized marijuana and behavior reaches a steady state. Very interesting though, thanks.