Drugs

[flexibeast]

Apparently "landmark" studies don't need to be of particularly high quality nowadays - at least when it comes to confirming 'official' societal 'standards':

Researcher George Patton, who conducted the study for Melbourne University's Centre for Adolescent Heath, said that while both alcohol and cannabis carried health risks, the overwhelming evidence was that cannabis was "the drug for life's future losers".

"It's the young people who were using cannabis in their teens who were doing really badly in terms of their mental health," Professor Patton said.

"They were also less likely to be working or be qualified or in a relationship and more likely to be using other substances such as ecstasy, amphetamines, cocaine and even tobacco.

"Effectively, for a substantial number of high-risk users in our sample, cannabis was the drug that was preferred as teenagers."

[ "Teen dope users 'life's future losers'" ]

So how did they define "high risk users?

using cannabis every day or in the case of alcohol, exceeding 43 standard drinks per week for boys or 28 for girls — more than the guidelines for very risky drinking by adults.

Er, what? So having one toke of a joint each day is enough to qualify you as a 'high-risk' user of marijuana, but to qualify you as a 'high-risk' male user of alcohol, you need to have 6 standard drinks per day?? And what possible justification could there be for that figure to be higher than the figure for "very risky drinking by adults"? Colour me naïve, but i was under the impression that teenage brains are more vulnerable to drug-related damage than adult brains, due to the fact that the former are still developing?

Am i missing something, or is this 'study' severely flawed?

Edited to add: i can't help but mention the following data point: in Victoria in 2000/01, there were ~17,000 alcohol-related hospital admissions, but only ~250 marijuana-related hospital admissions (sources: The Victorian Alcohol Statistics Handbook, Volume 4, p. 16; and NDARC Technical Report no. 256, p. 48). Now it's true that these figures must be adjusted for comparative rates of usage; the 2004 National Drug Strategy Household Survey, p.3, suggests to me that, Australia-wide, alcohol is used by ~8 times more people than pot. Multiplying the pot-related admissions by 8 gives us an estimated ~2000 marijuana-related admissions if as many people were using pot as are currently using alcohol - a figure an order of magnitude less than the figure for alcohol-related admissions. Yet that 2004 survey found that many more people first mentioned "marijuana" as being a problem drug than first mentioned "alcohol" as being a problem drug. i suppose it doesn't help that people only rarely think of alcohol as a drug . . . .
 

Comments

[sacred-harlot.livejournal.com]

And as we know from very personal experience, addiction to alcohol can be just as destructive to oneself and ones family, as any addiction vehicle!

I would have a lot more respect for these so-called findings if they came out and said that one drug is much like the next in the hands of a person who needs addiction to escape from emotions, fears, worries, relationships etc. As a society I feel that we are paying attention to the wrong subject here, instead of demonising one substance over another, we need to be looking at the root of the problem. Of course drugs of addiction have differing immediate effects on one, such as violent behaviour; or feeling really chilled out man! But once a person has reached the level of addiction, the end result is the same, that of destruction, and self harm, and harm of others. So instead of defending one substance over another how about we take a really good look at the mechanics of addiction and tackle it that way? Rhetorical question really, as I know that the difference between the drugs of choice such as alcohol and marijuana is that the Govt can tax alcohol and therefore gain an income from the misery of addiction - well here's an idea, why not legalise and then tax marijuana, or is that just a tad too simple?

Thanks for bringing this to our attention Sweetie!

Much Love,
Sacred Harlot.

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

Excellent points!

People can, it seems, be addicted to almost anything. Some people are addicted to conspicuous consumption, which distorts societal values and damages the environment; but since it's regarded as necessary to sustain our economic system, it's not criticised. :-/

Then, too, demonising certain substances, and user of those substance, creates a 'deviant' class which can be utilised to create and/or sustain moral panics. :-/

Which is, i guess, part of the reason why governments are loathe to legalise and tax marijuana - it would involve admitting their policies were wrong, and that they had in fact been spreading misinformation. Which i suspect that many people - including teenagers! - realise when they witness campaigns suggesting that smoking pot will inevitably wreck one's life, but then have a few smokes themselves and find that their life has not suddenly gone down the gurgler. :-P

[penguinpusher.livejournal.com]

At least the UK seems to be getting a touch more sensible with pot, did you spot that stuff on reddit a while back about reclassifying drugs based on how easy it is to kill yourself with them? Pot is the SAFEST, and on this scale alcohol was marginally safer than heroin. Will try hunting it up if you didn't see it.

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

Yes, i saw that, and have come across other similar rankings . . . . not to mention this great article (http://www.onmarijuana.com/2007/03/24/marijuana-is-safer-than-aspirin/) about the safety of marijuana vs. aspirin (on the blog that alerted me to the article in The Age to which this post refers).

[haw-thorn.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that the prevailing attitude among legislators and their advisors (including many church bodies) is that some substances (ie the illegal ones) are inherently EVIL, regardless of their actual effects. Because these substances are EVIL there is NO point practicing any type of harm minimisation, this risk of exposure to EVIL is apparently so much worse than the effects of the substance that it is better for the individual and society to suffer all the effects of prohibition rather than to condone the use of these inherently EVIL substances. It all makes perfect sense once you enter the appropriate head space!

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

*chuckle* i suspect you're right. Personally, i tend to see more EVIL in someone else thinking they have the right to tell me what i can and can't put inside of me . . . .

And Happy Birthday! :-D

[winterkoninkje.livejournal.com]

As if you needed another confounding factor: Given the fact that pot's illegal, that creates a strong self-selection for who is willing to try it vs more legal drugs. More harm is probably caused by the fact that pot is illegal than by the pot itself.

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

*nod* Indeed. Especially when one considers the massive amount of criminalisation and incarceration of people for having and/or using small amounts of grass . . . .

[winterkoninkje.livejournal.com]

Certainly (with all the abuses that entails). Though I was referring more to things like cartels, organized crime, gang violence, etc. So long as drugs are contraband, they'll be valuable and illicit, and hence they'll give rise to all manner of criminal nature —not because of anything the drugs do, they're just a commodity, but because of what people are willing to do to make a buck off the folks who want them. For some drugs (meth, heroin,...), the drug itself will cause crimes like property theft and damage or assault; but pot, not so much.