The Washington Post has an article up about the odd thing about cannabis use - it can be relaxing for some, but anxiety producing for others. And (I didn't really realise) its effects can vary even in the same experienced user:
The effects of weed can even vary with each experience and may be influenced by how anxious you are when you ingest the drug. A person could smoke or ingest the same amount of cannabis on two different occasions and have two completely different experiences, said Ryan Vandrey, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins Medicine.
“A lot of it could be the baggage you’re carrying into the situation,” Vandrey said. “It’s really hard to predict.”...
Sariyah, a 20-year-old who lives in Georgia, used to smoke cannabis every day when she got off from work. She said she felt like the weed helped her unwind. But then, a few months ago, cannabis started making her feel worse.
“Eventually, over time, it started making my heart race,” said Sariyah, who asked that her full name not be used because her family doesn’t know she uses cannabis.
Sariyah said weed often enhances her “deepest thoughts.” If she’s sad or anxious, she feels more so when she smokes. Sariyah said she has cut back and wants to find the dose of weed that reliably works to soothe her anxiety.
Now, she smokes about twice a week. “A majority of the time, I’m not anxious when I smoke, but sometimes it’s there,” Sariyah said. “Sometimes it just comes out of nowhere.”...
Decades of clinical research has found THC can negatively effect the developing brain, and regular cannabis use in the teen years is associated with a higher likelihood of developing anxiety and depression later in life.
“Smoking early can catalyze anxiety and depression,” Grisel said. “It’s not exactly clear how that happens but the evidence for it is very strong.”
The article sounds reasonably balanced to me, and doesn't even touch the area of increased risk of schizophrenia, at least for teenage users.
But go to the comments, and you get the typical pot-head "how dare you criticise our habit" contributions:
There is some pushback:
There is, I should note, another WAPO article up which is an outright cautionary one about the potential bad effects of marijuana use on teenagers and young adults:
Parents are not ready for the new reality of teen cannabis use
Wow, the comments on this one are going to be "good":
Again, some pushback:
And finally: I will repeat my (very reasonable) position on this:
* how any drug use and availability affects society and communities depends on a lot of factors, and you can't really prescribe universal rules very helpfully. For example - alcohol is cheap and abundant in Japan, and its overuse can be a real problem, but visit the place and no one would think it is making it unpleasant to live in, or causing widespread economic harm. In Russia, or Alice Springs, or a wide variety of other remote indigenous communities around the world, it's a completely different story. The easy availability of marijuana in a place like Amsterdam might have little effect on residents, given their general work ethic and community attitudes (in fact, the country has low usage rates); but no one is likely to argue that widespread use is harmless in a community that has high unemployment already and is economically struggling.
* Obviously, banning and criminalising use of a drug that some use with pleasure can have its own negative consequences, and profit a criminal underworld. Yet bans work in some places with no great disaster on a societal level (see Japan, Singapore with marijuana, for example. Depends on how you feel about capital punishment though - I don't think Singapore is the perfect example.)
* Given the situation with Mexico and crime syndicates, as well as the lack of wisdom of filling jails in the US with drug users, I can see the benefit of decriminalising and perhaps even legalising use in the USA.
But: the social background for legalisation in the US makes it a dangerous experiment on a societal scale, and one which I think will only be averted by increased governmental role in standards being set for the products.
Thus - as someone in the comments sections said, there really is a case for nation wide legislative control, as to the strength of THC in products, and (probably) the type of product can even be sold.
But there is no real push for that at the moment, and I think the US is going to regret the current haphazard path it is taking on this.