Thread: Legalizing Mary-Jane Yes or No?

TwoStoopid, the study that your "cannabis culture" website was citing is a statistical study by Dr Fisher at Keele University finding that, in the UK, increasing rates of cannabis usage among the population didn't correlate with an increased frequency of diagnosed cases of schizophrenia or other psychosis disorders. That in no way justifies your claim that cannabis-induced psychosis disorder is "a myth." As I said, disorders aren't included in the DSMMD unless they have actually been clinically observed. There's nothing in there that's hypothetical. If it's in there, that means there are actually people who suffer from cannabis-induced psychosis. It is a completely real medical condition. There are people sitting in psychiatric hospitals right now because they have cannabis-induced psychosis. So claiming that the disorder is nonexistent is utterly absurd. Here's a precis for an article from the British Journal of Psychiatry by a group of psychiatrists and doctors who have examined 535 cases of cannabis-induced psychosis: http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/abstract/187/6/510

The very fact that you would put a quote from the website of Cannabis Culture Magazine next to a quote from an authoritative medical text, and try to claim that the former proves that the latter is a "myth", suggests to me that you should not be trying to make any statements about scientific facts.

I gather that you don't WANT to believe that cannabis-induced psychosis is real--and certainly it's not common, and is no reason to keep weed illegal--but it is a real set of conditions. Deal with it.

EDIT: If you had done a bit more research into the claims of Cannabis Culture's website, you might have found that Dr. Fisher's study has attracted some skepticism; there are other researchers out there who feel that unrelated factors may have lowered the UK's incidence of psychosis diagnoses concurrently with the rise in cannabis usage. All Fisher's study said was "The number of people smoking pot in the UK increased by X percent over X interval, and the rate of diagnosed psychotic cases didn't increase by a corresponding rate over the same interval". That's not the same thing as debunking the idea that cannabis usage can cause psychosis disorders.