I have to admit to being a total bust when it comes to being a high school doper. I'm as allergic to pot smoke as they come, so merely being around it at concerts, etc., during youthful gatherings in the 70s was an invitation to a blinding headache within half an hour of the first sniff of that noxious scent. I sure wasn't inclined to indulge.

On the upside, it saved me lots of money. My peeps were spending money I had much better use for - on my princely part-time grocery-store clerk $3,25 hr - like clothes, gas, and car accessories-wise.

Everyone's priorities are different.

I'm also not an addictive personality (as long as you discount an unwholesome attraction to fried things and men in uniform), so 'pot culture' has always just been interesting to me. 

When I first got to California as a Marine, pot was everywhere. 

MCAS El Toro was surrounded by orange groves and chicken farms. Sand Canyon Road, the main drag heading past the front gate, heading west, dead-ended in an Irvine Company field about a quarter of a mile short of the 405 freeway after crossing a big irrigation canal.

When the lunch hour hit, good luck finding anyone in our group if you needed help while you were working or had the phone watch. If they weren't out trying to sneak through a fast food drive-thru lane without getting caught (you weren't allowed to do that in uniform at the time - big trouble - MPs would be hiding in parking lots watching), they might well be found out by the canal before the end of Sand Canyon getting high.

Then, everyone came back to work and carried on until quitting time.

Once in a while, on FOD walk (a daily ritual where you methodically police the flight line for debris that could harm engines), you'd find the remnants of a doob that a night crew type had dropped going about his business. Once, I even had a rotted bag of dope smack me in the face when it finally dropped out of its hidey spot in a nose-wheelwell. I was pretty disgusted - it was gross. But the old salty plane captains laughed. It seems they'd had them stuffed all through the planes coming back to Japan from the Philippines and somehow missed that one when they cleaned them out. So it sat there rotting away the whole time 'til it got back to the States.

The none-doper got whapped with it. Classic.

Pot culture was pervasive, not just throughout the base but also in the military at the time.

And it stayed like that until June of 1981, when an EA-6B Prowler crashed trying to land onboard the USS Nimitz and, horrifyingly, killed 14 sailors.

The autopsies of the dead were a rude wake-up call.

The Navy acknowledged today that six of the 14 men killed in a crash aboard the aircraft carrier Nimitz had smoked marijuana but said that drug use had not caused the accident.

Autopsies showed that three of the men either smoked marijuana heavily or used it shortly before the fiery crash May 26, but none of the users were members of the flight crew, the Navy said.

The Navy reported to the Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, which is conducting a hearing to determine whether drug use contributed to the accident, the worst involving an American carrier in peacetime.

Man. The hammer came down. And remained that way.

Pot went back to being illegal, and no one was winking at its use.

It has been fascinating watching all those restrictions and exhortations over the dangers gradually peel away after forty years. First, under the guise of "medical," and now, in some states, advocacy for "everyone deserves/has a right to be able to grow a little of their own."

Here in Florida, we have medical marijuana but defeated a constitutional amendment in November that would have expanded to legalizing it for recreational use. Of course, it would have had to be sold by those same medical-grade cannabis purveyors - they made sure growing your own stash stayed illegal. It fell just short of passage.

Personally, I don't think that's a bad thing because of several factors, not to mention the data now available thanks to the legalization of weed. 

The pot of forty years ago is not the hybridized strength cannabis grown today. The effects of today's pot are much stronger, and the isolated compounds are more concentrated, too.

...In 1994, variations of the plant contained about 4% of THC. Today, these amounts have spiked. According to a study published by the National Library of Medicine, the drug’s potency has tripled. The quantity of THC found in weed has soared from 4% to 12% in only a few years. There are even certain strains like sinsemilla (seedless female hemp plant) with a 15% to 25% concentration rate...

...Because of advanced knowledge and new technology, today’s cannabis products are isolating higher amounts of psychoactive compounds and according to a study published by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, the stronger a cannabis product is, the more likely a person is to develop an addiction. Roughly 1 in 10 adults who use marijuana become addicted. A research paper presented by Missouri State Medical Association claims THC is the component that causes addiction. Therefore, the bigger the amounts of THC in a cannabis product, the greater the possibility of dependence and eventual addiction.

Higher concentrates of THC, according to the National Institutes of Health, may lead to physical dependence, psychosis, and anxiety, particularly in young users. Thus, another major health concern is the increased risk of teen dependency. Since higher THC amounts in products increase the likelihood of addiction, those underage run a greater risk of developing health issues. Over the past few years, there have been cases of “cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome,” referred to by healthcare workers as “scromiting”—screaming and vomiting—among young people using highly concentrated marijuana products in states like Colorado. Marijuana use among teens can lead to improper development. Imaging tests show that long-term use among teenagers results in fewer connections impaired cognitive functioning within the brain. The underdeveloped brain activity has been linked to slower learning as well as reduced levels of alertness and memory. Some studies have even discovered that underage weed consumption may lead to lower IQ points in young adulthood.

It made me think of Jordan Neely, the "gentle but psychotic" Michael Jackson impersonator with a mile-long rap sheet whom Daniel Penny restrained in that subway car. How much of that psychosis was fed by the pot?

There's an interesting snippet from a British NHS doctor who runs a cannabis psychosis clinic (!) talking about the effect of the cannabis free-for-all. She says now that they have data to track it, in half of the patients she sees, cannabis is "playing an important role in maintaining people unwell even when they had developed their psychosis for the first time, whatever is the cause of it." 

The head of the NHS's first clinic aimed at stopping cannabis use calls for more centres as staff must turn patients away daily.

Marta Di Forti: “The UK is one of the places in Europe with the highest rate of psychosis.”@iancollinsuk pic.twitter.com/EFZC3wXhRY

— Talk (@TalkTV) December 12, 2024

IOW, the pot use feeds and extends the mental illness, even from a first episode.

Another paper released a week ago seems to confirm that pot can be bad for the brain that has the potential to slip sideways.

Heavy cannabis use and genetic risk for schizophrenia independently contribute to the likelihood of developing psychosis. Researchers used two large datasets to analyze the relationship between cannabis use, schizophrenia polygenic risk scores (PRS), and psychosis. They found no evidence that cannabis and genetic risks interact, suggesting these factors influence psychosis through separate pathways.

Daily use of high-potency cannabis showed the strongest link to psychosis risk, regardless of genetic predisposition. These findings highlight the need for targeted preventative strategies as cannabis use and potency rise globally. PRSs could potentially help identify individuals at heightened risk of psychosis among less frequent cannabis users.

Canadian studies are saying, "You know? It might not be the best thing for teenagers..."

Risk for psychosis skyrockets among teens who use cannabis

...Teens who use cannabis face 11 times the odds for a psychotic episode compared to teens who abstain from the drug, new Canadian research contends.

...It's long been known that marijuana use can help trigger psychosis, and the potency of cannabis is much stronger now than in decades past, the Toronto investigators noted. They estimate that the average THC potency of cannabis in Canada rose from roughly 1% in 1980 to 20% in 2018.

I'll add they're saying that, even though it chills most people out, it's also bad for your heart.

...The number of people using marijuana has increased significantly in recent decades in the U.S., where its recreational use has been legalized in 24 states and the District of Columbia. In 2019, a federal survey showed more than 48 million people ages 12 and older reported using marijuana at least once ­– nearly double the number in 2002. On the federal level, marijuana use remains illegal.

...In the new study, researchers analyzed survey data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 434,104 U.S. adults from 2016 to 2020. They investigated whether the number of days of cannabis use in the past 30 days was associated with self-reported cardiovascular outcomes, including coronary heart disease, heart attacks and strokes, among the general adult population and people who had never smoked tobacco or used e-cigarettes. Researchers also investigated these associations among men under 55 and women under 65 who were at risk for heart disease.

Any marijuana use was linked to a higher risk for heart attacks and strokes, but people who used it most frequently had the highest odds. Adults who used marijuana daily had 25% higher odds of having a heart attack and 42% higher odds of stroke than people who didn't use it at all. Smoking was the most common method of cannabis use, followed by eating or vaping it.

Among men under 55 and women under 65, using marijuana resulted in a 36% higher combined odds for coronary heart disease, heart attack or stroke, regardless of whether they also used tobacco products. The odds were higher even when researchers looked only at those who had never used tobacco products or e-cigarettes.

Advocates tout studies, of course. Pot makes you more empathetic, for instance. Many users have a lower BMI.

One SUNY study even found a significantly decreased risk of cognitive decline.

But as more places become pot-friendly, much of the former hype and promoted benefits are finding themselves side by side with documented risks and possible side effects that weren't part of the original bargain.

All magnified by the fact that the weed they're selling isn't what was in your parent's generation's rolling papers. 

...Some of the ill effects have been reported in academic studies or news stories in recent years. The data and interviews reveal not only new, detailed evidence of the health risks but also growing alarm among doctors and researchers.

In interviews, they acknowledged that marijuana can offer substantial health benefits for certain patients. Most of them favored legalizing the drug. But many were concerned about significant gaps in knowledge of its effects, regulation of the commercial market and disclosure of the risks.

“Cannabis should not have a free pass as something that is safe because it’s legal — or safe because it’s natural — because actually it clearly causes harm in a number of my patients,” said Dr. Scott Hadland, who oversees adolescent medicine at Mass General for Children and is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School.

When states began legalizing marijuana nearly three decades ago, initially for medical use, they set in motion something of an unintended public health experiment. Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia now also allow recreational use of the drug, and after ballot measures this fall in Florida, South Dakota and North Dakota, it may be legal in more than half the country. Internationally, the United States is an outlier: Only a few countries allow such sales.

As one neuroscientist the NY Times interviewed for their piece said:

“There's a difference in legalizing the original cannabis on the planet and the products that exist today.”

The cannabis growers, as we found here in Florida during the recent campaign over Amendment 3, are as supercharged as their product. 

It is an 'industry' ruthlessly protecting and expanding its territory through hook, crook and control of assets, information, and customers.

A downside to the high is bad for business.