This study could not establish whether adolescent cannabis use was a consequence of pre-existing psychotic symptoms rather than a cause

That’s the SECOND SENTENCE IN THE STUDY.

First of all, schizophrenia is a genetic condition, it’s something you’re born with. You can’t “catch” it. Marijuana cannot “cause” it. What these studies have been saying is that it can exacerbate symptoms in people who have a genetic predisposition to it. That means, if you have schizophrenia already, getting really stoned can trigger an episode. This makes sense, considering if you have schizophrenia, you’re pretty much bound to snap eventually, and it can be any number of triggers that causes it. By far the single biggest cause of a lapse is stress. The second most common trigger is alcohol. Anything can cause it, from the sound of dripping water, to flashing lights, to a knock on the head. If you are born schizophrenic you must learn to control your headspace, to keep your mental state intact. You need to be aware of what your triggers are and avoid them. Marijuana might be one of them. On the other hand, there’s a very good chance (which the studies admit) that the people who are having psychotic episodes while smoking weed may have been trying to self medicate, trying to calm themselves down. The weed didn’t cause the schizophrenia, but the schizophrenia caused them to smoke weed. Correlation doesn’t equal causation. 99% of all serial killers were known to wear shoes. Hitler wore shoes. Both Jesus and Gandhi did not wear shoes. The only conclusion then is that shoes drive you to kill people.

Second of all, the numbers just don’t back these studies up at all. If marijuana increases the likelihood of schizophrenia 6 times higher than normal, and 60% of the population has tried it, that’s ten million people that should have started breaking out with schizophrenia. It just doesn’t happen.

but you know what, I do appreciate that I don’t see gyrating pink worms, who upon closer inspection reveal 100x’s/sec video clip loop of a penis slammin’ in and out of a lipstick’d mouth on my fb ad column too.

Now, if they could just do something about those 50% off pastel flavored macaroons adds I would feel this decision was perfectly fair.

Also, alcohol is a drug. Tobacco kills, but it kills you late in life, unlike alcohol. Facebook’s anti-drug policy is a farce as long as big alcohol is allowed to advertise on their site.

If they replaced the image of a pot leaf with the image of Christina Hendrick’s cleavage, Facebook would be happy to have the ad.

I think Just Say Now knows what it must do. For the good of the Cause.

Some adults with addictive personalities take recreational smoking too far. Just like some adults with addictive personalities take drinking, gambling, sex, shopping, dieting, etc… too far.

The argument for legalization shouldn’t rest on the foundation that marijuana is harmless. It’s not.

The argument for legalization should rest on facts like these…

1) A significant percentage of otherwise law-abiding adults enjoy recreational smoking, and thier behavior causes relatively little harm to themselves or society.

2) The failed drug war has proved you cannot eliminate the demand for cannabis – for something low harm like cannabis, legalization and taxation is a far better approach than wasting all that money on police and judges and lawyers and jails, all while the black market makes the bad guys rich.

3) Black markets don’t check IDs and they don’t regulate what they’re selling. In my high school it was far easier to get drugs than alcohol, and what you got wasn’t always what it was supposed to be.

A Liverpool John Moores University study found that “The annual rate of Cannabis Psychosis among English Cannabis Users was typically as low as one in 10,000. But although past-year Cannabis Usage climbed from 2.55 million (8.7%) in 1994 to 3.36 million (10.9%) in 2002/03, there were no clear trends in either schizophrenia (36,000-38,500 cases annually) or Cannabis Psychosis cases (280-380). Both predictions were disconfirmed…There was no support for the claim that cannabis use can cause psychosis, nor for a ‘true’ Cannabis Pychosis. Instead, CP cases were arguably misdiagnoses of extreme cases of Acute Cannabis Intoxication and Harmful Cannabis Use, and/or Mental and Behavioural Disorders arising from other/multiple drug use.”

But then why let the scientific method get in the way of a good sensationalist headline? Don’t you think it’s far more likely that people who are at risk of developing schizophrenia already are more likey both to self-medicate (with cannabis, alcohol or whatever other drugs they can get their hands on) and/or to be drawn to counter-cultural/disaffected elements of society where marijuana use is prevalent?

Every “my cousin’s friend smoked and he went mental” story is singularly unhelpful in this context; it completely confuses correlation with causality. Yes, cannabis use is probably unhelpful in people who are becoming schizophrenic, but so is any other type of self-medicating behaviour.

Funny that people never say “I know someone who drank alcohol and he became schizophrenic”, even though the American Psychiatric Association claims that 33% of all schizophrenics met the criteria for Alcohol Dependency at some stage in their lives. Chain-smoking cigarettes is a key indicator for suggesting that a given patient may have schizophrenia because the nicotine allows sufferers to temporarily alleviate their symptoms, but noone suggests that cigarettes cause mental illness, because the causal link does not exist. The fact that schizophrenics are more likely to smoke cigarettes does not mean that nicotine causes psychosis. Why is cannabis any different?

Sure, it should be legal. But you know what? It’s not.

Why should Facebook not be allowed to discriminate what ads it shows on its site? Why do you suddenly think that businesses can’t be run by their own rules within the law? (which this absolutely is.)

Just get over it. If they can’t advertise this way, put that money somewhere else.

When a website accepts some political ads and not others, that’s a problem.

What if they only accepted ads for Democrats? Or only Republicans were OK? What if they only allowed ads for “Yes On 8″? Would you be OK with that?

The pro-legalization crowd of course denies this just like how the Tobacco industry before them denied tobacco caused cancer.

Most of the “pro-legalization” folks I know aren’t of the opinion that there are no possible downsides to marijuana, rather that prohibition creates more serious problems than the ones it solves- just like alcohol.

Regardless, nobody but the craziest activists think we should be giving this to kids. One of the benefits of legalization would be strict control over age limits. Drug dealers don’t card. People growing plants might be required to lock them up, laws would strictly punish those furnishing pot to kids, etc.

As for the topic at hand, I think the degree to which marijuana activists are shut out of typical advertising venues is awfully stupid, but sometimes it almost seems like these sort of campaigns thrive on getting rejected. All that publicity at no cost.

Most of the “pro-legalization” folks I know aren’t of the opinion that there are no possible downsides to marijuana, rather that prohibition creates more serious problems than the ones it solves- just like alcohol.

Exactly. I don’t like pot. I don’t smoke it. I tried it a few times when I was younger, didn’t like it, and never looked back. I’m also aware that people can become dependent on it, and I would be very surprised that smoking anything would be free of harmful side effects.

All that said, I absolutely favor legalization. Many people enjoy smoking marijuana or take it for medicinal purposes. The level of harm done is roughly comparable to that from tobacco, alcohol, motorbike racing, cheerleading, watching pornography, etc.

All of these are things with the potential for harm that are nonetheless legal. In a free society we allow people to participate in activities that carry risks. We are also able to regulate those risks to a degree. But we need to be wary of prohibition, not only out of a sense of liberty, but also because prohibition creates problems of its own. These problems are well-documented elsewhere, but they include a gross distortion of law enforcement priorities, the creation of a market for criminal drug gangs, etc.

Perhaps I’m being paranoid, but this post reads like it was written under the influence of several lawyers.

Did you get a call from some very serious-minded people who wanted you to publish a certain version of events? Or are you even allowed to say that?

Discussing legal reform is not illegal. Get your head out of your ass. This is a horrible unjust law that has destroyed the lives of millions of people. They’re not censoring a “marijuana advertisement”, they’re censoring a political viewpoint. There’s nothing illegal about discussing change.

Legalized pot would also take away a large source of income from criminals and give it to the government in the form of taxes, as well as saving police forces millions each year.

For young adults, smoking marijuana nearly doubles the risk of developing recurring psychosis, paranoia and hallucinations – the hallmarks of schizophrenia.

So tell me then, are you all on board to criminalize alcohol? And, if not. Why NOT?

Bring on the alcohol prohibition again, yes?

Some of the world’s top schizophrenia experts believe there is a connection between marijuana and mental illness.

The correlation between marijuana use and psychosis doesn’t necessarily mean that marijuana caused the psychosis. Many of the researchers made this clear in their findings, but mainstream reporters left it out.

Mainstream reporters also failed to observe that massive increases in marijuana use over the past century have not corresponded with increased rates of psychosis.

Smells like agenda to me, sorry.

As one who lost a family member to this terrible incurable mental disease, considering this person happened to be a very heavy pot smoker from age 12, I feel this scientific evidence does not get the publicity it deserves.

I’m sorry for your loss, but that person probably would have had mental illness with or without pot. And, you have to wonder why this person was such a heavy pot smoker from such a young age anyway.

I’ve seen severe illness from a friend who took Advil, but I certainly don’t think his individual experience and some loose connections from a flimsy study make me inclined to criminalize Advil, sorry.

From where I sit it seems that laws against pot are barely enforced now- so I wonder just how sweeping the changes resulting from legalization would be.

Sit closer.

Should they be subject to the same rules TV is, then? Who will oversee this?

That’s a stupid argument. At the end of the day, advertisers have to play by Facebook’s rules, which, at the end of the day, are whatever Facebook wants.

Try running a pro-pot ad in some conservative newspaper. Gonna cry that it’s censorship there, too? Please.

I support the Just Say Now campaign because Facebook does not understand that the Declaration of Human Rights applies to hippies too.

“We don’t allow any images of drugs, drug paraphernalia, or tobacco in ad images on Facebook.

Anyone notice they left out one of the more harmful drugs…. alcohol?

Sigh… I hate Facebook.