Anecdotal I know, but I’ve certainly had them. Going from a $50 a day bong habit to cold turkey (usually only because I couldn’t actually get any) would result in at least 3 nights with restless broken sleep, a complete lack of appetite, nausea and occasional vomiting when I did try to eat, and extreme irritability. After about the fourth day most the symptoms would have dissipated, but those first few days weren’t ever pleasant.

It’s not like caffeine or opium because caffeine or opium aren’t even like each other and very rarely do to different drugs have the same withdrawal effects.

Unfortunately this myth that marijuana has no addictive qualities seems extremely pervasive amongst the pot smoking world and very few ever seem to want to concede the point. It is unfortunate because anytime the legalisation debate comes up, pro-pot misinformation that can easily proven incorrect by people that want pot to remain illegal, only hurts the legalisation cause. The best way to win this debate is laying out the facts on the table.

Also there are various definitions of the word narcotic, but only a minority of them infer addictive qualities. Usually it simply implies that a drug will induce sleep, unconsciousness or stupor; hence the related term narcosis.

Perhaps our good president could normalize his approach by “not defending” The Drug Enforcement act when it faces a 10th amendment challenge. Because clearly there is no interstate commerce for a product grown, prepared, and consumed in the same state, and in such cases state law should supersede federal law. However I think it’s more likely that any president would rather look like a fool and a hypocrite than willingly ceed power from the federal governments to the states.

All psychology is physical.

Right, which is pretty much all I’m arguing: that addiction is a spectrum, not two distinct categories.  I’ve been rather upfront about the fact that I don’t believe cannabis addiction or withdrawal is nearly as severe as for other substances.  Please see my comment above on whether physical and psychological addiction are “pretty obviously different things.”  The difference is not obvious and despite the fact that I’ve asked several times for clarification no one has bothered to provide any.

It is frustrating to have such a request met time after time with the naked assertion that the statement is true rather than evidence backing up those assertions of truth.  And please don’t just link me to some yahoo answers or wikipedia page.  Show me some peer-reviewed research that confirms this distinction that everyone is very quick to make but no one is willing to back up with hard evidence.

Regarding severity of withdrawal symptoms, do you believe that nicotine withdrawal is severe enough to warrant classification of nicotine as “physically addictive”? Why or why not?

You should consider researching it, then, since they are pretty obviously different things. Regardless, we are clearly talking about addiction in the sense of narcotics rather than addiction in the sense of food, sex, or gambling. All activities which, I might add, have their effect and cause addiction through chemical means. All psychology is physical.

Medically, though, there’s a very big difference between the two. Addiction is defined by the type and strength of withdrawal symptoms. The withdrawal symptoms associated with most narcotics are NOTHING like those associated with pot – instead, pot symptoms are more on kin with the symptoms of an addiction to food, sex, and gambling. This is from a purely chemical perspective – again, all of these things form their addictions through chemistry – and the medical profession may call them both “addictions”, but they clearly treat “narcotic”-style addictions (which can actually kill a person, and not through psychological behaviour-altering means) differently from “psychological”-addictions (which are still, like narcotics, chemical in nature, but follow a much different path of behavior with different consequences and different symptoms).

And medically, symptoms are often the important line drawn between different conditions.

The symptoms of pot addiction do not match the symptoms of narcotics addiction.

If you want to call that kind of restriction a “blue law” then fine, but then I’ll just have to disagree that blue laws are terribly inconvenient.

You should look into other states that have similar restrictions. I think you’ll find that New England is not particularly bad about this sort of thing.

Thanksgiving was a great day for blue laws in MA.  No liquor, beer or wine sales permitted in any store (nor in CT, for that matter).  Also, shops couldn’t open at all for Thanksgiving-day sales, so Walmart and Sears had to open at midnight on Friday.

Here’s a WebMD article mentioning that:

Many experts also believe that marijuana is physically addictive.

Here’s a paper that says:

Although some people question the concept of marijuana dependence or addiction, diagnostic, epidemiological, laboratory, and clinical studies clearly indicate that the condition exists, is important, and causes harm (Budney, 2006; Budney and Hughes, 2006; Copeland, 2004; Roffman and Stephens, 2006). Marijuana dependence as experienced in clinical populations appears very similar to other substance dependence disorders, although it is likely to be less severe.

Which is all I’m arguing.

Can you provide any evidence that it isn’t physically addictive? Better yet, can you find me a single scientific study explaining or investigating the distinction between physical and psychological addiction that concludes there definitely is such a distinction?

Here’s an article questioning that distinction by a PhD addiction researcher.

Nicotine is supposedly physically addictive but I’ve never heard of nicotine withdrawal entailing anything besides irritability and anxiety which, going by the best definitions I’ve been able to find on the internet, would make is psychologically and not physically addictive. Do you agree that nicotine is only psychologically addictive? If not, why not?

P.S. Had a celebratory first legal smoke last night with four housemates here in Colorado. Curtains wide open. It actually feels different not to have to hide anything.

Where else in New England are blue laws in effect?

If you can’t then maybe we can accept that marijuana has physical effects and we can move on?

I’m quite sure marijuana is *less* addictive than a lot of other things, but I don’t see how the mechanism of addiction is appreciably different from that of other psychoactive substances.  I’m going to need more than this “oh it’s psychological not physical” stuff to be convinced otherwise.

Besides which, there’s still existing limits on retail hours, availability, etc., in MA.  Seems like that’d count as a law, actually. 

-oh it doesn’t affect me like that, so obviously they are making up bullshit.

Just for some more anecdotal evidence of something completely different, caffeine in low quantities over long periods of time gives me the jitters and a whole host of other issues.  Sure I can have a cup of coffee or a soda a few times a week, but everyday and after a couple of weeks I begin to feel like shit.

Obviously that’s all in my head because the vast majority of the population drinks coffee, tea, soda on a daily basis and has no issues.  In other news, things don’t always affect everyone the same.