Tragedy in Tucson: Did Marijuana Play a Part?
With President Barack Obama’s eloquent speech at the Tucson memorial, Speaker John Boehner’s emotional reminder to his Democratic and Republican colleagues and all Americans that “an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” and the thousands of pundits, left and right, arguing about the meaning of the tragedy in Arizona, it might seem that there is nothing more to say or learn about the horrific incident that killed six, wounded 13, and put a bullet through the brain of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
But there is - and it is as important as any other lesson to come out of this tragedy.
It’s about the relationship of marijuana use to psychotic illnesses.
There has been plenty of media and talking head attention to the weak gun laws that allow purchase of automatic weapons and super size ammunition clips. There has been story upon story, and comment upon comment, bemoaning how easy it was for this mentally deranged young man to buy such a gun and ammunition clip. And the reporting about the twisted mind of Jared Lee Loughner and his erratic behavior has been extensive.
But I haven’t seen press reports or talking heads discuss their concern about how easy it has been for this mentally ill young man to get marijuana. And there has been no mention of the potential of marijuana to spark latent psychosis and exacerbate schizophrenia and other mental illnesses.
In 2007, the British Medical Journal Lancet concluded that an exhaustive review of cannabis use and mental health “leads us now to conclude that cannabis use could increase the risk of psychotic illness.” Since then, there has been more research on the relationship of marijuana use and psychosis.
Scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City conducted a study of individuals who suffered from schizophrenia, half of whom used marijuana. They found that among marijuana users, three fourths had begun smoking pot before the onset of their mental illness and their schizophrenia appeared two years earlier than it did in those who did not smoke pot.
Marie-Odile Krebs, a psychiatrist at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in France, found that among a group of 121 patients who used cannabis, 44 either developed schizophrenia within a month of beginning to smoke pot or significantly intensified their existing psychosis with each successive use of the drug. Schizophrenia appeared some three years earlier in these 44 than in the other marijuana users.
From CNN and other press reports, we know that Loughner was turned down by the Army because of his admitted regular marijuana use. His childhood friend Kylie Smith tells us that after Loughner’s sophomore year in high school, “he got involved with marijuana, and he was really into psychedelics.” Smith described how Loughner got more and more involved with marijuana and alcohol during his high school years and how he began hanging out with potheads. In his short stay at Pima Community College, one professor described Loughner’s “hysterical kind of laugh, laughing to himself, and his bright red complexion, and his kind of shaking and trembling, as if he was under the influence of drugs.”
The question that not enough people are asking - and the one that should be answered - is this: Was Loughner under the influence of drugs at the time of the shooting?
If the police have any of the hair shaved from Loughner’s head, they can easily find out if marijuana was in his system at the time of the shooting. They may even be able to do so from hair that grows back in.
So as we continue to think about this killer and his deranged mind, we should be asking this question: Is Jared Loughner an individual whose psychosis was prompted or exacerbated by the use of marijuana?
Whether or not he is, it is important for the press and parents to see this horrendous incident not only as a teaching moment about the easy availability and dangerous potential of automatic weapons, but also as a teaching moment about the easy availability and dangerous potential of marijuana to spark and exacerbate psychosis and schizophrenia in individuals with latent mental illnesses.
The missing story line in existing news reports and television chatter shows is about the terrible trinity of easy availability of guns, easy availability of marijuana and mental illness.
The question for all of us, especially parents of teenagers, to ask is this: Is the media’s failure to acknowledge this tragic trinity due to its tendency to overlook or underplay the dangers of marijuana use?
I agree but also feel that not enough attention was paid to the lack of availability of EARLY prevention of emotional/mental health issues. See:
[ondcpcomprev] Loughner more than a deranged individual; he is one of millions (events in my home town of Tucson echo across America)
Dennis Embry submitted the following message from dde@paxis.org
—————————————————————————————–
The phone rang Saturday morning in Tucson. My coworker Sarah was gasping: “Gabrielle Giffords has been shot.” I couldn’t breathe, and started to sob. ‘”Oh, God no.” Sarah and I both know Gabby and many people in her office.
As a prevention scientist and psychologist involved in violence issues, substance abuse and mental illness prevention for over 30 years, I was suddenly certain of the profile of the shooter. He will be young man. He will have a history of behavior problems that go back in time. He will have markers of instability, impulsiveness and ruminating or obsessive thoughts. More than likely, the young man will have also had problems with drugs or alcohol, too. His school experiences will show run-ins with staff and students, too. And, the young man will likely have some political obsessions.
Twelve hours later, all that I suspected appears true. The news is bad about victims. Six people died, including a young man I know who worked in Gabby’s office. Several elderly people are dead. So is a 3rd-grade girl and a Federal judge. Gabby is alive, but could have lifetime impairments or die yet from complications. America is stunned and riveted by this event.
The news becomes more shocking with other facts. Most Americans don’t know that the prevalence rates of mental, emotional and behavioral disorders have been increasing among American youth for more than 20 years. Today those rates are significantly higher than in other 22 rich democracies.1-3 Most American’s don’t know that more and more young people are being rejected for military service because of such mental, emotional and behavioral disorders—just like the presumed shooter was rejected.4
Twenty-four hours after Tucson’s rampage, I am surfing the Internet reading various blogs and watching Sunday morning shows.
“… [T]his was just a deranged individual,” opined a spokesperson for Gabby Giffords’ political opponent in the 2010 election on one of the blogs.
On ABC, George Will said to Chritiane Amanpour, “…we have 308 million people in America; a few of them are unhinged.”
He was implying that tragedies like Tucson are inevitable.
No, Mr. Will, it is not inevitable, and it is not a few. We have tens of millions young people on psychotropic medications in America. And, the rates or percentages of these mental, emotional and behavior disorders Will calls “unhinged” have been increasing in America, based on peer-reviewed science.
Will argues that this small percentage of unhinged people is the final explanation for what happened at the Tucson Safeway store. But his glib sound bite does not explain what we might do to prevent other young people who might be tipped to into madness.
Every day in America, there are hundreds of isolated events by presumed deranged individuals. They just do not make national headlines like the shooting of a congresswoman, a federal judge, a 9-year-old girl, and 14 others at the same place, at the same time.
Dick Armey, one of the leaders of the Tea Party, said on the same show that we don’t need pop sociology. Rather, Mr. Army said, “if we really want to understand deviance and danger in this country, we should apply the correct field of study, the correct tools of understanding and discipline with rigor and responsibility [of psychology].”
I agree with Armey. He describes what my colleagues and I do as prevention scientists. So, here are data from the correct field of study.
According to the Wall Street Journal, there are 25 million children on ADHD medications, almost 10 million on anti-depressants and about six million on psychotropic meds. These rates are probably twice the percentage as most rich democracies, based on data I’ve seen across countries.
Figure 1: Number of America’s Youth Out of 75 Million Using Psychotropic Medications
(Source, Wall Street Journal, December 28, 2010)
Looking just at our young people, given the research, if one-half of our youth, or even if 10 percent, out of 75 million are vulnerable to erratic outcomes like the shooter, that means there are millions of children and youth with mental, emotional or behavioral disorders that could metastasize to violence against others, suicide or both. Shockingly, way too many of our children are not well in their thinking, emotions or spirit. The reality is that practically every adult in America knows somebody or has a friend that knows somebody struggling with mental health and/or addiction problems.
Around noon on Sunday, I appeared on a local Tucson television station to discuss the prevention of violence.
Initially, the TV anchors wanted me to focus on the deviance of the individual, along with screening and referral for the suspect. While that is interesting, the point I chose to drive home is that the rate of these problems is out-of-whack and that too many people are doing such terrible things across the country.
Every day in America, 38 people are murdered; 58 are arrested for rape; 1,165 are arrested for aggravated assault. Almost 1,600 people are arrested per day for some other form of a violent crime, and 4,550 people are arrested for drug crimes. Another 3,950 people are arrested for driving under the influence. And American children take hundreds of thousands of pills for mental, emotional and behavioral disorders, every day.
Is this a few? Is this inevitable? Is this simply the way human children, youth and adults are supposed to live?
My short answer is an emphatic NO!
The reason for my firm response is really quite simple: I have a couple hundred world-class scientific studies in my computer that demonstrate we can prevent the bulk of these problems for about the price of several childhood vaccinations we typically already give our kids for things like measles, mumps, tetanus, or the flu.
The Institute of Medicine reported in 2009 on the availability of “behavioral vaccines” against mental illness, addictions violence, emotional problems, suicide and other behavioral ills. This is not voodoo science or pop sociology. These are the replicated findings of our most respected medical and scientific journals.
The financial and emotional savings to our country of implementing the Institute of Medicine Report recommendations in every American household would bailout most state and local governments in a few years. The Federal budget problems associated with social security, disabilities, Medicaid and Medicare would be healed significantly. Private health insurance costs could be lowered substantially, because these mental, emotional and behavioral disorders actually drive most of the health-care costs.
So why don’t we give those behavioral vaccines to every American child and youth? There is not a single valid reason we should not act.
What are the behavioral vaccines for metastatic madness affecting millions of children, youth and young adults? Consider these examples from the Institute of Medicine report.5
o A behavioral vaccine, called the Good Behavior Game, enables first-grade teachers to help children learn to control their attention and resist negative peer attention.6 This dramatically increases time for teaching and learning immediately. Overtime the benefits grow to prevent ADHD and Oppositional Defiant disorder by 3rd grade.7 By the 6th grade, bullying has been reduced.8 As have conduct disorders—just from the first grade “inoculation”.8 9 The same behavioral vaccine increases high-school graduation and college entry.10 From the early twenties to age 30, this behavioral vaccine prevents involvement in violent crime,11 suicidal behaviors,12 adult addictions and psychiatric disorders.13 And, the cost of this behavioral vaccine? About $50 dollars per child’s life. No single medical vaccine prevents this many costly diseases or disorders that touch every family in America.
o A behavioral vaccine called Triple P (which stands for Positive Parenting Program) provides universal access to brief parenting supports to EVERY parent who wants them. These brief supports can be delivered on TV, in the newspaper, on tip sheets, in 90-minute seminars, on-line, at doctors’ offices, at clinics, at churches and many other settings. This system of parenting supports (rather than a single 18-week course or book) costs about $15 per child to deliver yet prevents ADHD and Conduct Disorders,14 prevents child maltreatment for whole counties or communities,15 and other maddening problems for families.16 These benefits happen quickly for families and communities.
There are other behavioral vaccines in the IOM report. They are also powerful and very cost effective. All of them together are scientifically proven to quickly inoculate against the metastatic madness spreading to every social class of families in America.17 There is even an inexpensive behavioral vaccine that prevents psychosis or felony violence among very high-risk individuals, studied by the National Institutes of Health and the British Prison Service.18 19
Our officials will almost certainly move to spend several billion dollars to increase security details, bomb barriers, and other systems for our Federal officials. That, however, will not make the country—our workplaces, our schools, our strip malls, or our homes safe from the metastatic madness infecting our children, youth, and young adults. Those things will do nothing to make our children saner, smarter and less vulnerable to the metastatic madness.
If we don’t act for true prevention, the “unhinged” shooting at the Safeway on Swan will not be the only one;, if we don’t seek to prevent metastatic madness in America, Tucson’s tragedy will be a swan song for public safety, wellbeing and our democracy.
What must be done is not Red or Blue, conservative or liberal, right or left. What must be done comes from what Mr. Armey calls the correct understanding and discipline of rigorous science to prevent disturbance, deviance, and danger in this country.
Dennis D. Embry Ph.D.
President/senior scientist
PAXIS Institute, PO 31205, Tucson, AZ 85751
Ph: 520-299-6770
FX: 520-299-6822
(assistant, Bea Ramirez, 520-360-2995)
http://www.paxis.org • http://www.simplegifts.com
To see recent videos, presentations and publications of Dr. Embry’s work go to http://www.slideshare.net/drdennisembry
References Cited
1. Costello EJ, Foley DL, Angold A. 10-year research update review: the epidemiology of child and adolescent psychiatric disorders: II. Developmental epidemiology. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 2006;45(1):8-25.
2. Costello EJ, Egger H, Angold A. 10-year research update review: the epidemiology of child and adolescent psychiatric disorders: I. Methods and public health burden. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 2005;44(10):972-86.
3. Collishaw S, Maughan B, Goodman R, Pickles A. Time trends in adolescent mental health. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 2004;45(8):1350-62.
4. McMichael WH. Most U.S. youths unfit to serve, data show. Army Times 2009 Nov. 5, 2009.
5. O’Connell ME, Boat T, Warner KE, editors. Preventing Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders Among Young People: Progress and Possibilities. . Washington, DC: Institute of Medicine; National Research Council, 2009.
6. Embry DD. The Good Behavior Game: A Best Practice Candidate as a Universal Behavioral Vaccine. Clinical Child & Family Psychology Review 2002;5(4):273-97.
7. van Lier PAC, Muthen BO, van der Sar RM, Crijnen AAM. Preventing Disruptive Behavior in Elementary Schoolchildren: Impact of a Universal Classroom-Based Intervention. Journal of Consulting & Clinical Psychology 2004;72(3):467-78.
8. Ialongo NS, Werthamer L, Kellam SG, Brown CH, Wang S, Lin Y. Proximal impact of two first-grade preventive interventions on the early risk behaviors for later substance abuse, depression, and antisocial behavior. American Journal of Community Psychology 1999;27(5):599-641.
9. Kellam SG, Ling X, Merisca R, Brown CH, Ialongo N. The effect of the level of aggression in the first grade classroom on the course and malleability of aggressive behavior into middle school. Development and Psychopathology 1998;10:165-85.
10. Bradshaw CP, Zmuda JH, Kellam S, Ialongo N. Longitudinal Impact of Two Universal Preventive Interventions in First Grade on Educational Outcomes in High School. Journal of Educational Psychology 2009;101(4):926-37.
11. Petras H, Kellam S, Brown CH, Muthen B, Ialongo N, Poduska J. Developmental epidemiological courses leading to antisocial personality disorder and violent and criminal behavior: Effects by young adulthood of a universal preventive intervention in first- and second-grade classrooms. Drug & Alcohol Dependence 2008;95(Suppl 1):45-59.
12. Wilcox HC, Kellam S, Brown CH, Poduska J, Ialongo N, Wang W, et al. The impact of two universal randomized first- and second-grade classroom interventions on young adult suicide ideation and attempts. Drug & Alcohol Dependence 2008;95(Suppl 1):60-73.
13. Kellam S, Brown CH, Poduska J, Ialongo N, Wang W, Toyinbo P, et al. Effects of a universal classroom behavior management program in first and second grades on young adult behavioral, psychiatric, and social outcomes,. Drug & Alcohol Dependence 2008(Special Issue):24.
14. Mihalopoulos C, Sanders MR, Turner KMT, Murphy-Brennan M, Carter R. Does the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program provide value for money? Australia and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 2007;41(3):239-46.
15. Prinz R. Population-Level Impact of the Triple P System in Prevention of Child Maltreatment. Helping Families Change Conference. Charleston, SC, 2007.
16. de Graaf I, Speetjens P, Smit F, de Wolff M, Tavecchio L. Effectiveness of the triple P positive parenting program on behavioral problems in children: A meta-analysis. Behavior Modification 2008;32(5):714-35.
17. Embry DD. Behavioral Vaccines and Evidence Based Kernels: Non-Pharmaceutical Approaches for the Prevention of Mental, Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. Psychiatric Clinics of North America in press.
18. Amminger GP, Schafer MR, Papageorgiou K, Klier CM, Cotton SM, Harrigan SM, et al. Long-Chain {omega}-3 Fatty Acids for Indicated Prevention of Psychotic Disorders: A Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Trial. Arch Gen Psychiatry 2010;67(2):146-54.
19. Gesch CB, Hammond SM, Hampson SE, Eves A, Crowder MJ. Influence of supplementary vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids on the antisocial behaviour of young adult prisoners. Randomised, placebo-controlled trial. British Journal of Psychiatry 2002;181:22-8.
Articles like this just exploit fear and stigma about drug use. The media cannot adequately address the sorrow and rage of gun control that is out of control; marijuana use that is rampant and or any of the other complex issues associated with why people act out or are otherwise untreated in our communities. Influential agencies like yours need to address the resources for help and welfare rather than the “dangers of marijuana use”. The “reefer madness” argument is so ineffectual. This solution doesn’t work; it’s called prisons. What’s wrong with you?
Thanks Joe for writing this important article. I hope some one in the media is reading this and thinking “how can I help” instead of “how can I continute to regurgiatating the same useless rhetoric” !
Good points! What really frightens me is Michigan’s (where I live) recent adoption of medical marijauna laws and the decrease in the perception of harm in our young people and also the easy access they now have to the drug, due to “caregiver” growers. Our town already has a “grow” shop and a “head” shop. I am really concerned about the short and long term ramifications of this law. Scary stuff.
From my understanding, Mr. Loughner was known to experiment with several different substances such as salvia, marijuana, and hallucinogens. We do not know if Mr. Lougner was under the influence of any of these at the time of the shooting, but one can assume, from myriads of research showing the detrimental effects of drugs on brain development and functioning and the links to mental illness, that Mr. Loughner’s drug use certainly did not help the situation and may have led to or exacerbated his mental illness.
You can’t really blame guns here. I own a handgun, yet I have no thoughts of going and killing anyone with it. People who can not legally purchase guns, still have guns. Not everyone with a gun will kill someone with it. Marijuana is illegal, yet how many marijuana users do we have in this country? And marijuana, no matter who you are, will have a negative impact on your body and mind.
I agree with Dr. Embry. We need to step up to the plate and try our best to prevent these behaviors, to recognize problems when they are present, and get people help for their problems regardless if they have a drug addiction or mental illness or both. By the way, marijuana use has been proven to cause violent tendencies.
For those who want to reject the idea of “reefer madness” probably because you partake in a little pot and feel like it has made your life wonderful, you probably don’t suffer from mental illness or other genetic factors that could exacerbate mental illness. But you know, I stay away from the stuff, because there is no way to know until it is too late, who will be okay after taking a hit and who will become mentally ill, sick, or addicted and I am just not willing to take that chance.
Perhaps the media can not address all the issues, but they can help educate and make people aware that the problems do exist so we can stop living in silos and under our blankets and actually recognize the problems, see the signs, (because as we can see with Mr. Loughner, there are ALWAYS signs) and get help for oursevles, our friends, and our families before they suffer the devastating consequences. You see, drug use and mental illness, it affects us all regardless of whether we are the one using or suffering from a mental illness or someone else. Case in point, who has not been affected by the Tuscon shooting?
And yes people, you better be really fearful of drug use. If you are not, you haven’t studies the effects of drug use on the brain. You haven’t been paying attention to what is going on around you.
Dr. Embry seems to suggest just that, that we need to pay attention but that’s what is wrong with us as a society, no one is paying attention to these problems (such as drug use or mental illness) until people are killed and the media has a field day with it. Only then do we come out from under our blankets and the whole world says “Huh? How did that happen? He (the killer) must had been a psycho.”
What’s wrong with you? Wake up people. Problems don’t go away on their own. We need the programs that Dr. Embry mentions. We need education and awareness and better parenting. Knowledge is power.
Both Mr. Califano and Dr. Embry are on target. We have 5% of the world’s population and consume 66% of the world’s illicit drugs …. root cause of the problem.
Prevention is the key. In addition to what is mentioned, non-punitive random drug screening for all middle and high school students is a must. It can be done for as little as $1 to $2 per student per school year, and is an investment, not an expense.
Currently, 3,200 Americans die monthly of drug overdose, and the vast majority started their drug journey with pot. Today’s high potency pot is highly addictive, and research has shown it can cause permanent damage to the brain which is not fully mature until age 25. The risk is associated with the age on onset, frequency of use and potency. The pot being sold in California today ranges from 10 to 21% THC, and goes as high as 30%. Compared to the .5% to 2% pot of the 1970’s, this is like grain alcohol compared to near beer.
Loughner was apparently using sativa and other drugs, but chances are his schizophrenia and paranoia developed during his adolescence. Not everyone hits the extreme like Loughner, but there are many that are some shade of gray. Last year it was John Patrick Bedell, the Pentagon shooter, and avid pot smoker from adolescence. With marijuana use up 11% in just one year (2009), we can expect more.
Sad, because it is preventable is our government had the courage, wisdom and will to do what works.
Roger
Has Sarah Palin taken over CASA? This is simply a political effort to scape-goat cannabis instead of looking clearly at the real problems: widespread gun availability, the widely disseminated violent political rhetoric of the Right, and inadequate community resources to screen, diagnose and treat the mentall ill. This article is demagoguery masquerading as science policy. As we have seen in epidemiological research, drugs rarely kill people, but cops trying to arrest drug abusers kill innocent people on a near daily basis. Empirically-based drug policy suggests that we stop with the “drug warrior” rhetoric and deal with the sceintific realities of cannabis use in the U.S. Yes, cannabis disorganizes first break schizophrenics such that can’t separate reality from the ongoing urge to “reload” incited by the Republican Right on the most widely available news talk shows. However, in non-schizophrenics, well controlled laboratory research has shown that cannabis attenuates aggression and violence. Let’s talk about the science….all the science…not just the part that fits your political agenda.
I agree with Dr. Embry that we need to do more to prevent this behavior and most of it starts at home with good parenting and the school programs he cited. We don’t know why Loughner did what he did, but clearly people around him felt he had serious mental health issues. I’m not here to say that there are no risks to cannabis, but in general it is associated with passivity not violence. The stronger (higher in THC) cannabis is a result of our prohibition of the drug. Cannabis has more than 60 constituents known as cannabinoids and researchers have found that one of the many non-psychoactive cannabinoids, called cannabidiol, can actually treat psychosis. So let’s not blame this horrific incident simply on his use of cannabis. Shall we discuss how many violent acts are conducted under the influence of alcohol? The problem is that we want to blame drugs or guns for the violence and pass laws to try to control their use, but the bigger problem is the environment that many kids grow up in with little support and guidance.
What a load of crap. Blame marijuana for him being a complete psycho? That’ ridiculous, and anyone with a PhD should know that this is even worse than the politicians blaming each other for it.
Simple fact is that marijuana is safer than ibuprofen, aspirin, alcohol, or tobacco. Don’t believe me? Do some research. Think for yourself.
Any amount of time you spend attempting to subjectively promote the dangers of marijuana strike me as inefficiency in your role as chairman.
For whatever reason, you seem to focus on cannabis disproportionately to substances far more problematic.
Why point to marijuana as the trigger of this man’s psychosis?
You wonder why the media and ‘talking heads’ haven’t discussed how easy it would be for Mr. Loughner to obtain marijuana. Because that would be irrational, and quite frankly, absurd. It would be far easier for him to buy a half gallon of vodka on the corner.
Hopefully, his toxicology report will be released to the public, and then you can respond with knowledge at hand, not careless conjecture.
This article and thesis is excellent.
I will also add the following which is less sensational but equally important ( possibly more so, due to far wider prevalence ). My own observations regarding folks who have even prior extensive use or recurring light recreational use, is that use of the drug does significantly impair aspects of higher cognition, aspects of reasoning and inferential logic that few acknowledge.
I personally have seen repeated major company / division / project failures due to leadership and engineers using or having a prior history of some( even light) regular use of the drug. Typically folks say light use does not impair cognitive abilities, I have experienced / seen career events of plant closures, and product losses of millions of dollars likely due to seemingly small undiagnosed cognitive and judgment impairment that is otherwise hard to quantify.
The strangest part was to see someone with an IVY undergrad degree and a top tier PhD subsequent, completely be useless in technical projects except for production of profuse data, which he had significant problems interpreting as to implications of results and observations, and largely clueless in what to do next. And significant challenges in improving processes that were simple since his observational skills ( attention to detail ) were sorely lacking and his ability to interpret observations and results was pitiful. Given his credentials this was almost unbelievable.
Moreover despite the $80k salary he kept making repeated sloppy technical mistakes in experimental work - things like miswiring a circuit of two transistors, circuit taken from a book in undergrad where he took the class from the author ( but confessed to having heavily smoked through much of his undergrad IVY education, and “roomed with a smoker” in his PhD years ). The errors made were neither isolated ( 3-4-5 projects of different unrelated tasks ) nor trivial and did materially affect the project.
If one thinks that despite intelligence, that one is immune to cognitive effects of impairment since one only used a small amount ( but with some regularity ) that person is a fool.
I sense that yes in cases of considerable use, the cognitive impairment can be tipped toward psychosis, but the larger problem is through larger parts of western society where recreational use is too common even in well to do society, the implications of performance and success in real life, from marijuana use, are larger, more subtle and insidious. It is curious how this relates to some societies / countries where drug use is strictly prohibited and near nowhere to be found ( china is my guess much lower incidence of marijuana use )
I sense a kind of compulsive behaviour as a recurring theme in technical pursuits done by those who have had or continue with significant marijuana use. Most project failures are not due to lack of technical skill it is often easy to attribute correctly to a misplaced compulsion ( ?related to drug use in quite a few cases even if not initially apparent, often this fact surfaces later, with the people in question merely laughing it off but acknowledging the issue directly )
I have seen this at over 4 maybe 5 firms maybe more, and the results are neither pretty, and do have large financial implications and impact company /project success or failure.
While effects of psychosis are more obvious and easily comprehended by the larger public, recurring light marijuana use or prior heavy use even relatively long ago, is in no way trivial in its impact either. It is truly sad, reminds me of the history of the decline of Britain, in long ago times of extensive narcotics use there. Sad.
The biggest problem in society today, first and foremost, is parental involvement. We need to institute a program to get parenting help for unplanned pregnancies. Parents need to stay connected to their children even if they don’t want them to. Talk, talk, talk. Find out who’s being “bad” and who’s being “good” through the conversations you have with your children then react. Parents cannot turn a deaf ear to their children and their problems. We have to accept it and get help early before it gets out of hand. In the Loughner case, his parents saw him slipping but looked away. Where were his teachers, principal, friends, etc. Did no one see he needed help. Once again no one wanted to get involved. Idle time for children leads to mischief. Mischief leads to smoking, drinking and trouble. Children who start smoking cigarettes will eventually try marijuana. Once they get the sensation of marijuana the doors are open to other drugs to help them experience a bigger better euphoria. When you combine the problem of drugs and a weapon that should not be in the hands of the typical citizen you WILL get trouble. Until we get help for unplanned pregnancies and get the NRA to stop fighting for semi-automatic weapons to be in the hands of lunatics these horrific accidents will happen over and over again. It is one thing to carry a pistol for safety or have a rifle for hunting but, really, do we need to have multi-round guns legally in the hands of our citizens? How much money does the NRA funnel through the American Government to allow them to keep these guns legal? Why does the program that funnels the most money through society go undisturbed?
Dear Dr Califano,all over the world the press and public tend to minimize the already proved relationbetween marihuana and marihuana psychosis,and the common polidrug abuse of marihuana users and psychotoxic implications of it,as well as the fact that marihuana inhalation involves carbon monoxide-also a neurotoxic-and a lot of other mentioned cannabinols still to be completely studied.School and media programs must include that knowledge in their programs.Yours sincerely.Jorge Kiss