"But Rachel also has another hobby, one that makes her a bit different from the other moms in her Texas suburb—not that she talks about it with them. Once a month or so, after she and her husband put the kids to bed, Rachel texts her in-laws—who live just down the street—to make sure they’re home and available in the event of an emergency.

“And then, Rachel takes a generous dose of magic mushrooms, or sometimes MDMA, and—there’s really no other way to say this— spends the next several hours tripping balls.”

  • Dasus@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I can show you evidence of smoking causing lung cancer. Do you think smoking cannabis magically makes the smoke healthy?

    While cannabinoids aren’t carcinogenic, a lot of the byproducts of smoking are.

    This isn’t even debatable, man. Smoking is unhealthy. Were people to only use edibles, I doubt there’d be any mortality of any sort to report. And I doubt the veracity of the mortality rate in general. (I didn’t notice it, my bad for saying “read the chart, bruh”, as I was the one who had poorly skimmed it, because I’m rather high and thought I remembered what it said.) The mortality rate, afaik, would include things like if someone smoked only cannabis, got lung cancer, then those medical files would probably count towards this stat. I’m thinking there’s probably cases where some drunk driver has died in some way, and they test the blood, find alcohol and a tiny bit of cannabis, and then list “driving on drugs (cannabis)” as the reason or something.

    https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2516340/

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23846283/

    If you’ve only ever vaped, (and not vape-liquids, but actual herb vaporisers) I don’t think you’re much at risk of lung cancer, really. I should like to see evidence to the contrary, and until I do, I don’t think I’ll believe it. Smoking, on the other hand? Drawing the byproducts of combustion into your lungs? Yes, I’m sure it causes cancer. And scientists tend to agree.

    I’m off to hit my bong, all this talk of lung cancer made my lungs leak; got to go tar them a bit.

      • Dasus@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I literally just linked two studies showing that smoking cannabis is independently linked to cancer even when smoking cigarettes, socioeconomic factors, etc are taken into account. One of them is a 40-year cohort.

        Science really doesn’t get more valid than that in our current age, so I don’t really know what you mean. Also, does this mean you don’t believe that SMOKING cannabis causes cancer? Lighting it on fire, it burning and you inhaling the smoke?

        You don’t think breathing in heavy smoke from this everyday is causing me to have an increased risk of mortality from an increased risk of cancer vis-a-vis breathing in tar? And I clean this daily, often twice or more a day.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          No evidence of mortality though.

          So where did they get their mortality figures?

          Maybe ask yourself that.

          • Dasus@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            What you’re doing is colloquially known as “sealioning”.

            Science literally does not get much better than that. Plus the decades and decades of studies there are showing that smoke — in general — causes cancer.

            Do you think it’s the nicotine in cigarettes which is causing people to die? That that’s why the mortality figures from cigarettes is so high? Or could it be that inhaling smoke is unhealthy?

            You’re demanding that I present to you where the chart I linked got their figures from, saying you absolutely refuse to believe there’s any connection to increased mortality in any method of using cannabis — even the one where you INHALE SMOKE. How am I supposed to do that? I don’t have access to their data. I have access to the same data that I presented to you. But if we want to pursue your query as to where these mortality figures might come from, well, obviously they’re at least from the increased risk of cancer from smoking. I’ve said this several times but I suspect that if every single person that was involved in that study had actually used edibles instead of smoking, there would be much less mortality, if any.

            So I don’t understand what exactly you’re protesting here. Because the most popular method (well, it might actually be edibles or vaping already in some places where it’s legal) is smoking and smoking causes cancer. It feels like you’re adamant that smoking cannabis magically makes smoking healthy. Which feels subpar compared to your normal rhetoric.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              No. No I am not.

              I am asking for where they got their mortality numbers.

              It’s clear you don’t know and you’re just guessing. I can only surmise because you want cannabis to be that deadly.

              • Gigasser@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                Hey man, I like cannabis too, but it is true that ignition based delivery systems(smoking) I think just generally cause cancer.

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  That’s not the issue. The issue is that their mortality numbers are suspect. How could they possibly know that all of those people died of lung cancer because they smoked cannabis? Especially when Cannabis is illegal in the UK where that chart is supposed to be from? I would like some actual evidence. So far, all the evidence I can find goes back to a pyschopharmacologist called David Nutt who seems to think cannabis is dangerous but won’t show his sources either.

                  • Gigasser@lemmy.world
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                    2 months ago

                    I’m guessing it’s all estimated numbers from statistics. Personally, I’ll always recommend dry herb vapes or just getting regular THC vapes from more reputable brands, or shit make your own vape liquid if you think you can do it on your own(although I hear this way can be risky).

              • Dasus@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                You are denying that there’s any evidence for mortality being increased from any way of using cannabis. That’s the very strong implication you’re giving off here.

                You definitely didn’t even browse the studies I linked.

                I’m very disappointed. This is really hurting the respect I have for you.

                A popular method of using cannabis is smoking. Do you disagree?

                A very obvious consequence of smoking is an increased risk of mortality from an increased risk of cancer and cardiopulmonary disease. Do you disagree with this?

                If you don’t disagree with either, then you know where the figures came from, at least partly. I’m sure you can try to look them up for yourself if you have such a burning need to browse them in detail.

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  I am doing no such thing.

                  I am asking where they got their figures from. You have no idea. Telling me “do your own research” will not tell me where they got their figures from.

                  No matter how much you object to it, I’m not going to take a chart with no sources at face value.

                  No one should.

                  • Dasus@lemmy.world
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                    2 months ago

                    Fine, be childish. I’ll do the work for you, so you can’t even use your asinine sealioning to get out of this one.

                    https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/06/25/what-is-the-most-dangerous-drug

                    So that’s the article I linked. It says:

                    That question is the subject of a report published today by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, an independent group of 26 former presidents and other bigwigs.

                    The study in question:

                    http://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2019Report_EN_web.pdf

                    Which says:

                    Mortality is defined as risk of lethal overdose (drug-specific), OR BY life shortened by factors other than overdose (drug-related)

                    This graph is based on the scientific modelling made by David Nutt et al. (Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria decision analysis, The Lancet, https://doi.org/10.1016/S6-61462(10)6736-0140), and their assessment of the various harms of drugs used for recreational purposes in the UK, using multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA)

                    Huh. Other factors? No way we could know what mortality related factors there could be in using cannabis, seeing as the most popular method is burning it and inhaling the smoke? Geez. I wonder what we’ll find, right?

                    Let’s see. You just copy the link from there. Select it, and then you can use a handy keyboard shortcut, just press “CTRL+C” while you have something selected, and the computer copies it to memory! Oh, the URL seems corrupted because of the formatting of the PDF. Just select the title mentioned there and paste it (CTRL+V), and you’ll find this: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21036393/ which has a functioning link: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)61462-6/abstract

                    All the data is there. Satisfied, or still gonna just stomp your foot and yell “no no no no smoking cannabis magically makes it healthy and thus there’s zero increased mortality rate from anything related to cannabis, not even smoking and inhaling it”?