On Wed, 18 Jun 2008, [EMAIL PROTECTED] went:
This must be a new phenomenon and certainly deserves some explanation. Back in the 60s marijuana was seldom known to cause users to be rushed to the ER.The drug was not supposed to be that detrimental. So why is it nowadays that kids end up in the ER after smoking a few joints?
That's actually an interesting question, and I expect the reflexive answer to be "Oh, marijuana's a lot stronger that it used to be." Some very potent strains have emerged, but data actually DON'T support the generalization that typical '60s pot was stronger than typical '00s pot. The potency of the old stuff has been underestimated due to bad storage techniques. Maybe some of the change in people's responses is a manifestation of generational forgetting. Look at Norman Zinberg's comments, circa 1984, on the role of knowledge and expectations: <http://psychedelic-library.org/zinberg1.htm> "In 1967 sociologist Howard S. Becker, in a prophetic article, compared the current anxiety about psychedelics to anxiety about marihuana in the late 1920s, when several psychoses had been reported. Becker hypothesized that the psychoses came not from the drug reactions themselves but from the secondary anxiety generated by unfamiliarity with the drug's effects and ballooned by media publicity. He suggested that the unpleasant reactions had ceased to appear after the true effects of marihuana had become more widely known, and he correctly predicted that the same thing would happen in the case of the psychedelics." [...] "Interviews (ours and others') have shown that the user of the early 1960s, with his great hopes of heaven or fears of hell and his lack of any sense of what to expect, had a far more extreme experience [with psychedelic drugs] than the user of the 1970s, who had been exposed to a decade of interest in psychedelic colors, music, and sensations. The later user, who might remark, 'Oh, so that is what a psychedelic color looks like,' had been thoroughly prepared, albeit unconsciously, for the experience and thus could respond in a more restrained way." --David Epstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
