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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   24771 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 1, 2025

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I’m actually curious now. Got any stats and case studies on this?

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2424288/

This study says people who used weed prior to age 18 were 2.4 times more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia than those who hadn't, and rates scaled with heavier use:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2424288/

They also estimated that about 13% of all schizophrenia cases could be eliminated by eliminating cannabis usage.

You'd probably get similar numbers for tobacco use though -- I don't see anything there that establishes cause and effect?

From the abstract:

These relationships have persisted after controlling for confounding variables such as personal characteristics and other drug use. The relationships did not seem to be explained by cannabis being used to self-medicate symptoms of psychosis. A contributory causal relationship is biologically plausible because psychotic disorders involve disturbances in the dopamine neurotransmitter system with which the cannabinoid system interacts, as has been shown by animal studies and a human provocation study.

That just means that it wasn't also correlated with any of the other factors that they checked -- doesn't mean that there's not some unknown covariate between "enjoys marijuana" and "is predisposed to schizophrenia".

Except that schizophrenia rates tend to increase following legalization (and/or reduced criminalization) of cannabis: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2829844

Definitively proving cause and effect is extremely difficult even in the best of cases. Numerous studies have consistently established correlation, and plausible causal mechanisms have been proposed. I'd say the burden of proof at this point is those insisting that there is no causality.

Huh. That’s interesting. Thanks for sharing.

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