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Notes -
I realize that I just duplicated your post - yeah, Ezra is a dumb policy wonk who is trying to pretend that he wasn't a fellow traveller of woke to push neoliberal policy. If he recommends anything, much like the anti-compass, we should do the opposite - because anything this smug prick recommends or advocates for is the the will of smuggest of LA radlibs.
I understand the worry people like Ezra have. His appearance on the podcast was a horrible debate for him, but it was highly instructive for illustrating a similar view the left and the right both share. Ezra has a view of these topics that’s almost on par with the way the right-wing views the concept of a gateway drug.
Weed is an innocuous drug. We have known that chemically, medicinally and almost every other way you want to have it for a long time. So why do so many on the right remain so uptight about it even though society has become more acceptable of its use? Well because there’s at least one way a gateway drug retains a valid use as a concept. It’s proximity to everything else.
I knew a person once who wanted to open a dispensary in a state that had at that time fairly recently legalized recreational marijuana. And he was well positioned to do it. But after thinking over it for awhile he decided against it, because of the ‘type’ of clientele that’s mostly associated with smoking it. Yes, otherwise normal people also smoke weed, but we all know the popular images of the kind of people who use it. And those types of people do exist. In large numbers. And much of the time, those ‘are’ the kinds of people you’re dealing with.
But it goes even further than that and also puts you in proximity to other people. Hard drug users, or maybe not people who do hard drugs, but drug dealers who sell weed along with hard drugs. And that puts you in closer proximity if not outright in the same circle with those people. If you are a person who doesn’t want the risks associated with that kind of activity or it’s more than you want to think about from a business perspective as the person I was talking to, you’ll abandon the idea entirely just as he did.
Yes, of course IQ exists. Of course there are differences between people and populations. Just as there are height differences, skin tone differences, hair and eye color differences, the whole 9 yards. But these are all differences in a mundane sense and shouldn’t attract such significant attention to them that the KKK and every Neo-Nazi group closely follow your research activity and publication pipeline, and it places those people at the discussion table along with you; because these differences are truly inconsequential and meaningless. And yes, I don’t want those assholes at my table either.
Large swathes of my family are racially intermixed. Several cousins are half Hispanic. I have a red head cousin who’s been in a long-term relationship with a black man. When I was in high school I was in love with a black girl. But you can understand why the whole table becomes quiet and nervous if you bring up a topic like that, especially when large audiences are tuning in to see what you have to say. I think Ezra feels the same way. And I don’t blame him for it. But his approach for handling the matter is not one I would adopt. Sam was having a debate. Ezra was speaking to the mob.
Far from it. Plenty of people in psych wards would disagree strenuously with you.
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:
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.
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