Many years ago, my wife and I invited a nephew into our family so that he could join a local competitive running group. He was with us for a year, and I enjoyed his company even as he pestered our three much younger children. And he was a dedicated runner, spending hours every day pounding out miles. He entered races from time to time and I suppose he was a good runner as he moved up the standings in his club. He decided not to join us in our sojourn to Colombia and instead largely lived on his own. Within a couple of years, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and the outlook for his life took a sharp turn down. His diagnosis followed a newfound attraction to marijuana, but correlation is not causation.
I once hired a marijuana smoking friend to do some construction work for me. He had made his career choice based partly on his pot habit and his task was to tape and mud the drywall that had been installed in a basement suite. The neighbour was not happy seeing him red-eyed and peeing off the back deck but marijuana or no marijuana he did a fine job. That was my first impression when I reviewed his work, but my satisfaction was severely tested when I went to install the electric plugs and switches. He had mudded over the electrical boxes, and I had to buy a metal detector to locate them. It took several tripped breakers in the electrical panel before all the boxes were found and the drywall mud removed.
Not too many years ago, I took a telephone call from another nephew.
“Hey Uncle Murray. It is me, Brent (not his real name). You won’t believe who I saw today!”
“Hey Brent! It has been a long time! How are you doing, and I likely won’t. Who did you see today?”
“George Lucas! I met him on the bus, and he wants me to be in his next Star Wars movie! What are the chances!”
“Wow! George Lucas! I would say the chances are not very good. When does filming begin?”
The conversation continued in this vein for a few more minutes and it was clear that Brent had only a tenuous grasp on reality. Another case of schizophrenia after heavy marijuana use. But correlation is not causation.
My own experience with marijuana was formed largely by my parsimonious nature. That is to say that I never smoked marijuana because none of my friends were interested in sharing theirs with me and I was too cheap to buy my own. The red eyes and silly giggling of my friends was not enough of an incentive to buy pot at any price. I did have an interesting experience with the larger world of commercial pot production, however. I was evaluating a potential gemstone project in the Slocan Valley of British Columbia and was being shown the outcrop occurrences by a local geologist. Usually, such visits start with a safety discussion related to dangerous flora and fauna but this one started with the proper protocols for human encounters.
“If we meet anyone, don’t look at their face and let me do the talking. These people can be crazy.”
Pot growers in pre-legalization Canada were sullen and suspicious and the easiest way to get rid of a problem apparently was to shoot it. I was subsequently told that the RCMP were afraid to go into that part of the bush, but I don’t believe it. They always “get their man”. In fact, there was a funny story of one pot growing couple who fed a group of bears to provide security around their grow-op and it was the RCMP who discovered the scam and arrested the bears.
All of these thoughts came to mind when reading an important book written by Alex Berenson (alexberenson.substack.com) called Tell your children: The truth about marijuana, mental illness and violence1.
Berenson points out with considerable data and medical evidence that the correlation between marijuana use and diseases like schizophrenia in teenage males is causal. Not only are young males who smoke marijuana at risk of serious health risks but the psychotic incidences they experience can often be extraordinarily violent. He makes the salient point that the lack of reporting on the dangerous violence associated with marijuana use is not evidence that there is no linkage. It is evidence that the linkage is not reported.
He also makes a compelling argument that “medical marijuana” is a canard that worked exceptionally well in a public relations sense but its medical effects have no basis in science. You know... that thing we are supposed to always follow. His book is really a call to be part of “Team Reality” even though he didn’t coin the term at that time. He also presents a very useful guide called the A. B. Hill criteria for establishing causality from correlation. I wish I had read this ten years ago. The criteria for assessing causality include temporality or how close the correlated events are to each other in time, strength of association, dose-response, response consistency, plausibility, how the hypothesis fits with others, experimental repeatability, specificity of response, and coherence to the hypothesis. If a correlated association satisfies a majority of these criteria, it may be considered causal.
One reviewer of the book, in an update to Berenson’s conclusions adds, “The National Academy of Sciences, the most highly regarded group of scientists in the United States, released a report in 2017 based on an exhaustive review of all known research on marijuana. Their unequivocal conclusion is that cannabis use increases risk of developing schizophrenia and other psychoses. I also performed an extensive search of the literature from the time the NAS report was released through February 2019 and found that nearly every study on this topic, without exception, found an association between marijuana and schizophrenia and other psychoses.”
Pot was legalized in Canada in 2018 after this report was published. Interesting. But the horse has fled the barn you might protest. That is true but the legislation called for an automatic review of the policy within three years. I wonder what that review concluded about the safety and utility of unrestricted marijuana use particularly for adolescent and young male adults? More importantly I wonder if that review has ever taken place. It turns out that it hasn’t, and the pot industry is not happy because they want to optimize profit by increasing the potency of the drug. For this they need the legislative review and approval. What could possibly go wrong if they receive such approval?
When we were allowed to volunteer in the local penitentiary (pre-covid), a bright young man became a regular at our meetings. As his release date approached, I was very taken by his excitement and trepidation. “This guy is going to make it,” I thought. He felt that he had learned positive things from the prison experience, was drug free and wanted to take on the world by using a different set of lenses in his decision-making. Everyone was rooting for him. Three weeks after release he died of a fentanyl overdose. Just another criminal dying of his vices, I guess. But that is not how I remember him.
Remember in 2020 when we were told, “If we only save one life, the lockdown will have been worth it”? Maybe it is time to tell Parliament to start saving lives rather than throwing people under yet another ideological bus. Maybe, like gun registration, driver’s licenses, boating permits and voting, we need to protect young males by delaying their urges to become chemically stupid. Maybe the review should suggest that marijuana be legally available to young males after the age of 25. The libertarians will cry foul of course and argue that these young guys will get marijuana one way or another and so it is best to legalize it at all ages. But the law is a teacher… and “if we save only one life”… and why should I be complicit in the immoral act of visiting dangerous psychoses on young males by encouraging dangerous practices? Put your seat belts back on all ye dissenters!
I am not an expert, but I have two male relatives living lives of quiet desperation due to the (then) unknown effects of marijuana use. Now that we know what the effects are is it morally defensible for Canadians to be complicit in destroying more young lives? We put warnings on cigarettes so surely, we can do something similar for marijuana. You might want to contact your Member of Parliament and ask him or her how the marijuana legislative review is coming along. Be sure to mention the 2017 NAS study2.
https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2017/01/health-effects-of-marijuana-and-cannabis-derived-products-presented-in-new-report