ON POT AND PSYCHOSIS

A philosophy of science professor once explained how smoking a pack of
cigarettes prevents cancer and does so quite significantly. He then
went on to show that smoking a pack a day reliably results in fewer
cases of cancer than smoking two packs.

I mention this because it is by no means clear that marijuana smokers
do not choose to do so from intuitive knowledge that they have a lower
chance of becoming psychotic if they do smoke.

During the Dark Ages, it was observed that towns with fewer cats had
less black death.

Did it make sense to systematically kill off cats elsewhere?

No! It was not the cats but the fleas on the rats that spread black
death.

What happened when the lawmakers did the common sense thing and
criminalized possession of cats? I leave that as an exercise.

Associated Press reporter Maria Cheng clearly exposed her ignorance
last month when she explains marijuana is thought to cause psychosis,
possibly by interfering with dopamine and interfering with the brain's
communication system. Interestingly, only one of the many drugs used
to improve the symptoms and signs of psychosis does so by any other
means than by interfering with dopamine.

Christopher Koonce,

Chapel Hill