I like this NIDA director ..progressive !

[Sir X]

That's a difficult one. Establishing causality with mental illness is not clear cut. What the research seems to show—for schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety—is that if you have an underlying predilection for these illnesses, smoking marijuana may accelerate the disease's progress and exacerbate it. Studies have found that schizophrenics are more likely to smoke marijuana, but that doesn't mean that marijuana produced the schizophrenia.

In any normal person, if you give them high enough doses of 9-THC—delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol, marijuana's major psychoactive ingredient—you may trigger paranoia. But it's generally short lived. In young people who have a vulnerability to schizophrenia, by contrast, marijuana can trigger a chronic psychosis, which is a much more serious condition. So there may be a connection there. It's a difficult question, because other factors may also be at work. Many people with schizophrenia may also have started smoking cigarettes at an early age, yet nobody suggests cigarettes trigger schizophrenia. In certain people who have genetic vulnerabilities, marijuana use might be a contributing factor for triggering a mental illness. I'm not completely ruling that out.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...lkow--science/


She came out as much as she politically could...Kudos.

[Sir X]

My personal opinion ,anyone who smokes cigs ,its an indicator of a psychiatric problem...my opinion based on visual data,be it anxiety to the extreme schizophrenia.

As for her contradictory view on cancer,the research is out there to dismiss that but she does advocate more research...shreeewd.

Kudos,big step.