Recommended for educating school and community groups: In a 3-minute video, Crystal Dilworth explains how marijuana — even in small amounts — affects the developing brain, and changes its structure. She makes a compelling case for why not to use for those under 25.
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I don’t see my “stand by” area for listing the correlation with marijuana abuse and homicide. Just as well, let me list another I saw this morning since it regards teens being murdered.
The perpetrator is Jeffery A. Hazelwood is actually aged 20, and he is the suspect in the killing of two teens in Georgia,
Quote: “Nelson continued on to say Hazelwood was a drug dealer who sold to high school kids. Yet Nelson said he only took a ride with him to a local school one time and witnessed it, but wanted nothing to do with the drug scene.
“He sold drugs to high schools. That’s what losers do; they sell drugs to high schools.”
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“Drugs” of course is a term that covers a variety of recreational drugs, yet it should be understood that when drug abuse occurs, the use of marijuana is invariably at the core of it.
The racist shooter at Charleston this last year, Dylann Roof, has been in the news repeatedly for a variety of reasons. As a reminder, Roof also has a substantiated history of marijuana abuse as a teenager, as well as ‘mental health issues’ that are often associated.
Now think of the parallels with Omar Matteen, the mass murderer in Orlando recently, or Mohamed Bouhlel, the mass murderer in Nice, France recently. They also had histories of marijuana abuse and mental illness issues.
But where is the radical Islamic connection in the later two? The connection seems rather tenuous at best, other than perhaps their names and some incidental reaching out.
Otherwise, they are very similar to Roof, that is, they ALL have histories of marijuana abuse, pent up hate and anger, and mental health problems. Rather than exclusively blaming racism, guns, jihad, or trucks for that matter (used by Bouhlel), why doesn’t our society, our intellectual elite, whether in academia or at the highest levels of government, not at least wonder if the marijuana abuse of these individuals is creating or exacerbating underlying mental illness (such as schizophrenia), which in turn creates a deranged vision of the world these individuals have, that amplifies hate and anger, which in turn may culminate with final drastic acts as revenge on society?
I mean, it’s plain as day what appears to be happening. Of course, the causal connection may be wrong in the final analysis, but there sure is plenty to arouse suspicions. Yet this obvious possibility is for whatever reason being overlooked or ignored. It’s right under our noses, yet NO ONE in the upper echelons of academia or government is getting it.
Mind altering drugs such as marijuana may be actually adversely altering the minds of genetically and/or environmentally susceptible abusers.
It’s been reported lately that regular marijuana use has doubled during the Obama administration, from some 15 million users, to now in 2016, 30 million users. (ball park figures I’m sure)
Now there are a couple of genes that scientific research is now indicating may engender regular marijuana users a much greater susceptibility (seven fold, it appears) to psychosis. One of those genes is AKT 1, called an allel, that appears to dominate in about 1 percent of the population.
Thus if that gene is active in 1% of marijuana users, and truly is the culprit behind psychosis, then of the 15 million new marijuana users during the Obama administration, then some 150,000 new marijuana users are much more vulnerable to the risks of developing psychosis.
The next study should be to calculate how many of those 150 thousand individuals at risk go on to be violent threats to society. And of course those risks increase dramatically for younger users of marijuana whose minds are still developing.
Our society may be tricking itself into thinking marijuana is harmless because the other 99% are not necessarily as vulnerable to developing psychosis. They may be developing other, relatively minor mental issues, or habits or addictions, all of which are serious and need addressing, but the overall effect is most of society erringly concludes marijuana is relatively harmless because they themselves have been test models.
But they are not seeing the downside, the one percent who are developing psychotic tendencies, and who do resort to violence. Thus for most of the 99%, especially if their minds are skewed favorably toward marijuana (via rewiring in the brain from use), it is very difficult to connect the dots.
We, our western society, may be falling into one of the greatest traps imaginable, perhaps the very same trap that brought down the once great Arab civilizations. We will likely to continue to have increasing bouts of random, senseless violence for whatever cause, that will certainly take a heavy toll on our way of life. There is no getting around it. And nobody at the national level is on their guard, at least wondering what harms from widespread marijuana abuse may be befalling us?