Advice needed Son Growing Marijuana

[jway86]

Sorry, but I have had too many friends tell me that when they weren’t using pot, they got A’s, when they started using, they got C’s, and then when they quit again, they went back to getting A’s. This personal impression is backed up by studies of student grades as a function of marijuana use.

That’s interesting but the people you didn’t hear from are the ones who quietly used marijuana instead of alcohol and saw no adverse effects. I think that you might come across as a little anti-pot and that could be putting your friends off from telling you about any successful use of cannabis they’ve had.

In the end though I feel that if cannabis was as detrimental as we’ve been lead to believe that it wouldn’t have nearly so many people using it. The vast majority of people try to avoid things that harm them and if marijuana caused the sort of harm that you mentioned then it shouldn’t be nearly as popular as it is.

Marijuana is only about as addictive as coffee so marijuana users aren’t trapped into continuing their use like tobacco and heroin users are, however according to NIDA there are 2.4 million new marijuana users every year in the U.S. and by the time teens graduate from high school fully 46% of them have used marijuana.

First of all, statistics like these should be ***impossible ***after 70 years of a federal marijuana prohibition. Obviously the prohibition isn’t working.

And secondly, where are the masses of marijuana-damaged people that this should be generating? They simply don’t exist.

 

[jway86]

I also have no reason to believe that anyone chooses marijuana as an alternative to alcohol, either. That’s made-up nonsense…who ever does that? That’s like saying if you give people chocolate it will help them give up bacon. It doesn’t even make sense.

Well, chocolate and bacon aren’t substitute goods, marijuana and alcohol are. With substitute goods an increase in the use of one leads to a decrease in the use of the other.
Alcohol users who start using marijuana simply have to use less alcohol - they have no choice. Getting drunk before consuming marijuana makes people violently sick, and consuming marijuana before drinking makes people drink less.

Even if a person doesn’t give up alcohol entirely any reduction in alcohol use will result in a reduction in alcohol-related diseases, alcohol-related violence and alcohol-related deaths and injuries. And because alcohol is far more harmful than marijuana, this is true even when the reduction in alcohol use is accompanied by an increase in marijuana use.

 

[EasterJoy]

Well, chocolate and bacon aren’t substitute goods, marijuana and alcohol are. With substitute goods an increase in the use of one leads to a decrease in the use of the other.
Alcohol users who start using marijuana simply have to use less alcohol - they have no choice. Getting drunk before consuming marijuana makes people violently sick, and consuming marijuana before drinking makes people drink less.

Even if a person doesn’t give up alcohol entirely any reduction in alcohol use will result in a reduction in alcohol-related diseases, alcohol-related violence and alcohol-related deaths and injuries. And because alcohol is far more harmful than marijuana, this is true even when the reduction in alcohol use is accompanied by an increase in marijuana use.

What tells me I am not conversing with someone on the staff at Hazelden? You must be joking or else using even as you type.

You want us to believe that marijuana is a substitute for alcohol, removing the bad effects of using alcohol because it works like antabuse? Using marijuana and alcohol together in any combination or degree always makes people sick, so people just don’t ever combine them? Where did you get these ideas? Not from watching actual pot-smoking beer drinkers, let alone pot-smoking alcoholics. (Yes, in spite of your cheery assessment of pot, there are pot-smoking alcoholics. That doesn’t speak volumes for the power of marijuana as a “substitute”, does it?)

Of course it is a particularly stupid idea to combine any two mind-altering drugs–alcohol and drugs are bad enough without unforeseen interactions–but I don’t know anybody who found that their marijuana use made them into teetotalers. Sure, they might use them on different nights or drink less because they intended to get stoned later, but good heavens, nobody would elect the guy who’s getting stoned instead of drunk as their designated driver for the night!!

You don’t have any evidence that people who used alcohol so heavily that they were ruining their livers, committing assaults, and driving under the influence are in any way amended by the addition of marijuana to their list of self-medications, because that evidence does not exist. Name someone who cured their alcohol abuse by turning to marijuana use, becoming model employees and improving their health by turning to smoking weed. Name one single sober alcoholic who credits marijuana with their return to a sober and sane life. Show me a study where people with alcohol abuse problems improved in any measurable way because they were given access to weed. It doesn’t exist. To propose marijuana use as an antidote for a habit of alcohol abuse is sheer lunacy!!

There isn’t even evidence that marijuana users are less violent than those who don’t use it. That little deceit must be made up in the minds of those who smoke a few joints and imagine that they’ve magically become mellow and wise. Well, as it turns out, after smoking a few they become anything but wise–I have seen the minds of physics majors become vapid and ridiculous after smoking pot–and it turns out that they are not immune to the kind of violence that people turn to when they aren’t thinking straight, either.

If alcohol abusers and addicts want to become healthy, wealthy, and wise, they need to get clean and sober and face their issues instead of self-medicating with a mind-altering substance, not take on a pot habit as “substitute.”

 

[Xantippe]

jway86

"And secondly, where are the masses of marijuana-damaged people that this should be generating? "

All the people who drone on and on about how pot is totally harmless and it hasn’t hurt them a bit–they look and sound pretty damaged, even just in print.

There’s a reason why there’s a recognizable stereotype of the stoner.

 

[EasterJoy]

That’s interesting but the people you didn’t hear from are the ones who quietly used marijuana instead of alcohol and saw no adverse effects. I think that you might come across as a little anti-pot and that could be putting your friends off from telling you about any successful use of cannabis they’ve had.

In the end though I feel that if cannabis was as detrimental as we’ve been lead to believe that it wouldn’t have nearly so many people using it. The vast majority of people try to avoid things that harm them and if marijuana caused the sort of harm that you mentioned then it shouldn’t be nearly as popular as it is.

Marijuana is only about as addictive as coffee so marijuana users aren’t trapped into continuing their use like tobacco and heroin users are, however according to NIDA there are 2.4 million new marijuana users every year in the U.S. and by the time teens graduate from high school fully 46% of them have used marijuana.
By
First of all, statistics like these should be ***impossible ***after 70 years of a federal marijuana prohibition. Obviously the prohibition isn’t working.

And secondly, where are the masses of marijuana-damaged people that this should be generating? They simply don’t exist.

Buddy, are you arguing that the OP has no reason for any legal concern about their rental property because their son is illegally growing The Best Drug Ever? The thread is, after all about what a parent/landlord ought to do when they find their son/tenant has decided to grow some pot without their permission. It is about a son who knows his pot use is a problem from his parents’ point of view since he started using in HS, but who decided to grow his own in THEIR house, anyway.

If the son had his own place or rented from someone else, this would be a different conversation. It could be argued that his civil disobedience would be between him and his landlord. That is not the situation.

He’s a tenant. If the lease says no dogs, he cannot have a dog. It doesn’t matter that the President has a dog, it doesn’t matter that he thinks he can prove dogs are better tenants than toddlers, it doesn’t matter that his dog is licensed. It only matters that he is violating the trust of the landlord.

The son needs to stop doing illegal things on his parents’ rental property without their consent. He doesn’t have their consent and surely he knew it would be a cold day in H $#@ before he gets it. He never should have had pot on that property. He needs to getcrid of it and keep it off the property in the future. Period.

 

[EasterJoy]

That’s interesting but the people you didn’t hear from are the ones who quietly used marijuana instead of alcohol and saw no adverse effects. I think that you might come across as a little anti-pot and that could be putting your friends off from telling you about any successful use of cannabis they’ve had.

In the end though I feel that if cannabis was as detrimental as we’ve been lead to believe that it wouldn’t have nearly so many people using it. The vast majority of people try to avoid things that harm them and if marijuana caused the sort of harm that you mentioned then it shouldn’t be nearly as popular as it is.

Marijuana is only about as addictive as coffee so marijuana users aren’t trapped into continuing their use like tobacco and heroin users are, however according to NIDA there are 2.4 million new marijuana users every year in the U.S. and by the time teens graduate from high school fully 46% of them have used marijuanhmm ia.

First of all, statistics like these should be ***impossible ***after 70 years of a federal marijuana prohibition. Obviously the prohibition isn’t working.

And secondly, where are the masses of marijuana-damaged people that this should be generating? They simply don’t exist.

If they quietly quit using alcohol, I would have seen them quit drinking, don’t you think?

 

[SamH]

Easy.

Spray the plants with 2-4D and forget about them.

 

[jway86]

You want us to believe that marijuana is a substitute for alcohol

I’m assuming you googled “substitute goods marijuana alcohol” before you asked that, right?

 

[jway86]

If alcohol abusers and addicts want to become healthy, wealthy, and wise, they need to get clean and sober and face their issues instead of self-medicating with a mind-altering substance, not take on a pot habit as “substitute.”

So you support us continuing the 800,000 annual marijuana-related arrests because national teetotalism is a viable option?

 

[EasterJoy]

So you support us continuing the 800,000 annual marijuana-related arrests because national teetotalism is a viable option?

One of my forebearers went to jail during Prohibition for cooking bootleg liquor. Everybody in the family thought Prohibition ought to be repealed, but nobody in the family blames the government for enforcing the existing law.

 

[EasterJoy]

Sigh. Why are you making this about whether or not marijuana should be legal or not, as if the OP were the state governor and not the landlord? Even your own experts aren’t giving evidence that argues in favor of letting people grow this stuff in their back yards:

I’m assuming you googled “substitute goods marijuana alcohol” before you asked that, right?

No, I didn’t, but when I did, what I found was this: hamsnetwork.org/mm/

*To date there have been no placebo-controlled double-blind studies of the success of cannabis as a substitute for alcohol for people with alcohol dependence. However, the late Dr Tod Mikuriya, MD (1933 - 2007) has long been an advocate of medical marijuana for a wide variety of uses included the treatment of alcohol dependence. In 2004 Dr Mikuriya published a study of 92 patients for whom he had prescribed cannabis as a treatment for their alcohol dependence.
The following quote from Dr Mikuriya’s paper tells us about the efficacy of marijuana for these patients: *

•  As could be expected among patients seeking physician approval to treat alcoholism with cannabis, all reported that they’d found it "very effective" (45) or "effective" (38). Efficacy was inferred from other responses on seven questionnaires. Two patients did not make follow-up visits but had reported efficacy at the initial interview.

Nine patients reported that they had practiced total abstinence from alcohol for more than a year and attributed their success to cannabis. Their years in sobriety: 19, 18, 16, 10, 7, 6, 4 (2), and 2.

Patients who reported a return of symptoms when cannabis was discontinued (19), ranged from succinct to dramatic:

• “I started drinking a lot more.”
• “More anxiety, less happiness.”
• “Use alcohol when cannabis isn’t available.”
• “If I don’t have anything to smoke, I usually drink a lot more.”
• "I quit using cannabis while I was in the army and my drinking doubled. I was also involved in several violent incidents due to alcohol.
• “My caretaker got arrested and I lived too far from the city to purchase at a club, and I started doing heroin again and almost killed myself and some of my friends.”
• “Stress level becomes higher, become more uptight. Went back to drinking in the 1970s.”–A female patient with 19 years of sobriety. Several patients specifically noted that cannabis use reduced the craving for alcohol:
• “I crave alcohol when I can’t smoke marijuana.”
• “Had to quit drinking at 48 yrs. old. Found cannabis helped stop the urge to drink.”–A 69-year-old commercial fisherman.

Three patients reported a sad irony: they had “fallen off the wagon” when they had to stop using cannabis in anticipation of drug tests. Patient S., a 27-year-old cable installer, had six alcohol-related arrests by age 21, “. . . after not smoking herb (for probation drug test) and blacking out on alcohol, I found my drinking getting out of hand and I began getting into more trouble.” He later relapsed when denied use of cannabis at a residential treatment facility.

Twenty nine of Mikuriya’s patients reported that they had formerly used alcohol for pain relief and were now using cannabis in its stead.

Fourty four reported that they had previously used alcohol to medicate some sort of mood disorder such as depression, anxiety, stress, or PTSD. All forty four reported that they had successfully substituted cannabis for alcohol for the relief of thes psychological issues.

Mikuriya makes the case that cannabis not only has fewer side effects than alcohol, but also fewer side effects than prescription drugs as well. Not to mention that marijuana is much cheaper to purchase than most prescription drugs for the uninsured poor.

Dr Mikuriya’s full article can be read here:
Cannabis as a Substitute for Alcohol: A Harm-Reduction Approach *

IOW, when they can’t have their drug of choice, their craving for alcohol not only comes back, but often comes back with a vengeance.

I’m not surprised that these studies are not being published in JAMA, but instead are showing up in such “peer reviewed” standards as Harm Reduction Journal and Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics. They’re switching one addiction for another. That does not argue in favor of taking marijuana out of the hands of doctors, let us say that!

 

[Allegra]

Trying to explain to a pot head that pot is addictive, harmful to the brain, the cause of highly risky behavior, and not worth the legal ramifications is a complete waste of time. They’re on pot for crying out loud! You could provide enough medical and legal evidence to read for their entire lives as to the harmful effects of pot and they would still just drool and claim that pot makes them “creative”. These kinds of conversations are almost laughable as any sober person can clearly see those who are under the influence from a mile away, yet they still swear it isn’t doing them any harm. Honestly, the OP could just spray the plants with weed killer and be done with it. Their son will probably just say, “Oh man. They died.” and go on with his creative life.

 

[Father_of_10]

Trying to explain to a pot head that pot is addictive, harmful to the brain, the cause of highly risky behavior, and not worth the legal ramifications is a complete waste of time. They’re on pot for crying out loud! You could provide enough medical and legal evidence to read for their entire lives as to the harmful effects of pot and they would still just drool and claim that pot makes them “creative”. These kinds of conversations are almost laughable as any sober person can clearly see those who are under the influence from a mile away, yet they still swear it isn’t doing them any harm. Honestly, the OP could just spray the plants with weed killer and be done with it. Their son will probably just say, “Oh man. They died.” and go on with his creative life.

OP don’t spray. Some of the herbicides out there have phosphate inhibitors and if inhaled in smoke can be permanently debilitating or fatal. Junior may see the dead plants and try to smoke them!

Other than that Allegra is dead on.

 

[EasterJoy]

Trying to explain to a pot head that pot is addictive, harmful to the brain, the cause of highly risky behavior, and not worth the legal ramifications is a complete waste of time. They’re on pot for crying out loud! You could provide enough medical and legal evidence to read for their entire lives as to the harmful effects of pot and they would still just drool and claim that pot makes them “creative”. These kinds of conversations are almost laughable as any sober person can clearly see those who are under the influence from a mile away, yet they still swear it isn’t doing them any harm. Honestly, the OP could just spray the plants with weed killer and be done with it. Their son will probably just say, “Oh man. They died.” and go on with his creative life.

Some pot users are very competent gardeners, and would be insulted and hurt as any gardener to find that their own mother would do that to their plants. You may as well kill his tomato plants, while you’re at it. Besides, why be sneaky? As landlords, the parents have standing to banish the plants as a condition of the son staying on. I’d play the landlord card, and leave it at that.

You’re right about the arguments over it. Frankly, though, even if I were theoretically pro-pot, I’d make him get rid of the plants. Did they let all the bootleggers out of prison when Prohibition was repealed? I’m doubting it. Neither will legalization of pot erase a drug-related arrest or conviction.

 

[rayne89]

Sorry, but I have had too many friends tell me that when they weren’t using pot, they got A’s, when they started using, they got C’s, and then when they quit again, they went back to getting A’s. This personal impression is backed up by studies of student grades as a function of marijuana use. Whatever else it does, marijuana is never going to do for productivity what coffee does. Based on the testimony of users, it seems to me to be one of the most reliable cures for ambition known. I can’t tell you how many bright people have written down their “revelations” while being stoned and later reported that the result was the biggest pile of circular garbage they’d ever read. IOW:* Pot use gives people the impression that they have a deeper understanding of complex questions, but it is entirely illusory*. Cognitive impairment is documented, and lasts longer than the cognitive impairment from alcohol use. I would certainly never hire anybody who was a regular pot user. Heaven forbid someone use pot and then drive a car.

The amount of tar and carbon monoxide inhaled when smoking marijuana is, depending on who measures it, as high or higher than with tobacco use. Long term marijuana use impairs lung function. Youth who use marijuana regularly are more likely to have engaged in violent behavior in the last year, not less, so marijuana’s reputation as a “mellowing” drug are not actually deserved.

My father used alcohol every day except Advent and Lent for decades, and neither I nor anyone else has ever seen him drunk. I do not know a single marijuana user who does not use pot with the specific goal of reaching cognitive impairment. As President Obama once put it, he inhaled because “that was the point.” That alone makes marijuana different than coffee and alcohol: that is, no one uses pot to enjoy the flavor, no one would ever throw marijuana into a recipe and then cook away the active ingredient because only the flavor was wanted. That is why I think that people who use pot are fooling themselves if they think they are a bit different than people who use alcohol only as a vehicle to get themselves to some target level of drunkenness.

Could there be people who might benefit from using the active ingredient in marijuana as a pain or nausea reliever? It’s possible. That’s a medical question on a topic of political importance, so getting a real answer would be difficult–and really outside scope of this thread, besides.

:clapping:

 

[capcrack]

I would talk to him and calmly ask him to remove the plants first. Give him a week (in writing) and send it off via certified mail. If it’s not gone within a week, I would start the process of eviction.

 

[Aggie414]

I wouldn’t be quite as polite as a lot of posters here are suggesting – I would come right out and tell him to get that stuff off my property or find another place to live. I don’t think some posters are realizing quite the position this “child” is putting his parents in. He is risking them being criminally and/or civilly being held accountable for this illegal substance. If he can’t realize that and correct it immediately, then he has no respect for his parents and they should have no responsibility for helping him out – just like any other tenant that would be renting from them.

 

[Allegra]

OP don’t spray. Some of the herbicides out there have phosphate inhibitors and if inhaled in smoke can be permanently debilitating or fatal. Junior may see the dead plants and try to smoke them!

Other than that Allegra is dead on.

I didn’t think of that. Yeah, don’t spray.