You can't go without a fag. You need it for your hash."

Addiction ^ | Jan 2004 | Amanda Amos, Susan Wiltshire, Yvonne Bostock, Sally Haw & Ann McNeill

[qam1]

A qualitative exploration of smoking, cannabis and young people

Aims: To examine the relationship between smoking tobacco and cannabis use among smokers in their mid-to-late teens.

Design and participants: Two qualitative studies in Scotland. One study used semistructured paired interviews involving 99 16-19-year-old smokers, the other comprised eight focus groups involving 46 15-16-year-old smokers.

Measurement: The interviews and focus groups explored the role and meaning of smoking in the participants' lives, smoking histories and future cessation intentions and how these related to other aspects of their lives, particularly cannabis use.

Findings: Cannabis use was regarded as an important and enjoyable aspect of many of the participants' lives. Importantly, cannabis use and cigarette smoking were linked inextricably. Several reported how smoking joints had been a 'gateway' to smoking cigarettes. While most wanted to quit smoking cigarettes, cannabis use reinforced their cigarette smoking and few wanted to stop using cannabis.

Conclusion: National studies need to be conducted to examine how widespread the problem identified is and tobacco control initiatives and smoking cessation treatment services need to consider urgently how to overcome the barrier that a desire on the part of young people to continue cannabis smoking poses to achieving a reduction in tobacco use.

[tacticalogic]

Well, you can spin it anyway you like. But in the case of this argument with the surgeon I don't think any amount of spinning ever results in me choosing the stoned surgeon over one who has just smoked a cigarette.

Personally, I think it's "spin" to try and set up the surgeon question as the only basis by which the determination of "dangerous" is made. Denying the "mind altering" qualities of tobacco essential attempts to dismiss what are arguably the most dangerous aspects of it. I don't recommend either one, but trying to downplay one in order to demonize the other is simply pushing an agenda.

[tacticalogic]

But tacticlogic, when the question is the mental state of a surgeon about to perform surgery, it's not that subjective.

But Huck, I already told Dane, I'm not chasing that red herring.

[Huck]

So you harp on an inconsequential semantic point? There is nothing to chase after. The answer to the question is simple. The easiest way to be done with it is to answer it, without qualification.

[tacticalogic]

It's a loaded question, and it's getting ignored. Deal with it.

[bc2]

It is my experience that the only places that people smoke "straight" marijuana, that is without mixing it with tobacco, is the United States, most parts of Canada, and Holland and Amsterdam.

The rest of the world either mixes their marijuana with tobacco or they don't get marijuana and use hashish mixed with tobacco.

[Prodigal Son]

I don't recommend either one, but trying to downplay one in order to demonize the other is simply pushing an agenda.

It's not demonizing to call a spade a spade. What agenda, pray tell, do I have? Do you think I'm anti-legalization? Do you think I am against you smoking dope? I'm not.

But the thing is, I have smoked a considerable amount of dope in my life and I know for a fact from my own experience that we're not talking about 'mind altering' so much as we are discussing 'diminished capacity'. If a person were constantly stoned (just as if they were constantly drunk) there would be a very wide range of normal activities that it would not be safe for that person to do/perform. Things like driving, working with power tools, doctoring/nursing all manner of things. There are very few examples where the same argument can be made for cigarettes. Tobacco smokers- demonstrably- carry out all sorts of complex tasks every minute of the day. We don't have to stick to the surgeon example. Pick anything that requires a great deal of skill and concentration. Air Traffic Controller. Who do you want pushing the tin you're flying in- a Marlboro junkie or a guy who just smoked a joint? Pilots. Ambulance drivers. SWAT team member. Soldier. Working on an aircraft carrier flight deck. Crane operator. The list just goes on and on.

The surgeon question isn't the only basis at all and to me this is perfectly clear. I would no more want someone who was stoned (or as I said- F--ked Up) to be doing any of these things than I would somebody who had been drinking. Smoking cigarettes isn't even on the same scale in this regard.

I'm not against you smoking dope though. Toke away. No agenda at all. I would suggest that someone who is defending the argument that 'it's ok for a surgeon to toke up before cutting on me' is promoting an agenda and one that doesn't make that much common sense at that.

For me, defining dangerous has to do with whether the person in question can perform normal activities or not. Driving is a dangerous but normal activity. Drinking alcohol is inherently more dangerous than smoking because a person who just drank a six pack is more impaired than a person who just chain smoked half a pack of cigarettes. Same with smoking pot.

Let's say, you're a parent and for whatever reason, your spouse is not home. Something grave happens to your child and you have no way to call an ambulance and it becomes necessary for you to physically drive your child to the hospital yourself. Odds are, you're going to make it whether you've had a few joints, beers or whatever. But the risks go up with every toke or beer that you might be involved in an accident while driving to the hospital because you were impaired. This is a normal situation where you placed your child at more risk because you were high or drunk. Smoking cigarettes has different dangers but I can't see where the normal activity of getting your child to the hospital would be impaired at all by tobacco.

This is what's being discussed here. Not this situation per se, but the fact that something that impairs you logically raises risks for lots of normal things- therefore making it more dangerous than something that does not similarly impair you.

Again, it's not called 'Getting F--ked up' for no reason.

[tacticalogic]

For me, defining dangerous has to do with whether the person in question can perform normal activities or not. Driving is a dangerous but normal activity. Drinking alcohol is inherently more dangerous than smoking because a person who just drank a six pack is more impaired than a person who just chain smoked half a pack of cigarettes. Same with smoking pot.

Okay. For me it also has to do with the affects on the user that may not be apparent or casually observable.

[Prodigal Son]

Well, I have a very strong libertarian bent. We all do things that are 'dangerous' to ourselves in that they diminish the chance of living a long life. Eating fatty foods, not exercising enough, engaging in dangerous activities etc. But for me all these things are personal matters. What concerns me in a political and societal sense is which activities that you do (to use you generically) that might be dangerous to me. If you want to pickle your liver this is fine with me but it stops being fine when you get behind the wheel of a car.

This is the premise from which I argue. I thought the example of the surgeon always implied the danger that the impaired one might cause to another, not to himself.

[tacticalogic]

I tend toward a libertarian bent too, and I thing that drug use should be largely a societal concern. I just find the surgeon example, and mental impairment as the measure of how dangerous a particular drug is to be over simplified. You can get just as impaired drinking alcohol as you can huffing paint, but I find one to be inarguably more dangerous than the other.

[TKDietz]

"The rest of the world either mixes their marijuana with tobacco or they don't get marijuana and use hashish mixed with tobacco."

I was waiting for someone to catch that. Europeans smoke tons of hash compared to Americans. When they roll joints or even when smoking it out of a pipe most mix it with tobacco. I lived in Germany in the early and mid eighties. I smoked a little weed back then and recall that we almost never saw plain marijuana, it was always hash. The only times I saw unprocessed marijuana were the few times I went to Amsterdam. I remember thinking it was strange that people always mixed their hash with tobacco.

In Holland they even mixed tobacco with plain marijuana. They had bowls of tobacco, rolling papers and filters on the tables in some of the coffeeshops. They rolled fat conical "spliffs" with tiny filters in the small end and took small drags and blew it out quickly more like they were smoking cigarettes than joints. Americans tended to smoke straight marijuana or hash, take bigger hits and hold it in a long time. I remember Germans comparing straight hash to hard liquor and saying mixing it was more like drinking beer.

I don't recall it making much difference whether you mixed it or smoked it pure, but many folks claim the high is milder when it's mixed. I didn't smoke it very often so just about every time I did it I ended up more stoned than I wanted to be whether it was mixed with tobacco or not .

That's the big problem the health authorities are worried about. "Cannabis" and tobacco are too closely intertwined there. Hence the title, "You can't go without a fag. You need it for your hash."

[Old Professer]

Several reported how smoking joints had been a 'gateway' to smoking cigarettes.

Sleeping causes wet sheets in Boy Scout Camp.

[jmc813]

WOD Ping

[jmc813]

My answer with no qualms at all, the Doctor who had just smoked a cigarette.

What if the choice were a drunk doctor and a stoned doctor?

[jmc813]

I was a pot smoker in the late 70's and early 80's

I bet you had a white boy 'fro and/or a perm.

[Dane]

What if the choice were a drunk doctor and a stoned doctor?

Dude, first of all you are way late, way back in reply #14, HF, specifically stated that tobacco was more dangerous than tobacco.

Thus my question, if you were going to have surgery, who would rather have do it, a surgeon who had just smoked a cigarette, or a surgeon who had just smoked a joint.

HF on this thread answered the question. She basically stated that she wants a surgeon from the Cheech and Chong School of "Medicine".

[Dane]

Dude, first of all you are way late, way back in reply #14, HF, specifically stated that tobacco was more dangerous than tobacco

The above should read.

Dude, first of all you are way late, way back in reply #14, HF, specifically stated that tobacco was more dangerous than tobaccomarijuana.

I ain't perfect, never will be, but I do know that I would rather have a surgeon who had just smoked a cigarette, than a joint.

[jmc813]

I notice you didn't deny having an early-80's style perm back then.

[Jaysun]

I tried gum when I first attempted to stop smoking cigarettes. The gum was ineffective because it wouldn't stay lit. However, I did eventually stop smoking - without the "help" of pot.

[Dane]

I notice you didn't deny having an early-80's style perm back then

What the hell are you talking about? Perms were late 70's disco. Early 80's was straight hair with the part in the middle.

I was cursed(blessed) with curly hair, although I am a losing a lot of it on top.

[jmc813]

What the hell are you talking about? Perms were late 70's disco. Early 80's was straight hair with the part in the middle.

Sorry, I'm not an ancient geezer who was old enough to care about styles in those years. ;-P I'm a young strapping stallion. BTW, did you know that Cat Crawford finally admitted to CWOJackson that she thinks I'm hot. Seriously.