<p>If it’s about controversy, it would be less of an issue than say getting a job at an abortion clinic.</p>
<p>galoisien, your response to my quote which you cited in your post 37 is so off the mark that the only conceivable explanation is your statement “(This is from a purely biochemical POV – I’ve never smoked pot but the neurochemistry is very interesting.)”</p>
<p>Call it “getting high”, “buzzed” or “stoned”, there is no recreational use of pot that is NOT associated with its intoxicating effects. That’s the whole purpose of ingesting it. You admit that you’ve never smoked pot but have you ever even hung out with people who do - while they are doing it? When’s the last time you’ve been with some pot smokers who when offered a bowl said, “no thanks, I prefer to stuff this maple leaf in my pipe instead.” Your interest in the “science” of it is laudable but jeeze, you need to come to grips with the everyday reality of recreational pot smoking. And take into account the potency of even the “average” pot available today. The “science” of pot growing has had the singular objective of creating commonly available strains of pot that are tremendously more potent than the pot commonly available in the 60’s 70’s and 80’s. Why do you think that is - maybe so that people can ingest smaller quantities and get high quicker (as well as the profit motive of higher yield per plant and higher prices for smaller quantities of more potent weed)?</p>
<p>And that’s what sets pot apart from alcohol. You can, and people often do, drink a single serving of alcohol without any intent, purpose, desire or effect of getting “intoxicated”. In contrast, if a person consumes a “serving” of pot (a joint or a bowl) and does not get intoxicated, then they want their money back.</p>
<p>Beer drinkers and scotch drinkers may be aiming for the same blood-alcohol concentration, regardless of the potency of their beverage of choice. </p>
<p>My understanding is that pot smokers make similar adjustments, depending on the potency of what they are smoking.</p>
<p>Consumption of alcohol and marijuana produce very different effects. Using a word like “intoxicated” (a term most typically most associated with consumption of enough alcohol to impair motor functions significantly) to the ingestion of amounts of marijuana that may have no discernable impact on motor function simply isn’t very precise. It implies that smoking any amount of pot is the equivalent of getting drunk. That’s simply not true.</p>
<p>“my kids have been drinking wine since they were old enough to sit at the table … but drugs are a different story. thankfully we have not had any problems”</p>
<p>I bet there’s a connection; you have taught them responsible behavior that also makes sense. Same in our house.</p>
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<p>Uhhh, unless I’m trying to use it as a cooking solvent, for essential oil extraction/solvation/preservation, or in a chemistry synthesis, ANY utility of alcohol comes from effects on body biochemistry. I don’t imagine people ingest it for taste, even in social events. (Sure in wine, there’s the additional flavor of other terpenoids and tannins, but the effect of alcohol upon the bitterness receptors as I imagine is the thing to be masked.) If it relaxes you (perhaps due to dilation of blood vessels), that’s a biochemical effect.</p>
<p>Also the effects of pot are not singular or one-dimensional. Again THC is not only chemical acting. Many of the chemicals in pot don’t act directly on ion channels or G-protein receptors in neurons but other portions of the neuroendocrine system (just like caffeine, ethanol, etc.)</p>
<p>Greybeard, if you don’t like the generic use of “intoxicated”, substitute “under the influence” of the psychoactive chemicals in pot. My point is that having a drink does not always have as its purpose consuming a sufficient quantity to be “under the influence” of alcohol while the whole purpose of smoking pot, in any quantity, is to achieve “being under the influence” of its psychoactive chemicals. Obviously, you can limit how much you smoke to limit the degree of being “under the influence” but the reality is that social drinking can and is enjoyed often with the design of avoiding being “under the influence” and doing so with smoking pot is the antithesis of why one smokes to begin with. As to “discernible impact on motor function”, the reality is that the psychoactive chemicals in pot, even in limited amounts associated with getting “buzzed” as opposed to “stoned” do have an objective impact on motor functioning even if subjectively you don’t think or perceive that they do. And not to be overly argumentative about this but when you say “My understanding is that pot smokers make similar adjustments…”, it sounds like you are basing you statements on something other than actual experience with the behavior and culture of pot smoking and the actual experience of personally ingesting it.</p>
<p>Some parent earlier was commenting on how he forbade his kids from drinking “cheap” alcohol, as though the expensive alcohol was somehow any more beneficial or less harmful. The only essential difference between cheap and expensive alcohol is the distribution of accessory terpenoids and tannins, and the expensive distributions aren’t necessarily more healthy. In fact, the more expensive ones aren’t necessarily inherently (tabula rasa) better-tasting either. Once again, wine studies have shown again the placebo effect to be dominant.</p>
<p>Laugh at us college students all you want, but one day we will find a way to duplicate those same distributions by genetically engineering (cyano?)bacteria, algae or yeast, we’ll mass produce the stuff at 2.99 a gallon, and we’ll laugh at all you elderly snobs drinking $2000/bottle vintage wine. :p</p>
<p>The real hindrance really, is discovering the regulatory proteins that allow you to control the relative amounts of each terpenoid product, cuz you don’t want to overproduce too much of one substance. I believe we already know most of the chemical pathways to the products themselves.</p>
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<p>Huh? The effects of alcohol on the neuroendocrine system already begin at very small concentrations of BAC. The whole idea of social drinking I believe, is to get some desired effect without overshooting. If it’s sole object was to enjoy the byproducts of fermentation, why drink alcoholic beverages at all? Might as well eat yogurt, or fermented beancurd, or soft drinks with the woody tannins mixed in. Carbonated iced tea would be a better alternative perhaps? (And I don’t mean the mild, mainstream types you find by Lipton.)</p>
<p>galoisien, science in the lab is often devoid of the reality of life. There are loads of people who will have a glass of red wine at dinner because the taste enhances the dining experience. The amount of alcohol ingested is way below the threshold of any discernible biochemical effect. In any event, we are talking about behavior here. Recreational pot smokers smoke pot to get high. Casual drinkers may have a glass of wine, simply because they enjoy the taste with their food, without any purpose, intent or effect of becoming under the influence of alcohol. None of my posts have been about the relative merits, impact or science of one form of intoxicant versus the other; it’s all about the behavior of consumption and end results of the behavior. That’s the basis on which I differentiate between alcohol and pot (although I would argue that ingesting the hot smoke and chemicals involved with smoking a “serving” of pot has potential health consequences that are more severe than drinking a “serving” of alcohol).</p>
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<p>How do you know? Can you please cite this? Because I know the effects of alcohol (as an adenine agonist) start showing up in the parts per million of BAC. </p>
<p>Take a glass of red wine (100 mL), with say 10% alcohol content. So 10 mL of alcohol. (That’s already a lot. It’s enough to solvate the caffeine contained in a dozen cups of coffee.) That’s about 0.17 mol of ethanol, or about 1 * 10^23 molecules of ethanol. Now imagine them floating about in the bloodstream, each one acting as a potential adenosine agonist (as well as agonists/antagonists of various neuroendocrine receptors in the body not necessarily in neurons). How is that below the threshold of any discernible biological effect?</p>
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<p>You are ignoring the potential effects of psychological conditioning and the placebo effect, as well as dilation, relaxation, euphoric effects already brought on etc. Where does the “enhancement” come from? Something tells me it is because of a response by the neuroendocrine system.</p>
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<p>Your definition of “high” is interesting. By your book, you would call a kiss a smaller version of an orgasm. The effects you get at 10% concentration of a dose is not merely a smaller magnitude version of the effects you get at 100%. Remember some effects are antagonistic, and receptors have thresholds. Some receptors are already saturated at 10% and going to 100% makes no difference on those receptors, while at the same time, some receptors don’t get activated at all at 10% but spark action potentials at 100%.</p>
<p>Galoisien, I’m not a drinker myself but it’s pretty dumb not to get that many people do indeed enjoy a glass of wine, a margarita or a beer to complement the taste of certain foods, not to get high or buzzed.</p>
<p>The complementing is mostly physiological/psychological.</p>
<p>Take the double blind (and literally blind) taste experiments often done by scientists between cheap and expensive wines. Restaurants blab on how they recommend this wine variety to go with this dish, but essentially there’s no real difference. (Sometimes there’s psychological conditioning involved: if you tell them it’s this variety of wine, they’ll believe you and the effect proceeds as normal, and vice versa.) </p>
<p>So by the principle of falsification we can show it really comes down to either psychology or the actual ethanol content, which unlike the tannins contribute no real taste whatsoever (its taste is always undesirable). And the latter factor interacts with the former.</p>
<p>Of course, many of the snobs of the upper (middle) class are anti-science and like to delude themselves. The entrenched wine dynasties have essentially been running a pseudoscientific scam for years through cultural misinformation and prestige. And prestige can be self-reinforcing. How many so-called wine tasters would be receptive to the scientific method?</p>
<p>“By your book, you would call a kiss a smaller version of an orgasm.”</p>
<p>If it’s not for you, then my condolences. Obviously, neither you nor your partner know how to kiss. And that’s not something you will ever learn in your lab. Just like all of your “scientific method” and laboratory measurements won’t negate real world behavioral observations.</p>
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<p>What real world observations are you talking about here? How do they falsify my argument?</p>
<p>Without the scientific method, empirical observations can lead to self-delusions.</p>
<p>Just because more expensive wine supposedly goes better with gourmet food does not mean there’s anything in the expensive wine (differentiated from a cheap one) that is causing the better effect. You know, the power of suggestion, psychology, conditioning and all.</p>
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<p>Okay, metaphorically you can say it’s a small orgasm. I’m sure there are common pathways that get lit up by both kissing and orgasms. </p>
<p>But you know, since we’re talking about science and biochemistry, precision is important. My point is that there is a QUALITY of stimulation that occurs in one that does not occur in the other, and vice versa, and not merely QUANTITY. (And here we refer to very precise quality – one type of channel could be activated but not the other, etc.)</p>
<p>“Just because more expensive wine supposedly goes better with gourmet food does not mean there’s anything in the expensive wine (differentiated from a cheap one) that is causing the better effect. You know, the power of suggestion, psychology, conditioning and all.”</p>
<p>With respect to my posts, that is one giant non-sequitur. Never made any comment remotely related to your response. So much for scientific precision.</p>
<p>" But you know, since we’re talking about science and biochemistry…"</p>
<p>No, you are talking about “science and biochemistry”. The original post dealt with whether a parent would permit a student to have a drink or smoke pot under certain circumstances. My responses focused on the behavioral differences endemic to indulging the 2 substances (i.e. the purposes for engaging in the 2 activities) and my opinion that as a result parents should treat alcohol differently than pot. To repeat, you can have a glass of wine during an hour and a half dinner for reasons other than to become intoxicated and with an end result consistent with those reasons. The only reason to recreationally smoke pot is to get high and a single “serving” (i.e. a joint or a bowl) is intended to have that exact end result. The behaviors involved in each activity are qualitatively different and that’s the point.</p>
<p>“What real world observations are you talking about here? How do they falsify my argument?”</p>
<p>Oh I don’t know; maybe you should spend some time socializing with pot smokers and record the number of times over a year they light up compared to the number of times they light up and don’t get high. Hmm, I wonder what the results will be and what that will tell you about the reasons pot smokers smoke pot. Maybe you ought to smoke some pot yourself, since, as you noted, you never have and then decide for yourself whether in the real world people smoke pot recreationally without getting high.</p>
<p>And by the way, that is not a judgmental comment based on class, economics, snobbery or any other criteria or value that you want impute to others without any “scientific” foundation. It’s simply an observation based on years of experience with both substances and associating with a broad age spectrum of individuals who engage in both behaviors.</p>
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<p>Yes, but my point is the basis of that pleasure of that glass of wine with the food might well be a neuroendocrine effect, and that would be very similar to the low-dose effects of pot.</p>
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<p>I had some for floormates. They smoked into a small powerful window fan sealed the window and clothed the doors to avoid detection. And I was definitely often in the same room. (They were rich and I was not; hence they were a source of free alcohol, which I indulged occasionally.) I don’t know what your definition of “high” is, but I never observed any dramatic behavioural changes that say, come with getting drunk. On the other hand, they were often lucid enough to work out detailed orgo syntheses together. I can tell there were psychoactive/neuroendocrine effects, but as far as purpose was concerned, it was all social glue and no stupidity. Face it: eating is a recreational activity too.</p>
<p>On the other hand, when alcohol was involved, there was often a bit of stupidity.</p>
<p>Any idiot who thinks it’s somehow “okay” to smoke pot obviously has no idea what’s going on at the U.S.-Mexico border these days… Or doesn’t care. Funny thing to me is that most of the folks that smoke pot consider themselves socially aware and concerned people. The irony is unbelievable.</p>
<p>John.</p>
<p>As I am aware, the majority of the cartel revenue comes from harder drugs, not cannabis.</p>
<p>And cannabis can be grown domestically.</p>
<p>Oh, there’s that side technique of splicing in cannabis genes into garden weed plants…</p>
<p>Back to the original topic… my mum has always let me drink or do drugs. I have had the desire to do neither. </p>
<p>She is from England and when we visit there there is always alcohol open and available and it is almost always offered to all of us. My cousins and I would have a few beers when we were with family or out at a restaurant, this started when I was 13. I think I’ve been drunk maybe once (I am 18). I had my first beer in about 2 years last weekend. My parents were out of town and my boyfriend, best friend, and I split it. They knew about it, but didn’t care. I hate wine… everyone in my family drinks beer and hard liquer. None of us like wine.</p>
<p>My parents smoke pot and have for over 30 years. They have always told me I could, but I don’t like drugs. I am also an athlete so I don’t want to screw myself up.</p>
<p>I call horsepucky on the " one drink doesn’t affect you".</p>
<p>I drink practically every week- a glass of wine one week- maybe a beer the next- if I am at a club- I might have a couple shots of tequila. ( I have a designated driver)
I feel the effects- with one glass of wine.
If I have two glasses- I am liable to feel the effects the next morning.
*That *is why I drink- I like the taste ( or I have convinced myself I do)
and I like the way it makes me feel.
Anyone who drinks & says different- is lying.</p>