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April 08, 2008
Annals of Addiction: how cannabis initiation became an adolescent rite of passage.
Of the several unexpected (and to many, unwelcome) discoveries uncovered by questioning pot smokers over the past several years, two stand out. The first is that in the early Sixties, well before its existence had been clearly recognized by society at large, the generation we now know as the Baby Boom was just starting to discover the unique anxiolytic properties of cannabis (but only when inhaled).
Ironically, the term “anxiolytic” was coined at about the same time to describe the then-unique effect of benzodiazipines, of which Valium (1963) became the best known. The second discovery referred to above is more subtle because it involves a negative: very few have realized that because delivery by inhalation allows even more rapid onset than the IV route and more precise user control of the effective dose, inhaled pot (the "reefer" demonized in 1937) became the preferred anxiolytic of the youthful counterculture then beginning to emerge.
Thus from a historical and sociological point of view, what has ensued since the Sixties has been a result of the blending of unique demographic and pharmacologic phenomena on a huge scale: it’s what happened when the largest generation in American history began its uncontrolled (and uncontrollable) discovery of several unique pharmacologic phenomena in a setting that had already been hopelessly confused by a long standing federal policy failure and its (still successful) cover-up. In fact, the best modern evidence that the same cover-up is still successful is another negative: an almost unanimous refusal by the media to raise even the most obvious questions about the drug war. Whether that refusal is out of conviction or ignorance is immaterial; what’s become most important is the denial itself.
Data from admitted pot smokers of all ages also reveals that after 1968, the age at which kids tried it fell so rapidly that by 1975, it was happening in tandem with alcohol and tobacco. Also important is the ritual that has evolved: as with alcohol, the goal is not simply to try the drug, but for small groups of naive initiates, almost always under the tutelage of a more experienced peer, to become intoxicated: drunk on alcohol or high on pot. As it turns out, the “high” produced by cannabis is so distinctive and unlike drunkenness as to leave those who haven’t experienced it both incapable of understanding its appeal, or that its major advantage over other psychotropic agents is its immediate anxiolytic effect and precise user controllability. Those qualities also explain why pot inspired its earliest users to begin creating the (huge) modern illegal market. Ditto the still shadowy gray market that has been defying federal opposition in California for the past eleven years.
At some point, we humans may eventually recognize the enormity of the follies our species is capable of denying; but I wouldn’t bet on it...
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at April 8, 2008 03:57 PM