Could legal marijuana be changing how we treat anxiety? A new study in JAMA Network Open reveals that in states with legal cannabis, fewer patients are filling prescriptions for anti-anxiety medications like benzodiazepines.
We did have that. It was also terrible. Prohibition is stupid.
That said as someone who works in a field adjacent to addiction it would probably be a great idea to heavily regulate the industry. Banning substances is foolish. But allowing them to advertise and create billion dollar industries? That’s far far far more foolish
I worked on research many years ago about impulse regulation in addiction. It was basically put someone in an fmri with a little lcd screen and show them images. When we showed addicts images of things that triggered their addiction (eg alcoholics a bottle of gin, crack addicts a pipe) the parts of their brain that processed the craving reacted much faster than the parts that regulated impulse control. The takeaway was that things like alcohol advertising was potentially damaging for people attempting to quit.
This is very relevant because if you look at alcohol consumption in america by sales it’s shocking. Something like 90% of alcohol is consumed by the top 5% of users. These numbers are off, I’m going off of memory from like 2 decades ago, but it’s basically that a very small percentage of users consume the overwhelming majority of alcohol sold. It was impossible to determine but we suspected
this was similar for other drugs too. Contrary to popular belief there are people who do heroin, Percocet, Xanax, cocaine, etc casually. They do it uncommonly, every once and a while. But a percentage of users consume a huge amount. We suspected that the split was different due to a combination of higher likelihood of physical addiction and much stronger stigma against casual use, but they do exist (and probably would in greater numbers if legalization or decriminalization occurred)
This is another example of our complete failure of a regulatory state. We have research that indicates things like this but it doesn’t matter. The alcohol industry simply has too much money, so it doesn’t change. So sorry alcoholics, your chances at recovery are much much much harder. It doesn’t matter that there is research that shows your brain simply cannot ignore the urge when presented with stimuli. Sorry gambling addicts too. Fanduel makes too much money! We will just force these companies to put a 1-800 number in small print at the end. That’s a good compromise, right?
What’s crazy is that at one point this country did overcome this issue. Cigarette advertising used to be everywhere. But then it became clear how addictive and how harmful it was and relatively quickly it disappeared. We know alcohol is addictive. We know drinking is harmful. But we don’t care. Budweiser is an american icon
Interesting note: the research continued after I left and found that baclofen, a non addictive muscle relaxant, can modify that brain response and delay the craving enough that impulse control can intervene. Others have built on this research and it’s occasionally prescribed for alcohol addiction now
We did have that. It was also terrible. Prohibition is stupid.
That said as someone who works in a field adjacent to addiction it would probably be a great idea to heavily regulate the industry. Banning substances is foolish. But allowing them to advertise and create billion dollar industries? That’s far far far more foolish
I worked on research many years ago about impulse regulation in addiction. It was basically put someone in an fmri with a little lcd screen and show them images. When we showed addicts images of things that triggered their addiction (eg alcoholics a bottle of gin, crack addicts a pipe) the parts of their brain that processed the craving reacted much faster than the parts that regulated impulse control. The takeaway was that things like alcohol advertising was potentially damaging for people attempting to quit.
This is very relevant because if you look at alcohol consumption in america by sales it’s shocking. Something like 90% of alcohol is consumed by the top 5% of users. These numbers are off, I’m going off of memory from like 2 decades ago, but it’s basically that a very small percentage of users consume the overwhelming majority of alcohol sold. It was impossible to determine but we suspected
this was similar for other drugs too. Contrary to popular belief there are people who do heroin, Percocet, Xanax, cocaine, etc casually. They do it uncommonly, every once and a while. But a percentage of users consume a huge amount. We suspected that the split was different due to a combination of higher likelihood of physical addiction and much stronger stigma against casual use, but they do exist (and probably would in greater numbers if legalization or decriminalization occurred)
This is another example of our complete failure of a regulatory state. We have research that indicates things like this but it doesn’t matter. The alcohol industry simply has too much money, so it doesn’t change. So sorry alcoholics, your chances at recovery are much much much harder. It doesn’t matter that there is research that shows your brain simply cannot ignore the urge when presented with stimuli. Sorry gambling addicts too. Fanduel makes too much money! We will just force these companies to put a 1-800 number in small print at the end. That’s a good compromise, right?
What’s crazy is that at one point this country did overcome this issue. Cigarette advertising used to be everywhere. But then it became clear how addictive and how harmful it was and relatively quickly it disappeared. We know alcohol is addictive. We know drinking is harmful. But we don’t care. Budweiser is an american icon
Interesting note: the research continued after I left and found that baclofen, a non addictive muscle relaxant, can modify that brain response and delay the craving enough that impulse control can intervene. Others have built on this research and it’s occasionally prescribed for alcohol addiction now