Herb Ninja

Reefer Madness

They've proved that cannabis makes you aggressive. Yeah, right, says Marc Abrahams

3-29-2005 | The Guardian

Lock three men in a room, make them smoke cannabis, and then try to provoke them into being hostile. Thirty years ago a team of American doctors actually conducted this daring experiment. They then described it in a report called Marijuana and Hostility in a Small-Group Setting.
The conventional wisdom at the time said that cannabis would make people less hostile, that it would tend to quieten aggressive behaviour even in people who tended to be pugnacious. Such was the widespread belief among cannabis smokers, and also among people who knew cannabis smokers, which included a large proportion of the American population.

But conventional wisdom is not always right. Several aggressive political figures voiced with certainty that cannabis had pernicious, vicious effects, and that directly or indirectly its use led to hostility, violence and worse. Several medical eminences agreed. This experiment was an attempt to settle the question.

Carl Salzman and Richard Shader were co-directors of the Psychopharmacology Research Laboratory at Harvard Medical School in Boston. Together with a colleague, Bessel A van der Kolk, they recruited 60 brave volunteers, all healthy men between the ages of 21 and 30, all with prior experience of smoking cannabis.

The men were divided into groups of three. Half the groups would be smoking real cannabis. The others would smoke placebos.

The doctors asked each group to perform a series of actions. First, the group met for 10 minutes, looking at a card with a picture on it and trying to concoct a consensus description of the picture. Then each individual thoroughly smoked one cigarette. The cigarette in some groups did, and in other groups did not, contain THC, the most famous psychoactive constituent chemical in cannabis.

Each group was then told, with cold hauteur, that its picture description was "inadequate". This, the doctors explain in their report, "was conceived of as an experimental frustration stimulus". The group then tried to reach consensus on a new, better description of the picture.

The results were largely as expected. Upon being frustrated, the general hostility levels of the non-cannabis smokers went up, and those of the cannabis smokers went down.

But there was one, quite specific, surprise. The doctors' report puts it plainly: "Marijuana produced a small but statistically significant increase in sarcastic communications."

Cannabis-enhanced sarcasm may seem a wispy thing to notice or worry about. But to public policymakers charged with leading the large, sometimes fractious American populace, it seems to have seemed a danger. This apprehension may not exist in the UK, where public politicians hone and pride themselves on an ability to ignore sarcasm.

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"Truth is treason in an empire of lies." -Ron Paul

Cassius

Sarcasm is a public danger, and I'm Edgar Hoover.

(note: that was marijuana-induced sarcasm, for those who care =P)

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{ Cassius, Your Humble Narrator }
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SacredJellybean

Thanks for the clarification, Cassius.

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"Every age has its peculiar folly and if Charles Mackay, the author of the 19th century classic, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds were alive today he would surely see 'cannabinophobia' as a popular delusion along with the 'tulipmania' and 'witch hunts' of earlier ages. ... I also believe that future historians will look at this epoch and recognize it as another instance of the 'madness of crowds.'"
~Dr. Lester Grinspoon

gob

"Marijuana produced a small but statistically significant increase in sarcastic communications."

I always wondered why I am so sarcastic.....

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End Prohibition

snakedbz2

i love being sarcastic its what i live for haha
but that would have frustrated me to though being as i dont like frivolous conversation to try to explain something that could be viewed so many ways as a portrate

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I will take my rest and I will consider in my dwelling place like a clear heat upon herbs. For afore harvest, when the bud is perfect and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, he shall cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks and take away and cut down the branches." (Isaiah 18:4-5)

Godmadepot

Most likely when quotes like "thou annointest my head with oil;
my cup runneth over" refers to cannabis oil.
God also said all the herbs of the fiels were made for man's
nourishment and pleasure

Puffer

Originally posted by Cassius:
(J.) Edgar Hoover was a public danger.

(Note: This was not marijuana-induced sarcasm. Dammit!)

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Just say "know" to marijuana!

Burninbrooke

Oh Nooo!!!!! Somebody!! That Man Over There Was Being Sarcastic, Arrest Him, It's Insanity!!! Save Us Please!!!

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"We need to change our ethic and aspire to be more Canadian-like,"

"The majority of Americans - the ones who never elected you - are not fooled by your weapons of mass distraction."
Michael Moore

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." — George W. Bush Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004

frolic

Marijuana might make a good weapon. You fly over the enemy and drop joints and brownies. Then again perhaps they tested for this purpose and felt a quick overcome of a stoned enemy could put our troops at risk as they would likely find remnant pot bombs with joints and brownies intact and imbibe themselves; and there's the rub. Have you ever tried to deal with sarcastic troops.

king cola

I like how they proved marijuana didn't make the people violent but then because they became sarcastic instead and the people who didn't use marijuana become a little more aggressive they go and critize marijuana because the people became sarcastic. It's like when Anslinger went around saying marijuana made people violent and want to fight, people still obviously didn't believe him, then recants his story some years later saying how it made people not want to fight and made them peaceful and talked of it being a threat to turning people into communists. Either way these people have way too many excuses, they look for one reason after another to keep pot banned.

Even for alcohol, people get drunk and get pulled over, if you watch some of these police videos you see how sarcastic they get too but we don't say to ban alcohol because of it! One thing that is different is if you put a few drunk people in a room together they are more likely to fight over something as stupid as describing a picture haha, but i still wouldn't say to ban it but they shouldn't keep pot banned either.