.@IMZandor @Dopefiend @NORML we should prepare for intense (US) pressure against cannabis & salvia (and drugs in general) as fallout from the Jared Lee Loughner incident. I fear this will endanger legalization efforts in 2012.

Even though Laughner's problems seemed to have kicked off when he broke up with his girlfriend and had reported conflicts with his father which led to his ALCOHOL poisoning on May 15, 2006 -- as well as evidence he was bullied at school. That's where the focus should be.

Use of psychedelics in such cases are almost always SELF-MEDICATION/Escapist and NOT causative.

As for the link between cannabis and schizophrenia, there is an even STRONGER link between smoking tobacco and schizophrenia (but you don't see that in the reports)! But again, it appears to be used for a palliative effect (even before symptoms are apparent).

One counter to the Swedish/Stockholm studies (from 1987/1989) is this one from 2007:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17462864
Schizophr Res. 2007 Jul;93(1-3):203-10. Epub 2007 Apr 25.
RESULTS: There was no statistically significant effect of cannabis use on the presence of any of the above. There remained however a non-significant trend towards more insight (OR 0.65 p=0.055 for "loss of insight") and a finding of fewer abusive or accusatory hallucinations (OR 0.65 p=0.049) of borderline significance amongst the cannabis users. These were in the hypothesised direction. There was no evidence of fewer negative symptoms or greater family history amongst cannabis users.

CONCLUSION: We found few appreciable differences in symptomatology between schizophrenic patients who were or were not cannabis users. There were no differences in the proportion of people with a positive family history of schizophrenia between cannabis users and non-users. This argues against a distinct schizophrenia-like psychosis caused by cannabis
======

Correlation alone is NOT causation and NORML is correct to point this out but it needs to be more forcefully stated because laypersons simply do not understand this. Need to be clear that the evidence is that they seek out cannabis AND TOBACCO because they find relief in the effects.

More Links and Resources:

More details on the story here:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/tucson-shooting-jared-loughner-stopped-authorities-hours-shooting/story?id=12597092

Reports on his drug use:

http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2011/01/jared_loughner_salvia.php

Called 'habitual user' despite report he stopped in 2008:
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2011/01/jared_loughner_marijuana.php

and he was BULLIED (who didn't see that one coming?):

http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2011/01/jared-lee-loughner-arrest-records-bullying-history-revealed/

Loughner was also the victim of bullying on more than one occasion.

In September 2004, police were called to Mountain View High School after Loughner was "stuck with a pin – a stolen type needle, in the cafeteria," according to official reports.

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