[HN Gopher] Lead exposure in last century shrunk IQ scores of ha...
___________________________________________________________________
Lead exposure in last century shrunk IQ scores of half of
Americans: study
Author : gmays
Score : 366 points
Date : 2022-03-08 14:54 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (today.duke.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (today.duke.edu)
| [deleted]
| jaboutboul wrote:
| Well, this explains a lot...
| traveler01 wrote:
| It explains a lot...
| dqpb wrote:
| Be careful buying kids toys from china. Many of them contain
| lead. In fact, it's probably best to not buy anything from a
| culture of people who hate you.
|
| Also, get a lead test for your child at every checkup, not just
| the ones where they offer it to you. The finger prick doesn't
| bother them nearly as much as the vaccinations do.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > The finger prick doesn't bother them nearly as much as the
| vaccinations do.
|
| On the contrary, my kids have definitely figured out the cold
| hard truth. Finger pricks _suck_ much more than injections.
| breakyerself wrote:
| Black children had an adjusted 0.73 to 1.41 ug/dL more blood Pb
| (p < 0.001 respectively) and a 1.8 to 5.6 times higher odds of
| having an EBLL >=5 ug/dL (p <= 0.05 respectively) for every
| selected risk factor that was tested. For Black children
| nationwide, one in four residing in pre-1950 housing and one in
| six living in poverty presented with an EBLL >=5 ug/dL. In
| conclusion, significant nationwide racial disparity in blood Pb
| outcomes persist for predominantly African-American Black
| children even after correcting for risk factors and other
| variables.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7084658/
| tyjen wrote:
| Learned about this phenomenon when considering buying a home
| built prior to 1978.
|
| The highest blood lead levels are seen in children living in
| denser population areas at or below poverty thresholds. Homes
| in these largely urban, low-income areas are disproportionately
| built before 1978 and subject inhabiting children to a
| significantly higher lead exposure risk. In 2014, it was
| estimated that 90 percent of all DC homes were built before
| 1978.
|
| Despite Baltimore leading the charge to inform the public
| concerning the risks of environmental exposure to lead by
| banning lead-based paint (but not plumbing or other
| construction products) in 1951 following a clinical study from
| Johns Hopkins University, many Baltimoreans, primarily Black,
| continue to face excessive exposure to lead. The US would not
| follow Baltimore's example and ban lead-based paint until 1978,
| because lead lobbyists continued to disrupt regulation efforts.
|
| Lead remediation is an expensive process and even with programs
| that help or completely cover the costs, many people may not be
| aware of the programs to take advantage of them.
|
| You can start to see why the problem disproportionately impacts
| the Black population.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > because lead lobbyists continued to disrupt regulation
| efforts.
|
| I have genuine, actual trouble maintaining faith in humanity
| when I hear about people like this existing. It just makes me
| incredibly depressed and bummed out about life.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The statement you're replying to is blurring the lines
| between creative history and dishonesty. Lead wasn't big
| business, well it was, but not like steel or oil. The fact
| that we were able to get rid of leaded gas and leaded paint
| in a 20yr span without destroying our economy tells you how
| big it was. For every lead lobbyist saying don't do it
| there was probably a zinc lobbyist asking them to do it.
| The feds are perfectly happy screwing smaller industries
| like that it gets them political brownie points.
|
| The reason lead persisted so long is because it was a key
| component of paint that was both cheap and durable so
| literally every industry that needed to use paint to
| prevent stuff from succumbing to the elements had an
| incentive for lead to stick around.
|
| I know it's fashionable to "not have faith in humanity" or
| whatever but when you drill down into these sorts of issues
| you tend to find that rarely is anybody being particularly
| evil and pretty much everybody is just doing what's best
| for them and the people they're tasked with caring about
| within the constraints of the norms of their times.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| This and asbestos is why I will only ever buy homes
| constructed after 1979.
| breakyerself wrote:
| Yes because the reason they they are prodominantly
| represented in those neighborhoods just because they were
| redlined there as a matter of public policy for decades
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I'm surprised they don't control for(or even mention!) fruit
| juice consumption, which can end up bioaccumulating dangerous
| amounts of lead and other heavy metals at a surprisingly low
| daily intake ([0] ~4oz of juice per day). I also very rarely
| see anyone talking about this source of lead intake - usually
| it is focused on water pipes or paint chips. Do black children
| drink more fruit juice than non-black children? If fruit juice
| consumption is anything like soda consumption(which I suspect
| it is, but have no proof), then the answer is yes[1]:
|
| > With whites as the reference group, the odds of consuming
| soda was 3.1 times higher for U.S.-born blacks (95% CI
| 2.6-3.7), 2.4 times higher for Puerto Ricans (95% CI 1.9-3.0),
| and 2.9 times higher for Mexican/Mexican-Americans (95% CI
| 2.0-4.1). Those living in households with income less than 200%
| of the federal poverty level were more likely (odds ratio [OR]
| = 1.7, 95% CI 1.4-2.1) to be frequent soda consumers than those
| in households earning 600% or more of the poverty level.
|
| [0] https://www.consumerreports.org/food-safety/arsenic-and-
| lead...
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2329746
| wtinasky wrote:
| golemiprague wrote:
| hammock wrote:
| From the study:
|
| >examined risk factors; survey years; binary gender;
| bodyweight; low birthweight; anemia; health insurance coverage;
| Medicaid/CHIP enrollment; federal Women, Infants, and Children
| (WIC) supplemental food program enrollment; use of water
| treatment devices; b age in months; c educational attainment
| less than 9th grade education; d housing built before 1960 or
| 1940; e number of cigarettes smoked inside the home per day (1
| to 40 or more); f poverty-to-income ratios
|
| I don't see traffic proximity aka urbanicity aka leaded
| gasoline particulate pollution in there.
|
| Lead plumbing and lead paint are two factors. But there is lead
| all through the soil and air as well.
| fkfkno wrote:
| This recent case seems to correlate closely with that research:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-55330945 (Ella Adoo-
| Kissi-Debrah: Air pollution a factor in girl's death, inquest
| finds)
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/16/girls-de...
| kukx wrote:
| Is it certain that the Pb causes the lower IQ or maybe there is
| some other factor and poorer people happen to have higher
| concentration?
| raegis wrote:
| It one of the most impactful studies on how lead affects
| intellectual development, the researcher (who is white)
| restricted the study to white people only because he assumed
| (correctly) his results would be ignored if he included
| African Americans who are disproportionately affected by lead
| poisoning.
| trophycase wrote:
| How can you assume correctly if you aren't even testing
| that assumption?
| treeman79 wrote:
| It's politically toxic to try and commission a study on
| the intelligence of one race/gender versus another.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| It's been pretty well accepted for decades that this is the
| case:
|
| >A highly significant association was found between lead
| exposure and children's IQ (P < 0.001)... There was no
| evidence that the effect was limited to disadvantaged
| children and there was a suggestion of the opposite.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8162884/
|
| That's a 1994 meta-study that turned up in 30 seconds of
| googling, and I'm sure more recent evidence also exists.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| I really doubt that. While I am aware of shrinking IQ, as far as
| I know its a thing of the last 30 years, leaded gas in most
| developed countries was already outlawed.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| IQ reduction is totally expected from the moment contraceptive
| methods became fully available. Common sense seems to be out of
| fashion these days, but Idiocracy was spot on: the dumber you
| are the more prone to "unexpected" pregnancies you'll be. The
| future will not be Star Trek.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| you never know. We might be able to hit a critical mass with
| Authoritarian regimes regulating reproduction, and through
| gene editing.
|
| Perhaps when we finally translate "unintelligent people" into
| "vermin" we'll do what many previous iterations of society
| have done... genocide.
|
| Part of this is literally possible. A big part of made stark
| to point out that we should be careful in the way our
| language dehumanizes people of below average intelligence.
| They're still part of our species, and biological history.
| 09bjb wrote:
| Until we treat "unintelligent" people in our society with
| compassion and respect I think "intelligent" is a misnomer
| for the remaining demographic.
| [deleted]
| ivanech wrote:
| The Lead Exposure Elimination Project
| (https://leadelimination.org/) is an organization that's working
| to solve this problem internationally. I've been giving money on
| a monthly basis and have been blown away by their progress.
| Krasnol wrote:
| > Experts suggest that lead paint is now one of the most
| important current and future sources of lead exposure, as well
| as the most tractable source to address.
|
| https://leadelimination.org/factfile/
|
| Why is it so popular in the US? Is it better? Cheaper?
|
| I'm quite shocked to see it's still happening. Lead in pain has
| been forbidden for interiors in Germany since 1921 (exterior
| since 1989)...
| istjohn wrote:
| It was banned in the US in 1978.
| Krasnol wrote:
| So this is all historical and not being removed because of
| the cost?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Correct. Though note also that lead paint was being
| phased out already earlier than 1978, so single-family
| homes built after 1960 or so are less likely to have
| lead. That still leaves a lot of dwelling units,
| particularly those that were not renovated recently (i.e.
| cheaper places).
| mkr-hn wrote:
| I still remember the school shutting down the playground
| to get rid of lead paint back in K-12. In the 1990s.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Unless it was a 20 year old playground, the playground
| was probably made in SE Asia. We got miniblinds around
| 1990 that were manufactured in China, but sold in the US
| that were recalled due to lead paint.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| The school was built in 1979. It was probably the
| original playground. All chippy-paint metal aside from
| the rubber swing seats.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Related:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29043518
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| And plastics/PFAS/pththalates being everywhere has brought down
| sperm counts as well. They all need to be outlawed.
| softwarebeware wrote:
| It makes me angry to think of how wreckless the generations
| before millenials were. Lead's risks and damages were well-known
| long before 1996. And they still didn't ban it until then.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Diesel is just as bad and I see plenty of millennials driving
| diesel trucks around here.
| miketery wrote:
| Same goes for sugar. We know the dangers it poses, we are also
| seeing how much it increases risk of death due to covid.
|
| I don't think we should be surpsied, as much as pushing to
| regulate this garbage.
|
| As an aside, Michelle Obama's campaign when Obama was in office
| was about improvement children's health. Her focus was going to
| be on nutrition (lunch food). Shortly thereafter Coke and Pepsi
| came in with "donations" and the whole thing became about
| exercise, no focus on nutrition.
|
| There should be no surprise that capital takes precedent over
| health in our current system / culture.
|
| Arguably, we should care more about sugar than we do about
| covid.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| Same for industrial seed oils. We know it's dangerous.
|
| But monied interests and some vegetarians who think all
| things that come from plants must be good for you, prevent
| this from being shoved into near all packaged foods.
| nostromo wrote:
| You can't ban everything...
|
| Marijuanna and sugar and a million other potential vices like
| alcohol and video games should be available.
|
| But we should teach kids discipline, critical thinking, and
| impulse control - rather than playing whack-a-mole with every
| vice that comes along.
| x3iv130f wrote:
| Instead of banning things we can stop subsidizing it or
| just tax it.
|
| Sweeteners are heavily subsidized in the US which is why
| they're in everything.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| as we're a society increasingly made up of single parents
| with a poverty of energy and time. not to mention their own
| education on these matters.
| nostromo wrote:
| Perhaps we should solve that problem then.
| miketery wrote:
| Process is much easier to change then changing people. Its
| why the government deducts taxes from you, instead of you
| paying at the end of the year (both because you'd spend it
| all, and you'd be pissed doing a bulk sum payment).
|
| Likewise we have levers, should we be selling soda / pop
| with outrageous amounts of sugar in them without some sort
| of healthcare tax? I don't mind sugar being available, but
| right now its subsidized by our health care fees. My
| insurance is more expensive because of diabetes, heart
| disease, etc.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| >As an aside, Michelle Obama's campaign when Obama was in
| office was about improvement children's health. Her focus was
| going to be on nutrition (lunch food). Shortly thereafter
| Coke and Pepsi came in with "donations" and the whole thing
| became about exercise, no focus on nutrition.
|
| Well also, the right-wing culture war machine decided
| Michelle Obama was taking everyone's children's freedoms
| away.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > Coke and Pepsi came in with "donations" and the whole thing
| became about exercise
|
| You know, I wouldn't mind this as long as the scale of the
| donation was big enough. If they donated $1000 per american
| to the US government, who could use it to reduce taxes or
| improve life for americans more than the sugar decreases
| quality of life through illness and poor health, that would
| be great.
|
| But they didn't. I bet their donation was $100k or so, or
| less than 1 cent per american.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Same goes for sugar.
|
| Except that presumably includes the current generation,
| instead of everyone pre-millenial. There is certainly not any
| real consensus or meaningful action being taken in regards to
| sugar. It is as prevalent now as it ever was.
| chucksta wrote:
| Its not nothing, but it's close;
|
| https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-
| initiative...
| nynx wrote:
| Sugar is at least a substance that one can choose not to eat.
| Lead poisoning and pollution aren't choices.
| pathartl wrote:
| Sugar isn't really optional these days. It's snuck into so
| much of our processed food it's sickening.
| alyandon wrote:
| Indeed. Added sugar and high fructose corn syrup is in
| everything. I have to go out of my way to find a brand of
| bread that doesn't have added high fructose corn syrup.
| It's ridiculous.
| lhoff wrote:
| I havent bought bread in probably 4 Years now. Investing
| half an hour of work (distributed over the day) every
| other week for a 2kg Bread. Half of it goes in the
| freezer.
|
| Also buying fresh vegtables and cooking instead of buying
| ready made dishes helps.
| tomxor wrote:
| Yup, this is basically the only realistic way to avoid
| it, switch to types of food that cannot by their very
| nature have sugar added.
| cma wrote:
| I would imagine most of those fresh vegetables have been
| domesticated/bred to increase sugars.
| mixedCase wrote:
| It is optional to eat those foods for the vast majority
| of people, but it isn't as convenient.
| pathartl wrote:
| Not just inconvenient, but expensive and out of reach.
| mixedCase wrote:
| Not really. That's exactly when I had in mind when I said
| "vast majority of people". The biggest problem is access
| to a cooking fire and some sort of refrigeration you can
| rely on for most of the year.
|
| It does require spending a little time cooking and
| probably to shop around rather than getting everything
| from a (possibly overpriced) supermarket depending on how
| much you can spend. So it's strictly an inconvenience, it
| requires stretching the argument really thin to view it
| otherwise.
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| I have a simple rule: If it has processed sugar in the
| ingredient list _anywhere_ I don't buy it.
|
| If everyone did this, less processed sugar would be in
| our food supply. (corn syrups especially but also weird
| stuff like stevia, sneaky stuff like maltodextrin, etc..)
| pathartl wrote:
| Unfortunately that runs into the issue of education,
| expense, and general preference. We're never going to
| remove it by relying on consumer choice.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Everything is a choice to some extent. You could have gone
| and lived in the middle of a forest to avoid the lead
| poisoning.
|
| The problem is there are far too many pollutants for
| everyone to be able to educate themselves about every one,
| and take steps to avoid them. Instead, it's the role of
| government to decide in each case whether to allow, ban,
| tax, inform or restrict each type of pollutant.
| bdamm wrote:
| Between the marketing for children, the many "sugar
| holidays" (Valentines, Easter, Christmas, Halloween, etc),
| the widespread use of processed foods in children's diets,
| the fact that every single grocery store in America puts
| sugar products on loud display, and that some restaurants
| _only_ serve sugar based drinks, I would argue that it is
| not possible for American children to avoid sugar.
| JPKab wrote:
| An adult can choose to eat it or not (I'm ignoring the
| addictive nature of concentrated sugar), but our public
| health establishment has been foolishly stupid (combined
| with industry marketing) at making people think that fruit
| juice is natural or healthy. It's about as natural as
| cocaine is. Sure, it comes from a plant, but it gets
| refined and concentrated into levels that are unheard of in
| nature and toxic to the body.
|
| Virtually my entire extended family are working class
| people, and they all were feeding their kids apple/orange
| juice on a regular basis without diluting it. When I showed
| my sister that she could literally do a 5% solution of
| apple juice in water, and it still tasted sweet, she was
| blown away. I'm pretty sure most members of the laptop
| class know that juice is bad for kids (gatorade too), but
| that message hasn't filtered to most of the population. And
| these kids are too young to know how toxic it is for them.
| tw3464575686 wrote:
| Gatorade ? Gatorade can't be bad. It has electrolytes!
| temp0826 wrote:
| _Plants crave it!_
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| > public health establishment has been foolishly stupid
| (combined with industry marketing) at making people think
| that fruit juice is natural or healthy.
|
| Can you cite specific examples of the public health
| establishment pushing juice as healthy? I got a minor in
| nutrition over a decade ago and back then, public health
| officials were very quick to call out the juice industry
| for its predatory tactics on kids and false
| equivalencies. This doesn't match my experience in
| university at all.
| JPKab wrote:
| You're exactly right. Public health in general has not
| pushed juice, but what I should have stated is they have
| been complicit in not condemning it and pushing for
| prominent labeling on juice. They've sat back and allowed
| it to be marketed aggressively, to a point where the
| mayor of NYC exempted fruit juices from the proposal for
| a sugar tax. The general public thinks juice is healthy.
| That's easily remedied with public health messaging, but
| we all know why it hasn't: farmers/USDA/lobbyists.
| mf_tomb wrote:
| Sugar is bad, but it's only one part of the picture:
|
| "Evidence-informed dietary priorities include increased
| fruits, nonstarchy vegetables, nuts, legumes, fish, vegetable
| oils, yogurt, and minimally processed whole grains; and fewer
| red meats, processed (e.g., sodium-preserved) meats, and
| foods rich in refined grains, starch, added sugars, salt, and
| trans fat."
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4814348/
| legitster wrote:
| > As an aside, Michelle Obama's campaign when Obama was in
| office was about improvement children's health. Her focus was
| going to be on nutrition (lunch food). Shortly thereafter
| Coke and Pepsi came in with "donations" and the whole thing
| became about exercise, no focus on nutrition.
|
| This isn't accurate. There _were_ changes to the school lunch
| program, and by most accounts they were pretty effective:
| https://sph.washington.edu/news-events/news/obama-era-
| school...
|
| The main takeaway is that the changes were fairly expensive,
| so lots of schools didn't participate.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The rollback they did in 2020 is ridiculous.
|
| My kids school lunch now is all packaged sugary crap.
| Corndogs, cinnamon buns for breakfast, Trix yogurt, etc.
| Even the milk is gross - lowest bidder swill that tastes
| like wax.
|
| The hot food items are all oven-baked, in plastic wrappers.
| It's essentially the same crap that you would see in a
| university vending machine.
| jozvolskyef wrote:
| One major aspect that makes sugar a category of its own is
| that there is a safe dose, and the safe dose isn't small.
| It's very easy to count how much you consume and not all
| cultures suffer from overconsumption.
| api wrote:
| It's absolutely amazing how much we shovel sugar into our
| kids even at school, then wonder why they can't pay
| attention.
|
| Sugar is our generation's tobacco for sure.
| tomxor wrote:
| > Sugar is our generation's tobacco for sure.
|
| This might seem far fetched, but I think it's pretty
| accurate.
|
| When tobacco was at it's height most people didn't really
| think it was bad for you - which gradually turned into a
| denialistic "yeah but it's not that bad" - it took a long
| time for society to come to terms with just how harmful it
| is.
|
| The quantity of sugar in every day food has increased
| dramatically over time, and our attitude to it has been
| similar to the denialistic phase for tobbaco - "yeah it
| might hurt my waistline a little bit but it tastes too
| good" - Making people think if they aren't fat then it's
| ok, when really the consequences are far worse, sugar is
| pretty much poison for our bodies, it's bad for every
| single part of it (melts teeth, causes gum disease which
| poisons your bloodstream, ages skin, causes inflammation,
| causes heart disease, causes diabetes, affects the immune
| system, messes with cognition, makes you more hungry by
| sharply switching off ketosis, and finally displaces
| nutritional food making your body even more susceptible to
| aforementioned ailments).
|
| I wish I understood this better when I was growing up.
| Thankfully I had a parent who never encouraged sugary food,
| and put in the effort to cook good meals... but many people
| don't and are at the mercy of what super markets sell,
| which is increasingly extremely sugary food.
|
| If there is a single leading harmful substance that is as
| prevalent as leaded petrol was - i think it's probably
| sugar (in the west at least).
| ArnoVW wrote:
| This is what my grandchildren will say about us, and our
| ambivilant attitude to our use of CO2 and disposables.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I don't think it helps to make this a generational warfare
| issue. Especially since it's not like every person in a
| particular generation had a say in these decisions.
|
| It's also too easy to cast judgement backwards in time, given
| the lack of context and the benefit of hindsight. Better to
| look forward.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Those that ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
|
| We saw it with tobacco/lead/etc, so it's only natural/right
| to apply that experience to other things. Theorizing that
| sugar/THC could also fall into the same model is not wasting
| of anyone's time. If evidence is found that it is bad, then
| good can come from that knowledge. If evidence is found that
| it is not bad, then party on Wayne. But the studies should be
| conducted. Let's look forward to having actual knowledge
| rather than just blindly carrying on in the dark with no
| flashlight to guide.
| Jach wrote:
| As true in 1888 as now, Froude: "Each age would do better if
| it studied its own faults and endeavoured to mend them,
| instead of comparing itself with others to its own
| advantage."
| phphphphp wrote:
| We are just as dumb. Processed meat causes cancer, micro
| plastics are doing all sorts to us: arguably, we are dumber,
| because we know all about the harm that lead and cigarettes
| cause and yet... we haven't applied that lesson. Do you eat
| meat?
| loeg wrote:
| We smoke less than earlier generations, actually.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| Playing devil's advocate, previous generations didn't have
| access to the vast, coordinated information on the scale that
| Millennials do.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| There are a lot of things wrong with this take that others have
| pointed out, but for some reason no one noted that as the
| article points out, the people most impacted by this were born
| in the late 60s and 70s, and those people are Gen X. We didn't
| choose this, we just suffered for it. Someone born in 1976
| didn't vote until 1994.
| modzu wrote:
| similarly, the second leading cause of death is cancer, and yet
| we willingly bask in cancer-causing substances all the time.
| future generations will probably look back and think, wtf?
| jollybean wrote:
| People didn't wear seatbelts in the 1950's. Infant mortality
| was 10% before the age of 1 in 1910. At the same time, homeless
| children would roam the streets of cities and orphanages were
| common. The #1 form of surgery back then was amputation.
|
| To make such a statement implies how little perspective one
| might have for how hard life was, the risk and tradeoffs being
| made, especially when there were unknown - and especially for
| 'how good we have it now'.
|
| I'm not even that old, but I have the lived experience from my
| grandparents who were born on farms without electricity and I
| believe without a doubt that we have crossed the line into
| 'civilizational wealth'. We are really rich for the first time
| in history. Unequal, yes, but even lower-middle class people
| have access to vast material bounty: actions, travel,
| decorative clothing, choices, opportunity, education, amazing
| produce throughout the year, entertainment, technology,
| delivery, amazing health care innovations. Heck .... people are
| even less afraid of getting _shot_ these days because we know
| how to stabilise and save people. Getting 'shot' used to mean
| 'pretty much going go die'. Even 'heart surgery' is now done on
| an outpatient basis these days like getting an oil change.
|
| 'Millenials' have already let loose Facebook and other
| completely destructive technologies, and are taking absolutist
| views on necessarily complicated things like gender identity
| (and more) and I'm 100% certain that history will come back
| like a wrecking ball on at least those things, of course it's
| already happening with Social Media.
|
| The issue with lead is hard to fathom, it's still a bit grey,
| I'm wondering what the effect of some other things are going to
| be i.e. micro plastics, and the steroids they use on livestock
| etc..
|
| I'm not 'organic' by ideology but I'm wary that there's a lot
| of risk in those kinds of things.
|
| And it goes further: lighting in the cities all night, and
| noise pollution in the city and with our gadgets. It should be
| mostly dark and quiet at night.
| scottLobster wrote:
| Speaking as a millennial, don't praise us too soon. We haven't
| really gotten the reins of power yet, so it's easy to claim
| that we'd do it better. In reality I imagine we'll still
| succumb to various corrupting forces just like every other
| generation.
|
| Granted I still think we have a more enlightened perspective on
| some issues as a generation just due to better education
| overall, but at best we might manage a marginal increase in
| overall quality of life for people.
|
| Plus the basket of crises we've faced starting with the Great
| Financial Crisis has allowed many to blame external factors for
| their situation and not take personal responsibility, even when
| they clearly should. I've met plenty of unwise/stupid
| millennials who could do more to better their situation, but
| are happy to just sit still and bitch about everything but
| their self-destructive habits.
|
| It's like how the Boomers got associated with Woodstock/the
| hippies/counter-culture, but in reality most Boomers didn't
| rebel all that much. Boomers elected Reagan, and he ran in part
| as an anti-counter-culture figure.
| nus07 wrote:
| Fantastic answer. In 30 years time we have no idea how the
| youth then will view our race for urban living, yoga, tech
| hustles and high inequality, juice and vegan diets, electric
| cars, open concept houses, social media, tech surveillance
| and screen addiction and various other things which are less
| cutesy and more sinister.
|
| One thing that already gets me thinking of future generations
| looking down on us will be this quest for travel and high
| living especially for social media glamor and the new keeping
| up with Jones'. This increases more flights, polluting
| untouched places and how bad it is for the climate.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Lead still isn't banned in the US. You can go buy 100LL and
| burn it in your plane all day long showering it over the land
| below. Completely legal.
| Cerium wrote:
| We should definitely move away from leaded gasoline and
| housing should not be allowed to develop near airports.
| Phrasing the conversation around "showering it over the land
| below" is to the point of fearmongering. The airplanes
| burning 100LL today consume gasoline at the same rate as an
| old pickup truck - they go about 12 miles per gallon. Lead
| pollution today due to aviation is a fraction of what it was
| in the past and is unlikely to even be the largest
| environmental exposure for most children.
| weaksauce wrote:
| yeah i live under the flightpath of a lot of flight school
| traffic and this weighs a bit on my mind. pretty busy flight
| area too. Who knows the damage really? are there tests you
| can take?
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| If it is larger jet planes, you're mostly safe. Those burn
| lots of fuel, but it is "jet fuel" which is more like
| kerosene or diesel.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Yes, you can get a blood test done that measures lead
| level. I asked my doctor for the test and got it done.
| Covered by insurance.
| [deleted]
| conradev wrote:
| Yep https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/leaded-
| gas-wa...
| xeromal wrote:
| It's easy to point the finger at boomers, but where they maybe
| killed us with lead, we're killing the next generation with
| plastics. Sure, plastics were started in earlier generations
| but we're showing no signs of slowing down in usage.
| jmugan wrote:
| That comment seems to blame a large group of people for
| something a small group did. The problem with lead is the same
| problem it always was and still is, a small group of people
| benefit and are able to make everyone else suffer. We clearly
| need to fix that, probably with specific measures to limit
| undue influence in congress. We should focus on those specific
| measures instead of divisive generalizations.
| JPKab wrote:
| It's pretty insane. I was born in 1981, and near as I can tell,
| I'm likely a bit luckier than most other Americans my age
| because I grew up in such a sparsely populated, rural area.
| Still, there's no question that even people living in areas
| like me were impacted since most of the population drove old
| trucks, including my family.
|
| It's crazy to think about having a lower IQ than I was capable
| of having for something that could have been solved a few
| decades previously.
| tlss wrote:
| Recreational marijuana and JUUL is very much a millenial/gen Z
| hobby, and it is being pushed with a fervor that glosses over
| serious studies any potential health risks.
|
| IMO weed will be in 50 years where "big tobacco" is right now.
| mountainriver wrote:
| Not a chance, maybe smoking marijuana, but not edibles. I
| know plenty of people that have done them their entire lives
| and are in great shape
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| That sounds a lot like "my grandmother smoked 2 packs a day
| and lived til she was 99."
|
| I think the whole point is that it hasn't been studied yet,
| so we can't say definitively if its safe or not.
| yojo wrote:
| It didn't even stop then. My own city (Portland) has been
| regularly exceeding EPA lead action levels since 1998[1].
|
| All they need to do is treat the water to raise ph like every
| other city with a large lead solder install base, but they've
| been dragging their feet for literally decades while the people
| they serve get lead exposure.
|
| 1: https://www.opb.org/article/2021/11/30/lead-portland-
| oregon-...
| selimthegrim wrote:
| You mean the anti-fluoridation fanatics didn't know when to
| get off the train? (channeling Richard Pryor here)
| nintendo1889 wrote:
| What is provable is that the type of fluoride that they are
| using is NOT the supposedly 'healthy' type that is good for
| teeth.
| User23 wrote:
| So is fluoride's neurotoxicity[1], especially for developing
| brains, and we still insist on using it, to just give one
| example. We're no less reckless than prior generations and our
| children will be just as baffled looking back at us as we are
| now.
|
| Yes I'm aware that idiots are also fixated on fluoridation.
| That doesn't make the science wrong though.
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6923889/
| Neurotoxicity appeared to be dose-dependent , and tentative
| benchmark dose calculations suggest that safe exposures are
| likely to be below currently accepted or recommended fluoride
| concentrations in drinking water.
|
| That the authors felt the need to pack four weasel words into
| the sentence saying maybe it's ok doesn't indicate that they
| believe it's safe.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Do you have other citations? How is this different from
| fluoridated toothpaste or topical application at the dentist?
| trockbort wrote:
| The fortification properties afforded by fluoride are
| entirely topical, meaning that fluoride-containing
| toothpaste can be considered beneficial. You use it and
| then spit it out. Drinking fluoridated water can hardly be
| considered helpful. Most of the fluoride content of water
| goes directly into the stomach where its effects are
| strictly not studied, and if you know anything about the
| fluoride ion, the effects are most likely detrimental, and
| possibly horrendous.
| trockbort wrote:
| Fun fact: America fluoridates its water supply because
| notorious propagandist Edward Bernays convinced them to, for
| money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations_campaign
| s_of_... .
| tombert wrote:
| I hate that everything has to devolve into some kind of "this
| generation sucks" debate. Whether or not we can blame boomers
| _does not matter_ , at least not until we have a time machine
| to go remedy stuff. The fact is that the decisions have been
| made, the damage is done, and we need to figure out what to do
| _now_ , regardless of whose fault it is.
|
| It seems like so many of these conversations end at the "who is
| responsible" part, without the understanding that we really
| shouldn't care.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| I wouldn't complain if they were already unable to do
| anything, but many of them are actively _preventing_ further
| improvements. Often due to it coming at a cost for them.
| Their unwillingness trickles down to other generations both
| in teachings and in pressuring the next generation what can
| and can 't be done, and how to respond. Most of late gen X
| has also thrown in the towel, leaving the future generations
| to solve it themselves.
|
| This despite the fact leaders are overwhelmingly at/past
| middle age, as is wealth required to make moves as an
| individual.
| tombert wrote:
| Sure, but I think that it's needlessly divisive to pin it
| on a generation, particularly when I can find
| counterexamples for each.
|
| I have no issue whatsoever with complaining about
| _individuals_ who are destroying the world _right now_ [3],
| I 'm certainly not going to sit here and defend basically
| any fossil fuel executive, but I think saying it's a
| generational thing is needlessly reductive and doesn't buy
| us anything. I don't think Noam Chomsky [1] or Bernie
| Sanders are destroying the world [2], and I don't think
| millennial/gen-z bozos like Charlie Kirk are helping it.
|
| [1] I realize he's older than a boomer, but I think my
| point still fits. [2] At least not advocating for stuff
| that's destroying the planet. I am not trying to take a
| directly political stand.
|
| [3] clarification edit.
| SimplyUnknown wrote:
| I agree that people have been reckless with population safety
| in past, but your comment seems to imply that the Millenial
| generation are somehow flawless with regards with this subject.
| While safety is now more stringent than in the past, I very
| much doubt that this is the case.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Physical safety is more stringent. You can't swing a dead cat
| without a horde of people with safety vests and clipboards
| writing you up for it.
|
| However, the planet is arguably the most ideologically
| polluted it's ever been. First world cultures have developed
| an aversion to individual and organization/group
| responsibility. Democracy is not doing great. Many
| institutions are bankrupt. Hardship is looming. We're in for
| a wild ride.
| andrewzah wrote:
| As of 2021, out of 432 members in the house of congress, a
| scant 31 are millenials. In the senate, just 1.
|
| Millenials are -not- the ones responsible for disastrous
| policies (yet). They haven't been around long enough yet.
| It's mainly boomers, some gen x, and a few silents.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/02/12/boomers-
| sil...
|
| edit: Added "(yet)" because it's not obvious, I suppose. My
| point here is that the actual policymakers in congress, right
| now, are majority "not-millenials". So stop blaming
| millenials and/or gen-z when they're not the ones currently
| writing legislature...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Who is the largest single voting bloc?
|
| Edit: That struck a chord with millenials, ha! Tell your
| friends that bitching does not help, voting does. Boomers
| seem to understand this and so they have a disproportionate
| amount of influence. You want it to stop? VOTE.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Generations don't vote as blocks, but of the named
| generations the largest number of _actual voters_ are
| Boomers, still.
|
| 2018 was the first election where Gen X and younger
| together outvoted Boomers and older.
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| > Edit: That struck a chord with millenials, ha! Tell
| your friends that bitching does not help, voting does.
| Boomers seem to understand this and so they have a
| disproportionate amount of influence. You want it to
| stop? VOTE.
|
| There is, still, a statistical bump in the boomers, hence
| the baby boom.
|
| There is just more of them, and they vote. They've only
| just started dying in big numbers.
|
| Plus the older voters get the more they tend to vote, for
| various reasons.
| andrewzah wrote:
| It's my understanding that millenials and gen-z make up
| 31% [0], as of -2020-. Boomers and older still make up
| 44%. So sure, go ahead and blame millenials and gen-z for
| policies made in 2020 and onward.
|
| 0: https://catalist.us/wh-national/
| vlunkr wrote:
| So what you're saying is, millenials aren't responsible for
| disastrous policies yet. They'll get their turn.
| andrewzah wrote:
| Correct. I've no doubt that the new generation will also
| make some terrible calls thanks to lobbying being legal.
| I believe the environment will be much more prioritized,
| but we'll have to see.
|
| However, I'm tired of silents/boomers/gen-xers making
| comments about and blaming millenials as if it's somehow
| our fault the boomers and silents in congress are out of
| touch. A quick look at voting demographics and the
| demographics of congress dispels that notion (for now, as
| of 2022).
| ncr100 wrote:
| Good, be tired of it.
|
| The blame game is unhelpful unless a holistic explanation
| of Why Did You Do That is also given.
| ncr100 wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| It's difficult to be omniscient about the impact of
| everything to everything else for all future outcomes.
|
| Smacks of Ageism, to my mind.
| ajuc wrote:
| Compared to ignoring global warming - ignoring lead exposure
| is a minor negligence.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Both are a product of the same process of privileging of
| commodity production for profit over overall collective
| well-being.
|
| And yes, I'm aware that said commodity production produces
| wealth which also improves well-being. But there's a
| contradiction there in our economic model that is not
| serving us well.
|
| EDIT: I should add to my point above that what's common
| with both these is one overarching world altering product
| that has completely transformed the world: the automobile.
|
| Ribbons of tarmac lace the earth (it wouldn't surprise me
| if this is a long term environmental problem, too), even in
| some of the most remote sections of the planet.
|
| Cities are built around them, privileging automobile use
| above a bunch of other aspects of quality of life.
|
| Road transport is 75ish% of global CO2 emissions.
|
| And, yeah, leaded fuel poisoned our bodies, minds, and the
| environment for decades.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Economics has a term for this: negative externalities. A
| buys a snowblower from B, gaining 4 health for not
| shoveling and reducing everybody's health by 3 from
| pollution. B buys a leaf blower from C, gaining 4 health
| from not raking and reducing everybody's health by 3 from
| pollution. C buys a lawnmower from A, gaining 4 health
| from not scything and reducing everybody's health by 3.
| Each seller gets 4 health from the money. Every trade is
| beneficial to both parties by 1 health unit, but now,
| everybody is worse off by 1 health unit than they would
| be had the trades not happened. In practice, we're
| usually D-Z, who participated in no trades and get a net
| reduction in health of 9.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| That is an incredibly naive way of looking at it.
|
| The way it usually goes is "everyone is +5, except the
| village that shares the watershed with the mine"
|
| On anything but the shortest timeline things like like
| wealth, health and productivity are fungible at the
| societal level.
|
| If the net cumulative effect of the externalities wasn't
| smaller than the benefits of the progress then the
| progress wouldn't happen because more people would be
| worse off and things would grind to a halt because the
| gains would be more than offset.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Not only is it not naive, but avoiding these scenarios
| woth market regulation is one of the main purposes of
| modern government. Hence, vaccination policies and CFC
| regulation. Libertarians like to believe that negative
| externalities and other market failures don't exist, that
| the invisible hand is always benevolent, but examples
| abound for those who do not follow a religion that
| forbids them from noticing.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Not only is it not naive, but avoiding these scenarios
| woth market regulation is one of the main purposes of
| modern government. Hence, vaccination policies and CFC
| regulation. Libertarians like to believe that negative
| externalities and other market failures don't exist, that
| the invisible hand is always benevolent, but examples
| abound for those who do not follow a religion that
| forbids them from noticing.
|
| It's still naive, or maybe obtuse. Repeating the
| "negative externality" buzzword doesn't give you a blank
| check to peddle your preferred ideology (government
| intervention/regulation) while crapping on the other
| team.
|
| Without regulation we get lithium batteries and a couple
| dozen poisoned watersheds.
|
| With regulation we get slightly more expensive batteries
| and fewer poisoned watersheds.
|
| Regardless of how you or I or anyone else feels about
| regulation it's somewhere between farcical and deceitful
| to pretend that the economic activity in both of those
| situations doesn't help more than it hurts. If it didn't
| work this way progress would grind to a halt because the
| increased material wealth of having the batteries would
| be more than cancelled out by the problems that poisoned
| watersheds create, to run with the existing example.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Examples where most people are worse off are easy to
| think of. I gave an example where _everybody_ is worse
| off because it is an interesting scenario. I made _no
| claim_ about how often that situation occurs. There is no
| reason for overall progress to grind to a halt -- the
| Nash equilibria for a game can be arbitrarily bad. There
| is only the obvious conclusion that governments should
| get involved to fix these problems _when they occur_ ,
| including regulating lead use, given that we see plenty
| of governments that have not and have suffered the
| consequences.
| catchclose8919 wrote:
| ...are you sure about that?
| qorrect wrote:
| Yeah if anything millennial's were _taught_ to be less
| reckless. They didn't just come out of the womb that way :/.
| ncr100 wrote:
| > wreckless the generations before millenials were
|
| Premise is off...
|
| This assuming millenials are not reckless. We're humans and our
| behavior is not defined by our generation.
| [deleted]
| oversocialized wrote:
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| were no better these days with pfas, bpa, bps, badge,
| phthalates, etc.
|
| And we still have supplements and pots and pans that have lead
| in them, along with other heavy metals.
| MrYellowP wrote:
| I guess that explains a lot, but let's not ignore the horrendous
| education system.
| Borrible wrote:
| Who would have thought.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Needleman
|
| 'The Removal of Lead from Gasoline: Historical and Personal
| Reflections'
|
| https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.54...
|
| 'Lead, IQ and Social Class'
|
| https://academic.oup.com/ije/article-abstract/18/1/180/61682...
| webkike wrote:
| IQ doesn't measure intelligence so for all we know this just
| shows that IQ tests measure how little lead you've been exposed
| to
| gordian-mind wrote:
| Adding this to the list of things IQ tests accurately predict:
|
| 1) school performance
|
| 2) job performance
|
| 3) income
|
| 4) crime rate
|
| 5) health and mortality
|
| 6) quantity of lead exposed to
|
| 7) NOT intelligence
| throwaway-m3232 wrote:
| >3) income
|
| Hm, I know some obvious contradictions. Just saying.. not
| interested in discussing this.
| gordian-mind wrote:
| Individual cases do not invalidate statistical trends...
| imoverclocked wrote:
| every rule has its exception(s)
| throwyawayyyy wrote:
| Seems a reasonable assumption that lowering IQ is a decent
| proxy for other damage lead does to the brain, right? It would
| be weird if it just damaged the bits associated with doing well
| on IQ tests, and left the rest alone.
|
| E.g. it happens that IQ is something we measure, and EQ much
| less so. That lead leads to measurable reductions in IQ is
| strong evidence that it damages EQ too. (As its association
| with crime would suggest.)
| catchclose8919 wrote:
| That's one hard to parse sentence there... or maybe I've been
| exposed to too much lead as a child :)
|
| In all seriousness, IQ is an important component of
| intelligence, mainly "fluid intelligence" that correlates well
| to _learning speed_ in science and technology field, so for
| anyone that needs to do lots of learning /unlearning and
| career/domain hopping like we're all going to do more and more
| in the future _it matters a hell of a lot!_
|
| I a world where someone could pick a job/domain and stick to it
| for life, IQ would matter but less... but it's not the world
| we're living in, everything is accelerating and our kids are
| likely to go through quite a few career changes / professional
| re-conversions etc.
| ascii_pasta wrote:
| Genuinely curious, Where are you learning this from?
| hash03x wrote:
| jcranberry wrote:
| How did they calculate IQ loss due to lead exposure specifically?
|
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2118631119
|
| I don't have access and the abstract isn't very informative in
| terms of sample size control group etc.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| It reads like they made some assumptions based on earlier
| research and did some math.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Wait until everyone finds out about what COVID is going to do...
| munk-a wrote:
| Aye, in twenty years when we fully understand long covid a lot
| of people are going to regret not putting in the blood sweet
| and tears to convince ignorant family members that the vaccine
| is actually a good thing. We're also going to probably look
| back on the lack of continued remote learning as a dire
| mistake.
| amelius wrote:
| And what about crime rates?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| From what I've read the removal of lead from gasoline is
| partially a factor in the sudden reduction of crime during the
| latter half of the 20th century, but it's not enough to explain
| the entire trend... which seems to be a preponderance of
| factors.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| The remainder can be explained by bread and games = cheap
| food and game consoles which kept the kids playing in the
| house instead of being part of a gang.
| gordian-mind wrote:
| Maybe it was rather the removal of "lead victims" that led to
| the sudden reduction of crime.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| People say this about lead, people say this about abortion,
| people say this about building more prisons and 3-strike
| laws.
|
| Nothing is monocausal, don't trust anyone who makes such a
| claim unless they provide extraordinary evidence.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Obviously nothing is monocausal, but it seems like the link
| with lead here is best supported by evidence among the
| things you've listed. It holds constant across several
| countries and cultures where those other factors are quite
| different. Western Europe wasn't throwing up prisons and
| enacting 3-strike laws, but saw similar declines in crime.
| You can find similar counter examples around abortion
| access as well. Those thing probably contribute, but the
| effect size of removing lead from the environments seem
| really large!
| jeffbee wrote:
| The lead hypothesis is supported by particularly strong
| evidence: there is a natural threshold experiment where
| school children with blood lead levels over a certain
| amount are treated to remove lead from their home
| environment (and their bodies) while other children just
| below the same lead level were not treated. The
| difference in later life outcomes are stark.
|
| There is no such natural experiment for abortion. It's
| just an idea.
|
| https://ftp.iza.org/dp10872.pdf
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I'm not in the slightest challenging that lead is
| terrible for IQ; it's the link to national crime stats
| that I think is more tenuous.
| pessimizer wrote:
| https://jabberwocking.com/has-the-lead-crime-hypothesis-
| been...
| [deleted]
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| But then there's been a huge rise in crime. The murder rate
| in some cities is dramatically higher than just a few years
| ago. But it's not like the gas suddenly became leaded again.
|
| This makes me think that we just can't be too certain about
| these things.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Sure but it was an immensely stressful time for lots of
| people, that is going to drive up crimes of all types.
| Expect a similar (is not as drastic) drop in crime as well
| over the next couple of years.
| pfranz wrote:
| From what I've seen there has been a recent rise in the
| murder rate. In some places it was at historical highs--but
| the cities are also much, much larger now. When looking at
| per-capita data its still historically low.
|
| You're right in that there doesn't seem to be a definitive
| cause, but quite a few things have changed since Covid
| started and we're not sure what changes are permanent.
| watwut wrote:
| There was not huge rise in crime in general. There were
| more murders during lockdowns in US, which is in fact to be
| expected since people were forced to be with close
| relatives - and most murders are by close people.
| bluedino wrote:
| Murders have been on the rise since 2014 or so
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| > But then there's been a huge rise in crime
|
| Is this actually true? I've seen a lot of people saying
| this politically but haven't seen a lot of data to back it
| up. From what I've seen there's been a slight bump, which
| isn't too surprising given the state of everything... but
| it's still massively dwarfed by the decrease in the 90s and
| 00s
|
| For example https://www.bbc.com/news/57581270
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Here property crime was up a little bit but violent crime
| was way up (50% or so). I personally think it's the
| stress and anxiety of lost jobs, loss of release valves
| (going to the office, seeing friends, etc). I believe
| it's a temporary spike and will fade in the next year or
| two.
| ryan93 wrote:
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/27/what-we-
| kno...
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Thanks! this supports the fact that it's still lower than
| before the 90s decline, and possibly pandemic related. I
| guess we'll find out over the next few years.
|
| > Despite rising sharply in 2020, the U.S. murder rate
| remains below the levels of the early 1990s.
|
| > Americans remain far less likely to die from murder
| than from other causes, including from suicide and drug
| overdose.
| gordian-mind wrote:
| That probably means that the main reason for the crime rate
| spike since the 60s is not lead but something else.
| legitster wrote:
| I have a strong worries that our current generation will have a
| similar huge reckoning with marijuana.
|
| We are already seeing studies that show regular marijuana use is
| correlated with permanent decreases in intelligence, memory loss,
| motivation, and mental health. And anecdotally, this seems very
| apparent in my peer group. And Americans are using copious
| amounts of the stuff right now, and younger than ever before.
|
| I'm not against legalization by any means, or free of my own
| vices. But the risk in 50 years of people saying "we should have
| known better" seems really high.
| Tenoke wrote:
| >We are already seeing studies that show regular marijuana use
| is correlated with permanent decreases in intelligence, memory
| loss, motivation, and mental health.
|
| I can maybe believe it but I am yet to see a convincing Meta-
| Analysis or at least a large RCT. In general, people seem to
| recover from a lot of drug usage if they stop for long enough
| and weed isn't one of the heavy ones. Can you share what
| studies you are referring to?
| legitster wrote:
| The study in the linked article found that lead reduced the
| IQ of exposed Americans 3-6 IQ points.
|
| A New Zealand study found that persistent cannabis users had
| a 6-8 point decline, _even if they had given up cannabis_ :
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1206820109
|
| Here's a meta review that found a 2 IQ point drop across a
| wider range of usage types:
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-
| medici...
|
| There's a lot less known about cannabis at this point, but
| what we know so far isn't very positive.
| arcticbull wrote:
| That's not actually what the study found.
| Further, cessation of cannabis use did not fully restore
| neuropsychological functioning *among adolescent-onset
| cannabis users*.
|
| They did not find a 6-8 point decline for folks who gave up
| cannabis if they started later in life. In fact they found
| no decline in IQ whatsoever for folks who started later in
| life - both when using it and after stopping.
| In contrast, within-person IQ decline was not apparent
| among adult-onset persistent cannabis users who used
| cannabis infrequently (median use = 6 d) or frequently
| (median use = 365 d) in the year before testing.
|
| > There's a lot less known about cannabis at this point,
| but what we know so far isn't very positive.
|
| ... for adolescents. Both your studies only show impact in
| youth.
| legitster wrote:
| I don't think my summary was unfair. I was only asked if
| there was evidence for persistent effects. There clearly
| is, even if just for adolescents.
|
| It's also important to point out that for the adult-onset
| group they only looked at 1 year back. This doesn't
| preclude the possibility that longer periods as an adult
| find different results.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Your summary missed a critical piece, which is that it
| _is_ just for adolescents.
|
| I don't think, even within the marijuana community, that
| there is any debate that marijuana use in adolescents is
| harmful. I regularly see /r/trees comments telling teens
| to stop until they're at least 18 and their brain
| finishes developing.
| [deleted]
| mandmandam wrote:
| Sorry, no, your claims and summary were definitively and
| unquestionably false.
|
| There is a large, large difference between 'Americans'
| and 'adolescents'. Vast.
| staticassertion wrote:
| Sorry, I took a look at the study and I couldn't tell -
| what is an adolescent? Like, 10-18? 14-25? I know what
| the word means, but for a scientific study I assume
| there's a specific range they're referring to.
| Tenoke wrote:
| I hadn't seen the meta-analysis, thanks. 2=3 IQ points drop
| is pretty significant and enough to be worth consideration
| but it's not too worrisome.
| fkfkno wrote:
| >I have a strong worries that our current generation will have
| a similar huge reckoning with marijuana.
|
| I think "Cannabis" is the prefered term nowadays. The word
| "Marijuana" has negative cultural connotations which we would
| do well to escape when discussing this issue.
|
| The problem is that the research into the risks of exposure to
| both of these substances was/is not exactly at the top of the
| list due to various factors.
|
| That said, I'd take my chances with a bong over a car exhaust
| *or drinking water pipe. At least you have some choice over
| what goes into (and, consequently comes out) of the former.
| [deleted]
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > I have a strong worries that our current generation will have
| a similar huge reckoning with marijuana.
|
| There might be such a reckoning, just not at the same level or
| with the same impact.
|
| Water is simply a necessity, and marijuana is not. Quite
| literally 100% of Americans ingest water in some capacity
| and/or means. Also, brain development delay and interference,
| caused by contaminated water, would be present in children, who
| are not, by default, marijuana users.
| deepsquirrelnet wrote:
| Cannabis will probably never be legalized for children,
| outside of some extreme medical conditions -- or CBD, which
| is not psychoactive. It is clear that THC is not good for a
| developing brain.
|
| It is also likely that cannabis is generally less harmful
| than alcohol or even acetaminophen, and unlike those,
| considered fairly non-toxic. Consider that cannabis
| metabolites can be detected in your body for up to a month
| after consumption. It's apparently not that high of a
| priority for your body to purge it. Cannabis does not need to
| be combusted. The resins will readily vaporize at
| temperatures well below the point at which the plant matter
| actually burns.
|
| I no longer consume alcohol, but occasionally consume
| cannabis. My personal decision comes from a lot of experience
| with both, the way my body feels after consuming them, and
| studied risks associated with each. I exercise responsible
| moderation in my consumption and strongly believe that
| cannabis is the safer choice.
|
| This conversation is more about the extent to which we need
| to protect adults from their own adult decisions, and/or
| protect the antiquated and partially racist underpinnings
| behind how and why cannabis was initially made illegal. To
| that end, I'm not sure it bears much, if any, similarity to
| lead exposure.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I agree with some of this in the abstract, but I think it's
| worth noting that "regular use" in academic studies of
| marijuana usually entails dosing lab animals with quantities
| that a human being couldn't physically consume, or surveying
| the (much smaller) population of people with psychological
| addictions to marijuana.
|
| OTOH, and this is anecdotal, I worry about how potent a lot of
| "normal" marijuana has become and how rapidly we've normalized
| high-dose delivery mechanisms for it (like waxes and
| tinctures). It's hard to predict the future given how
| "primitive" marijuana consumption used to be, in contrast.
| Scalestein wrote:
| I agree 100% with the potency concerns. Many of the studies
| showing negative impact were using standards like "10 joints
| a day" which was easy to dismiss as that was an unreasonable
| amount of weed for most people. Now with wax, tinctures and
| 20%+ THC strains becoming the normal it seems really easy for
| many people to be hitting those previously unrealistic
| dosages.
| version_five wrote:
| I'm curious, because I have not heard of wax or tinctures,
| do you think those are things that more people will use, vs
| people who would have used some hard drugs anyway?
|
| What I mean is, there will always be some hard drug users,
| now from the discussion I understand some "hard" THC
| products exist, will this result in any kind of demographic
| change like the OP worried about, or is it just a new drug
| of abuse?
|
| Just because these things exist, I don't think it
| automatically follows that they will get used by most
| people, or even more people than would have found some
| other destructive thing to do in their absence
| schrectacular wrote:
| They are very common - "vape cartridges" are the
| preferred intake mechanism for a lot of people because
| it's much more discrete (almost no smell, can pass for
| normal vaping) and convenient (small size). And those
| cartridges can be upwards of 90% THC.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| They are pretty heavily in use and available at most
| locations that legally sell marijuana. Estimate they are
| 15 to 20% of sales, perhaps more. Even common flower now
| is 20% thc.
| giobox wrote:
| Just anecdota of course, but waxes and tinctures are
| routinely promoted and offered in discount deals at
| virtually any legal weed dispensary in the USA. They are
| IMO increasingly mainstream, as they often work nicely
| with tools like vaporizers which more and more young
| people use to consume.
|
| Technology has massively changed how people consume
| cannabis - many people today may have never rolled or
| smoked a traditional joint ever. You can buy it in ready
| to load resin cartridges powered by a LiIon battery. Many
| of these things produce cold vapor that makes it
| staggeringly easy to smoke an enormous quantity. At least
| with a joint, there normally comes a point one's throat
| will probably not thank you for continuing... The cold
| vapor from many vaporizers is almost odor free too,
| meaning people can consume in places they couldn't
| previously.
| BTCOG wrote:
| Dude, literally millions of people are dabbing wax and
| vaping 95% purity THC all day every day in just the US.
| Millions. Not just in legal states, and not just
| delta-9-THC. There's all 50 states legal
| hexahydrocannabinol carts from hemp, delta-8,10 THC and
| THC-O acetate widely available. Not sure though why an
| article about lead exposure turned into a Reefer Madness
| spook campaign. If one were looking for parallels I think
| one would lean towards something like widespread use of
| PFAAS chems or something. Smoking plants is up to an
| individual.
| Scalestein wrote:
| This is all anecdotal but I have multiple friends who
| smoke regularly for years. I would consider them heavy
| smokers, think 5+ joints a day. Once their states had
| recreational or easily obtainable medicinal marijuana and
| the retail shops that come with it they quickly started
| moving into the concentrates and waxes. Now they
| regularly are going through grams of concentrates and
| going back to their previously "heavy-use" of 5 joints a
| day would barely scratch their itch.
|
| The availability of vape pens also makes it REALLY easy
| to end up smoking way more than you would otherwise and
| as an easy way to start smoking in general. I smoke and
| enjoy the convenience of pens but they are perfect tools
| for increasing cannabis consumption in a population.
|
| It is almost as if flower based cannabis is a gateway
| drug to these concentrated forms and I think it is really
| easy to go down that path as an already regular user.
| It's more economical, potentially better for you (less
| smoking) and now very easy to obtain.
|
| I think the "overton window" of cannabis use is being
| shifted to the heavier end. Casual users will probably
| stay about the same but regular and heavier users will
| all shift to more or higher potency consumption.
| legitster wrote:
| But we still do have studies that compare cannabis users to
| non-users.
|
| The concern for marijuana is less about the toxicity of it as
| a substance, and more the psychological effects of being
| high.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| And the psychological effects of consuming a taboo
| substance.
| zelon88 wrote:
| I started smoking pot later than a lot of my peers. All
| through high school I was cringy and weird and
| judgemental and adversarial and entitled.
|
| Then I started smoking pot. And I experimented with a ton
| of hard psychedelic drugs. And it absolutely took a toll
| on my cognitive abilities. But it had a much more
| profound effect on my personality. A positive effect.
| Especially LSD.
|
| It was like a light switch went on in my personality. I
| suddenly was much more "tuned in" to the world around me.
| I became mindful and considerate. My judgement faded. My
| outlook had changed to one that was seriously more
| healthy. Today I don't drink or do hard drugs. Just
| Marijuana. And I'm happy with myself.
|
| I don't know what to make of that but I do know that I've
| seen things and felt things and understood things from
| perspectives that people who have never taken drugs can
| literally not imagine. You couldn't even dream the things
| I've seen.
|
| I believe there could be clinical uses for taboo things
| like psychedelic drugs. I hate to think that without them
| I probably would have eventually been red pilled or
| turned into a fascist. It was that much of an eye opening
| experience for teenage me.
|
| So while it probably did cost me about 15% of my
| cognitive ability, it also gave me 100% of my critical
| thinking ability.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| A lot of that could just as easily be attributed to you
| growing up, though. Teenagers are generally cringy,
| weird, judgmental, adversarial and entitled, each in
| their own ways.
|
| I personally had _horrible_ experiences on LSD, and I 've
| seen even worse bad trips and panic attacks as a trip
| dad, but I know it helps quite a few of my friends figure
| themselves out. Which is why studies on these drugs is
| crucial.
| s_dev wrote:
| > But the risk in 50 years of people saying "we should have
| known better" seems really high.
|
| Is there any evidence this happens with alcohol and if there is
| what was societies response? I suspect it alcohol does similar
| damage and we tolerate it due to the perceived benefits.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| It seems like the biggest and most present problem with
| marijuana is that most don't understand that smoking marijuana
| is just as bad as smoking cigarettes[0]. Of course, that's
| obvious - smoking _anything_ , even herbal theater cigarettes,
| are extremely bad for your health[1]. However, after years and
| years of the pro-marijuana lobby claiming that marijuana has no
| negative side effects and can't kill you, it would make sense
| if teens today were confused by the logical contradictions.
|
| Until we transition over to non-smoking marijuana consumption,
| I don't see an easy for the anti-marijuana lobby to make any
| claim about marijuana that the pro lobby wouldn't be able to
| refute by simply pointing to the smoke as the root problem. I
| agree that the reckoning will come but it will come in the form
| of anti-smoking ads (in favor of edibles or whatever else)
| rather than anti-marijuana ads.
|
| [0]https://www.lung.org/quit-smoking/smoking-facts/health-
| effec...
|
| [1]https://www.everydayhealth.com/stop-smoking/herbal-and-
| natur...
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| Marijuana needs to be reclassified off of Schedule I Status in
| the USA, so it can be more thoroughly studied. Schedule I
| category shouldn't include recreational drugs like marijuana,
| which has no overdose possibility and has limited withdrawal
| side-effects. This wrong classification, going back to ignorant
| viewpoints of the early-mid 1900's, has heavily limited our
| scientific understanding of marijuana's effects on health and
| society.
|
| Imagine if we weren't allowed to study alcohol freely, if we
| had to jump through a dozen hoops to become qualified to do one
| of the few alcohol studies. We might not have so much knowledge
| about alcohol's toxic effects, and we might not have the
| current picture of "Marijuana is slightly healthier than
| alcohol" if Marijuana had been as thoroughly studied.
| survirtual wrote:
| This much is clear. Scheduling MJ is extremely unwise. But I
| would also extend this to everything in the psychedelic /
| hallucinogenic category. They do no psychological harm and an
| increasing body of evidence indicates that they, in all
| likelihood, do a significant amount of mental good for
| responsible users.
|
| An acute example of this is a psychedelic called "DMT". This
| psychedelic is nearly everywhere in nature, including our own
| brains. When inhaled, it lasts less than 10 minutes, give or
| take. After that 10 minutes, a user is completely sober
| without any indication that they were not, and no
| physiological side effects. But during that 10 minutes? It is
| an acute spiritual and existential experience, possibly the
| most acute non-normal experience possible for a human being.
| A true exploration of altered states, and possible contact
| with a different form of life unbound from our reality.
|
| And for some reason, this substance is scheduled. It does no
| harm to a user, to third parties, nor to society, is short
| lived, and offers true spiritual experience but it's
| scheduled. The scheduling as a whole is archaic, oppressive,
| and if nothing else, misguided.
|
| This is also in top of the fact that it discourages addicts
| from seeking real treatment due to fear of being
| criminalized.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| I was going to post something v similar about psilocybin.
| The war on drugs has had such awful consequences and
| repercussions and costs, it boggles the mind.
| scruple wrote:
| To suggest that there is no potential for psychological
| harm from psychedelics is naive. I've personally suffered
| long-lasting psychological harm from a bad mushroom trip
| and I have at least a couple of friends/acquaintances who
| have, as well. You can quibble over the details of why
| and how adverse effects happen but it doesn't change the
| fact that they do.
| survirtual wrote:
| I meant physiological harm, definitely a mistype on my
| end.
|
| That said, psilocybin is highly sensitive to set and
| setting, especially to other neural nets and especially
| to others also on it. There is a massive host of issues
| in partaking with friends or around anyone else for that
| matter. It will amplify hidden untruths or other sort of
| otherwise "benign" sober psychological distress and make
| them acute.
|
| What people call a "bad trip" I call an important lesson.
| We can choose to react negatively and label it
| accordingly, or visit it in a sense that a very advanced
| mindset was indicating a problem. When done this way, bad
| states cease to exist and it becomes clear the "bad
| trips" were just bad other things that needed some
| conscious attention.
|
| All this to say: go get lost in the woods and trip with
| some plants & with people who hang with that setting,
| they will take care of you and it is a much better
| setting to do the work on self.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| Saying they do _no_ psychological harm is quite am extreme
| statement and is just blatantly untrue. I tend to agree
| that these drugs should be dicriminalized, but you 're
| doing the exact same thing thats been done with marijuana
| where the benefits of the drug are praised while the
| negatives are ignored.
| fkfkno wrote:
| Lack of guidance and cultural context leads to abuse of
| all sorts of substances. For all the ills of alcohol,
| there is at least (in the west) a degree of "acceptable
| usage" existing in society, something which almost every
| other recreational substance is currently missing.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| I don't disagree, but that's not what was said.
| survirtual wrote:
| My mistake. I meant physiological harm. Will edit.
|
| Edit: cannot edit any longer. While I do not think they
| do cause psychological harm in the long term (I think
| they force confrontation with buried psychological issues
| in order to transcend them), they most certainly can
| cause short term psychological distress and issues for
| people unprepared, approaching with the wrong mindset, or
| using in an otherwise problematic set or setting.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > This is also in top of the fact that it discourages
| addicts from seeking real treatment due to fear of being
| criminalized.
|
| Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2000 and saw a huge
| reduction in harm associated with drug use, and did not see
| an increase in usage. They went from among the worst in the
| EU in terms of HIV infections to among the lowest. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-
| radic...
| howinteresting wrote:
| The problem is that if you or your family have a history of
| schizophrenia, psychedelics can make things much, much
| worse. But so can ADHD stimulants.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > It does no harm to a user, to third parties, nor to
| society,
|
| Except it opens doors in people's minds which allows them
| to think differently for themselves. This results in them
| behaving less like sheeple. Why would that ever be scary
| for society?
| giobox wrote:
| My experience is it opens the door to not thinking much
| at all, but your mileage may vary. Is there anything more
| "sheeple" like than a bunch of stoned people sitting
| around not motivated to do much?
|
| Sure, not all mj users may experience it this way, but a
| lot do! I certainly wouldn't be arguing it opens the door
| to a bunch of usefully profound thinkers in society.
| howinteresting wrote:
| Marijuana is very different from psychedelics in this
| regard.
| pedrosorio wrote:
| Parent's quote refers to the psychedelic DMT, not to mj.
| dylan604 wrote:
| To paraphrase Bill Hicks, if you think marijuana/drug use
| has never had a good effect on society, take all of your
| favorite music and throw it in the trash. All of the
| musicians recording that music were "reaaaaalllll fucking
| high".
| survirtual wrote:
| MJ on its own has certainly ruined some people,
| especially daily users. I would argue, however,
| significantly less so than alcohol. It also has a much
| lower harm fact on others than alcohol.
|
| MJ used more sparingly, and especially when used on
| someone with exposure to a psychedelic (not
| simultaneously but maybe the weekend after a trip)?
| Entirely different ballgame. It can awaken an internal
| symphony of inspiration and thinking.
|
| Everything can be abused. Eat too much if anything and
| you will suffer. But when used appropriately, very
| magical experiences can be had that enable routes of
| thinking and problem solving that seem to come from out
| of this world.
|
| In general, my recommendation to anyone is to try these
| things while simply meditating or hiking a safe & easy
| trail. Your mileage will vary but when done correctly,
| you will acquire otherworldly inspiration applicable
| towards your skilled professions and hobbies.
|
| And if nothing else, even falling short of that result,
| this possibility should be enough for legality.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| Cannabis opens my doors alright. Not any more or less
| independent thought doors, mostly the doors related to
| eating pizza and grilling.
| bally0241 wrote:
| Joe Rogan, is that you?
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > This wrong classification, going back to ignorant
| viewpoints of the early-mid 1900's
|
| It "goes back" to Nixon needing a tool to criminalize the
| anti-war and racial justice movement.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-
| rich...
|
| By the time Nixon came out with that policy, multiple
| commissions around the world had concluded that pot was
| largely harmless and should be decriminalized. People in his
| own administration - who he ordered to come up with a "damn
| strong statement" - concluded the same, infuriating him.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_policy_of_the_Richard.
| ..
|
| Reagan, however, was the one who really ratcheted up the
| criminalization aspect:
| https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs
| opo wrote:
| >...It "goes back" to Nixon needing a tool to criminalize
| the anti-war and racial justice movement.
|
| The alleged Ehrlichman quote is brought up every single
| time drug prohibition is mentioned but it should be taken
| with at least some skepticism.
|
| The surviving members of his family don't believe he made
| the quote:
|
| >...Multiple family members of Ehrlichman (who died in
| 1999) challenge the veracity of the quote: The 1994 alleged
| 'quote' we saw repeated in social media for the first time
| today does not square with what we know of our father...We
| do not subscribe to the alleged racist point of view that
| this writer now implies 22 years following the so-called
| interview of John and 16 years following our father's
| death, when dad can no longer respond.[22]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman
|
| This is a very explosive quote - if Baum had included it in
| his book in 1996 I am sure it would have garnered a huge
| amount of attention for the book. Instead Baum did not
| include it in his book, but instead would wait for many
| years before making the claim when Ehrlichman was no longer
| around to dispute the quote.
|
| If the quote was actually said by Ehrlichman, it isn't a
| very accurate description of the overall drug polices of
| the Nixon administration. While Nixon is remembered for
| "war on drugs" rhetoric, the actual substance of his
| policies is a bit different than what people think it was:
|
| >...I have been fortunate over the years to discuss the
| distorted memory of Nixon's drug policies with almost all
| of his key advisors as well as with historians. Their
| consensus is that because he was dramatically expanding the
| U.S. treatment system (by 350% in just 18 months!) and
| cutting criminal penalties, he had to reassure his right
| wing that he hadn't gone soft. So he laid on some of the
| toughest anti-drug rhetoric in history, including making a
| White House speech declaring a "war on drugs" and calling
| drugs "public enemy number one". It worked so well as cover
| that many people remember that "tough" press event and
| forget that what Nixon did at it was introduce not a
| general or a cop or a preacher to be his drug policy chief
| but...a medical doctor (Jerry Jaffe, a sweet, bookish man
| who had longish hair and sideburns and often wore the
| Mickey Mouse tie his kids had given him).
|
| https://www.samefacts.com/who-started-the-war-on-drugs/
|
| >..."Enforcement must be coupled with a rational approach
| to the reclamation of the drug user himself," Nixon told
| Congress in 1971. "We must rehabilitate the drug user if we
| are to eliminate drug abuse and all the antisocial
| activities that flow from drug abuse."
|
| >The numbers back this up. According to the federal
| government's budget numbers for anti-drug programs, the
| "demand" side of the war on drugs (treatment, education,
| and prevention) consistently got more funding during
| Nixon's time in office (1969 to 1974) than the "supply"
| side (law enforcement and interdiction).
|
| https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs
|
| >Reagan, however, was the one who really ratcheted up the
| criminalization aspect:
|
| To say Reagan "ratcheted up the criminalization aspect"
| ignores the structure of the US federal government. The
| president does not make laws, the president can merely sign
| or veto laws made by the legislature. Unfortunately the
| drug policies of the 1980s were a bipartisan affair. The
| real bipartisan push for harsher penalties in the US came
| in the 1980s after basketball star Len Bias died of cocaine
| overdose.
|
| >...Immediately after Bias's death, the speaker of the
| House of Representatives, Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr., from
| the Boston area (where Bias had just signed with the
| Celtics), issued a demand to his fellow Democrats for anti-
| drug legislation. Senior congressional staffers began
| meeting regularly in the speaker's conference room as
| practically every committee in the House wrote Len Bias-
| inspired legislation attacking the drug problem. News
| conferences around the Capitol featured members of Congress
| extolling their efforts to clamp down on cocaine and crack.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2006/06/24/
| u...
|
| >...It became the sole focus of legislative activity for
| the remainder of the session on both sides of the aisle.
| Literally every committee, from the Committee on
| Agriculture to the Committee on Merchant Marine and
| Fisheries were somehow getting involved. Suddenly, the Len
| Bias case was the driving force behind every piece of
| legislation. Members of Congress were setting up hearings
| about the drug problem and every subcommittee chairman was
| looking to get a piece of the action...
|
| https://www.salon.com/2011/06/19/len_bias_cocaine_tragedy_s
| t...
|
| If you want to go back further, a good person to start with
| is Harry Anslinger who headed the Federal Bureau of
| Narcotics:
|
| >...Prior to the end of alcohol prohibition, Anslinger had
| claimed that cannabis was not a problem, did not harm
| people, and "There is probably no more absurd fallacy"[15]
| than the idea it makes people violent. His critics argue he
| shifted not due to objective evidence but self-interest due
| to the obsolescence of the Department of Prohibition he
| headed when alcohol prohibition ceased - campaigning for a
| new Prohibition against its use.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger
|
| A difference with Nixon is that he was one of the first to
| try to greatly expand drug treatment and also reform
| sentencing in at least a small way:
|
| >...the mandatory minimum sentence in a federal prison for
| marijuana possession was 2-10 years until Nixon slashed it
| to 1 year with a judicial option to waive even that
| sentence. No federal mandatory drug sentence would be
| rolled back again for 40 years (in the Obama
| Administration).
|
| https://www.samefacts.com/who-started-the-war-on-drugs/
| pessimizer wrote:
| You posted this after a direct Anslinger quote had been
| posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30602134
| rayiner wrote:
| Okay so explain all the other countries with harsh drug
| laws that don't have Nixon or minorities to oppress? Japan,
| Singapore, Sweden, etc.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You could take a swing at it and see how it goes. The
| person you're replying to has said what they believe the
| cause is. You're free to propose other ones for other
| countries.
|
| My explanation would be that the US drug war was
| aggressively international.
| bnralt wrote:
| I've tried doing deep dives into drug criminalization a few
| times before, and I've never been able to find a simplistic
| explanation for it. Keep in mind, this is something that
| every country in the world went forward with around the
| same time, even when they were adversaries who couldn't
| agree on much else. This was also something that nations
| often did on their own. A lot of these movements start much
| earlier than people think; look at Mexico's moves against
| cannabis in the late 1800's early 1900's. Or even the Gin
| Craze of the 1700's for a precursor.
|
| There seem to be a few threads I've found that are worth
| pursuing:
|
| 1. The general increase in state power in various domains
| of life .
|
| 2. The decline of traditional communities and move toward
| urbanization creating a disconnected group of people that
| worried the upper classes.
|
| 3. The tendency of geopolitics to follow social
| trends/fads.
| noasaservice wrote:
| The anti-cannabis groups started in the 1930's with Hearst
| and loads of yellow journalism
|
| quote from https://gizmodo.com/anti-marijuana-laws-were-
| based-on-racism... :
|
| -----------------
|
| Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal
| Bureau of Narcotics (an early predecessor of the DEA), was
| one of the driving forces behind pot prohibition. He pushed
| it for explicitly racist reasons, saying, "Reefer makes
| darkies think they're as good as white men," and:
|
| "There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and
| most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers.
| Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana
| use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual
| relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."
|
| The main reason to prohibit marijuana, he said was "its
| effect on the degenerate races." (And god forbid women
| should sleep with entertainers!)
|
| -----------------
|
| That tells me all I need to know about this whole
| situation. We would rightfully cancel/hold accountable
| someone saying that now. Why aren't we viewing the laws in
| the same light in which they were made?
| fkfkno wrote:
| Furthermore, this attitude persisted well into the Reagan &
| Bush administrations, with the "war on drugs"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_tolerance#Narcotics
| rayiner wrote:
| I'm against legalization. I thought it was just going to be a
| humane alternative to putting people in jail. But instead we've
| just broken down the social norm against drug use. Parts of DC
| now smell strongly of weed during the middle of the day.
| mandmandam wrote:
| Is that your strongest argument? A smell?
|
| If anything broke down the social norm against drug use it
| was the heroin and opioid epidemics.. Which started shortly
| after Afghanistan.
|
| Probably the trillions of dollars pumped into feeding
| terrorism instead of going on free school lunches and the
| like pushed people into drug use as well.
|
| Seriously, I don't know how people can miss the mark this
| far. Yet apparently many in DC do, and it's getting REAL OLD.
| [deleted]
| scythe wrote:
| Kids aren't smoking weed when they're eight. Or four, for that
| matter.
| mark-r wrote:
| Second-hand smoke?
| sethammons wrote:
| I was at my 3rd grader's outdoor field trip and saw a puff
| of vape come up from a trio of kids. Someone had gotten a
| small juul cartridge and they were puffing away on it. The
| dispenser makes it much easier to hide, but it is not a new
| phenomenon. My mom started smoking cigarettes when she was
| 10 years old.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| You're really not telling the story correctly based on evidence
| you linked below, to quote:
|
| > Fig. 3 shows that, among adolescent-onset persistentcannabis
| users, within-person IQ decline was apparent regardlessof
| whether cannabis was used infrequently (median use = 14 d)or
| frequently (median use = 365 d) in the year before testing.
| Incontrast, within-person IQ decline was not apparent
| amongadult-onset persistent cannabis users who used cannabis
| in-frequently (median use = 6 d) or frequently (median use =
| 365 d)in the year before testing.
|
| So more specifically smoking weed while your brain is
| developing seems to be correlated to a decline in IQ later in
| life. While those who start smoking, even copious amounts, as
| adults don't have a permanent decline.
|
| I am cannot find reference to support your claim that people
| are consuming it younger than before.
|
| If you're going to cite studies, you could at least represent
| the findings honestly. Also, it's pretty apparent you're trying
| to sell a narrative to others to induce fear of marijuana...
| this is a post about lead poisoning after all. Quite the leap,
| IMHO, to compare it marijuana use...
|
| The paper you linked below and incorrectly summarized for
| anyone curious:
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1206820109
| eloff wrote:
| To be fair there are also studies showing alcohol has similar
| effects on the brain. I saw one just yesterday:
|
| "A large study of more than 36,000 high-quality MRI brain scans
| has found that drinking four units of alcohol a day - two
| beers, or two glasses of wine - causes structural damage and
| brain volume loss equivalent to 10 years of aging."
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28735-5
|
| I always said I would never smoke marijuana because my brain is
| my biggest asset and I wouldn't want to do anything to decrease
| its value to me. Now it looks like I need to take a good hard
| look at my alcohol consumption. I just can't square it with my
| values anymore.
| jl6 wrote:
| I don't think it should come as a massive surprise to anyone
| that alcohol isn't exactly good for you.
| eloff wrote:
| You'd be surprised. I don't know many people who understand
| it's actually a carcinogen. And I was unaware it's doing
| permanent damage to my brain.
|
| It's just so ingrained in society, many don't even question
| it at all. But it's one of the more dangerous drugs. It
| destroys a lot of lives.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| Interesting. What about porn abuse?
| quercetumMons wrote:
| Overblown.
| [deleted]
| shagmin wrote:
| According to [0] peak marijuana usage was in the 70s. I don't
| think with a smaller/more stable subset of the population
| partaking there's going to be many more people saying "we
| should have known better" than there currently are.
|
| https://www.mlive.com/resizer/G7WZuDwdu5D2eCujzIi_RYGWYkc=/7...
| zelon88 wrote:
| I wasn't there in the 70s, but from what I understand potency
| of the 70s wasn't nearly what it is today. I have no source
| for this, but I've been in countless circles with long time
| smokers who all correlate the same story; that modern day
| mids was literally the best quality Marijuana you could find
| in the 70s. So that's probably about 10% THC compared to 30%
| THC which is not uncommon today.
| pessimizer wrote:
| When you smoke with people these days, they only take a
| couple of hits. In the 90s when we smoked it was joint
| after joint after joint.
|
| It's basically the cigarette filter thing; people know
| where they want to get, and they'll keep going until they
| get there, no matter how weak you make it. Which is what
| made filtered cigarettes _worse_ for your lungs than
| unfiltered ones.
|
| The calculus would be different if you were talking about
| edibles, because they actually sneak up on and can surprise
| you.
| trophycase wrote:
| I wish we could go back to that. Personally I find most
| weed I smoke these days to be way way too strong.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| I don't smoke cannabis nearly as much as I used to. When I
| was a daily user it didn't have any intellectual effects so
| much as emotional ones. I would have been baseline mildly
| depressed and weed made it so much worse. That's not going
| to be a surprise to any objective observer.
|
| When I do have it today I make sure to seek out the weakest
| stuff I can. It's annoying that you might just have one
| option below 15%. Of course edibles are a far superior
| option in legal states. Easy dosage and no damage to your
| lungs. I'd also suspect that the milder (but longer) highs
| are easier on the brain.
| nickpp wrote:
| If it's a matter of dosage then who knows how many joints
| they smoked in the 70s vs how many hits today?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The societal risks are the same with additional worse effects
| for non participants with alcohol and they have been known for
| a long time. If society is OK with those risks, then I cannot
| see cannabis being an unacceptable risk in 50 years. Can throw
| in refined sugar too.
| javert wrote:
| > The societal risks are the same and additional worse ones
| with alcohol
|
| I don't think this is correct, personally.
|
| (I'm pretty sure you'll find studies arguing for both sides,
| so we can only go on personal wisdom.)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Would you rather deal with someone high on cannabis or
| drunk on alcohol?
|
| To collect data, visit all the hotels, restaurants, bars,
| police, security guards, and entertainment venues in your
| area and ask all the front line employees this question. Or
| even who you would rather drive around.
|
| I guarantee everyone would rather deal with someone high on
| cannabis, who might ask for extra snacks or drive slow and
| be unlikely to go on a belligerent tirade or get physical.
|
| In terms of other societal risks, I have not heard of a
| cannabis addict beating their spouse or children yet.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| But omg cannabis users get so lazy and have no
| motivation... /s
| ska wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure you'll find studies arguing for both
| sides, so we can only go on personal wisdom.
|
| Without opinion on the relative damage of both, I'll note
| that considering this a logical statement is really flawed.
|
| You can pretty much always find "studies arguing for both
| sides" on an issue, but that doesn't mean much in and of
| itself.
| javert wrote:
| > Without opinion on the relative damage of both, I'll
| note that considering this a logical statement is really
| flawed.
|
| I can't understand what you are saying here.
|
| > You can pretty much always find "studies arguing for
| both sides" on an issue, but that doesn't mean much in
| and of itself.
|
| Just trying to cut off the expected "studies show X"
| comments before they get started. Because if studies
| aren't definitive, which they rarely are, there isn't any
| point in raising that. And a simpler way to explain this
| is "studies conflict."
| [deleted]
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| It's not even comparable. You an ignore the fact that far
| more people use Alcohol regularly, that it has countless
| other deleterious health affects and just look at pure
| death rates directly attributable to Alcohol. It's just not
| even in the same universe.
|
| >(I'm pretty sure you'll find studies arguing for both
| sides, so we can only go on personal wisdom.)
|
| This is blatantly false. Find me 1 study that shows
| definitively that MJ is worse than Alcohol for society.
| javert wrote:
| You're being aggressive. Please stop.
|
| I wouldn't contest that more people die from alcohol than
| marajuana. That wasn't the issue under discussion. The
| issue is, which is worse for society.
|
| Part of why I find your comment so aggressive is because
| you're being very sharp with me, but you don't realize
| you aren't talking about the same thing.
|
| > This is blatantly false. Find me 1 study that shows
| definitively that MJ is worse than Alcohol for society.
|
| Having worked in academia as a researcher, I don't
| actually believe studies can reliably be understood by
| anyone other than those who conducted it and their
| immediate peers in the field.
|
| A weaker form of that, which I also agree with, would be,
| "studies are rarely definitive." But you're asking for a
| definitive study. That doesn't seem fair.
|
| Anyway, it isn't incumbent on me to do the work for you
| that you are asking me to do.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| >You're being aggressive. Please stop.
|
| If my comment is what you consider to be overly
| aggressive maybe you need to get out more.
|
| All research is BS therefore opinion is king is one of
| the weakest arguments I have ever heard.
|
| BTW your not so subtle digs are uncalled for.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| >I have a strong worries that our current generation will have
| a similar huge reckoning with marijuana.
|
| > But the risk in 50 years of people saying "we should have
| known better" seems really high
|
| The problem with lead was that it was everywhere. Walls, gas,
| water, air. As long as society chose to use, we all _had_ to
| ingest it. That 's not so much the case with narcotics. I
| wouldn't expect anymore of a reckoning with MJ as there has
| been with alcohol.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| MJ definitely increases aspects of my intelligence.
|
| Said no one ever about lead.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I worry more about the covid vaccines
| WinterMount223 wrote:
| Exposure to marijuana and marijuana derivatives is optional.
| Exposure to lead is almost never optional.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Second hand smoke is not optional. It is the same reason we
| banned smoking in various buildings.
| fkfkno wrote:
| True, but this was for tobacco, and the ban was mainly to
| protect non-smoking workers (and more recently the patrons)
| in restaurants and bars who started suffering with long
| term health complications usually attributed to smokers.
| The lawsuits would have crippled the industry, so the
| change was largely financial in nature, such is the basis
| of most public health legislation.
|
| https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2013/08/01/secondhand-smoke-in-
| ba...
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29870518/
|
| For controls on residential buildings, we would need better
| standards in shared housing construction and perhaps also
| we could take a look at better airflow and particulate
| filtration methods. I expect it will be some time (and
| perhaps another airborne pandemic?) for that to be
| addressed seriously.
| rdiddly wrote:
| I see your point, but just want to draw a line between
| something you ingest willingly that affects only you, and
| something foisted semi-secretly on the entire public by a
| special interest (basically to make cars and/or fuel more
| marketable) despite their knowing, almost from the beginning,
| how toxic it was. (One of many great examples of humans using
| technology because they can, without giving due consideration
| to whether they should.) I would rather the law protected me
| from the actions of others, and let me be the one to worry
| about what I do to myself.
|
| [Edit: Which isn't to say there couldn't be a very persuasive
| weed marketing campaign or something, that influences people to
| use it and hides the negative effects. Just as there was a
| campaign to squelch public debate about the negative effects of
| tetraethyl lead. Nonetheless, being able to individually decide
| to reject inhaling lead, like you can with pot, would've been a
| welcome privilege.]
|
| Not sure what "current" generation means, by the way. I'm
| currently alive, and currently, I'm in the same generation I've
| always been in. (I'm not mad, just teasing you a bit.)
| abcc8 wrote:
| It might make more sense to first have a similar reckoning with
| alcohol. It is a far more dangerous intoxicant and exacts a
| large toll on individuals and society.
| alex_sf wrote:
| We can do both.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Can we? Everything I understand about the public tells me
| otherwise.
| coding123 wrote:
| It does seem weird to me that about 5-10% of a grocery
| store is bottles of alcohol.
| giobox wrote:
| Fluids consume large amounts of shelf space by volume
| regardless of what fluid it is, not much we can do about
| this, so a large amount of shelf space does not mean a
| large percentage of the store's total items, in theory.
| By percentage of total items, it's likely very small for
| most supermarkets.
|
| See also the large amount of shelf space typically
| required to stock bottled water and soft drinks.
| dTal wrote:
| The variety of alcohol on offer does seem a tad perverse,
| in a way that status quo bias renders difficult to
| perceive. How many brands of bottled water do you usually
| see? Half a dozen, tops? And much of the volume in that
| aisle is occupied by huge 16-packs and giant carriers.
| Meanwhile the average wine aisle has _hundreds_ of
| different brands, nearly all no more than 75cl, and might
| even stretch to two aisles in a large supermarket. It
| dwarfs the available selection of any other category of
| product. And that 's before we get into the bafflingly
| endless rows of spirits.
|
| Is this a healthy relationship with what is, in the final
| analysis, an intoxicating drug? If there were an aisle in
| every supermarket with 10 times as much cannabis as you'd
| currently find in the average dispensary, would we regard
| that as equally normal?
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I don't think the number of brands on offer has any
| effect on our relationship with booze. It doesn't matter
| how many brand of yellow mustard are on the shelf, I'm
| buying it at the same rate. Where I live now, very few
| super markets have beer/wine and none have spirits. I
| know I buy less booze now than I did when I lived in
| places where you could get beer pretty much anywhere, at
| gas stations, super markets, convenience stores, etc.,
| and it's probably for this reason.
| giobox wrote:
| Perhaps the difference is I am not baffled; Alcohol is
| enjoyable in moderation and it is one of the few high
| margin items in the store. Fluids are popular and take up
| much more shelf space as noted. As for bottled water, my
| local Safeway easily carries in excess of 20 brands
| before we count the huge number of soft drinks too?
|
| I suspect you have not been in a dispensary recently if
| you think a supermarket would stock 10x as much; the
| range of products in most US dispensaries is truly
| enormous now across edibles, waxes, flowers, tinctures
| etc. I would strongly argue we would see a _smaller_
| range of products in the supermarket, should it become
| legal to sell there. This is exactly like alcohol too,
| where dedicated booze stores often have a wider range. It
| would still be significant in size though - lots of
| people like weed.
| quercetumMons wrote:
| That depends on where you're from. Some states don't
| allow the private sale of liquor.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Interesting to see where the U.S. stands in this list -
| https://www.abbeycarefoundation.com/alcohol/alcoholism-
| by-co...
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| >We are already seeing studies that show regular marijuana use
| is correlated with permanent decreases in intelligence
|
| When used at very young ages. Important caveat. The other
| things you mentioned are highly speculative and I typically
| discount anecdotes as mostly useless.
| legitster wrote:
| > I typically discount anecdotes as mostly useless
|
| This is fair. I mention it because it was only in hindsight
| that it was so obvious how many smokers were getting
| emphysema and lung cancer, and that these were not actually
| common diseases.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| Well to be fair vapes and edibles are much more common now
| and that would greatly reduce those kinds of risks.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| deutschew wrote:
| As a long time marijuana user I am leaning towards that view
| and I've ceased using it but largely "permanent" is wrong and
| its the same thinking that lead to war on drugs.
|
| In large doses, it can bring about negative effects especially
| in people with ADD but the bad parts are almost always gone
| after cessation.
|
| I don't think it
|
| It's that when you are in your teens and you start smoking
| marijuana, the risk is big but I see many grey markets happy to
| sell you marijuana to people still going to high school.
|
| I find both sides obnoxious, the Singaporeanesque fear
| mongering about "permanent damages" based on curated and
| manipulated data and the Western panacea attitude that it be
| used for everything.
|
| Trying to tie lead exposure to marijuana is just asinine.
| antattack wrote:
| Smoking (anything) is bad for your lungs, throat too.
| mrits wrote:
| Not a huge problem when we die from diabetes or heart
| disease first.
| staticassertion wrote:
| Something being bad for your lungs is presumably going to
| be very bad for your heart.
| fkfkno wrote:
| Marshmallow leaf is often used as an alternative for
| those seeking to quit tobacco, and does have known health
| benefits:
|
| https://www.real-leaf.com/blogs/realleaf-blog/smoking-
| marshm...
|
| Although certainly any combusted plant will produce tar,
| and this is well known to cause pulmonary issues which
| will indeed place more stress upon the heart.
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| Plenty of ways to use cannabis without smoking
| (combustion). Examples include edibles, vaporizers,
| suppositories, and topicals. You've heard of the nicotine
| patch but did you know they have THC patches?
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Unless it clearly provides any medium to long term benefit I
| guess I'm going to avoid it. Plus it is expensive. Same for
| alcohol amd cigarette, I avoid them as much as I can. The only
| thing I need is caffeine but I'm tricking myself by drinking
| decaffeinated most of the time. I hope one day I can remove
| that too.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Perhaps if the typical American was paid better and had more
| hope for the future then less would use such things to escape
| from reality.
| somenameforme wrote:
| When saying things like this, I think you should intuitively
| consider the corollary of your sentence. If people are using
| drugs to "escape from reality" presumably because have
| insufficient money to do nicer things, then the implication
| is that people who have lots of money would use drugs at a
| substantially lower rate.
|
| And so this is pretty easy to test. I did a quick search for
| 'marijuana use by rate by income' and the first paper that I
| came upon [1] showed there is indeed quite a strong
| correlation between substance use and socioeconomic status -
| in other words, the richer or more privileged individuals
| were (in terms of coming from wealthy family backgrounds),
| the more likely they were to use drugs.
|
| So unless there is some confounding variable that we may not
| be considering, it seems fairly easy to reject the hypothesis
| that people are using drugs because of a lack of money.
|
| [1] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3410945/
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| >t seems fairly easy to reject the hypothesis that people
| are using drugs because of a lack of money.
|
| To most people hope doesn't mean more money, it means a
| better future. These are not the same.
| jshen wrote:
| It's more than that. High paid people in very demanding jobs
| also turn to it and drinking so they can "turn off" work for
| a bit.
| sonicggg wrote:
| Of coursr, all the wealthy and successful people absolutely
| do not partake in recreational drugs.
| goodpoint wrote:
| You missed "had more hope for the future"
| slg wrote:
| >I have a strong worries that our current generation will have
| a similar huge reckoning with...
|
| I thought that sentence was going to end with "Covid".[1]
| Research was just published yesterday which indicates that even
| mild cases have resulted in damage to the brain. Meanwhile,
| over the last few months we have just accepted that everyone is
| going to get it eventually. Who knows what the long term impact
| will be of us all giving ourselves a little brain damage?
|
| EDIT: It is funny that the HN community's commitment to moving
| on from the pandemic has gotten to the point in which linking
| to research that suggests maybe getting Covid is bad is
| downvoted.
|
| [1] - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04569-5
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> But the risk in 50 years of people saying "we should have
| known better" seems really high.
|
| Well, we are just about 100 years after alcohol was legalized.
| We have lots of data on how horrible it is for out bodies, how
| many accidents and premature deaths it causes. But I hear
| absolutely nobody in North America talking about curtailing
| alcohol in any way. (The UK medical bodies have spoken out
| against alcohol use in recent years.) In fact I see
| advertisements for alcohol virtually everywhere. So no, I do
| not believe we will have a reckoning in 50 years about pot.
| serjester wrote:
| Anecdotally I know a good amount people that now smoke all
| day, every day now that we work from home. At least among the
| people I know, there's no stigma - they tell me it "helps
| them think". I don't think this is the case with alcohol
| without a lot of people calling you out for having a
| "drinking problem".
| BakeInBeens wrote:
| Consuming cannabis everyday all day will also results in
| dramatically less consequences in your life than consuming
| alcohol the same way. The abuse factor of cannabis is
| really low all things considered and gets even lower if you
| avoid smoking.
| ck2 wrote:
| Lead exposure isn't over by a long-shot.
|
| Anywhere there is an airport with prop aircraft there is leaded
| fuel/exhaust spew for miles around it.
|
| Can't believe we just don't have the care to protect people,
| write it off as their problem and then let the poor/ignorant
| suffer in "pollution zones"
| cpncrunch wrote:
| The EPA is planning on issuing a proposed endangerment finding
| for leaded avgas in 2023, and there are already a number of
| unleaded avgas replacements available that can be used in the
| majority of aircraft (other than some high compression
| engines).
|
| https://www.epa.gov/regulations-emissions-vehicles-and-engin...
|
| In terms of actual lead, the amount used by aviation is a tiny
| fraction of that used in cars.
| teknopaul wrote:
| Independent of the effect of lead on intelligence isn't it
| impossible to reduce the IQ of half the population because IQ is
| a comparative calculation across that population. Ie as
| intelligence goes down the definition of 100 IQ points changes?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient
| redleader55 wrote:
| The IQ should be defined for the human race, in a time
| independent way, not for a specific nation or group. This
| allows us to make comparisons between different times, between
| different societies, etc.
|
| Otherwise, if the IQ is redefined to always follow the current
| mean, it can only be used to classify people between smarter
| than average and "dumber" than average, which is not so useful.
| jart wrote:
| I guess it's useful if your goal is to figure out how to
| divide kids into separate math classes. I don't think anyone
| intended ability to rotate blocks and scramble letters as a
| timeless gauge of the quality of a person.
| cylon13 wrote:
| Don't conflate intelligence with quality or value. Every
| human being is inherently valuable independent of their
| intelligence, and there are plenty of other interesting
| features besides intelligence that make people unique and
| interesting. Believing that IQ measures something tangible
| is not equivalent to ranking people based on their value
| any more than believing height or weight measure something
| real.
| jart wrote:
| Am I being excommunicated already? I thought that's what
| I said.
| quercetumMons wrote:
| I'd imagine that it is nearly impossible to control for time
| with tests like IQ.
| kanzenryu2 wrote:
| For something like lead you can look at different parts of
| the world at the same moment where lead was abolished at
| different times in the past.
|
| Also of interest might be:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
| cutemonster wrote:
| Auto generate IQ tests, so cannot be learned by trying many
| times / cannot learn by heart. And have people in the next
| generation do the same auto generated tests.
|
| This won't be perfect, but, using mathematics, Id think it
| would be possible to know how (im)precise the comparisons
| would be (confidence intervals of the differences).
|
| Also, might not work for really bright people (they'd learn
| how the auto generated tests get generated? They might sort
| of "disassemble" them and find the answers quickly?)
| darawk wrote:
| This doesn't work because of the Flynn effect. Raw IQ
| scores have been consistently increasing over time. So
| much so that the average person in the 1920s would be
| considered mentally challenged today, if you used their
| raw IQ scores. However, we know that obviously the
| average person in the 1920s was not mentally challenged
| in the sense that someone with that same raw score would
| be today.
|
| This is all a pretty big mystery and suggests we really
| don't understand this "IQ" thing we are measuring.
| However, one big consequence is that we _definitely_
| cannot meaningfully compare scores across time.
| quercetumMons wrote:
| Think of it from the individual-up. Even if the half of people
| with affected IQs were spread proportionally throughout the IQ
| bell curve, they'd have lower IQs than they did before. The
| other half would raise just as much as the affected half
| lowered, but the affected half still have lower IQs.
| krob wrote:
| programmarchy wrote:
| And so few capable of nuanced discussion.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| Thanks for taking the hit from the "HN isn't about politics"
| crowd, this is something that needs to be said again and again.
|
| Right wing conservatives and their followers - aka Republicans
| - are the number one threat facing the world today, hands down.
| Beyond their abhorrent legislative agenda based on their shared
| hatred for various parts of society, their complete
| disconnection from reality and traitorous attacks on democracy
| itself have essentially disqualified them as a legitimate
| political party.
|
| In terms of lead's influence: My assumption has been simply
| that lead and mercury in the air caused a minor, yet
| statistically significant, impairment of cognitive ability
| which has robbed Boomers and much of GenX of their ability for
| both _empathy and critical thinking_. This has led to a swath
| of the population who is more susceptible to totalitarian
| messaging which always include intense hatred of others,
| conspiracies and wild accusations.
|
| To paraphrase an old cliche: All Republicans are NOT lead-
| poisoned racist sociopaths that think Putin is a great leader,
| the virus is a hoax, the election was a fraud, etc. However,
| the reverse, is obviously quite accurate.
| ouid wrote:
| This headline is very bad, because it sounds like the observation
| you would get if there were no effect.
| munk-a wrote:
| How does "Thing decreased in half" sound like the effect you'd
| expect from population independent variables? If, in the last
| century, the average number of toes had decreased in half I'd
| have a hell of a lot of questions.
| hateful wrote:
| Thomas Midgley Jr can be thanked for this. He also played a role
| in developing CFCs (Freon).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.
| pklausler wrote:
| Midgley can be blamed for leaded gasoline, but not lead paint
| or lead plumbing.
|
| (He also came to a famously ironic end, strangling in a rope
| contraption of his own design.)
| brain_staple wrote:
| Not so ironic, that's exactly how I'd expect Midgley to die.
| krrrh wrote:
| One of the most heartbreaking things I ever learned about was the
| high levels of lead in Mexican candy. This is apparently mostly
| due to the inks used in the packaging.
|
| https://annalsofglobalhealth.org/articles/10.5334/aogh.2754/
|
| The following paper also pegs pottery as an issue. Just
| devastating.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221499961...
|
| > Our results indicate that more than 15% of the population will
| experience a decrement of more than 5 IQ points from lead
| exposure. The analysis also leads us to believe that lead is
| responsible for 820,000 disability-adjusted life-years for lead-
| induced mild mental retardation for children aged 0 to 4 years.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| I was recently horrified to learn that the baby glass bottle I
| had been using with my baby had lead paint on it.
| https://tamararubin.com/2021/12/sailor-themed-glass-nuk-baby...
|
| Apparently, it's considered to be acceptable by current
| standards. Despite the fact that babies will obviously touch the
| bottle (and the paint) and then put their hands in their mouth. I
| bought glass bottles because I wanted to avoid plastic thinking
| it'd be safer and I was reassured by seeing that they were
| manufactured in Germany :(
|
| I think we still have very far to go in terms of toxic substance
| exposure.
| fkfkno wrote:
| There's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium_dioxide#Pos
| sible_carc..., which is used in many glazes and coatings, but
| also as a whitener in health supplements and toothpaste!
| zapataband1 wrote:
| learned about teflon via the movie 'Dark Waters'... it was
| horrifying
| downrightmike wrote:
| Small airports have more smaller prop planes, fun fact, they
| almost exclusively use leaded gas because it gives them more
| power. So if you live near one, you're getting a dusting of lead
| everyday. Like this one in the middle of $500k+ homes suburbs:
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/Chandler+Municipal+Airport...
| dmitrygr wrote:
| This has been disproven so many times, it is tiring to even
| try. Small amount, dispersed over huge distances. Current
| measurements indicate NO more lead in the blood of people near
| airports than not. It is only heard nowadays from land
| developers seeking to capitalize on a few acres among "the
| middle of $500k+ homes"
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Don't forget the part about "gives them more performance"
| which is just an overt lie. They use it because aviation is
| regulated to high heaven and there are no approved
| alternatives yet.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Yeah I believe it's more of an maintenance deal. The leaded
| gas causes less wear on the cylinders and pistons, so
| generally makes the plane safer and less risk of a major
| malfunction during a flight. There aren't many alternatives
| with similar characteristics to leaded gas. We used to use
| it in cars for the same reason, but decided the
| maintenance/safety/health trade offs were worth banning it.
| elihu wrote:
| It doesn't give them more power. As I understand it, small
| planes last a long time, and a lot of them have old engines
| that were designed for leaded gas and wear out faster if run on
| unleaded fuel. Thus, the FAA is reluctant to approve unleaded
| fuel in those aircraft.
| programmarchy wrote:
| Presumably there's an epigenetic effect from this i.e. having
| dumber parents would have negative effects on their children. But
| over time that should improve with the removal of lead from the
| environment. So we can at least take solace in that things ought
| to get better:
|
| > Blood lead data were instrumental in developing policy to
| eliminate lead from gasoline and in food and soft drink cans.
| Recent survey data indicate the policy has been even more
| effective than originally envisioned, with a decline in elevated
| blood lead levels of more than 70% since the 1970s.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/about_nhanes.htm
| leecarraher wrote:
| and then i thought, well look who is telling us that
| cf141q5325 wrote:
| Its one of the really bad part about many regions in Africa at
| the moment dealing with e-waste.
| https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/10/29/toxic-charge-h...
|
| Besides people melting lead batteries everywhere for recycling,
| much of the cooking dishes are made from recycled aluminum auto
| parts. Often laced with lead.
| frontman1988 wrote:
| DR Congo has been exploited so much it pains my heart. Sadly in
| coming years it's probably gonna get worse for them given they
| have so many minerals and both China/US are gonna tussle over
| them.
| hash03x wrote:
| DethNinja wrote:
| Perhaps past lead usage in fuels will indirectly lead to collapse
| of the civilisation:
|
| Lead is known to decrease empathy and increase crime.
|
| I don't want to generalise an entire generation but boomer
| generation was heavily poisoned by lead and perhaps this made
| them more selfish and less emphatic. Maybe this is the primary
| cause of many current problems? I wonder if humans were supposed
| to be more emphatic in past before all lead poisoning happened.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Maybe, but the events that proceeded the boomers weren't always
| empathetic. [Rephrased] Was leaded gasoline being used in WW2?
| I presume so?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Were Nazi's eating lead for breakfast or something?
|
| German here. The root cause for Nazism was not just a
| widespread acceptance of antisemitism, but especially the
| economic hardships following WW1 that gave rise to populism.
| A poor and desperate population is always liable to fall for
| a skilled demagogue.
| watwut wrote:
| And loss in WWI which was considered unfair along with wish
| to report it and win this time again. Stab in the back
| myth, the militarization of all government services and so
| on and so forth.
|
| The antisemitism was not unique to Germany. It was all
| around the Europe for centuries.
| fullshark wrote:
| Crime rates have fallen historically until COVID. I think it's
| more likely the post WW2 and post Cold War (perceived) eras
| were periods of irrational exuberance culturally in the west
| with uncommon optimism in western lead globalism and its future
| (What you consider civilization I take it). The last few years
| were a big time reality check on the collective interest in
| that future.
| xpe wrote:
| Pun intended?
|
| > western lead globalism
|
| You probably meant 'western-led globalism'.
| fullshark wrote:
| Heh not intended but I'll claim it retroactively to save
| face.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| The rate of violent crime nearly quadrupled between 1960 and
| its peak in 1991 in the US. Even with the COIVD bump, rates
| are comparable to the mid 60s, and aren't tracking the
| previous climb.
| ElephantsMyAnus wrote:
| Really? It looks like the complete opposite happened:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#/m
| e...
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Yes, 2015 was about on par with 1967[1] in terms of
| property and violent crime. Incarceration is not what I
| was talking about.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_Stat
| es#/me...
| ElephantsMyAnus wrote:
| But you agree that it needs an explanation, right? You
| gloat about a dramatic decrease in crime, yet the number
| of inmates increased tenfold over that time period.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| See my other reply[1]. I'm not gloating, simply conveying
| facts about numbers. The increase in incarceration is
| mostly due to tougher sentences for non-violent crime.
|
| [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30605054
| ElephantsMyAnus wrote:
| Maybe the tougher sentences worked?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_State
| s#/...
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Then why did Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan see the
| same drops in crime? They all lock up a minuscule
| fraction of their populations by comparison and had
| larger or similar drops in crime.
|
| The timing is also wrong, the drop in crime started
| before incarceration ramped up.
|
| Also as I mentioned the plurality of incarceration is for
| nonviolent crime, a lot of which is simple drug
| possession.
| ElephantsMyAnus wrote:
| They didn't:
|
| https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Homicide_Rate_i
| n_N...
|
| https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/01/14/national/cri
| me-...
| ch4s3 wrote:
| To respond to your other comment, homicide rates were
| falling starting around 1990, and the prison population
| exploded after that. Something else must be going one
| here. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons[1] as of
| last month 45.3% of the total US prison population is
| there for non-violent drug offenses. Only 3.1% is for
| homicide, assault, or kidnapping. In the late 80s and
| early 90s lots of states and the federal government
| instituted really draconian sentencing laws.
|
| So yeah, violent crime is WAY down from 1990, drug
| arrests have been soaring since.
|
| [1]https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate
| _offen...
| fullshark wrote:
| So it's dropped for 30 years...
|
| I'm not disputing the claim that lead poisoning can lead to
| violent crime, I'm disputing the claim that the turmoil of
| the last few years (my guess OP means starting with
| Brexit/Trump) is due to lead poisoned Boomer brains being
| less empathetic. Arguably the world is more empathetic than
| ever if you study history (simple data point: entire
| economies were built around slavery for most of human
| existence) and this one data point in isolation is really
| not a particularly strong one to point to for the claim.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I'm only commenting on violent crime, not political
| upheaval.
| fullshark wrote:
| Yeah that link seems reasonably well established. The
| link between "current problems" (whatever they are) and a
| generation of lead poisoned boomer brains isn't. I'm also
| not exactly sure what OP is suggesting and trying to
| connect the dots from their offhand comment. Probably a
| waste of time all around so I will exit the discussion.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Yeah that seems tenuous. Declining institutional trust,
| and the botched handling to trade liberalization in the
| 80s and 90s coupled with the post 2008 bailouts probably
| has a lot more to do with current political instability
| in the west broadly.
| gordian-mind wrote:
| What's the big change that happened in the 60s and started
| this trend?
| hash03x wrote:
| ch4s3 wrote:
| A lot of baby-boomers started reaching the prime age for
| committing crime all at once.
| depingus wrote:
| According to the article:
|
| Leaded gasoline consumption rose rapidly in the early
| 1960s and peaked in the 1970s. As a result, Reuben and
| his colleagues found that essentially everyone born
| during those two decades are all but guaranteed to have
| been exposed to pernicious levels of lead from car
| exhaust.
| gordian-mind wrote:
| So lowering the general IQ in a society by a few points
| means an explosion in crime?
| DFHippie wrote:
| Is this a rhetorical question? Leaded gasoline.
| [deleted]
| kixiQu wrote:
| FWIW the article is claiming Peak Lead would be Gen X.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| Yes- older gen x and the youngest boomers.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| This is untrue. The "rome collapsed because of lead"
| revisionary history is bunkum.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Is there any reason to believe that post-boomer generations are
| more empathetic? If anything, it feels as though empathy has
| been decreasing across the board amongst all age groups as time
| goes on, right up until the present. Maybe the Internet is
| stronger than lead.
| jccooper wrote:
| For context, leaded gasoline phase-out began in 1973, based on
| the 1970 Clean Air Act. It was largely gone in the US by the 80s
| but not officially eliminated (except for General Aviation) until
| 1996. Other countries continued to use leaded gasoline, largely
| in Africa and the Middle East; the UN started an effort in 2002
| to eliminate it in those places still using it. In July 2021, the
| last stocks of leaded gasoline (in Algeria) were exhausted
| (probably literally).
| istjohn wrote:
| And we still use leaded fuel in aviation. [1]
|
| 1. https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/avgas
| S201 wrote:
| GA pilot here. This is true and most of us don't like using
| leaded gas either. It's nasty stuff that leads to increased
| wear on our engines, is more expensive, and is increasingly
| used as justification for closing airports. Plus we're
| exposed to it when fueling our planes.
|
| However, it's worth mentioning that recently the first
| unleaded avgas, G100UL, was approved by the FAA. We're trying
| to move away from 100LL (leaded avgas) and are finally making
| some progress on that front.
|
| https://gami.com/g100ul/g100ul.php
| [deleted]
| hadlock wrote:
| Yeah in the US I recall in 1991 or 92 the pumps had "UNLEADED"
| in great big letters running up the side of them. My dad's '77
| chevy had a gas gauge near the center console that said
| "UNLEADED FUEL ONLY".
|
| There's been another push to get rid of leaded gas in aviation
| but studies show that it's virtually undetectable in the
| environment.
| mark-r wrote:
| They made the gas tank filler hole a smaller diameter for
| unleaded gas cars, so that the leaded nozzles wouldn't fit.
|
| https://uiobservatory.com/2010/how-intelligent-design-
| saved-....
| 09bjb wrote:
| Source? I have no reason to doubt you but would love to see
| where those data. Most of what I heard is that "lead exposure
| above zero is significant" and "if you're living near an
| airport, especially one serving smaller plans, you are being
| exposed".
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| I remember the UK in the 90s/00s had unleaded written on the
| pump too, but there was no leaded option.
|
| Actually, I think I have a vague memory pre-millennium of
| there being leaded pumps (typically red handle vs the green
| unleaded)
| screye wrote:
| Has widespread use of lead been exclusive to the US ? I'd imagine
| that there are other countries which still haven't transitioned
| off lead, and that they can be used as control. Alternately, are
| there states that never embraced widespread lead use and if they
| can be used as a control too ?
|
| Some also attribute the removal of lead to substantial decrease
| in violence over the last few decades. So, I am not surprised
| that the effect size here is so large.
|
| Might an impolite question to ask, but is there a known
| correlation between IQ and propensity for physical violence ?
| (controlled for socio economics and protected classes of course)
| thinkcontext wrote:
| > Has widespread use of lead been exclusive to the US ?
|
| No. Leaded gasoline was used throughout the world. Leaded paint
| on the other hand was in some cases banned in other countries
| 50 years before it was in the US.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| > Might an impolite question to ask
|
| > controlled for [...] protected classes
|
| I hope not. This fear of not fitting in with contemporary
| politics is toxic to science. Social science is already badly
| broken and is filled with it. If somebody can't be objective
| because of fear of being labelled a heretic for not deferring
| to the law to decide which factors must be controlled for, they
| have no business doing science on that topic. Are you aware
| that genetic information is a protected class in America,
| despite the fact that it influences IQ? Why would you
| arbitrarily control for that, but not for other factors that
| influence IQ such as maternal care? It's complicated to decide
| what to control for, but the _law_ is absolutely not the place
| go to make that decision.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| We're definitely smarter now though and know better...or are we?
| sgfgross wrote:
| In case anyone is interested in the article itself:
| https://oa.mg/work/10.1073/pnas.2118631119
| veltas wrote:
| Didn't we have a previous study debunking this research on
| statistical grounds?
| hash03x wrote:
| dionidium wrote:
| What has never made sense to me is that the IQ effects aren't
| equally visible across income/class groups, but we know there
| are millions of wealthy people living in old housing in Boston
| and NYC and Providence and so on. Lead levels in those houses
| must be just as high, right? But those kids aren't experiencing
| the same IQ effects. Surely this suggests that something else
| is a bigger factor?
| ivan888 wrote:
| I imagine frequency and budget of renovations in older
| housing influences the degree of lead exposure from paint.
| Poorer neighborhoods may have housing units with largely
| original (or old enough to contain lead) paint, whereas
| richer neighborhoods would have a larger proportion of high
| quality renovations which would eliminate some of the lead
| paint
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| Wealthy people are more likely to have good childcare
| (nannies, after school activities) where kids spend less time
| unsupervised and able to, for example, eat paint chips. For
| that matter, stuff like chipped paint is less likely to be
| left in a deteriorating state by more affluent owners.
| dionidium wrote:
| Just as a matter of common sense, what are we talking about
| when we talk about "eating paint chips?" Does eating a
| couple flakes lower your IQ in a measurable way? Seems very
| unlikely. What are we talking about, then? Do we imagine
| kids to be shoveling paint chips into their mouth day after
| day? Surely that's a pretty small number of children (if
| it's any), nowhere near enough to suggest generational,
| cohort-level effects. So what is it that we really think is
| happening here?
| bsedlm wrote:
| there's this thing about the modern internet era which makes it
| possible to find a study to debunk (or support) pretty much any
| idea/theory you want.
|
| specially in the midst of an information/propaganda war
|
| all I'm trying to say is that I have decided not to think in
| the way you just did e.g. "where's that study which supports
| what I already believe?". It doesn't seem like a good tactic
| anymore
| Verdex wrote:
| > all I'm trying to say is that I have decided not to think
| in the way you just did e.g. "where's that study which
| supports what I already believe?".
|
| Hmm.
|
| It looks like you're ascribing to the above comment the
| thought process: "I'm only looking for studies which only
| tell me that which I believe." However, the above comment
| doesn't seem to be saying this. They thought there was more
| to the story and are querying for the rest of the story.
|
| Meanwhile, you seem to ascribe to yourself the quality of not
| searching for data that supports what you already believe.
|
| However, it seems to me that searching for more studies (even
| if you're only looking for data that confirms your bias) is a
| better outcome than assuming (without more proof) that people
| who aren't you are thinking "the bad way"TM.
|
| I mean, if you had searched for additional proof to discover
| that what you already thought was true about above commenter
| (ie they were thinking the bad way) you might have discovered
| that they in fact were simply looking for additional context
| due to recalling past events that indicated that there might
| have been additional context.
| austinjp wrote:
| Indeed. One issue we have today is a glut of scientific
| information, some of which is high quality and some isn't.
| Also, some will later be shown to be false, and some correct,
| in any given context.
|
| It's not enough to say simply that a study exists (even if it
| is a large meta-study); it's necessary to actually read it in
| full and critically appraise it.
|
| But ain't nobody got time for that.... which is a problem!
| fallat wrote:
| If they don't have time to read the paper, they aren't
| investing in the argument enough, and at that point you
| know the other person is not open to being wrong, which
| then you respect and end the conversation.
| veltas wrote:
| I'm sort of asking if anyone remembers this as well, was
| posted on HN, I probably could find it myself but since I
| don't have the time right now I thought I'd make the comment!
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It also does not help that many scientific papers suffer from
| a reproducibility problem.
|
| But I hate to sink into defeatism and assume that there is no
| such thing as objective fact unless I do the experiments
| myself (and get them right...).
| pessimizer wrote:
| > I have decided not to think in the way you just did e.g.
| "where's that study which supports what I already believe?"
|
| I'm not sure you have if you immediately assume what veltas
| believes because they're asking to be reminded about another
| study. Seems like projection.
|
| My personal opinion is that it's less noble to close your
| ears to new information once you've found the information
| that you prefer than it is to look for more information when
| you don't like the information you have.
| bogwog wrote:
| This is nothing new, it's a defect of humanity that has
| existed forever. It's also a problem that has been solved
| through the scientific method and peer review.
|
| It goes against our nature, so it's a skill that needs to be
| learned and practiced. This means that the average person
| isn't going to have those skills, and even people with those
| skills aren't all going to be experts.
|
| What is new is that the internet is leading every random
| idiot to believe that they're an expert on everything. So
| finding a link to a "study" with a title that sounds like it
| supports your point (without even reading it, and definitely
| without critically evaluating it) is seen as _doing
| research_.
|
| > all I'm trying to say is that I have decided not to think
| in the way you just did e.g. "where's that study which
| supports what I already believe?". It doesn't seem like a
| good tactic anymore
|
| You might be victim to what I described above. Finding a
| study that already supports what you believe was never a
| "good tactic". In fact, calling it a tactic makes it seem as
| if it's an adversarial thing where there's a winner and a
| loser. It's not. Facts and truths aren't partisan (ignoring
| them is)
| meowkit wrote:
| +1 to this response.
|
| To add, playing a paper like a trading card is essentially
| an appeal to authority[1].
|
| Readers, you have to build mental a model and use causal
| mechanism and research studies as evidence, not proof.
| Accept the models which are stronger than the ones you
| have, even if they make you uncomfortable or conflict with
| your preconceived notions. Its ok to flip between
| conclusions as new evidence presents itself.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
| paulpauper wrote:
| a meta study showed the effect to be minimal to zero
|
| https://greyenlightenment.com/2021/08/02/the-effects-of-lead...
| scythe wrote:
| That's focused on crime, not IQ/cognition. Crime is not a
| purely mental phenomenon, so it would likely have a weaker
| correlation with lead even if the effect is real. The blog
| post _does_ try to dissemble on the IQ question, but the only
| evidence presented shows a significant effect of lead (contra
| the blogger 's thesis).
| frazbin wrote:
| the whataboutism is strong in this thread.. people talking about
| sugar and marijuana. Really?
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Here I thought the word "whataboutism" could not be possibly be
| more overused. You realize that drawing parallels in a
| discussion is not whataboutism?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Whataboutism is when you discuss the content instead of just
| bickering over the headline.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Whataboutism is not every time someone says "what about X".
| It's when you are asked a question and you dodge it by saying
| "What about X". e.g.
|
| "Lead is bad for health", "sugar is bad for health", "marijuana
| is bad for health". Not whataboutism.
|
| "Mr Senator what's with your taxpayer funded holiday?", "What
| about YOUR broken election promises?". Whataboutism.
|
| > " _Whataboutism or whataboutery is a variant of the tu quoque
| logical fallacy, which attempts to discredit an opponent 's
| position by charging hypocrisy without directly refuting or
| disproving the argument_" -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
| [deleted]
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