had a good answer for all comments/questions that are unwelcome or "rude:"

"Why would you say (or ask) that?"

Try it. The benefits are many and self-explanatory.

I recall the photograph in Newsweek magazine of a group of college kids watching the televised OJ verdict come in. All the white faces; shocked, devastated. All the brown faces; jubilant, joyful. I stared at that picture for a long time, looking for exceptions. I cannot recall any.

Years earlier, working in a small grocery store near the campus of my liberal, diverse Midwestern university, I noticed a trend. White kids came into the store and bought a candy bar or other snack and left. African-American kids came into the store and bought a snack and asked for a bag. This was so common it was predictable: the American kids with dark skin wanted a bag no matter how small the purchase, the white kids, almost never. I assumed at the time and still believe that the bags represented protection against being accused of stealing. The white kids felt no need for protection because they were not afraid of false accusations. The black kids, even those bright kids who were students at a prestigious university, must not have felt the same freedom from fear.

The election of Barack Obama represents the possibility that more kids of color will pay their money, grab their candy bars and stride out the door. Perhaps their experience of justice in this country will someday be less lopsided and no one will celebrate the acquittal of a person widely regarded as a murderer.

It is a stunning victory, an incredible moment. It is worthy of hymns, odes, paintingss and sculptures, and worthy of talk of miracles. It is why I was always for this candidate and never for anyone else - his election sends ripples far into the future. It is not the end of the struggle for people of color, but it is the end of a barrier that seemed so thick it blocked the sun.

Thanks for your expressions of faith and angst over the last seven years, Anne. Bastille Day is coming.

I am tired of people who say pot is relatively harmless. The pot-psychosis link is pretty well-researched. Anyone with any family history of mental illness is insane to use pot, pun intended.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/researchers-link-pot-to-greater-risk-of-psychosis/article772764/

I believe that the link to the abstract you posted (abstract pasted below) makes my point. No media hysteria necessary - the association is real, and, as I said, if you have other risk factors for mental illness, such as a genetic predisposition, then smoking pot is stupid. If you have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism or liver disease then drinking alcohol is stupid. This is not emotional - this is playing your best odds when it comes to serious illness.

In all the recent mainstream media on the uses of medical marijuana I have never read a caution on schizophrenia, so I wonder what overblown media reaction you are referring to? The article I posted was the most recent update I could find and it was from the Globe and Mail - I cannot find record of a major US media outlet commenting on the pot/psychosis research within the last 2 years. If there is REEFER MADNESS out there, I don't see it. I see the opposite.

Thanks for the link.

Schizophrenia Biological Research Center, Psychiatry Service, VA Connecticut Healthcare System, 116A, 950 Campbell Avenue, West Haven, CT, 06516, USA, deepak.dsouza@yale.edu.

"The association between cannabis use and psychosis has long been recognized. Recent advances in knowledge about cannabinoid receptor function have renewed interest in this association. Converging lines of evidence suggest that cannabinoids can produce a full range of transient schizophrenia-like positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms in some healthy individuals. Also clear is that in individuals with an established psychotic disorder, cannabinoids can exacerbate symptoms, trigger relapse, and have negative consequences on the course of the illness. The mechanisms by which cannabinoids produce transient psychotic symptoms, while unclear may involve dopamine, GABA, and glutamate neurotransmission. However, only a very small proportion of the general population exposed to cannabinoids develop a psychotic illness. It is likely that cannabis exposure is a "component cause" that interacts with other factors to "cause" schizophrenia or a psychotic disorder, but is neither necessary nor sufficient to do so alone. Nevertheless, in the absence of known causes of schizophrenia, the role of component causes remains important and warrants further study. Dose, duration of exposure, and the age of first exposure to cannabinoids may be important factors, and genetic factors that interact with cannabinoid exposure to moderate or amplify the risk of a psychotic disorder are beginning to be elucidated. The mechanisms by which exposure to cannabinoids increase the risk for developing a psychotic disorder are unknown. However, novel hypotheses including the role of cannabinoids on neurodevelopmental processes relevant to psychotic disorders are being studied."

I am not sure who are you arguing with - I have never posted an opinion on the legalization of pot, which I am definitely for. In a discussion of the lack of current media coverage of psychosis risks you quote an op ed column from a "former senior drug policy analyst" and the thoughts of long-dead Harry Anslinger, the instigator of the whole reefer madness mentality in the 1930s? Talk about red herrings!

My one and only point was that marijuana is not a magically safe, natural drug that does no harm. It should be legalized and controlled like other drugs so that people can better know the risks for themselves. (For example, I believe that it would be a safer anti-anxiety med than current Rx offerings like Xanax).

Still, everyone who laughs at or minimizes the risk of triggering schizophrenia, no matter how small, has no clue what schizophrenia is. I am not persuaded by the straw man that I am somehow channeling Harry Anslinger by my practice of warning people with a family history of psychosis against pot smoking.