Legalization Of Cannabis Did NOT Cause Carnage On The Highways

The latest Canadian study confirms yet again that legalization of cannabis did NOT actually cause carnage on the highways like the fearmongers had predicted.  And that is for a country that legalized the herb for everyone over 18 at the federal level, while individual provinces could set it higher (currently 18 in Alberta, 18 in Quebec until it was raised to 21 in early 2020, and 19 for all other provinces).  Despite the generally lower age limits in Canada, these results dovetail nicely with those of most studies of the several US states that legalized it for people over 21.

And yes, the most recent study looked at Alberta (18) along with Ontario (19), both provinces whose legal toking ages are equivalent to their drinking and smoking ages.  Neither province showed significant increases in traffic-related ER visits post-legalization, whether for young people or otherwise.  Really.

In other words, regardless of the age limit chosen, cannabis legalization was NOT a disaster after all.   So what are we waiting for?  Let's do the Alberta model (legal at 18 for alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis, period) in all US states and territories.  Yesterday. 

Stop Scapegoating Kids And Teens For Adult Problems!

 The following Tweet basically says it all:

As renowned sociologist and youth rights activist Mike Males has repeated noted, it seems to be a great American pastime to scapegoat kids and teens for adult problems.  Alas, COVID seems to be no different in that regard.  One thing European countries generally haven't done is force kids under age 12 or so to wear face masks, even in countries where adults are required to.  Whereas while American adults generally have more freedom than their European counterparts now (aside from Sweden and a few other countries), there are many places in the USA (even some parts of Florida where school administrators are openly defying their governor) where kids as young as TWO are forced to wear masks AND (anti)socially distance in school and sometimes even in daycare too.  The USA is one of vanishingly few countries who currently does so, and also one of vanishingly few countries that is in such a hurry to vaccinate kids under 18, let alone kids under 12.  Even 18 months into the pandemic. schools and even colleges are becoming increasingly prison-like these days--and yes, even for those who got "baptized" with the magic vaccine.

That is of course very reminiscent of how alcohol is treated:  the USA has a drinking age of 21 and strictly enforced (with the young drinkers themselves targeted disproportionately for punishment), low alcohol taxes, and relatively lax DUI laws for adults by international standards (even if stricter than in the past).  And alcohol is routinely used as an excuse for otherwise unacceptable behavior.  Meanwhile, most European countries set their drinking ages at 18 or less (and often not even enforced), while alcohol taxes are higher and DUI laws are a lot stricter on average for all ages.  And alcohol is far less likely to be accepted as an excuse for otherwise unacceptable behavior.

And in both cases, defenders of the status quo smugly claim that "Europeans may be able to handle more freedom, but Americans can't."  Because reasons.  All without seeing the irony in literally implying that Americans are inferior to Europeans!  

We at Twenty-One Debunked of course support lowering the drinking age to 18, while also raising alcohol taxes and toughening DUI laws for all ages.  And when it comes to COVID, we believe it is long past time to end all restrictions for all ages, period, regardless of vaccination status.  These restrictions were originally supposed to be short-term measures to "flatten the curve", that is, to merely delay infections a few weeks to avoid catastrophically overwhelming hospitals and buy more time. That's it, that's all these measures are capable of doing.  Beyond that, they are all pain and no gain.  Then the powers that be decided to move the goalposts repeatedly, and as they say, the rest is history...

Imagine the counterfactual where young people were the ones in charge.  By March 2020, or perhaps even February, imagine if young people decided to "ground" their parents and grandparents just for a few weeks to protect them from the virus, while young people were free to live life as normal, partying and all.  Raves, keggers, and even cruises would continue at least for everyone under 30 or 35.  Schools and colleges would be as wide open as the rest of the economy and society.  And instead of discharging contagious COVID patients back into nursing homes, we actually got serious about protecting their vulnerable residents.  And instead of putting all "nonessential" workers of all ages on the public dole for 18 months, imagine if they took that money and instead used it to pay for a voluntary three to six month sabbatical for any workers who were over the age of 60 and/or immunocompromised or with otherwise serious underlying conditions.  And we made any and all promising early treatments and prophylaxis readily available to all from the start.  And we otherwise let the virus rip, which the virus kinda did anyway under lockdown albeit slower and more painfully.  How many lives could have been saved that way?  I think we already know the answer by now.  And herd immunity would have been reached well before the vaccines were launched.

This disgusting perversion of American Exceptionalism needs to end.  Yesterday.  Seriously ageists, KNOCK IT OFF!  The song "Another Brick in the Wall" by Pink Floyd comes to mind.

Is There Really Any Link Between Vaping And COVID?

Is there really any link between vaping and COVID?  Most likely not, according the results of the largest study on the matter to date.  That study, done by the Mayo Clinic, found literally no correlation between vaping and being diagnosed with COVID.  And of course, the MSM was predictably crickets about that.

Not only that, they found that current combustible cigarette smokers were at a lower risk of contracting the virus.  That latter finding is rather puzzling until you consider something a bit esoteric that is frequently pointed out by Dr. Dmitry Kats:  some of the nicotine in tobacco, upon combustion (and also in the liver to a degree), turns into nicotinic acid, better known as Niacin (Vitamin B3) which he notes seems to really work wonders in curing and preventing COVID.  To achieve this same benefit without putting one's lungs in jeopardy, it would be better to simply take niacin directly, at least 500 mg at a time, along with cofactors Vitamin C (which gets depleted by smoking), Vitamin D, zinc, quercetin, thiamine (which also gets blocked by nicotine), B-12, magnesium, selenium, melatonin, and the amino acid lysine.  

So why did a previous smaller study seem to find that (younger) vapers were more likely to get COVID than non-vapers?  Well, smaller sample size can magnify any biases and confounders in a study, and one obvious bias is that younger vapers often share devices, which can clearly spread the virus.  They may also be more likely to attend parties that can turn into superspreader events.  But the act of vaping itself, while not exactly the healthiest habit in the world, does not appear to be directly causally linked to an increased risk of contracting the disease. 

Interestingly, even that previous smaller study of teens and young adults only found a correlation with "ever used" vape products, but NO correlation with recent use.  That is a rather strange finding for a study that purports to show a causal link to vaping.

As for the theory that people who got that mysterious vaping illness EVALI in 2019 and early 2020 were at greater risk of COVID later on, that may very well be true.  But we know now that it was primarily the result of black market THC (i.e. cannabis) vape products adulterated with questionable additives, most notably Vitamin E acetate.  And it is very telling that states where cannabis was legal for recreational sale in 2019 saw not only fewer per capita cases of EVALI than states where it was not, but also fewer COVID deaths as well.  Ditto for countries where cannabis was and still is fully legal (Canada, Uruguay) as well as where it is de facto legal (Netherlands) compared to their neighbors where it was not.  Thus, the lingering subtle lung damage from using tainted vapes several months prior may very well increase one's susceptibility to severe and fatal COVID, meaning that the cannabis prohibitionists whose policies created these black markets may have even way more blood on their hands than we thought.

But legal and untainted vape products, whether nicotine, cannabis, or otherwise?  The evidence that they significantly increase the risk of COVID simply isn't there, period.  Another myth bites the dust.