I seem to be on a roll! I think this is five times in the last week that I've been too vague in my descriptions and came across as supporting the opposite viewpoint on accident.

My point was that if someone wants to ban cannabis for schizophrenia reasons, if you show them the correlation behind tobacco, for them to be consistent in their ideals they will be forced to want to ban tobacco as well. But nobody has ever under any circumstances said "we should ban tobacco because it causes schizophrenia!", and it's a huge double-standard for people who are blinded by correlation meaning causation.

I personally don't think that there is a shred of evidence that supports cannabis causing schizophrenia. I don't even think it "brings it out" of you, either. It's just that when you are psychotic you are highly agitated, and want to do something, ANYTHING, to get the agitation to stop. The voices/delusions are one thing, the agitation is the worse symptom.

Some people resort to various things to relieve their agitation, some go to alcohol for the CNS suppression, others go to marijuana for the mellow anxiety relief, and others go to tobacco for... well as the article states nobody really knows, but once you get hooked on tobacco smoking ends up being a thing that DOES reduce anxiety. The anxiety is heightened by the addiction, but I think the big thing with psychosis is not necessarily that you care so much about what levels are you at sometimes and more interested in feeling those levels move up and down. The downward spike in anxiety levels, regardless if your destination is an anxiety level that is higher than the average person, is quite relieving.

When you are psychotic you are pretty much constantly for years or even decades at an anxiety/agitation levels that are higher than average, so the downtick in levels is something that is noticeable and keeps you from completely losing it and keeping some semblance of touch with reality and your own emotions.

Then you are being put on god knows how many different anti-psychotics and psychotropic medications to try and figure out which one works for you, which can take years to figure out (assuming you can/have received medical treatment). When you are on the wrong ones (which for each body is a random 90% of them), it can actually increase your agitation levels. Having an addiction that can cause noticeable, consistent downticks in agitation on your command is something that a lot of people like to have in the hard days even if it has it's own risks of increased agitation. It becomes a cost benefit analysis where the cost/risk of being addicted to tobacco outweighs the temporary relief since it can prevent a suicide out of fear that you'll forever be trapped in that state. Then these people probably have difficulty quitting once they get moderately to mostly better.

As opposed to cannabis, which if was used to create those same downticks would leave them with no physical addiction to the drug in the short term meaning no increased agitation when they are not smoking, being more in control of the drugs they are consuming, and no physical addiction in the long term meaning once they get better they can just quit if they wish without insane withdrawals and dependence.

And while we are at it, you know, we can just not restrict the prescription of benzos to certain psychotic patients. I can't believe how much agitated psychotic patients are denied benzos when that is basically the core usage of them at this point. In some cases they work better than anti-psychotics, especially patients who have bodies that can't really cooperate with the high-powered nature of an anti-psychotic.