Excuse me, but your self-proclaimed life experience is that you do NOT smoke pot, so you're not credible in your claim that it turns people permanently, mentally impaired. That's ridiculous.
And I am not the "very rare exception" you refer to. I know lots of people who I went to high school and college with in the 60s and 70s who smoke pot on a regular basis and live normal lives. People in all walks of life and professions.
Almost everyone I know here in rural Florida where I raise Angus beef cattle, smoke pot. It's so common that it is hard to find folks you haven't smoked.
I was a hospital administrator in the service and at least half of the doctors and 90% of the dentists I was stationed with smoked pot with no detrimental effects on their lives. How do I know this? Because I smoked pot with them.
I just reconnected with a college fraternity brother on a road trip to Arizona where we both graduated from ASU. He owns 15 McDonalds' franchises in the Phoenix area and is worth millions. He and I smoked a lot of pot in college and numerous times while I was visiting him and he definitely is not permanently mentally impaired. Quite the contrary.
It's been my experience that people who don't smoke pot, don't know what they are talking about when it comes to what pot does to you.
Pot is not addictive like hard drugs or even liquor. It's not LSD or cocaine or meth or heroin. It is habitual but not physically addicting. You don't get "hooked" on it. If you stop smoking it, you don't have withdrawals or go through the DTs. I've stopped smoking for one reason or another several times in my life, including a five year stretch where I couldn't get any. Nothing bad happened to me. I wasn't turned into some vegetable who couldn't think or function.
You sound like you watched the government propaganda movie "Reefer Madness" and decided that anybody who smokes a little pot is not going to be able to mentally function in life. Well, you're wrong.
I would no more claim that everyone who took an alcoholic drink when they were young would be destined to a life of drunkenness and debauchery because they had a couple of beers in high school or college, than I believe your bogus claim. Because that's what you're claiming without any facts to back it up.
Now, do I know people who smoke pot and can't keep a job or get ahead or get their sh*t together? Yes, absolutely. But those people would be messed up with or without the pot. Some people shouldn't smoke pot or drink or do any kind of drug.
But that 's not an indicator that everyone who smokes pot will be "permanently, mentally impaired". Alcohol kills brains cells not pot.
Responsible people can smoke pot and not ruin themselves and society just because they enjoy a joint once in a while.
Ironically, I am not trying to "promote" pot smoking. I have no horse in this pot legalization race. I'll continue to smoke whether it's "legal" or not.
What I am saying is that if you don't smoke it, you don't know it.
LOL! You've noticed that too?