“but I do believe that the longer you can keep kids away from it as they hit their teens, the better for everyone”
Pot is proven to damage young minds. Only a fool would argue otherwise.
However, it affects some more than others. There are some who seem to go off the deep end quite quickly. There are others who smoke several times per week for years...then go on to be solid contributors to society.
And nobody knows which they’ll be when they take their first hit.
And, I think we can say the same of alcohol.
Yes, alcohol is just as bad if not worse, though obviously in different ways. Alcohol has more immediate dangers, you can die from drunk driving, fighting, having unprotected sex, etc. Long-term, you can trigger alcoholism, which can also physically kill you. There’s far less of any of that in terms of immediate effect of marijuana, but I do believe that it depresses ambition and focus, which is a particularly damaging thing to have happen to a minor, even more so in preteens. That’s the particular danger that I think we all need to focus on, even as we open things up for adults.