Once people (collectively) decide on a certain thing, it can be the merits of an electric car, the reality of an impending climate crisis, covid and masks, the ill effects of booze years ago, or marijuana today, the ethical and so called “scientific” arguments will follow suit.
Suddenly, you get terms like gateway drug and ideas like psychological addiction becoming prominent arguments... Hint, ANYTHING which makes you feel good can be psychologically addictive. Masturbation is psychologically addictive. So are computer games, gambling, porn, comfort foods...
Most of the time, there is a shred of truth with these arguments. Climate is changing, and folks that smoke pot might really have more heart attacks. But the problem is usually not in correlation, but causality. Meaning, yeah climate is changing but is it because of our CO2 output? Unlikely. People that smoke pot have more heart attacks, that may even be true, but many people who use pot are ill (cancer, heart disease, insomnia, etc), they may already suffer from some sort of psychological issue and are in reality self-medicating no differently than I saw many of my peers do with booze when returning from war. I wonder, if you look at how many people taking sleep and anxiety medicine have heart attacks, would you see the same trend? If I had to guess, yes.
Marijuana is a drug. It is a real no kidding drug. You need to respect it. Even Tylenol kills people (we take OTC drugs not seriously) every year and while I do not see marijuana as some super addictive and dangerous drug, it still needs to be dealt with responsibly. A kid high in school every day wasting away is probably not a good thing. A consenting adult on a Friday evening after a hard week lighting up and relaxing may even be beneficial to that person. It’s a drug, treat like a drug. Don’t over villainize it or make it into more than it is, but also don’t make it entirely harmless because if abused it can hurt people (even though that’s pretty hard to do with pot).
Agreed. And yet, you’ll forgive me and other FReepers if we question the results of any NIH “study”, including this one.
There is a subset of the population that weed can make insane.
It happened to a friend but his family was predisposed to paranoid schizophrenia. He had several relatives with it.
My daughter says she can’t stop smoking it. She’s hooked.