Posted on 08/27/2012 6:20:21 PM PDT by DannyTN
Teenagers who regularly smoke cannabis are putting themselves at risk of permanently damaging their intelligence, according to a landmark study.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
It doesn’t really matter with second hand smoke, does it. Any amount is considered dangerous with tobacco. The same standard will apply because the risk of permanent brain damage is just too great a burden to bear.
The complaints and threats of law suits will influence landlords and community associations. No one will want to be responsible and the marijuana smokers will be put in the position of proving a negative.
Not fair? Not right? Maybe not, but that’s the way it’s going to be. The war on drugs will be endless, whether legalized or not.
All that matters is that it's "considered dangerous", and it's irrelevant whether there's really any good evidence to back that up? You want too much.
Was there good evidence with tobacco? The risk is even greater with marijuana because marijuana has the same carcinogenic traits as tobacco, and now the risk of brain damage.
Oh, I don’t think that the real threat from marijuana is from the second hand smoke. I just think that it will be the excuse that will be used to fight to keep marijuana out of the hands of kids. Like the article said, more teenagers now smoke marijuana than cigarettes because they don’t think that marijuana is harmful. We are stuck fighting the same war over smoking all over again.
Disclaimer - I do smoke cigarettes.
Many municipalities now ban smoking outdoors ostensibly to protect others from second hand smoke. I suspect they don't really have any evidence this poses any measurable health risk. They simply don't think people ought to smoke, and they're lying through their teeth about the second hand smoke to get what they want.
You think I'm just being paranoid?
AFAIK, no one here is advocating legalizing it for minors. We know that tobacco and alcohol are dangerous for kids, but we don't have fedgov imposing national prohibition.
Here's a radical idea for drug policy in the US. Let's honor the Tenth Amendment and let each state decide intrastate drug policy. Do you have objections to that?
Legalizing marijuana sends the wrong message to minors. You won’t be able to keep it out of the hands of minors if it is legalized. Heck, they can’t keep it out of the hands of minors, now.
This drug is NOT harmless to minors. In addition to the decreased IQ, I would bet that it has addictive properties in minors that it doesn’t have on adults. My friend, who uses, or has used all sorts of drugs, smugly claims that she never became addicted because she didn’t start using drugs until she was 18.
Her youngest is a hopeless heroin addict and he blames it on her because of her laissez faire attitude towards drugs. Her answer is that she never used until she was an adult.
That’s the message that kids get, just like alcohol. Oh, you say, that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol? …not to a teenager. I remember my husband warning me that we would probably have trouble with our kids drinking because they saw us drinking alcohol - at least it wasn’t drugs.
So what say you to honoring the Tenth Amendment and having the states decide intrastate drug policy... yes or no?
Drugs are an international commodity.
So are firearms. You sure you want to run with that argument?
It's readily available to minors because it's illegal, and therefore distributed, sold, and purchased on the unregulated black market, which is accessible to minors as well as adults. If marijuana were legalized and regulated by the state (as in the several states), distribution and sale would be regulated, and the state would most definitely close that market to minors, just like the state closes the alcohol market to minors.
Black market trading in marijuana in such a scenario would dry up to next to nil, because once the state legalized and regulated marijuana, the price of the marijuana as a commodity would plummet and destroy the profit margin in it for sellers and distributors.
It's really not that complicated.
Alcohol isn't a drug?
Man, that's rich. Dear God, I hope you were being tongue-in-cheek.
Is that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ to my Tenth Amendment question?
The DEA agents would just go to work for the ATF busting down doors for those who were evading taxes on growing/selling their own "natural" weed rather than the industrialized/regulated major corporation toke.
Decriminalize possession but prohibit its sale and trafficking. Keep the commercial trade out of it. It would be marginalized. Those who want it would procure it. Can't smoke tobacco in public. Employers can prohibit employees from smoking tobacco even in the off hours. Legal or illegal, there wouldn't be public (and restricted private) usage.
Nah, up here, we have “medical marijuana”. The parents buy it legally. The kids get it from their parent’s stash, on their dresser at home. The same story I was hearing from kids when my kids were in school.
Now, though, the kids come to school high, claiming that they have a sore back, or neck or ankle, sometimes with notes from their parents.
How many times have you heard the line from parents that they would rather have their kid drive high on marijuana than drive drunk? What kind of message does that send? My friend’s kid told her that she was the worst mother in the world because she made drugs sound cool, the “in” thing to do.
So the idea is that we need to inflict the drug war on all of us because you've got some lousy parents up there?
Lousy parents are everywhere. How many times have you heard, “I’d rather have the kids drink at home, so I know where they are, or I’d rather have them drive high than drive drunk? How many times have you seen an adult serve kids beer at home? Any adult that serves alcohol, would also share a joint if marijuana was legal for adults.
There’s just no getting around, adults spoil it for themselves because they don’t always act like adults.
I was more concerned with teenage drug use when my son was in high school because my son had a heart arrhythmia that made his heart rate go up to 250 beats per minute and street drugs could have killed him. He was tempted to use drugs and encouraged, every single day at school. I had to impress on him that it wasn’t worth the risk, that he could die.
One time, he said to me that marijuana made kids lose all ambition, get lazy. He said that his one friend, who had been the brightest kid in the class, had turned into lazy bum. Maybe it was more than just laziness.
You do understand what the end result of wanting the government to protect you from every bad thing that could happen is?
The most effective way is to inform the kids of the brain damage that occurs. If kids think it’s safe and cool and glamorous the way hollywood portrays it, then they will want to try it. But if they realize it’s going to cause them to become schitzo or Bipolar or stupid, most will leave it alone.
Doubtful. "But here's the conundrum: while marijuana went from being a secret shared by a small community of hepcats and beatniks in the 1940s and '50s to a rite of passage for some 70% of youth by the turn of the century, rates of schizophrenia in the U.S. have remained flat, or possibly declined. For as long as it has been tracked, schizophrenia has been found to affect about 1% of the population." (http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2005559,00.html)
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