[Aardwolf]

I'm not at all happy with the idea of legalizing Pot. The idea that it's no more harmful than tobacco is just plain wrong. Not only that, it triggers destructive behavior in the user such that even those who don't take it are effected. Making Marijuana use legal, easy, and worst of all, social acceptable would open a Pandora's Box- and I'm speaking as someone who's had to live in close proximity to pot users for longer than I like to think about.

Nope. Virtually all of the "bad stuff" they teach you about it in school is wrong. It doesn't permanently damage your brain cells, it's not super-addictive, and the "gateway drug" phenomenon is the result of drug dealers using it as the hook to get you to try their other stuff, not any property of the drug itself.

Triggers destructive behavior? What, you mean making stupid decisions while stoned? The same can be said of alcohol.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Yeah, you're going to need to cite some sources on that one, InsaneBaron.

[headdie]

http://unmaskingmarijuana.org/uploads/Brain_Regional_Abnormalities_Hippo_Aust_ArchGenPsych.pdf
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_1-7-2013-11-49-21
http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mentalhealthinformation/mentalhealthproblems/alcoholanddrugs/cannabisandmentalhealth.aspx
http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=481834
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2013/12/marijuana-users-have-abnormal-brain-structure--poor-memory.html

Tried to avoid the sensationalist stuff, may have failed in some cases, but it looks like academically the jury may still be out, certainly needs more large scale trials to be undertaken as it looks like most of it recycles the same 3 studies

[AdmiralRalwood]

I'm not seeing any corroboration of the idea that tobacco is healthier for you in any of those links.

[Mongoose]

I know I once saw someone put together a 100-point scale of the danger levels of various drugs, based on a wide range of criteria including health effects, societal impact, and so on.  By this scale, marijuana ranked somewhere down in the teens...while alcohol was in the mid-80s.  Legality and safety don't necessarily go hand-in-hand.

[Nuke]

i dont doubt that smoking weed is a cancer risk. and the solution to that risk is vaporizers and brownies. vaporizer tech is going to greatly reduce the damage caused by smokables, reducing but not eliminating the risks.

when you compare weed to alcohol, there is just no contest. booze will **** you before weed ever does. i have done far stupider things on booze than on weed. i have been on the verge of alcohol poisoning several times. weed has never made me feel like my life was in danger. you just get so high you forget how fire works and you cant light your bong anymore, and you wake up the next day in a puddle of bong water with bits of weed everywhere. i hear doing brownies can cause a runaway high, because of the delayed reaction and positive feedback caused by the munchies, this is fixed by limiting the amount of weed you put in your brownies, so that even if you eat all of them, you wont die (i never put more than a bud or two into a batch).

[Scotty]

Whatever. Unless I'm missing something, there's currently zero legal recreational drugs that are anywhere near as potent as the illegal ones. I don't care if it's not the exact same effect. If tobacco were "as good as" the illegal stuff, a lot fewer people would bother with the illegal stuff. But it isn't, right?¹

This is because illegal recreational drugs (for the sake of clarity of discussion leaving out marijuana) tend to have dangerous effects that are intrinsically linked with their potency.  Meth is not dangerous solely because it's addictive, it's also dangerous because it produces vivid visual and aural hallucinations and psychotic tendencies.  This is a trait it shares with most other highly illegal drugs.  It's not necessarily the exact same effects, but their danger is not too terribly overblown by pharmaceuticals that want to stay in business.

tl;dr there's a good reason legal stuff is less potent than 'the good stuff' and making 'the good stuff' available through legal means is a Bad Thing.

[Nuke]

i think people who make drug laws should smoke it before they decide if they should ban it or not.

[Aardwolf]

@Scotty: ...in all cases except marijuana. So far you've largely avoided commenting on the crux of my argument though.

Going from there existing zero safe, legal, non-prescription recreational drugs to there existing one would cause a marked drop in the demand for unsafe, illegal, or prescription-only recreational drugs.

Agree or disagree? If you disagree, how?

[Scotty]

My answer to that is fairly clear, if you'd stop framing it in terms of what you want to hear instead of what I'm actually saying.

There is no currently legal alternative to high-potency illegal drugs.

What the rest of my post went on to say is that this is a good thing because high-potency drugs are Bad Things.

[666maslo666]

I'm not at all happy with the idea of legalizing Pot. The idea that it's no more harmful than tobacco is just plain wrong.

Legalisation is debatable, but decriminalisation of personal use is a must. War on drugs does far more damage than drugs themselves ever could.

[Aardwolf]

@Scotty: So you are disputing the notion that recreational drugs can be both "potent" and "safe" at the same time? If so then yes, your answer was clear. Nonetheless I believe at least one counterexample exists, one which you have declined to contest.

[Luis Dias]

I think that we will legalize marijuana and when the massive weed corporations figure biogenetics all in and out, we will be debating *what* is marijuana and what isn't, and it will be legal mayhem. It will be hilarious to watch.

[Scotty]

@Scotty: So you are disputing the notion that recreational drugs can be both "potent" and "safe" at the same time? If so then yes, your answer was clear. Nonetheless I believe at least one counterexample exists, one which you have declined to contest.

Weed is not nearly as potent and does not have nearly the negative consequences as any of the drugs you're trying to meander around the point with.

You're absolutely welcome to delude yourself into thinking that legalizing a meth-equivalent drug might help things.  Weed is not that drug.  That drug will not be as positive as you want to believe.

EDIT: to be completely clear, I'm not saying marijuana cannot be a safe recreational drug.  I'm contesting that it had any of the qualities that it must have in order to support your supposition.

[InsaneBaron]

Yeah, you're going to need to cite some sources on that one, InsaneBaron.

Okay, I'll dig some up, but...

@Aardwolf: since as you stated you're arguing that the vast majority of health textbooks are inaccurate I'm curious to see your sources as well.

I thought the fact the weed has nasty permanent consequences (including brain damage) was common knowledge. Yes, tobacco's bad too, but if tobacco and weed are equivalent than tobacco must be worse than I had thought. (Note: unless I'm mistaken smoking normal cigars doesn't make people violent.)

[Scotty]

I've never seen weed make a normal person violent.  If anything, my experiences with folks under the influence of marijuana is the exact opposite of that.

I really hope you're not confusing THC (chemical found in cannabis) with PCP (a dangerous dissociative hallucinogen).

[Aardwolf]

Indeed it is common knowledge, because it's taught in schools. It's also false. Want a source? Here's a Congressional report. There are many more like it.

@Edit:

Weed is not nearly as potent

Well there we go. TIL quoted thing.

[InsaneBaron]

Indeed it is common knowledge, because it's taught in schools. It's also false. Want a source? Here's a Congressional report. There are many more like it.

@Edit:

Weed is not nearly as potent

Well there we go. TIL quoted thing.

Very interesting. I'm going to look into this further. While it would be surprising, it wouldn't be the first time standard educational material has been entirely wrong (Haeckel's Embryos and the Manchester Moths spring to mind.)

[MP-Ryan]

I've never seen weed make a normal person violent.  If anything, my experiences with folks under the influence of marijuana is the exact opposite of that.

I really hope you're not confusing THC (chemical found in cannabis) with PCP (a dangerous dissociative hallucinogen).

The only people I've ever heard of getting violent on marijuana are those who are fending off someone trying to swipe their Doritos / chocolate bars.

Marijuana has a number of negative health effects, but no worse (and likely better) than both alcohol and tobacco.  Propensity to violence is not among the side effects.