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Tobacco smoking, alcohol abuse and exposure to lead, mercury and asbestos have been shown to have strong negative health effects by extensive studies with a lot

Tobacco smoking, alcohol abuse and exposure to lead, mercury and asbestos have been shown to have strong negative health effects by extensive studies with a lot of statistical power and grounded in theory. This is not the case for cannabis use. The public perception of cannabis as having horrible negative health consequences comes from state propaganda, not science. Look it up yourself. But look for scientific articles, not newspaper articles. So before you use that classical argument, you have to actually have some data that provides evidence for the substance under question being generally harmful. Carl Sagan (one of the counter-examples) used to confront his scientist friends with this, and they were surprised to find that there is indeed very little scientific support for this view. For a while, the strongest result was that cannabis could help trigger early schizophrenia, but even this research is on shaky grounds (turns out that the population under study was highly biased).

andrepd 11y ago
There is a high barrier to research about pot and other drugs such as LSD, for obvious reason. This means that while you have a gigantic corpus of data about alcohol usage, for instance, you have next to nothing to work with on pot. Just because you don't have studies showing pot is harmful it doesn't mean pot isn't harmful. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
TelmoMenezes 11y ago
> There is a high barrier to research about pot and other drugs such as LSD, for obvious reason. This means that while you have a gigantic corpus of data about alcohol usage, for instance, you have next to nothing to work with on pot. Prohibition prevents scientific research, but it is not true that there isn't a lot of indirect data. One of them is cause of death at emergency rooms. While alcohol produces a large number of deaths daily, cannabis produced zero so far (in the history of modern medicine). > Just because you don't have studies showing pot is harmful it doesn't mean pot isn't harmful. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Sure, but this applies to everything. Maybe having brown curtains in your living room increases your chances of suffering from depression. Let's make brown curtains illegal until we know more?
- Retric 11y ago
  Pot has produced cancer deaths just like other forms of smoke inhalation. Incense is also harmful for similar reasons. THC is fairly safe, inhaling smoke is stupid. PS: As far as I know eating it is ok, but many things become harmful when you do them for 30+ years. Ex: Runniners often have knee problems over the long term.

andrepd 11y ago

There is a high barrier to research about pot and other drugs such as LSD, for obvious reason. This means that while you have a gigantic corpus of data about alcohol usage, for instance, you have next to nothing to work with on pot. Just because you don't have studies showing pot is harmful it doesn't mean pot isn't harmful. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

TelmoMenezes 11y ago

> There is a high barrier to research about pot and other drugs such as LSD, for obvious reason. This means that while you have a gigantic corpus of data about alcohol usage, for instance, you have next to nothing to work with on pot. Prohibition prevents scientific research, but it is not true that there isn't a lot of indirect data. One of them is cause of death at emergency rooms. While alcohol produces a large number of deaths daily, cannabis produced zero so far (in the history of modern medicine). > Just because you don't have studies showing pot is harmful it doesn't mean pot isn't harmful. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Sure, but this applies to everything. Maybe having brown curtains in your living room increases your chances of suffering from depression. Let's make brown curtains illegal until we know more?

Retric 11y ago
Pot has produced cancer deaths just like other forms of smoke inhalation. Incense is also harmful for similar reasons. THC is fairly safe, inhaling smoke is stupid. PS: As far as I know eating it is ok, but many things become harmful when you do them for 30+ years. Ex: Runniners often have knee problems over the long term.