3 ms·

I agree that calling it "public evil" was over the top. My understanding is that most of cannabis is consumed through smoke inhalation which is about the worst

• aethr 10y ago
  From my anecdotal experience, I would agree that most cannabis is consumed by smoking. For casual recreational users though, this might amount to as little as the equivalent of one cigarette a month. Still not good for you, but probably not in the same league as tobacco smoking which is much more likely to be habitual. Habitual cannabis users on the other side of the spectrum seem to be acknowledging the health risks of smoking, and (again anecdotally) I'm seeing a lot of habitual users switch to vaporising or other delivery methods. Certainly there are people making poor decisions about cannabis use, but on a whole it doesn't seem much worse than plenty of other things that people do regularly without being stigmatised. Certainly not bad enough to become a moral issue in my opinion.
• dekhn 10y ago
  Your understanding is almost certainly wrong. If you want to learn a bit more about the difference between cannabis and nicotine in terms of smoking health, I suggest buying Glantz's Primer on Biostatistics; the problem sets are filled with citations to papers showing an almost complete lack of evidence that smoking cannabis has the negative effects associated with smoking nicotine products. This research has held up (NIDA attempts notwithstanding) and the primary issue with long-term heavy cannabis use appears to be gum problems (hoping to see more studies with better methodology in the future).