12 ms·

While I'm totally for drug (all drugs - not just cannabis) legalisation/regulation, I do think the "dangers" of marijuana have been really downplayed over the l

• qaq 10y ago
  Almost anything can be addictive not much we can do about it.
  • pacala 10y ago
    addiction + adverse effects on one's brain/life. There are a lot of benign addictions, which we call habits. We should be a bit more careful in casually classifying marijuana as benign on grounds that is not as bad as heroin. Edit. "Classifying" in educational sense, not in legal sense.
    • DanBC 10y ago
      By definition addiction has a harmful effect on the user. > We should be a bit more careful in casually classifying marijuana as benign on grounds that is not as bad as heroin. Yes, definitely. I'm strongly in favour of legalisation, but I recognise that for some people cannabis will be harmful.
    • tankenmate 10y ago
      Sure, but does it justify its place on Schedule 1? Hardly. As a whole alcohol does far more damage to society and yet it is very lightly regulated. Maybe Schedule 4 or 5 might be more appropriate? i.e Xanax, Tramadol, less than 200mg codeine, etc.
    • imaginenore 10y ago
      By that logic sugar should be highly illegal. Obesity kills orders of magnitude more people than heroin.
      • sjwright 10y ago
        Per gram (or per serve) of product, I very much doubt it.
        • c22 10y ago
          But perhaps per dollar...
    • thescriptkiddie 10y ago
      Sure, there are benign habits, like caffeine which is arguably beneficial even though it forms a physical dependency. There are also a lot of very harmful habits which are based around "addictive" substances. Personally I had to delete my Reddit account. I started using Reddit as a crutch for boredom and browsing became a default activity for me, something that sucked up every spare moment even if I wasn't actually enjoying it. That was monumentally self-destructive in exactly the same way that people describe their experiences with "addictive" substances. Even now I consciously limit my use of this site. I think that addiction is a purely psychological phenomenon, distinct from (though often paired with) the physical process of dependency and withdrawal. I might even go as far as to say that addiction is a symptom of larger problems, rather than a problem in itself. Anyway, cannabis does not form a dependency any stronger than caffeine, so in that regard I would argue it is even safer than alcohol. As for becoming addicted to cannabis, I don't think that any particular substance is more or less "addictive" than any other. Just my two cents.
• droopyEyelids 10y ago
  Correlation and causation can be hard to pick apart there
• mbrock 10y ago
  Some of that might be because they are afraid if they go outside they'll be arrested.
  • ryanlol 10y ago
    Is that actually common? Don't know about the US but haven't seen very much of that in the rest of the world.
    • meira 10y ago
      Yeah, totally common (Brazil)
    • lrem 10y ago
      Drugs possession is criminal in many places throughout the world. Police departments throughout the world have some kind of quotas. If a quarter is ending and am officer is five cases away from maxing out his bonus, what's to stop him from finding some potheads and cashing in?
    • ethanbond 10y ago
      In the US, it basically depends on how poor and/or black you are. No joke.
    • bahularora 10y ago
      It's quite lax here in India.
• Donzo 10y ago
  And I have anecdotal evidence of people smoking marijuana everyday for 10-20 years and remaining extremely productive. Oftentimes drug use is a symptom of a greater psychological problem/issue. Perhaps the underlying issues are causing the negative behaviors and the drugs are only enabling it.
  • pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    >anecdotal evidence of people smoking marijuana everyday for 10-20 years and remaining extremely productive. // What roles, in what areas, have they risen to in this time?
    • Donzo 10y ago
      Designers, architects, engineers, carpenters, administrators, teachers, writers, and so forth. I've seen daily marijuana users rise to the top of major industries. Of course, I've seen other daily marijuana users remain stationed at the front counters of gas stations, but that's my point. I don't think that daily marijuana use is the factor that accounts for the relative successes or failures of these individuals. There are many more variables. If Joe Gas Station stopped smoking pot, he wouldn't suddenly develop killer business instinct, or the motivation to build a company in his off time.
      • kristianc 10y ago
        And as other people have pointed out, neither should we present building a company as the pinnacle of human achievement simply because it's how a large number of people on HN want to spend their time.
      • pbhjpbhj 10y ago
        >I don't think that daily marijuana use is the factor that accounts for the relative successes or failures of these individuals. There are many more variables. // Do you think it's a significant factor for some? I'm interested in where you live, well what society - you've listed 7+ professions, each as a multiple, of people you personally know who you consider successful, who you also know to be daily pot smokers. I don't even know the daily routines of 7 people outside my family ... let's say 50% of people (you know) are using pot and they're split evenly between smokers, vapers, eaters, others ... that means you know the daily routine of over 100 people. That's, erm, impressive. [Ah, just realised, do you deal, that would explain it! Sorry, is still early for me.] I know a handful of people who smoke pot, but that's likely my demographic - but I couldn't tell you if they smoke once a day or once a week, or less. Any chance you're exaggerating your personal knowledge? In the UK site workers, like carpenters, will often be tested for drug use. Your engineer, teacher friends - do they use on the job, like when taking responsibility for multiples of other people? Are you content with that. Appreciate your responses as potentially they'd suggest a vast change in my ideas of the prevalence of daily pot use (depending on your geography, social context).
• robbiemitchell 10y ago
  I bet alcohol is a much bigger problem on university campuses.
• mtgx 10y ago
  That's why I hope that if it is legalized, it would at least be banned from advertising. The idea should be that "it's your choice if you want to use it, but people shouldn't be mass-brain washed by ads into believing it's the best thing ever that they should buy."
  • metaphorm 10y ago
    its legal to advertise pharmaceuticals. why should there be a special ban for advertising cannabis? if your objection is to "mass-brain washing", I think you're gonna have a lot of 1st amendment trouble arguing that case legally.
    • njloof 10y ago
      I have the same concern about the advertising of pharmaceuticals, both directly to consumers and especially to providers. What were the arguments used to regulate the display and advertising of tobacco? Those might be a model for the advertising of other potentially harmful substances. Certainly how beer is advertised is no model to follow.
      • metaphorm 10y ago
        afaik tobacco is not treated as a drug or medicine and historically was not regulated by the FDA (it began to be regulated by USDA and FDA in 2009). in any case, regardless of whether or not beer advertising is a good "model for society" is kinda irrelevant from the constitutional law perspective. the legal rulings have repeatedly found that commercial marketing is, with a few exceptions, free speech and that the government is limited in its ability to regulate that type of expression. from an ethical perspective, I think that people living in a free society have an ethical responsibility to educate ourselves and our communities about drugs (of all kinds, including alcohol and tobacco) independently of the commercial promotion of those products. at some point you have to just let people be responsible from themselves. trying to enforce health and safety through prohibition or censorship is not a good strategy.
    • njloof 10y ago
• forloop 10y ago
  Please delete. I can't rebut the reply—due to the legal status of cannabis.
  • snarfy 10y ago
    Now that it's recreational and all of the THC and CBD percentages are listed on the packages, I've noticed cannabis high in CBD is sticky, much more so than cannabis high in THC. For the many years it was illegal and I smoked it anyway, sticky cannabis aka 'dank' was always preferred. I believe CBD cannabis is more popular than it seems.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  • will_brown 10y ago
    >A "better" ratio of THC:CBD Here in Florida I think CBD oils were recently legalized and I think a single strain of marijuana (with negligible THC and high CBD) had been permitted for epilepsy patients. To be honest I haven't followed to closely after the last medical marijuana bill didn't pass. Anyway, is the CBD/THC ratios interdependent? Meaning as one goes up, the others go down? Or are there some strains with significant amounts of each and others with low amounts of each?
    • forloop 10y ago
      I just did a little research. It would seem the high THC/low CBD is caused by the farming technique: "However, modern growing techniques have also affected these chemical levels. For example, illegal growers have turned to indoor marijuana farms to avoid detection. Growing cannabis locally in such farms also circumvents the need to import the drug, and guarantees a more reliable harvest. However, the 24-hour lighting used in these farms inadvertently reduces CBD levels in the plant."[0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/jan/17/cannabis-memory-loss-cbd https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/jan/17/cannabi...
• sago 10y ago
  We used to say something similar about MUDs. Don't start, because you'll end up spending days and nights on a terminal in the basement of the library and your work/outside life/everything else will be put on hold. Multiplayer games... the drug of nerd generation X?
  • koolba 10y ago
    > We used to say something similar about MUDs. Don't start, because you'll end up spending days and nights on a terminal in the basement of the library and your work/outside life/everything else will be put on hold. > Multiplayer games... the drug of nerd generation X? MUDs, MUSHes, Doom, Quake, Starcraft, shit posting on Reddit, dropping knowledge bombs on HN[1] ... the venue changes but it's all the same waste of time. Not necessarily a bad thing either. [1]: Feel free to swap HN and Reddit.
    • ZoF 10y ago
      >MUDs, MUSHes, Doom, Quake, Starcraft, shit posting on Reddit This is my progression as well :^)
      • koolba 10y ago
        > This is my progression as well :^) I never said that list was arbitrary or randomly generated :D
• iRobbery 10y ago
  mostly agree, but 10 years behind what? Your ideal, or socially accepted view of how a life should be lived? I wait for the day, drugs are unbanned, medicine cant be patented, religion is banned, and the world has one common global goal, space exploration! I'd stop smoking cannabis for that. ;-)
  • martinald 10y ago
    Behind where they want to be (not my opinion, theirs). They look round when they come out of the weed stupor and realise that everyone else is 10 years further ahead in anything. I'm not just meaning careers - often they never go on vacation abroad/travelling (past maybe Amsterdam). They look around and see their friends who have been all over the world after university, when they've done really nothing.
    • iRobbery 10y ago
      Ah okay i didn't think of that, that is a pity then yes, as travelling broadens/opens the mind better then cannabis hehe. Specially seeing how other people have to live, struggle or live glamorous, etc. Using cannabis (being high) does make it easy to postpone things, and before you know it its indeed postponed 10 years. Though i have had this idea/thought too, i'm still getting less convinced about this. I've seen too many different cases to be sure. I might consider videogaming/online multiplayer stuff ruined more time of people and or students around me then cannabis. And yes, they do 'work well' together :)
      • wcummings 10y ago
        >travelling broadens/opens the mind This is bullshit. Most travel is leisure, just like cannabis, and not at all mind expanding. This is just a game of "my hobby is better than yours".
        • iRobbery 10y ago
          And you cannot get a nice idea or realisation, gain some knowledge when you are doing something considered 'leisure'? Must be interesting hanging out with you outside office hours. (also not saying anything was better, i like it all, including wasting some hours a week on a videogame)
• metaphorm 10y ago
  you may be conflating cause and effect. disappointing lives full of depression, anxiety, and boredom leads to both apathy and drug-use (self medication). it's a mistake to believe the drug use is the underlying cause of a person seeming unhappy and apathetic.
• meows 10y ago
  I think that exaggeration of the dangers of a drug can lead to an excessively strong counter-narrative. Unfortunately it is part of political play for major nations to state any case on anything to its weakest or strongest form, and not anywhere inbetween -- as if adversaries are going to negotiate the truth down to the middle, so we mind as well start at the extremes. Children should hear a realistic profile of effects for different substances, among other things.
• pmyjavec 10y ago
  Do you have any real evidence to back anything you've said up? Sorry, but you can't quantify 10 years behind, it's just purely subjective. Just because you know people who are lazy and use cannabis, proves very little I'm afraid. Do they drink beer also? Not attacking you, but it's comments and attitudes like this that help politicians justify silly things, such as, "The war on drugs". The war on drugs is one of the most destructive, wasteful, pathetic ideals of our time.
  • martinald 10y ago
    I am 10000000% against the war on drugs. This is obviously anecdotal. I am simply saying that cannabis has a very dark side to it which robs young people of a lot of their productivity and ambition. They usually never drink alcohol I find - or very little. I know about 5 people who fell into this trap and when (some) of them packed it in have enormous regret. My point is that this isn't talked about with cannabis.
    • madaxe_again 10y ago
      Wait, you see them not drinking alcohol as a problem? Alcohol is a drug with a far, far darker side than weed. My wife's father died of alcoholism, not smoking pot.
    • theAnonMe 10y ago
      I kinda agree with this, being stoned 24/7 makes things tougher but you get used to that. Some people don't have as much drive as others for whatever reasons, it's just an extra hurdle.
    • pmyjavec 10y ago
      Sorry, but there just isn't "very dark side" to a plant. It sounds to me like some of your friends have been using a substance to fill a void in their lives or avoid facing some issues, this is really terrible and I understand. Truth is, there are just so many ways people can use and abuse things and it's wrong to blame anything in particular. If people sniff glue to mask a problem, you wouldn't say glue has a dark side. Yes glue is can be toxic and extremely harmful, but it doesn't have any intentions or predispositions. Don't get me wrong, I've had similar views in the past, it's just where I'm at now from my own life experience. I agree that, being stoned every minute of the day is not a good idea, maybe you're trying to say cannabis is more toxic than people think?
• kingkawn 10y ago
  This is all true, but honestly no matter how superior it may arguably be to lead an active life, some people for their own reasons and experiences just need the break. The idea that one can judge oneself based on accomplishments seems more harmful than helpful, and the pressure of such a culture would seem to be one of the primary motivators for just wanting to chill and get high. If that is how they choose to spend their lives, please remember they get there honestly like the rest of us. Edit: also wanted to add that the humanity of the world views of many of the people commenting here is a source of great hope for the future for me. You all are thinking hard about how to improve the way we think of each other, and it's really moving to see it evolve each day on this site and elsewhere.
• madaxe_again 10y ago
  And alcoholism? Does that not affect ones life and health too? Hell, I know people who eat far too much and have lost aspects of their lives - but nobody is talking about outlawing food or alcohol.
• thucydides 10y ago
  Yes. Ceteris paribus, mutatis mutandis, all else equal, blah blah blah, marijuana decreases motivation. Period. How is this controversial today? Here's an n = 1 study. A few years ago, I used a Pax to vaporize cannabis nearly every night for a year. I quit altogether after moving to an area where it was harder to buy. After a month or two, I unexpectedly noticed a fog had lifted. It was easier to summon the right word to my tongue. It was easier to reason through difficult abstract problems. It was easier to start working on things. If you are reading this and are thinking "yeah, but n = 1, man," you're right. I must be the exception. Being an egregious stoner doesn't decrease anyone's IQ or motivation, "studies" and "your lying eyes" be damned. YOU are not experiencing any deficits from smoking herb. Cannabis is NOTHING like soma, and in fact has no negative side effects at all. And you are certainly not rationalizing self-destructive behavior.
  • rch 10y ago
    Your sample size is less of an issue than the fact that you're describing an obviously bad habit. I'm glad you were able to alter your behavior so easily when you moved though.
    • thucydides 10y ago
      Yes, that was what I was trying to say. Maybe I'm putting too fine a point on it, but using cannabis for even one day will make you stupider and lazier the next day. Using cannabis daily will make you stupider and lazier in general. People who deny this are lying to themselves. When I was a regular cannabis smoker, I had a high-paying, high-status job and was commended for my work. But I could have learned more and done more in that yearlong period - with no psychic cost. Stoners (and I certainly was one) concoct amazing rationalizations for the newly tighter bounds on their motivation.
• nine_k 10y ago
  Alcohol's effects are similar and often worse. Prohibition is still widely regarded as a mistake, and literally tens of millions people in the US consume small doses of alcohol without becoming adficts.
  • mercer 10y ago
    I sometimes wonder if a measure less extreme than prohibition might've actually worked. When it comes to weed, the Dutch approach seems to be pretty effective at allowing it's use while simultaneously keeping it from being a cultural mainstay, and I think that's a good thing. It also seems to work with smoking. It's amazing to see how many people quit smoking as price increases and as the cultural values change. As a chain-smoker who wishes he never started, I think that's great. In my ideal world it would be legal to drink, but it wouldn't be such an integral component of our social world. For many people, and perhaps especially those who struggle with dependence on alcohol, the relative difficulty of avoiding 'drinking culture' and the stigma attached (being boring) is a major pain in the ass.
    • nine_k 10y ago
      Completely agreed.
• IsaacL 10y ago
  I've also known three people who smoked marijuana regularly and developed serious life problems as a result, along with a larger number who didn't develop major problems but who definitely "stalled". I also knew many who smoked it regularly without major issues, so I'm not saying it inevitably causes problems, but I am 99.99% certain that if you already suffer problems with motivation or life direction, marijuana can majorly f... you up. I used to smoke it occasionally myself and I definitely saw its positive effects - for computer scientists, it's a fascinating springboard into understanding consciousness and meta-cognition. It makes good music and art even more enjoyable. It's also one of the most seductive drugs out there. Alcohol leads to very painful hangovers, which is a clear signal for people to slow down. Psychedelics are too mind-blowing and the trips last too long to be used regularly. Heroin, crack, meth etc are widely seen as dangerous. Cocaine is expensive. Cannabis is affordable, and can be enjoyed on a weekday evening without strong next-morning effects. So some people end up integrating it into their routine: surfing the internet stoned, listening to music stoned, playing video games stoned, chatting to friends stoned. If you have your s... more or less together, you can probably use weed semi-regularly without too much damage. But if there are one or more real problems in your life, things which would take real effort and motivation to fix (poor social life / grades slipping / lack career direction / etc), weed will tempt you to chill out and ignore said problems. You concoct wild rationalisations about why you don't really want X, why people who chase X are manipulated by the system, etc, etc. Long-term, you run the risk of becoming paranoid and demotivated, struggling to make everyday decisions or to get a grip on your own thinking. Given that this isn't a universal consequence of weed usage, it might not be solely due to the weed but also certain personality traits which weed amplifies. I rarely smoke it at all any more - personally, I found training myself to enjoy good art, and reading deep philosophy/literature gave me access to much more profound pleasures and insights than weed ever did.
  • lettergram 10y ago
    To add to the antidotal evidence... Ive smoked a lot of weed for a long time, I finished college, have a job paying well above average, I work on projects / my startup, I have a wife, and am looking to start a family (at which point I'll stop smoking for a bit). Further, my startup is starting to make money and I'm up for promotion at work. Then to tie this in nicely which the argument that people with issues will ignore them - I went through court during school for restraining orders, I worked a full-time job while in school, and started a small profitable business. All of that is insanely stressful and I would argue if weed would have caused issues, I would have had larger problems. All that being said, I think people who smoke weed (or tobacco for that matter) are more likely to get into the "drug culture" of partying, carnivals / festival, climbing, etc. It's really no different than people who become alcoholics. It's probably a symptom of a larger issue when people abuse drugs and attempt to "opt-out" of society. That being said, perhaps some people want this, and it should be an option. I don't care one bit if people want to waste their life on drugs. I only care that I have to pay for them via tax dollars, so remove social welfare for them and I'm all for it! I'd even expand my argument, and say any vice including videogames, cars, etc. Anything can get out of hand if people are trying to avoid a problem. Just like you can't blame a gun for murder, you can't blame a vice for a wasted life. At some point, if a person had choice, and knew what they were getting into it's their fault.
• natecavanaugh 10y ago
  I agree with you, but... :) There are quite a few people who go overboard with it, and I'm not arguing complete unfettered access for all, but I think the reason it's dangers are trivialized is in reaction to how trivialized alcohol is in our culture. Every show you watch, and people are drinking alcohol left and right. In entertainment it's just something you do. Costco is willing to sell you gallons of it cheaply and of high quality. And yet the dangers of alcohol both short and long term are taken as "things we just put up with" from a societal perspective. I think when people compare the dangers of long term apathy, malaise and possible overeating (which also just sound like responses to getting older ;) to people who get drunk and murder other people and end up killing themselves, short or long term, one set does seem kind of trivial. *Note: I am not meaning to make it sound like I'm anti-alcohol or pro-cannabis. I think responsible people can handle each one responsibly, and that instead of prohibiting everyone, we do what we do with bad drivers: we help them get better or forbid them from doing that activity any more and provide safe alternatives.
  • josinalvo 10y ago
    While I fully agree with limiting the WOW and canabis usage of irresponsible users as a goal, I wonder how to do it without creating very illiberal policies. That is: I am not opposed to a small amount of "nanny-state" to force heavy users into a better path (and that is very illiberal, I know) but I wonder if it is possible to do it in a fashion that has minimal "illiberal side effects".
• Symmetry 10y ago
  True, but I'm rather people develop substance problems with weed than with alcohol for many reasons. Even if there was only a 50% chance that without access to cannabis the people you knew in college would become drunks that's still a good tradeoff for society.
• dietrichepp 10y ago
  Sounds a lot like World of Warcraft, the way you describe it. Maybe we should criminalize MMORPGs? That part is a bit of a bad joke, but I've known people who have lost chunks of their lives to WoW, and the criticisms you outline for cannabis seem to mirror my perception of WoW very closely—"addictive", "causes them to be extremely unmotivated", and "a lot of people end up really trapped by it". To be honest, when I was in college, I was more worried about the potential dangers of WoW than I was worried about cannabis or other recreational drugs, chief among them alcohol and caffeine, but also cannabis. I had a "just say no to WoW" attitude.
  • Houshalter 10y ago
    http://lesswrong.com/lw/h3/superstimuli_and_the_collapse_of_western/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/h3/superstimuli_and_the_collapse_of_... >At least three people have died playing online games for days without rest. People have lost their spouses, jobs, and children to World of Warcraft. If people have the right to play video games - and it's hard to imagine a more fundamental right - then the market is going to respond by supplying the most engaging video games that can be sold, to the point that exceptionally engaged consumers are removed from the gene pool.
    • wldcordeiro 10y ago
      Infinite Jest thought it'd be a single ultimate piece of media that does it, but that was underestimating our ability to create addictively stimulating media wasn't it?
  • choko 10y ago
    Whoa there! I don't think the poster to which you responded said that marijuana should be criminalized, only that the risks are downplayed significantly by supporters of legalization. As a user myself, I tend to agree. It can be very easy to go overboard if you aren't careful. For many people, weed can completely sap motivation if abused. The exact risks are really unknown though, since research into marijuana has been stifled for decades.
    • 10y ago
• adrusi 10y ago
  Hemp smoking can let you not feel bad about your apathy while you're high, and if you don't have much in your life that you can't do while you're high, there's nothing stopping you from being high all day. Once you're high all day, you can be apathetic about everything all day. This is just like alcoholism, except it won't kill you and it won't make you do stupid/dangerous things and it's not physiologically addictive. And like alcoholism, it's only really attractive to people who meet certain preconditions. If you feel a lot better about your life while smoking hemp, and you don't have to give up anything you care about to smoke it all day, consider setting restrictions for yourself on when you smoke it. I think there's a place for escapism, but maybe restrict it to after 9pm, for instance.
• caub 10y ago
  smoking has indeed no positive effects
• ones_and_zeros 10y ago
  What if, what if, they were actually worse off with out marijuana?
• intopieces 10y ago
  They've been downplayed over the last few years to mitigate the outright lies that have been told to teenagers in their schools. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in between.
• al2o3cr 10y ago
  You probably also know more than a few people from university who've been addicted to nicotine and/or curled up in a bottle of booze for the last twenty years. Your point, exactly? Bonus points for the pun in the last sentence, since we're talking about drug prohibition which LITERALLY "traps" people in jail for possessing a plant...
• coldtea 10y ago
  >I know a lot of people at university who got into smoking it very often and basically lost 10+ years of their life to complete apathy to anything. Some have now stopped and are totally different people - just 10 years behind. Not any different that tens of different ways to do that: from videogame addiction (someone mentioned it already), to depression (and in fact marijuana can help fight that), not knowing what to do with yourself, to accidental pregnancy, to drinking, to studying for a liberal arts degree (couldn't resist the joke), ... Besides most people don't go to the university and don't have any particular "big plans" anyway, marijuana or not.
• dghughes 10y ago
  In a way you can overdoes but it seems to depend on the person cases of cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome aka CHS are appearing more and more. http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/pot-pains-why-marijuana-can-become-toxic-for-some-1.2984756 http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/pot-pains-why-marijuana-can-bec...
  • dghughes 10y ago
    edit: overdose* not "over does" albeit it's somewhat apt
• indlebe 10y ago
  But... I will argue that marijuana may sometimes have the OPPOSITE effect. Anecdotal evidence: John Smith, from a lower-income family, grows up a small rural community, 30 minutes outside a mill town with a population of 13k. He's around 13 years old, a computer nerd in the 90s and doesn't really fit in with the rest of the folks in his small school (grade K-8, Total pop 190 pupils). Alcohol has already introduced itself to John as it was common for kids of his age to consume stolen booze. His next door neighbour's son visits, he's a few years older than John and introduces John to marijuana. John begins smoking it occasionally at the early age of 13. Through his newfound interest in marijuana, he starts visiting alternative websites, listening to the Doors, reading books by writers like Hunter S. Thompson, and eventual Aldous Huxley. John continues smoking weed, increasing to daily, as he finds it opens his mind to being more creative and understanding the content better. At 15, John moves to a city 3 hours away that has a university. He looks into University courses and sneaks his way into the larger seminars after high school, on topics such as the existence of UFOs and quantum mechanics. He begins smoking pot with university students after seminars and has rich discussions with them. This leads to joining the local anime club and computer science club. Pot still remains the social lubricant for John and his social circle. Flash forward: John has moved to the other side of his large country, is an IT manager at a world-class organization as well as a private contractor, lives a comfortable middle-class life with a long term partner. He visits home every year and helps family with their business. He still consumes marijuana daily. True story.
• erikpukinskis 10y ago
  When someone become apathetic who doesn't smoke marijuana, do you notice those data points? This a fallacy I see all the time... when someone makes an unusual choice and something bad happens, people blame the decision. If someone makes the typical choice, people blame the circumstances. If someone has an open relationship and it breaks up, people blame the openness. When a monogamous relationship breaks up, no one ever blames monogamy. If someone breaks their leg while rock climbing, people think climbing is dangerous. If someone breaks their leg while painting, it was just an accident. When someone cooks some terrible vegan food, lots of people think "vegan food tastes bad". But if someone wrecks a piece of meat, no one ever thinks "meat tastes bad".
• msane 10y ago
  In a world where all drugs are legal, do you think there should still be prescription medications?
• forgetsusername 10y ago
  >lost 10+ years of their life to complete apathy to anything How do you attribute that to marijuana smoking? Correlation isn't causation; perhaps they would have been apathetic over that time period, regardless.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• ImTalking 10y ago
  Another anecdotal story about someone's sister's friend's aunt's barber who shot-up marijuana and now is in hospital with 6 tubes running out of every orifice. Let me tell you the truth... addiction is not about the drug. Addiction is about the environment. So if these students were apathetic, it was because they had deeper-rooted issues that they were attempting to mask via some drug. And cannabis is not physically addictive. Psychologically addictive as I pointed-out but not physically. Even coffee is more addicting.
  • hyperdunc 10y ago
    Are you saying they injected a marijuana solution? I've never heard of that before.
    • ImTalking 10y ago
      Sorry... just having a bit of fun.
    • psykpsyk 10y ago
      I know a guy who shot hashish. And no, I'm not joking. The guy is still alive, no hospital trip needed.
• InclinedPlane 10y ago
  Alcohol is far, far worse. Many more people get trapped by it, and it destroys careers, relationships, and lives. Sometimes directly, through DUI and other violent crimes committed while drunk. But we as a society recognized that the hazards of making alcohol illegal far outweighed those of having it legal. We need to learn to treat other drugs the same way.