8 ms·

Physically addictive is one thing, but it's a mood altering substance, and if you tell me you don't know people who overuse it because of that, I'm gonna call y

Physically addictive is one thing, but it's a mood altering substance, and if you tell me you don't know people who overuse it because of that, I'm gonna call you a liar. All of this "Weed isn't physically addictive" stuff is biochemically accurate and yet everyone who's been around enough smokers knows someone who smokes entirely too much for their own good and behaves like an addict to any other substance would. This is one of the areas where the legalization movement's going to hang itself - if we can't have a serious conversation about the risks involved and the real actual effects it has on some people, we're going to cause a lot of harm both to the movement and to the people we keep telling this is harmless who wind up learning we're lying. Yes, it's not physically addictive; yes, overuse is a symptom of other mental health issues, but this country's got a mental health crisis with no effective treatment system and we're advocating for the widespread availability of a powerful psychoactive substance. We're going to get people hurt if we don't start acting like grownups. And, to head off the obvious rebuttal: Yes, Alcohol is worse. That doesn't mean staying high all day is healthy behavior.

quesera 2y ago
I don't care about comparing cannabis to alcohol. Yes the world would be a better place if all alcohol users switched to cannabis, but that's not my area of interest. I don't care about cannabis either. I'm neither a user nor an advocate. I do care a lot about the right of competent adults to make their own choices about private matters. And when I was a teenager and discovered the immense systemic dishonesty around several big bad drugs and the war thereon, I learned a lot about systems and means of control. This is my only interest in the matter here, but consequently I find myself defending drugs and drug users, sometimes. Your points are reasonable. But they miss the fact that anything pleasurable can be psychologically addictive. Cannabis is not special. It should not be treated specially. That said, cannabis is treated specially, because of its legacy of dishonest representation by bad or ignorant people. So I take your point that it's important to acknowledge the "risk" of cannabis being the indulgence of choice for a segment of the population who find pleasure in it, to excess and to the detriment of other parts of their lives. See also: video games, sex, television, internet, wikipedia, partying, procrastination, etc. If we can treat cannabis as one of many possible diversions from a person's real priorities in life, I'm 100% in support. If we demonize it and pretend that it's different in some way, we are giving it magic powers that can never be properly treated, nor treated properly.
- roughly 2y ago
  No, Cannabis is not the same as video games, sex, television, or the internet. It’s a highly potent psychoactive and bioactive substance. Ignoring that isn’t being more “fair” or “honest.”
  - quesera 2y ago
    > It’s a highly potent psychoactive and bioactive substance. I'm not ignoring that, I'm just asking the question of why it's differentiating for this discussion. Neither "psychoactive" nor "bioactive" are inherently bad. We spend billions of dollars creating substances for those exact effects. You'll have to make the argument that cannabis causes psychological or physiological harm. The evidence for that argument is nonexistent, for the vast majority of peoples' usage patterns. And in those usage patterns, both the psychoactivity and bioactivity are considered, by those who enjoy them, to be net beneficial. You may disagree, and you are invited to make your own decision, for your self. By the time you get to the levels of usage where harm is objectively measurable, you're working with people who have lost control of their self-regulation mechanisms for an extended period of time. This can be due to an underlying issue, chronic or acute, that should be addressed. That's when the comparison to video games, sex, and HN become relevant. You can lose jobs and relationships and economic security due to a psychological overdependence on any of the above. This is not a particularly controversial or interesting fact, and there are support mechanisms (therapy, drugs, etc) for them. I'm arguing that, in this way, cannabis is not different.

quesera 2y ago

I don't care about comparing cannabis to alcohol. Yes the world would be a better place if all alcohol users switched to cannabis, but that's not my area of interest. I don't care about cannabis either. I'm neither a user nor an advocate. I do care a lot about the right of competent adults to make their own choices about private matters. And when I was a teenager and discovered the immense systemic dishonesty around several big bad drugs and the war thereon, I learned a lot about systems and means of control. This is my only interest in the matter here, but consequently I find myself defending drugs and drug users, sometimes. Your points are reasonable. But they miss the fact that anything pleasurable can be psychologically addictive. Cannabis is not special. It should not be treated specially. That said, cannabis is treated specially, because of its legacy of dishonest representation by bad or ignorant people. So I take your point that it's important to acknowledge the "risk" of cannabis being the indulgence of choice for a segment of the population who find pleasure in it, to excess and to the detriment of other parts of their lives. See also: video games, sex, television, internet, wikipedia, partying, procrastination, etc. If we can treat cannabis as one of many possible diversions from a person's real priorities in life, I'm 100% in support. If we demonize it and pretend that it's different in some way, we are giving it magic powers that can never be properly treated, nor treated properly.

roughly 2y ago
No, Cannabis is not the same as video games, sex, television, or the internet. It’s a highly potent psychoactive and bioactive substance. Ignoring that isn’t being more “fair” or “honest.”
- quesera 2y ago
  > It’s a highly potent psychoactive and bioactive substance. I'm not ignoring that, I'm just asking the question of why it's differentiating for this discussion. Neither "psychoactive" nor "bioactive" are inherently bad. We spend billions of dollars creating substances for those exact effects. You'll have to make the argument that cannabis causes psychological or physiological harm. The evidence for that argument is nonexistent, for the vast majority of peoples' usage patterns. And in those usage patterns, both the psychoactivity and bioactivity are considered, by those who enjoy them, to be net beneficial. You may disagree, and you are invited to make your own decision, for your self. By the time you get to the levels of usage where harm is objectively measurable, you're working with people who have lost control of their self-regulation mechanisms for an extended period of time. This can be due to an underlying issue, chronic or acute, that should be addressed. That's when the comparison to video games, sex, and HN become relevant. You can lose jobs and relationships and economic security due to a psychological overdependence on any of the above. This is not a particularly controversial or interesting fact, and there are support mechanisms (therapy, drugs, etc) for them. I'm arguing that, in this way, cannabis is not different.