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I had some room-mates that were abusing weed often, which made reconsider my previous support for legalization. Or at least it should be very heavily regulated
by dimitar 14y ago
I had some room-mates that were abusing weed often, which made reconsider my previous support for legalization. Or at least it should be very heavily regulated if legalized.
I learned the following from observation and having frank conversations with them (before that I expected recreational marijuana use to be like alcohol use):
* Weed is addictive, probably on the level of cigarettes. Sure plenty of people have tried tobacco and don't have the habit, but for people who develop it may be pretty hard to quit.
* People high on weed seem more pleasant and predictable than drunk people.
* Withdrawal seems to be unpleasant. Paranoia and restlessness.
* Decreasing returns - its harder to get high after a while, making you smoke more.
* They all admitted they feel damaged from continuous use - their thinking ability diminished after a few years and the habit costs them plenty of money. One girl smoked every day, even though she has reduced her use significantly and doesn't get high any more.
I really want a balanced approach to this. While not like heroin or cocaine, cannabis is definitely a drug. While banning its use is counterproductive, legalization shouldn't be done in a way encouraging use or minimizing the real dangers. People should be in the least informed before making a responsible choice. Maybe putting warning labels, banning use in public and banning advertisements in a good complement to a legalization.
- tptacek 14y agoI don't think weed is benign, and I think more people smoking more often is a net negative for society, but as everyone on this message board is likely to tell you with varying degrees of civility, you can say the exact same things about alcohol. Alcohol is definitely a drug.
- Alex3917 14y agoEven if weed were bad for you, that doesn't mean that increased usage would be inherently bad for society.
- stephengillie 14y agoWhere is the net negative? In reduced productivity -- because people are high, they will be less motivated to make websites, attend classes, and contribute to open source projects?
- tptacek 14y agoPotentiation of latent mental illness.
- stephengillie 14y agoDo you believe latent mental illness exists in that large of a percentage of the population? I've seen this happen to a few people, but I don't believe it's a large risk.
- tptacek 14y agoYes, I believe mental illness is underdiagnosed, and that illness (or "predisposition" to illness) that is asymptomatic normally can be dangerously symptomatic in the presence of cannabis. Like you, I have firsthand experience with friends who have had this problem. I also know enough people who have had this experience with their friends to be fairly confident that this is a common problem.
- stephengillie 14y agoSo psychiatrists should use marijuana as a means to exacerbate mental illness, so these illnesses can be more quickly identified, and people can receive the correct treatment more quickly? I don't believe mental illness in the general population to be underdiagnosed, rather the opposite. I believe most people are narcissistic enough that treatment has an effect somewhere between the Hawthorne Effect and Munchhausen Syndrome. Attention and approval are highly addictive, more than caffeine, sometimes more than even heroin -- look at how well interventions work. I believe most psychology and psychiatry academics studied those fields to understand their personal problems, which leads people in those fields to hold a perception bias about the rest of the people on the planet.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]