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[luckygodzilla]

I wouldn't make such a claim. I'm a realistic pothead. I think part of the issue at hand is the high naturally attracts lazy people.

In personally know people who fit both descriptions.

So wait, just to set things straight you're refuting the claims made by these studies.

 

[Poofynamanama]

All the weed I've ever smell pretty much smelled like weed once it's smoke in the air.



I don't think it should be illegal but at the same time I'm not crazy about the common stance that it couldn't possibly have some negative side effects if you're not careful.

People act like it's harmless. Not the least harmful. There's a difference.

I was referring to the bud before it's smoked, but I agree with bud being stinky while being smoked. always try to carry some axe around with me and some like me gum, I hate smelling like weed

 

[Fenderputty]

So wait, just to set things straight you're refuting the claims made by these studies.

No, I'm not refuting it. I think the study is vague at best and should be taken with a grain of salt for both sides of the fence.

I've thought young people shouldn't smoke for a while myself . I think legalization efforts would help this. People think legalizing would cause more young people to smoke, but regulation would actually make it harder. It was always more difficult to get booze in HS for me than dope.

 

[q_q]

Well, don't give it to kids. Relegate it to the same category as booze, spanking, full contact football and military service, fine for consenting adults but not allowed for children.

I agree completely, but sadly I don't see those last three ever coming to fruition in the U.S.

 

[highrider]

Man, I really would love to meet all these pro-active, super-motivated and educated stoners that you all seem to be hanging out with.

They aren't obvious like a stereotypical stoner. They are in every profession and walk of life you can think of.

 

[The Lamonster]

THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!

 

[Hilbert]

I agree completely, but sadly I don't see those last three ever coming to fruition in the U.S.

Its already happening, in Washington and Colorado.

 

[-KRS-]

Huh.

*Lights joint*

 

[Mammoth Jones]

I agree, and it should be common sense that changing the way your mind works will change the way your brain works. If you're high all the time, your mind adapts. If you then quit smoking, guess what, it's not going to be the way it was before you were high all the time. You open 1 door, another door closes.

I find that beyond the research that supports marijuana helping physical ailments, it can be good psychologically for some people. And when you get into psychological territory, you have to realize how different it can affect one person to the next. A lot of close-minded people who think people should get the death sentence for smoking weed, for example, would probably better themselves by smoking some.

Edit: more to the point, I don't like the research that tries to prove weed bad because there are so many obvious signs that it is less bad than most drugs. It should be researched, sure, but it should be made legal first. The biggest harm marijuana does right now is put people in jail.

I generally agree with everything you said. But especially with the bolded.

I was referring to the bud before it's smoked, but I agree with bud being stinky while being smoked. always try to carry some axe around with me and some like me gum, I hate smelling like weed

Gotcha. I have a neighbor that lights up once in a while. What sucks is the room they light up in is directly below our bedroom so that smoke goes up and I mean it's THICK in the air of our bedroom and it pisses me off. But it's the same when they chain smoke ciggs so it's not just an issue of weed, lol.

At the end of the day I just open a window and let it slide. Not calling cops or anything crazy on someone minding their own and just enjoying an evening.

Had an issue w/ people selling in the parking lot and I did call the cops for that but this isn't anywhere near the same thing. And if weed was legal I'd imagine there'd be less street dealers.

 

[CornBurrito]

Meh, most people drink and are willing to accept the long term consequences of that. College kids and teens especially definitely drink far more than is healthy while the brain is still healthy. The study isn't that shocking, and if the results are enough to convince you to stop using marijuana then you should probably also stop consuming alcohol.

 

[Odrion]

You can say the exact same thing in reverse by your logic..

Schrödinger's high.

 

[Daingurse]

It's very hard to tell whether weed has affected my motivation/productiveness, I had motivation issues long before I messed with marijuana. It's made life more tolerable, but who knows what damage it may have caused. For me I think I was fucked already, just a matter of whether weed made things better, worse, or had negligible effects.

 

[Madness]

Well similar sort of studies are also looking at caffeine intake and how it affects developing brains as well. Particularly since kids as young as 13 are starting to drink coffee or energy drinks in addition to cola/pop.

Also, the problem with these studies is the wide variety of strains, amount etc. All Marijuana isn't equal.

I never did it but I never had any problem with others who did, beyond the idiots who would do it at night on hot summer days when I'd open my window and be basked in weed smell from a nearby alley.

 

[CaptainGyro]

You're high right now, aren't you? .

That was kinda the joke, yes. I already admitted I was screwing around

 

[Surface of Me]

Pot can make you complacent as hell.

 

[charsace]

Pretty hard to believe drug studies with all the FUD studies done in the past.

 

[Ghazi]

Do you drink alcohol ?

lolno

 

[CornBurrito]

Pot can make you complacent as hell.

As can bread and circuses apparently.

 

[Wolfe]

"In the early 1900's people believed that radioactivity was good for you. Radioactive items were sold including radium pendants for rheumatism, uranium blankets for arthritis, anti-aging radioactive cosmetics, radioactive water, and more.

Radioactive water became particularly popular when radiation was found in well-known hot springs that people thought had healing properties.

Thinking radiation was natural in water, radioactive drinks were marketed to the public. Eben Byers, a well known industrialist, claimed to drink three bottles a day. His death inspired the 1932 Wall Street Journal headline "The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off".

Things change all the time. Look at history, people are always wrong. Marijuana is still in the early phases of testing.

One big difference being that even though testing hasn't happened much, use itself has happened for thousands of years without detrimental effects. It's not as though pot is something new in the last few hundred centuries that we're still getting acquainted with, it's only in recent time that it's become "bad" and that was due to competing industries.

this has nothing to do with the inside reference I was making, but no I have no knowledge of pot or weed or green and would not ever recognize the smell of one strain or another because I do not do pot.

My apologies, it sounded like you meant that in a different way when I read it. As if it was a blanket statement.

 

[Funky Papa]

Hey look, the study is utter bullshit.

Lion Pachter, computational biologist: Does researching casual marijuana use cause brain abnormalities?

In reading the news yesterday I came across multiple reports claiming that even casually smoking marijuana can change your brain. I usually don’t pay much attention to such articles; I’ve never smoked a joint in my life. In fact, I’ve never even smoked a cigarette. So even though as a scientist I’ve been interested in cannabis from the molecular biology point of view, and as a citizen from a legal point of view, the issues have not been personal. However reading a USA Today article about the paper, I noticed that the principal investigator Hans Breiter was claiming to be a psychiatrist and mathematician. That is an unusual combination so I decided to take a closer look. I immediately found out the claim was a lie. In fact, the totality of math credentials of Hans Breiter consist of some logic/philosophy courses during a year abroad at St. Andrews while he was a pre-med student at Northwestern. Even being an undergraduate major in mathematics does not make one a mathematician, just as being an undergraduate major in biology does not makes one a doctor. Thus, with his outlandish claim, Hans Breiter had succeeded in personally offending me! So, I decided to take a look at his paper underlying the multiple news reports:

J.M. Gilman et al., Cannabis Use Is Quantitatively Associated with Nucleus Accumbens and Amygdala Abnormalities in Young Adult Recreational Users, Journal of Neuroscience (Neurobiology of Disease section), 34 (2014), 5529–5538.

This is quite possibly the worst paper I’ve read all year (as some of my previous blog posts show I am saying something with this statement). Here is a breakdown of some of the issues with the paper:

First of all, the study has a very small sample size, with only 20 “cases” (marijuana users), a fact that is important to keep in mind in what follows. The title uses the term “recreational users” to describe them, and in the press release accompanying the article Breiter says that “Some of these people only used marijuana to get high once or twice a week. People think a little recreational use shouldn’t cause a problem, if someone is doing OK with work or school. Our data directly says this is not the case.” In fact, the majority of users in the study were smoking more than 10 joints per week. There is even a person in the study smoking more than 30 joints per week (as disclosed above, I’m not an expert on this stuff but if 30 joints per week is “recreation” then it seems to me that person is having a lot of fun). More importantly, Breiter’s statement in the press release is a lie.

It goes on and on.