Given its potential harm as well as benefits in health, it’s worthwhile that people in general as well as proponents for liberalization, myself included, know more about all its effects. We as a population would be better served if there were a middle ground between it’s and evil gateway drug and it’s a cure to many ailments and should not be regulated.
Whereas tobacco is ridiculously deleterious and causes oxidative damage directly iirc.
I used to think it was all about smoke inhalation but it’s not that simple.
That being said, obviously I agree that we need to study the effects of cannabis as much as possible.
That's about all the science on MJ smoke (vs vapor etc) that I really need to know.
Are you seriously willing to make the argument that that (which is the common way to smoke it) is not harmful ?
I mean, shred a paper, burn it, watch the burning threads rise. Now imagine these things on top of alveoli in the lungs. Despite their tiny size those threads are hundreds to thousands of times bigger than those alveoli. Now think of what happens to these things, when held against ~215 degrees celcius threads.
Harmless. Clearly.
As one example, "tar" inhaled from cannabis is not correlated with long-term diseases like lung cancer, throat cancer, etc. However, the "tar" (a very vague term) from tobacco, wood smoke, etc is horrifically damaging to your body.
In fact, with the except of one non-invasive prostate cancer, marijuana seems to have a protective effect against lung cancer.
It still does cause respiratory health problems in heavy smokers, but not nearly as significant as tobacco smoking.
People trust doctors. People expect that this will not be a problem. People have sympathy for those who are addicted due to having, perhaps wrongly, trusted a doctor. That doctor is a paid professional, highly trained, and expected to provide for your health.
Consider a similar situation. A person gets a house built, moves into it, and it collapses. They might have hired a licensed general contractor, or they might have paid a random person they found sitting outside the hardware store. The difference matters. Similarly, one could hire a licensed pilot or somebody who took just a couple lessons. You may die either way, but one way gets much more sympathy.
There is also the matter of need. The doctor is supposedly supplying drugs for a purpose beyond "it would be fun". There is no respect for people who gamble with their health just to have fun. Somebody who just got a hip replacement is understood to need painkillers. Visible needs are obviously legitimate. If there is no visible problem, the assumption is that the usage is just for fun.
BTW, for these purposes, the start of the addiction is what counts. The current drug supplier matters much less than the initial drug supplier.
Correction: It was also to attack the anti-war(hippie)-left -- comes directly from a Nixon Aid: https://qz.com/645990/nixon-advisor-we-created-the-war-on-dr...
It's so sad that this was all created for political gain, and not because it actually would 'help' society.
tl;dr; according to the author's "Irresponsible Utilitarian Analysis," the statistically dominant factor in whether widely-legalized marijuana would be a net benefit or harm to society is its impact on driving. Since cars are, for most of us, the most dangerous thing in our lives, this probably makes a decent amount of sense.
