Is Smoking Marijuana That Big of a Deal?
Question by The Guy With The Username: Is smoking marijuana that big of a deal?
I’m not planning on smoking it but I wanna know why it’s made into such a big deal.
Best answer:
Answer by Okkikunare.
1. It is well documented, thanks to a lot of studies done in nations that don’t have such a strange view of weed, that marijuana use by adolescents results in alterations in brain development. It retards the development of emotional coping mechanisms even with moderate use and with heavy use is documented to cause long term memory and learning issues. The problem is that when KIDS whose brains haven’t finished developing use weed and any number of other perception altering drugs/medications it results in an alteration of the development of the brain. Marijuana isn’t “Bad” but before around the age of 18/19 it is harmful to a specific group of people. Moderate use by ADULTS is less harmful than alcohol but for Adolescents, it is bad.
2. Marijuana is addictive to approximately 9% of people that have the preexisting series of genetic and brain structure that results in addiction. It’s estimated that 30% of humanity has the genetic predisposition for addiction. 9% of 30% doesn’t sound like much but that still means millions of humans have the potential to get addicted to weed. In those people, the addiction is extremely similar to opiate addiction and is just as profound and hard to treat. Some addiction medicine specialists report that 1 in 5 of the people they treat for addiction come in SPECIFICALLY for Marijuana Addiction.
Marijuana does have withdrawal… For the first 6 months of marijuana abstinence the person will have sleep disturbances, depression/anxiety, and even suicidality that is very random and not associated with the depression. There are documented suicides as a result of people not forming a support network for their addiction/withdrawal.
3. Our country is so fu*ked up that there is a massively distorted view of weed. One end of the spectrum says that weed is 100% harmless… It’s like taking a multivitamin and makes the world like the small world ride at disney land. These people are morons.
The other side says that marijuana drives people to psychosis, is more addictive than crack, and leads all people that use it to giving handy-j’s in dark alleys for money to support their eventual heroin addiction. These people are morons.
Marijuana is a perception altering drug. Drugs that aren’t automatically poisonous are neither “Good” nor “Bad” but what happens when individuals use them makes them good or bad for THAT PERSON.
4. Long term use of marijuana oftentimes results in problems. Specifically, it goes from being fun and happy to not working as well, so the user uses more, which leads to depression or anxiety, so they smoke more, which makes the symptoms worse, and eventually switch to another drug or booze which leads to bigger problems… Speed and Booze are the two other drugs that work similarly on the brains of these people and that’s what they usually turn to. Each person is different and some people get panic attacks after the first few tries while in others, it takes 30 years of use before this happens… But the problems always happen eventually.
I AM NOT ANTI-MARIJUANA. I believe it needs to be decriminalized so we can put the money saved towards better uses like stopping pedophiles and providing mental health treatment to people in prison.
I’m one of the people that used marijuana about 2x a week for many years then one day I tried it and *BAM* Panic Attack. I figured it was just me being in a bad mood so I didn’t think about it again until the next time I tried to smoke and *BAM* another panic attack. That happened when I was 26 years old, I haven’t been able to use for just about 5 years because it now causes problems.
The only issues I have with weed is when people use it ALL THE TIME, and it impacts their ability to maintain healthy relationships, employment, etc. Otherwise, it’s no different than having a few beers to relax at the end of a hard week.
Google the following videos:
1. History Channel “Hooked: Illegal Drugs & How They Got That Way”
2. BBC Horizon “Cannabis: The Evil Weed?”
3. BBC “Should I Smoke Dope?”
Answer by Mystie
People have a lot of different opinions about this subject.
Me personally, I hate it. But the bottom line is that marijuana is illegal.