And I can tell you about perhaps dozens of people I’ve known for whom that’s not true.
Everyone I know who smokes pot is a friggin loser. I don’t know whether pot smoking causes loserness, or whether losers are naturally drawn towards marijuana use. That’s not scientific evidence or anything, just my personal experience.
I’ve tried pot twice. Didn’t do much for me. I like alcohol a lot better.
Everyone I know who drinks more than socially is a violent redneck. I don’t know whether drinking causes them to be violent rednecks, or whether violent rednecks are naturally drawn towards alcohol.
Violent rednecks are bad, I suppose worse than lazy potheads.
As was stated earlier, there is a connection between habitual marijuana use and short term memory loss. Traces of it stay in your system for a couple months, so you might want to avoid it before applying for any job that will drug test you.
Aging over a long period of time will make you forgetful and paranoid.
I can’t remember who said that, but I think he’s after me.
scotth said:
Really? Does “almost any other substance” include cocaine and the amphetamines?
So because pot doesn’t get you high it’s bad, but since alcohol does, it’s good. I like the chain of thought.
Cheers 
Nobody’s mentioned this yet: cost. It varies depending on where you are, but even a moderate habit will set you back hundreds of dollars a month. I know at least one person who spends more on weed a month than their mortgage.
You can grow your own, of course, but that increases your legal risks.
Beer and tobacco aren’t cheap either. Think of the money that could be better spent elsewhere.
From my experience, I think of weed as on the level of caffeine in terms of seriousness as a drug, but I’d only partake of it if the price was close to a six-pack of Cokes.
Legalization solves this problem, of course. It’d be nice to go to the corner store and buy some like a carton of cigarettes.
I suspect that your problem with pot-smokers is that they tend to get kinda dumb, and if you’re not in the right frame of mind (or you’re not high yourself) they can be a little annoying. I can completely respect that frame of mind.
I would also speculate that you have never tried it yourself. This is fine. If you don’t want to try it, don’t. And certainly, tell your friend that you will lose respect for her if she becomes a pothead. After that, it’s kind of up to her.
But whatever you do, do NOT stop being her friend. Going off to college is a big, big step in someone’s life. She’s going to need you.
A moderate habit… hundreds of dollars a month? An eighth will last 2-3 weeks if you use it in moderation. That’s $60-$100 a month, about the price of a cell phone.
If you were to reach the same level of intoxication with alcohol, you’d probably go through a case of beer per week, which is still about $60 a month.
Now, a heavy habit can cost hundreds of dollars, sure. I knew someone who bought a 20-sack every night, but he was stoned every waking hour. Bong rips for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with a six-footer for dessert. That’s just crazy.
Depends on the pattern of use, but it can be worse than those as well.
Heavy alcohol use can nearly completely replace calories from other sources. On the other hand, stimulants can be really bad pretty quick if a minimum amount of sleep and food isn’t maintained.
Can y’all tell this to my mother? She’s from the same thinking as the OP - no reason to hate pot, she just does cause she was trained to. Well, the other day she asked me if I had ever tried it, and she started crying and gave me the lecture about how I’m a failure, she thought I was smarter, etc…
I should mention that I have a full scholarship at college (just got a 3.868 last semester), I’m graduating at least a semester early, I don’t drink, and I always come home on vacations and help with the house and cook every night. What a failure! Guess the pot’s making me stupid and lazy huh?
Pure gold.
The OP said: “I think that it is bulls*** because she gets drunk all the time. Anyway, I have told her hundreds of times about my displeasure about her getting drunk…”
This leads me to surmise that the person in question may have a problem with getting high a little too often. If so, neither alcohol or grass is a good thing for them.
Alcohol can lead a heavy user to alcoholism, and heavy use of pot can make the user into the stereotypical pot head or lead to abuse of other more dangerous drugs.
Having said that, I would like to add this:
When you buy your alcohol, you know what you’re getting and what to expect in terms of both the results and the economics of the transaction. With pot the way it is presently, you don’t. I would not drink if all alcohol came in generic containers that were unlabeled except for the words “alcoholic beverage”.
I gather from what Mr 2001 says that pot is quite expensive nowadays. Legalities aside, alcohol still seems a better deal from a cost-benefit standpoint.
FWIW, the Op’er might remind their friend that using alcohol or other “drugs” somewhat to excess can have an affect on your sex life: you may end up having sex when you otherwise wouldn’t, with peple you other wouldn’t . This isn’t always a good thing.
33 messages in and I can’t believe I’m the first person to say this:
Smoking weed makes you smell like shit.
It’s the same with cigarettes, but worse; if you smoke, you smell like dog turds. People who smoke pot smell like dogshit in hockey bags. I don’t mean the smell of pot, which is bad enough, but the stale, sweaty odor of a pot smoker. Some smell worse than others, but the pungent, disgusting, rank stench of the pothead isn’t any fun for those of us who would prefer not to smell like a forgotten laundry hamper. Of course, the people who SMOKE pot don’t notice this, just as cigarette smokers don’t realize they always smell like dirty feet. (Yes, you do.)
So if you want to convince your your female friend not to smoke, try telling her, “you know, it won’t hurt your health, but you’ll smell just like a sewer, so why not save your money and roll around in a pig sty instead?” It would work on me.
The issue is nothing to do with what the drug may or may not do (none of which is provable anyway, since there is no available unbiased research). It is a social issue, not a chemical one.
You feel unhappy about your friend smoking weed because of the company she keeps. Thats because none of our actions are independent - they all interact. While weed is illegal, smoking it is as much about cocking a snoot to authority as getting a high. So your friend is hanging about with anti-authority types. I suspect you are a more conservative type, and unhappy with this. That’s quite reasonable and understandable.
If weed was your societies drug of choice, and smoked typically by the establishment (a bit like cigars?) you might be less upset. And all the rebellious teenagers would be passing Havanas around.
Tell her her parents did it, and thought they were cool. That oughta stop her.
I graduated High School in 1990. Moved away shortly therafter and got transferred back to my home town in 98. I have since met 4 people I used to go to school with. EACH of them lived at home with their parents (Remember, these people are in their late 20s) and 3 of them were unemployed. This is in a city with virtually a 0 jobless rate. I remembered from HS that each of them was a serious pothead.
Coincidence? Ehh. Probably.
Whew, guess I’m a square, but I didn’t expect so many, “Hey Llardball. pot is really great/not really bad and you should lighten up!” responses.
What I told my little sister and what I will tell my kids someday is this: some drugs are inherently very bad for you (cocaine, crack, X, nicotine, etc.) and others not as much (booze, pot). There’s nothing inherently evil about drugs, nor the people who use them. But regardless of the relative potential physical harm of any substance, the fact remains that it’s not 100% good for you to ingest any of them, especially for purely recreational use. (Medical marijuana strikes me as legitimate; recreational use does not.) Modern living has enough peril from carcinogens and pollutants, and there is insufficient benefit from recreational use of drugs to justify the additional burden placed on your body.
That, and my mother is a very burned-out pothead who has rather severe memory loss as a result of her habit. Damned if me or anyone I love will even run the risk of becoming like her just to “have some fun.” :mad:
I hate to break it to y’all, but not everyone who smokes becomes a pothead loser. My memory is as good as ever. I’ve gotten MUCH better grades (from a 2.8-3.8 in two semester) since I started smoking. My manic depression has only hit me once rather than 4 times as it normally would have in this amount of time. Also, it’s NOT that expensive! An ounce can last most normal people an entire semester - that’s like $70 for 4 months. There’s a difference between drug use, and drug abuse.
While I appreciate that some people missuse stuff (some of my friends in high school have, but a small minority), don’t act like everyone who ever touches pot will become a lazy loser with no brain, no memory, no money, and no future. That’s just unfair. That’s like saying “Since we have so many fat people in this country, no one should eat at fast food places. If you eat at them, you’ll become fat - I’ve seen it happen before!” That’s not a very good argument.