Not to hijack, but I’d like to be clear. You are 100% certain that not one person in world history has ever gotten lung cancer from pot, got stoned and crashed a car and died, or had any chemical reaction to pot and died?
No. I said “medical history.” As in a medically documented case of death directly caused by smoking pot. You find one, and we’ll talk.
There is no documented case for anyone ever dying from a marijuana overdose or from adverse physiogical reactions to the pot itself. Whether it’s caused anyone to die from lung cancer would be difficult to prove and he carcinogenic effects are inconclusive. Whether it’s caused anybody to have a car accident? I don’t know. Do you have a cite that it has. The research on marijuana and driving suggests that people actually drive more cautiously when they’re stoned and that marijuana does not affect reflexes or judgement the way alcohol does. My own ancedotal, first hand “research” into baked driving would bear that out.
Your statement may be technically correct, I don’t know so I’ll take your word on it. With an estimated 162 million pot users today, and with it being used for thousands of years, you’d think at least *one * person would have died medically from it. But perhaps it’s the only totally harmless substance on the planet.
But my issue with that statement is that it’s such a red herring. Because by some comparison or standard pot is more healthy that some other drug, it’s therefore good. I hear how millions die of lung cancer from cigarettes, but zero from pot. As if cigarettes are a great benchmark for what is good and healthy in the world. Same thing for alcohol. The argument that drunks kill thousands on the roadways, and all pot heads do is sit at home, watch mystery science theatre and eat pizza. But people do die because of pot, lives are ruined or hurt from pot. It’s not an either or proposition. No one is going to put a gun to someone’s head and say either get drunk or get stoned. We can opt out of both.
Cite?
I don’t think anyone here is suggesting that someone must smoke pot. So, what’s your point again?
We are way off topic here, and it’s such an ancillary portion of the argument that it’s not worth much debate. But you’re a pretty sharp guy. Do you really need a cite to believe that just one person - one - in the last 90 years has gotten stoned and caused a fatal trafic accident?
Someone taking too much cough medicine, or not getting enough sleep can cause an accident too. But we don’t lock people up for doing those things (at least when they are not driving or operating heavy machinery).
Barring actual allergies (and it’s hardly the pot’s “fault” your immune system is whacky) or minor burns from a hot metal bowl, I think it’s entirely accurate.
Is dill worthy of becoming a controlled substance capable of causing great harm with no redeeming value because some serf in 400 CE was allergic to it on his potatoes? Show me that more people have died as a direct result of marijuana consumption than dillweed. Gotta watch out for that veggie dip, you know.
I don’t know. I wouldn’t think it’s been very many, if any. I think driving while dead tired is probably more dangerous than driving on pot. I’ve done both and the first is harder.
I didn’t say that we should lock them up. I’m not even sure if I think pot should be illegal.
But when I go home once a year, and go hiking with some of my high school buds and we sit around, with them getting high, the one defense I hear from them over and over, year after year is that “pot hasn’t ever killed anyone, never.” My point is that it’s a red herring, and that it just isn’t true.
So…um…prove it. You keep on asserting this but you haven’t proved it yet, and two people who do know they’re talking about have contradicted you.
Well, I’m sure a bale of marijuana has fallen on somebody’s head…
I’ll let it go. Clearly not one person ever, in the last 2,000+ years has died due to pot use.
You’re trying to use a ridiculously general and unfalsifiable definition of “died from.” People die from shovelling snow, does that mean snow shovels kill? 200 people die every year directly from eating peanuts. That makes your average PB&J sammy more dangerous than the average blunt.
Does Tom Crosslin count? I’m sure it’s safe to say that he’d not have been shot by an FBI sharpshooter if he’d not been actively running a marijuana farm.
Somebody, sometime, somewhere has died from breathing regular old air. I don’t care if I have zero evidence to back me up, don’t you think that out of the billions of people that have ever breathed, at least a couple have died from it?
On this board, you can’t really make assertions without anything to back it up and expect to get away with it.
I would almost certainly have an accident if I drove after pot. It screws up my muscle control. (which is why I only did it a couple times)
Next time you think of it, you might want to keep in mind that the character speaking the line is a bigger bum than the stoner to whom it’s addressed.
But that’s just it, you see. You were aware of your impairment and acted accordingly; pot doesn’t suppress your impulse control nor totally screw up your judgment the way alcohol does.