Snarky. Please take off the SD hat, and put on the common sense hat, just for a sec.
162,000,000 people smoke pot today.
Humans have been smoking this mind altering drug for thousands of years.
Do you really need a site to believe that at least one human being has died from pot in all that time?
And it’s not my ridiculously general statement. I hear that no one has ever died because of pot, from all my pot smoking friends. I’ve read it here today.
I’ll use my first personnel anecdote in my four to five year presence on the Straight dope. (I usually think about 50% of these anecdotes are B.S. and self serving, so YMMV) Close friend in high school, and four of us are swimming, and three of us, smoking pot. Pat, gets a high as any of us, and decides that he’ll jump off the waterfall and into the water, something I’m positive he wouldn’t have done otherwise. But off he goes, dives head first and after about three feet, hits a giant boulder and breaks his neck. About four months later, after lying in a hospital room paralyzed, he dies. Now I’m sure that someone could argue that he died from 1) a stroke, 2) the boulder 3) gravity or 4) say that he would have jumped anyway. But it seems clear to me that he died because of pot.
This is a strange world. People die from coconuts falling on their heads, choke on paperclips, stumble on a sidewalk, cut their tongue and die of infections. But no one has ever died due to pot.
I’ll go be productive now. Pot smokers or no, all, enjoy the weekend!
I’ll have to take your word for it. The two times I tried it, I didn’t have enough time to find out if it would impair my judgement or impulse control as it affected me physically too quickly.
Ok, say I concede your point… so what? Are you just arguing that we shouldn’t talk in absolutes because it’s not 100% certain in the way that 1+1=2? If that’s your point fine, but it’s seems like a very strange thing to get worked up about. If you’re trying to say that pot is more dangerous than people claim, ok, we have 1 documented case of pot killing somebody out of hundred of millions of people. Forgive me if I’m not terribly worried about smoking up.
Did you see this post Spifflog (oddly enough I read your name as splifflog at first)? I think we are looking for a much closer relationship between the consumption of a substance and the subsequent death to show causality. I’m sure many people have died eating food while driving because their attention wasn’t on the road, this does not say anything about food, it says something about driving (or diving as the case may be).
When going on a date with someone, I have to admit that the degree of possibility of that person defying all odds and dying on me due to toking is not something that has ever crossed my mind.
That being said, however, I can’t see myself enjoying a date where I am taken out to buy drugs (worrying about the possibility of being arrested would not be enjoyable), nor can I see myself enjoying a date while the other parties are smoking (regardless of what it is they are smoking), nor can I see myself enjoying a date in which the others get plastered (neither talking with drunkards nor wiping off vomit is particularly appealing to me).
I guess I must be one of those high-maintenance sort of fellows.
While I have no objections to smoking pot, one thought that does occassionaly flit across my brain is the drug trade. How did this drug get to me? Did anyone die in this process? Are any lives being hurt/harmed in the risky harvesting/transport of it? Thats the objection I can find, rather than all this Ohhh poor me…will it ruin My life?, the privileged person with the dispensable income to buy recreational drugs while someone could possibly be in danger just trying to make a living. Just wondering if its as bad as the coke trade.
Seemed to me it was something along the lines of, “I’m so much better than all those losers who smoke pot.” If that’s your message, it’s probably not the smartest move to illustrate that point by quoting a scene that primarily exists to set up the hypocrisy of a character mouthing a largely identical sentiment. The fat cat who looks down his nose at the befuddled ex-hippie for being a “bum” who doesn’t have a real job is revealed to be a lazy, shiftless fraud with no work skills, who lives on a trust fund set up by his dead wife while pilfering the coffers of a children’s charity on the side. I mean, if that’s the sort of association you wanted people to bring away from your post, I guess that’s cool, but it seems to work against the message you’re trying to convey.