There’s no easy answer to the question, but it’s neither healthy nor unhealthy. Like all other drugs, it has both healthy and unhealthy properties. Also, it’s more about the individual who consumes it than anything else. For some people, it can have positive health effects. For some people, the effects are negative. For others, there are both positive and negative effects.
If you have ever worked with a psychiatrist and they have prescribed you medication for a condition over an extended period of time, you should know it can take a long time to determine the the proper medication and quantity needed to minimize or eliminate the symptoms you need treated while simultaneously minimizing or eliminating any negative side effects the medication may cause. In this regard, prescription medications, like cannabis, are neither conclusively “healthy” or “unhealthy.” Rather, it’s about the individual consuming the cannabis, the potency of what they consume, how often they consume it, etc.
I think we have to take the cultural context into consideration when looking at what options are available. The scenario where “big pharma” is running the rescreational drug business does not appeal to me. Of course I think it is better than the current situation, but I would prefer if we could remove the profitability in trading harmful substances. For me it seems that a more “optimal” solution would be to have a government monopoly. This probably seems far fetched to some, but in Sweden the view on what should be private and what should be publically financed differs a bit. For example only a state owned and controlled company is allowed to sell alcohol, and we only recentgly privatized pharmacies and drug stores.
That of course assumes we are pursuing a “harm reduction” strategy, rather than a strategy that tries to optimize according to the overall well being of society. For example, we want people to eat healthy food, so we try to encourage trading in that sector. For example by subsidising better farming methods (let’s not discuss the merits, I only state that it happen), having information campaigns etc etc. My question is what are the best scenarios we have to chose from and what do we expect the results to be?
One scenario we could choose would be that we cease to use pot laws as a tool of racial oppression, even if we don’t exactly encourage anyone to smoke pot, basically by just legalizing it. Let yer mom cry about it, too bad, we don’t vote people into office to use the law as a mothering tool.
I’m sorry that I don’t have any statistics at my fingertips right now, but if you look into it (or just give me a day or two to dig it up- I’m hoping someone else will beat me to it though) you’ll see that the legal issue with pot doesn’t appear to be pot at all- it mostly seems to be a way to damage the lives of young black people by slapping them with drug charges/jail time for something that really doesn’t matter.
It is really quite shameful and disgusting. Smoking pot may not be advisable, but pot laws can easily be characterized as evil rather than just stupid policy based on misinformation. The bottom line is that pot is very popular, but it is mostly black people who have to face the legal consequences. Truly, shame on Uncle Sam.
I guess that depends on how you define cure? I would be willing to go so far as to say that it helps cure cancer, but would not accept “it cures cancer” without a context. How do you make the distinction between “doing”
I guess that depends on how you define cure? I would be willing to go so far as to say that it helps cure cancer, but would not accept “it cures cancer” without a context. How you make the distinction between doing and being part of causing something to happen decides it for me.
For example I would not want to allow a commercial saying ”CANNABIS CURES CANCER” but if someone in a discussion said ”cannabis can cure cancer” in a specific context I may not disagree.
However, isn’t the more interesting question whether it prevents cancer, since most people don’t suffer from it yet? I’d say that if it lowers the risk of cancer in any measurable way it would be of massive importance at least to me (my wife is very worried about cancer).
Totally anecdotal, but when I was an undergrad, I had a friend who had served in the Peace Corps (Nepal). He told me that the people grew marijuana for the seeds (they extracted the oil, which was used for cooking food).
He said everybody there was very happy:D
There are people who could become psychologically dependent on coffee.
There are people who could become severely mentally ill by regular drinking of coffee, or of fruit juice, or of nothing at all.
Yes there are people who shouldn’t touch it, just as they shouldn’t touch alcohol or anything else.
But for the general run of people it isn’t going to do any harm and may even do some good .
Personally I don’t think that using cannabis every single day is healthy, and I definitely don’t think that people should drive under the influence.
And using cannabis the smoking way is definitely not good for the lungs.
(Though I smoke it myself)
But I think that a lot of the violence, mental health problems, unhappiness and and physical health problems caused by legally available alcohol would at the very least be significantly diminished if, legally available cannabis was an option for the general public.
Also it would save a hell of a lot of police time which could be used against life diminishing crimes.
I think that at the moment, we’re in the same situation as Prohibition was with drink.
There are a small number of people strongly against it, a large number who are pro legal cannabis, and a probably even larger number who don’t use it themselves but don’t see it as the spawn of Satan, and don’t care if other people use it themselves.
But that’s just my opinion gained from people I live amongst generally.
Main stream media is now beginning to support marijuana:
If you water it regularly and use a good fertiliser, it’ll positively flourish!