Marijuana smoking: no different than smoking tobacco and drinking combined?

In My Humble Opinion
21

No, not like chocolate.

I had three friends who smoked pot in high school at least six times a day. They are in their 40s now, and still have to smoke six times a day to get through their day. They say that without it, they become tense and jittery (though one of those guys says the opposite, that it “wakes him up”).

These three men found it very difficult/impossible to give up marijuana. One cut back, after his wife had a baby and after a frank conversation with his doctor, but he still smokes occasionally (perhaps several times a week instead of per day).

That sounds like addiction to me, but again, I don’t know if it’s psychological or physical.

22

Cannabis is not physically addictive. You’lll never have physical side-effects from ending cannabis use. It can be physiological or psychologically addictive, similar to that of heavy coffee drinkers to caffeine.

Smoked cannabis presents many of the same dangers as smoking cigarettes, e.g. carbon monoxide, tar, etc,. But it doesn’t have to be smoked, it can be eaten in several forms, thus removing the smoking risks.

The main difference between the 3 is that one is illegal. The fact that it is the safest of the three substances seems not to matter.

23

There is little evidence to show that THC causes brain damage. There was a study done at Tulane in 1974 that showed “disrupted brain wave patterns” in rhesus monkeys, but the findings have been dismissed by other independently conducted studies. The Tulane study was also part of a larger study conducted by over 50 research centers and medical schools using marijuana supplied by the U.S. government, no other group reported brain damage as found at Tulane.

24

I have a pharmacology book somewhere that has various drugs listed in order of addictiveness.
From most to least it goes something like this:
Caffeine
Nicotine
Crack Cocaine
Heroin
Cocaine
Alcohol
THC
LSD

Most addictive does not necessarily equal most harmful. 1 in 10 users of cannabis will develop an addiction…but’s it’s going to be “easier” to overcome than say heroin addiction.

Look back to the days when cannabis was LEGAL and see why it was criminalised. You’re talking about laws based on a lot of faulty information…the kind of thing which gave us the term “dope fiend”.

There’s also the economic side of things, you can tax alcohol and tobacco, and prosecute bootleggers. Production of cigarettes and drinkable alcohol requires special equipment, time and money. It’s going to be very difficult to tax and control cannabis if everyone could easily grow a plant at home with access only to light, water, soil and some plant food!

I’ve seen enough alcoholic chain-smokers with severe psychiatric problems to tell you that linking cannabis use to pychosis is still not going to make it look worse than alcohol and tobacco. About 90% of psychiatric in-patients smoke cigarettes, it’s an effect of the mental ilness, rather than a cause, but it’s still a statistic to think about.

25

This mirrors my experience exactly. When I was in my twenties, I never understood why anyone would want to drink beer or wine. Marijuana was very pleasant. Now that I’m older, I find that pot makes me tongue-tied and anxious in a way that it didn’t used to-- and a couple of drinks is warm and pleasant in a way that I never noticed as a youth.

I don’t think the substances have changed, I think it’s personal. Hell, maybe when I’m a geriatric I’ll put away the wineskin and finally “get” the appeal of opiates. :smiley:

26

Wow, that’s a very interesting list!

What should be noted is the other side of that equation with the most destructive of the drugs. Surely, one can’t put a number on how much social/mental/physical damage alcohol does when one becomes addicted vs. Caffeine but the outcome is clear. A caffeine addict that needs his fix only has a headache and maybe moody which is easly solved by a drug that has relatively small effects compared to alcohol. You can be a functional addict of caffeine. Hell, a lot of people are. The extreme is like being addicted to affrin. sure you need it to breathe through your nose, but that’s about it. But then you have to account other factors too! THC is less likely to cause problems from coming down that say, Alcohol which has hangovers. Also THC is less likely to cause violence, etc.
On the other side, Heroin, less addictive than Caffeine and Nicotine has much worse side effects from coming down. It makes you feel like you’d do anything to get another dose. I don’t know but from what I read its pretty much true. It isn’t the addictiveness of herion ,but the strength of the actual feelings you get when you are addicted. Nicotine withdrawal is uncomfortable but it is very easy to get more cigarettes. If you had to steal and kill people to get cigarettes it would be a lot easier to quit, but herion addiction makes people do these things. Maybe its less addicting, but the feeling you get when you are addicted is that you really have to have it at all costs. I quit smoking and I still have urges to smoke ocassionally, but I also know that if I do smoke it won’t be pleasurable like when I was addicted, but really nasty. This is the same way with heroin addicts except when they haven’t dosed for a long time they overdose with a previous normal dose, but if I smoke a cigarette, I will just get a little nauseous.

Anyway, this is the reason why draconian drug policies are no good. THC is one of the least addictive an has almost no overdoses, or other externalities. But every drug is a gamble that must be accounted for.

In all, its important to remember to total positive and negative side effects of a given drug.

27

I know at least 8 people that are 35 to upper 40’s, one that is about 60 years old and they have smoked pot several times a day, every day (with a few exceptions) since junior high school.

They all have said that they feel like they should take a break for a while. The only time they have indeed taken a break is for a couple of months before a new life insurance health check up, for a week on vacation where it just did not feel safe to travel with it, and one that got caught and had to go to get tested almost two times per week for six months. Two just stopped for 13 months just to do it.

They all report the same experience: Not easy to sleep for a few days, dreams get more vivid after about a week, not much appetite. Everything is so slight that if one were not trying to detect any change, it might not even have been noticed.

The problem is that causes the most trouble is NOTHING! That’s right, they all got pissed off because the clouds did not part, car keys would still occasionally get misplaced, an item forgotten at the grocery store - of course 4 of them were almost straight A students, and 4 were straight A’s in graduate school too! - So much for the brain damage bit - If these guys were awake, they were high - except when in class (most of the time) or while studing/writting papers.

It seems that the pot smoke has much more tar, but because it is not consumed in nearly the quantity of cigarettes, and it is often filtered through water, a heavy daily smoker is probably getting the equivalence of just a few cigarettes per day, just empty the tobacco out of a pack of cigarettes into a bag, it would be a fat bag.

One of those friends has an article from some professional medical publication about medical imaging that revisited the “this is your brain on drugs” experiment of the 70’s, using PET. They noticed changes in blood flow but could not find any harm and the report sounded so good for pot that they had to include a comment that said this does not mean we can give pot a clean bill of health.

Alcohol is far more toxic that THC. It has been said that there has never been a death from THC overdose. Just watch one drinking all night and one that has been smoking all night - alcohol changes a person way more than pot ever will. --Shoot there is a commercial on TV right now about the tens of thousands of deaths from “medicine” - legal stuff.