Clearing things up about Canabis (Weed)

[Sordid Saint]

First off, I want to get out my "disclaimers"... I'm not promoting Marijuana in any way, but it's been very annoying lately hearing people talk about all of the false things that Marijuana does to you.

Now that I have that cleared up, on to my real post.

You have probably been told that Marijuana kills brain cells. Well, it doesn't and I can prove my point. The reason that this myth has lasted so long I don't know, but I know where it started. In 1974 during the Heath/Tulane study, President Ronald Reagan put together an experiment to prove that the drug could do permanent damage to your brain cells. The results that they got back came in that it did kill brain cells (the way that they did it), but they never told you HOW they did it. Now, the way that they did this was that they put gas masks on monkeys that pumped the equivalent of 63 Columbian strength joints a day into the monkey WITHIN 5 MINUTES. On average, the monkey died after 90 days. They suffocated the monkeys... They were pumping the weed in, but without additional oxygen, which suffocated the monkeys. Any other study will show you that one of the effects of suffocation is loss of brain cells. Studies after that show NO proof of brain cell damage, and in 2005, studies suggested that smoking could actually STIMULATE brain cell growth.



The next common belief is that Marijuana causes lung cancer. Well, that's interesting, there isn't one case anywhere of Marijuana causing lung cancer. The only thing that could damage your lungs is just the smoke, which does less damage than a punch to the stomach. There are no chemicals, meaning nothing is toxic, so you can't get cancer from smoking Marijuana. Also, it's not any certain thing in Marijuana smoke that does damage, it's just that all kinds of smoke could do damage to your lungs.


Marijuana is worse or as bad for you as tobacco? Impossible.


In fact, if you take a look at the amount of deaths from substances, a different picture starts to appear.


The number one killer in the country. It beat out aids, heroin, crack, cocaine, alcohol, car accidents, fire, and murder... COMBINED... Any guesses on what it is? DING DING DING! Correct! Tobacco! With an average of 430,000 deaths per year, it's interesting that tobacco receives government approval, and is grown with radioactive fertilizer.

Number two on the list, if I don't include poor diet and physical inactivity, with well over 85,000 deaths per year... Alcohol.

As we look further down the list there are others that may surprise you.

Caffeine comes in with 1,000 to 10,000 deaths per year.

Some of our favorite pain killer pills such as Aspirin, still making an appearance with over 7,500 deaths annually.

Where does Marijuana lie in this? What kind of staggering number do we find?

Get ready for it, here it comes... THERE ARE NO DEATHS FROM CANABIS USE... ANYWHERE... You CAN'T find one.

In TEN THOUSAND years of Marijuana use there's never been one death which Marijuana contributed to. There are 400,000 deaths per year (IN AMERICA ALONE) with 100% of the blame on itself from tobacco.

I've heard that you have to smoke something like 15,000 joints in 5 minutes to get a toxic amount of weed in your system. I challenge anyone to do that.

Moving on... It's undoubtedly true that Marijuana has the most people in rehabilitation clinics because of it. Shouldn't that mean that it is the most addictive drug out there? Nope. The reason why is that you either go get some horrible penalty, OR, you go to a treatment clinic. What would you choose? Actually, you can't be addicted to Marijuana. You can have a craving, but you can't be addicted.


Now... My last point.

THE GATEWAY THEORY... Ahh, yes... The good ol' gateway theory. I'm sure that everyone's heard about that right? There's nothing in the drug that will actually push someone to move on to heavier drugs.

If my drug of choice was alcohol, it could be said that it started on milk.

In fact. Only 1 out of every 104 marijuana users use cocaine. and less than 1 use heroin.



I'm done now. I would like it very much if this topic didn't get deleted. Like I said, I'm not promoting the drug, I just don't like hearing false facts that turn this drug into something worse than tobacco when it isn't. I don't recommend using drugs, I just was annoyed and posted this lol.

This took a long time to write, so I would be grateful if it didn't get deleted or locked.

[The Batman]

Are there any sources to back up your claims because right now it just looks like a bunch of made up facts and statistic by a pothead(I don't mean to offend you just saying what it looks like). That's what really annoys me about people that claim marijuana has no negative effects, they make claims with no sources and even if they do provide some it's usually a pro marijuana site.

[Sordid Saint]

Don't feel like siting my sources right now... It's 2:30 AM and i have school tomorrow...

Mostly look up death count from substances, Heath/Tulane experiment, and the stepping stone effect on google or wikipedia or something. I was using some books that I have on American History and Drugs and other books.

I forgot to add in the black market effect in the stepping stone section. Its basically that if a drug dealer had heavy drugs and marijuana at the same time and they were like "hey try this" that would be influence instead of stepping stone. There isn't any chemical in Marijuana that will make you want to try other things

EDIT:
http://www.electricemperor.com/eecdrom/HTML/EMP/15/ECH15_03.HTM A link to a site that I didn't use but has a lot of the same info as the source that I used

http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000247 some opinions on the stepping stone effect

http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/30 table of death from substances

[Zazu]

People who say it's bad never seem to provide evidence but it's accepted anyway.

Also, to add to the gateway theory: the main reason why a very small minority of people do go onto harder drugs from cannabis is because of the current prohibition. If you want weed, you go to a dealer or someone who knows someone. These people will most probably have access to harder drugs for sale and will normally offer them to people. Most people say no, but some say yes. Now if the growth of cannabis wasn't illegal, people would be growing it in their own homes using their own chemicals (tainted weed is the reason why some people have respiratory problems from it, burnt glass etc doesn't do you any good at all) and would know it was safe. They would also know the breed and the approx. strength of what they've grown. This means no contact with dodgy dealers and no immediate temptation of other illicit drugs.

The only reason it became illegal in the first place was because of a very racist regime in America; it was the Mexicans' choice of social drug so purely on that basis, it was outlawed.

Another interesting thing is that we all have THC chemoreceptors in our brains (small bodies which specifically detect and respond to THC). These don't just appear and we have them from birth meaning they must have been around for a bloody long time. Any form of receptor takes a long time to creep into any evolved body; we know Egyptians used cannabis so it must have been around in human culture long before them.

Cannabis is a natural drug, a lot better for you than synthesised crap like coke / heroin, and is perfectly safe in moderate amounts.

There has never ever been one single study which shows negative effects of long term moderate use of pure cannabis (a person smoking 1-2 joints of pure cannabis a week). The only studies which have ever hinted at showing any form of non-beneficial effects to the body never state the way in which they were conducted as the OP mentioned. These studies showing negative effects also used models of people who smoked abnormal amounts of cannabis each day for a very long time - even then it has never been proven that cannabis is the sole contributor to their problems.

[Sordid Saint]

@Chequ3r

I agree 100% with your post. The reason why they outlawed it in the first place (in America) is because since they saw Mexicans using it, it was considered "The devil's drug"

Now, on the gateway theory, I don't really know why, but most people refuse to believe that it is a personal preference on if you want to move on to something else. Before I even tried weed, I wanted to try Shrooms. Just because I tried weed, and then Shrooms, doesn't mean that weed is the reason that I tried it. I was just mature enough to know where to get stuff from. Also, like I said in my original post, "If my drug of choice was alcohol, it could be said that I started on milk, and the milk had the gateway effect on me, so I moved up to alcohol."


And finally, why can't people just accept that it's not bad? Just because they government turned weed into a bad thing (and you believed it for a while) doesn't mean that changing your mind isn't an option. I'm sure that the government has done something that you haven't agreed with before.

[staying_alive]

Yeah I don't understand the gateway theory. Smoking weed doesn't in any way make me want to try coke or heroine (or anything else for that matter). I mean I guess if you're pushing the whole "well your dealer could try to sell some to you" then that works, but that's the way a business works (drug dealing is a business afterall).

Thanks for the info and/or personal opinions guys. Although it wasn't backed up very factually, it's a good thread to get started.

[Fiending_the_freedom]

All of the facts you presented in this post can be found in the movie called "The Union: the business behind getting high" its a great movie.

[Sordid Saint]

All of the facts you presented in this post can be found in the movie called "The Union: the business behind getting high" its a great movie.

Yes I've seen it.

[janjanTRIP_]

Are there any sources to back up your claims because right now it just looks like a bunch of made up facts and statistic by a pothead(I don't mean to offend you just saying what it looks like). That's what really annoys me about people that claim marijuana has no negative effects, they make claims with no sources and even if they do provide some it's usually a pro marijuana site.

and to the people who make false statement against marijuana are automatically correct because they're all about antimarijuana?

[Zazu]

and to the people who make false statement against marijuana are automatically correct because they're all about antimarijuana?

Qft.

[The Batman]

and to the people who make false statement against marijuana are automatically correct because they're all about antimarijuana?

Not what I said at all my point wasn't about being anti-marijuana it's about sources to back up your claims. I don't care if you're for or against it but if you're going to say something at-least have proof. I stay out of these debates because when I have posted facts and links to back it up it's usually summed up as some government conspiracy.

[Zeh Crazy]

Thanks so much for starting this thread. So many people are blinded by the false beliefs about it.

Poor monkeys. :(

But anyhow, I am going to light up a cherry flavored blunt and I think we should all just chillax and get stoned. "Life's a bitch and then you die, so fuck the world and let's get high!"

[MyNameIsJack]

I have to say, that it's true. I don't smoke but marijuana isn't worse than tobacco or alcohol. Of course it has negative effects BUT everything that it's done in excess is harmful. Even working.