My theory for why many politicians - especially from the right-wing - are so opposed is b/c they didn't like their weed smoking and long-haired fellow students. It's a Pavlov thing.
Like many people dislike golf (justly so in my humble opinion) b/c they dislike the stereotypical golf enthusiasts.
It's a well known fact that it can trigger psychosis in susceptible persons and I have even witnessed it happen to a close friend.
It also had hugely detrimental effects on some of my weed-smoking friends, to the point that I no longer want to spend time with them since it affected their personality. I also know people who smoke it daily without any (visible) negative effects whatsoever..
regarding psychosis - if you compare weed consumption with number of schizophrenic diagnoses then the idea that weed causes schizophrenia can be easily falsified.
but - of course - any psycho active substance can and will impair the mind of somebody consuming it irresponsibly.
a lot of people micro dose weed - less than 0.05g per consumption unit - that's not going to cause any issues.
That's not how it works. There are many potential triggers for psychosis in general (and schizophrenia in particular), and there are reputable studies which show that cannabis consumption is one of them.
> but - of course - any psycho active substance can and will impair the mind of somebody consuming it irresponsibly.
I think it's safe to say that even responsible use can have negative effects for some people.
Likewise, the claim that micro dosing is not going to cause issues at all is unfounded and dangerous. We simply don't know enough about it to make such claims (enabling scientific research is a big argument for legalization!).
Oh, well if you "believe" it is dangerous. What's the LD50 on Cannabis vs alcohol, tobacco and countless other legal drugs? How many people die per year from Cannabis use vs other drugs? If you actually look at these questions with an open mind you will see which are really dangerous.
>It's a well known fact that it can trigger psychosis in susceptible persons and I have even witnessed it happen to a close friend.
It's not a "well known fact" because you saw it happen to someone once, not even mentioning their psychosis could have been triggered by a million different other things.
>It also had hugely detrimental effects on some of my weed-smoking friends, to the point that I no longer want to spend time with them since it affected their personality. I also know people who smoke it daily without any (visible) negative effects whatsoever..
All I get out of this is "some of my former friends act differently now so I don't hang out with them", which is like.. most people with or without drugs. I doubt you followed them all around 24-7 to see what their issues were, easier for you to just blame the drugs, as it were.
The common rebuttal against this is "those people were vulnerable to psychosis from the get-go", but what does that mean when, without cannabis use, those persons might have gone their whole lives without a psychotic episode?
Edit: if you carefully read my post you might notice I'm not saying cannabis should be illegal.
I know it's not a scientific study, but it have changed my mind. Years ago I though that weed was mostly inoffensive.
Interestingly, I heard an expert to comment that the weed of now it's not the weed of then, but many times more powerful because the plants have been selected for it.
That observation, by itself, does not say anything about what's cause and what's effect. It may very well be that cannabis causes all these things. It may also be that the sort of people who have psychological problems are drawn towards smoking weed either because of these psychological problems (i.e. seeing cannabis use as a relief for mental stress) or because of a common cause of both desire for cannabis and psychological problems.
I'm not saying which is true (not an expert on the subject), just that you cannot deduce it from your observation.
Just to be clear, I'm talking about heavy users here, not occasional users.
I don't think is a so strange prior to have. After all, heavy use of almost anything, have secondary effects.
I understand, this is an observation, not an experiment.
Anyway, as a follower of Bayes, I have updated my probabilities.
They would be a great example of a person who acts "too safe" all of his life not realising that it's his own fear that basically keeps him in his sandbox, when there's a whole world out there (BTW, I am not speaking about anything related to the New Age, as that could be interpreted - just the risks one could possibly take in general).
Two of my smartest friends are one who doped every day for a few years and the other one who practically never did drugs. Both are considered quite weird by the general population, and both know that and they know how they could manage others (but not vice-versa).
Now quite frankly I find that most of the people will never realise that drugs work well when they're done in balance with the other things in life. And the fact that occasional stressing of your body is quite beneficial in the long term, simply because it works just like training your physique.