see thats the thing, when people want to talk about another behavior they don't like, saying addiction is fine, in the context of "friends, families and obligations are neglected for this one thing"

when people want to defend something, they rely on a stricter medical definition about how reliant the body becomes on another source of chemical it would have otherwise produced. This is something that marijuana doesn't satisfy, it is currently accepted that the brain doesn't stop producing its own chemicals, so therefore "you can't get addicted to marijuana", but

With gambling addition, video game addiction, etc, there is no debate about whether this is self control issues or whether there is a drug that offers a chemical that your body now stops producing. its a self control issue, we colloquially call that addiction.

the marijuana scene has needed to draw distinctions to get this far, now its time to quit the semantical debate and help with a solution that doesn't involve locking up parents and taking children through child protective services.

You know it's interesting, I see the same sorts of themes crop up whenever there's an article criticising alcohol on mainstream press websites.

Quite a few people will come out and say that it can't really be addictive, because they aren't addicted. Some say things like "Well I can have a beer every night, but never go off the deep-end and become an alcoholic, so clearly it's not that bad".

The point is that a percentage of people won't be able to control it. They will lose themselves to it. They will suffer for it. This happens with substances that cause physical dependency (opiates, alcohol, tobacco) and activities that clearly cannot (gambling). Cannabis seems to lie somewhere between the two, and be relatively mild.

Good for you if you enjoy it, use it and are not addicted. But that's not everyone's experience (It was mostly mine too, mostly, until it wasn't).

Valid question to be honest.

Life is hard. Everyone knows that in order to lose some qeight all you need to do is exercise more and eat less. Still we have trouble with obescity in the world.

I believe that sometimes we underestimate the struggles of other people due to a lack of understanding. It is a dangerous traphole to fall into.

Lack of self control is absolutely a symptom of addiction.

No. Addiction is the inability to stop when you want to. Lack of self-control is generally a willpower / just not wanting to stop thing. But there are two kinds of addiction: physical and psychological.

Physical addiction can occur with things like heroin, alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine (the more and longer you use them the more likely you are to get addicted... generally speaking.) Your body literally craves/needs more and you can get sick or possibly even die if you stop too abruptly depending on the substance.

Then there's psychological addiction which most of the physically addictive drugs can be as well as things like pot (at least I don't recall hearing any scientific studies indicating it's physically addictive.) While your body isn't dependent on it, whatever it is, your brain effectively gets stuck in a feedback loop telling you that you need that other thing just like you need food or water.

Yes both are a compulsion. The inability to ‘respond’ to a situation and fallback on ‘reacting’ instead.