The biggest complaint I ever hear that isn't based on a non-truth is "it smells bad".
Why should you send someone to jail based on their smell?
You can legally cook pungent meals, burn smelly incense, slow cook meat over a stinking smoker, smoke fetid home rolled cigarettes, take one shower every month, have terribly foot fungus or a really bad case of farts.
All smelly but legal things.
Here in the Canadian town I live, you are not allowed to smoke or vape it on any public land. If you rent, your landlord has to agree to it. You can legalize it and still control it.
To be honest, the smells decreased since it was made legal. Police would tolerate it so nobody called for "pot smell". That was a bad waste of resources. Now that it's up to the landlord to enforce it, people are more willing to call.
I would never call the police on my neighbors for a smell. If I knew that someone went to jail over personal use because of me, I would feel really bad.
However, I would ring the landlord in a heartbeat if their action was not allowed in the lease.
There are tradeoffs in everything, of course, and everyone is entitled to their own choices and ambitions, and these risks don't harm everyone who tries them, but put yourself in the shoes of the friends and family that see their loved one become a burnout. There can be real and justified hate of the drug when it has measurably damaged your family.
There was an episode of South Park that addressed pot in a similar way- it is dangerous because it is so much fun you don't want to do anything else.
Smells bad can itself be a big deal. Some people also have migraines that result from inhaling second hand marijuana smoke. Moreover, many people don’t want to smell the stuff in their daily commute- and the smell definitely lingers longer, than say, tobacco, in an open space.
I’m not opposed to legalization, but saying that there’s no societal harm is pretty misinformed too. Seemingly minor things like ‘smells bad’ can easily make one hate cannabis.
If you 'smell it' you subconsciously feel like you are forced 'smoking it' akin to involuntary second hand tobacco usage. Whether that is true or not I do not know.
As a former tobacco and former casual marihuana smoker I dislike either of these smells. I consciously quit both, both for very good personal reasons.
There are obvious health related risks to abstain smoking tobacco but for me I have autism and marihuana can make me over-sensitised and get me into a psychosis. This occurred numerous times.
Yes, there are benefits to marihuana and specifically CBD. My uncle had terminal cancer and hash oil helped him against this pain (he was AFAIK never pro-drugs or pro-marihuana before he got cancer). And there are disadvantages as well. I'm a proponent of education and regulation, just like with alcohol.
The difference however is that although such might over-sensitise someone with e.g. (undiagnosed) autism your example is not proven to be harmful for the lungs, nor does it make you stoned.
I think an individual hating something doesn't necessarily elevate that thing to the level of "societal harm".
For example, durian smells bad. Many people hate it because of its smell. However, I've never heard somebody go on about the harm durian is causing to society.
Calling for keeping marijuana strictly illegal based on its smell is silly. Still, the smell is just as noxious as cigarette smoke to many people. I found walking around downtown Montevideo annoying. Legalization should come with some measures against smoking in public, just like those being applied to tobacco in many places around the world.
Both of these apply to a not insignificant amount of the population when it comes to perfumes and flowers too.
We should make Abercrombie cologne illegal; I sneeze at least twice when walking through the mall and sometimes get headaches.
They also dislike alcohol use, especially due to drunk driving causing accidents. In the same way, they think allowing another substance to be legally consumed will increase impaired driving rates (even tho DUI is illegal).
They think alcohol being legal has made it easier for high school students to obtain it. They think the same will happen with cannabis. They don't want substances (alcohol or otherwise) near their grandkids' brains.
Alcohol has a breathalyzer test. There is no such spot test for cannabis intoxication. Which makes regulating drivers hard.
Trust me, it couldn’t get any easier for high school students to get marijuana than it currently is.
https://www.drugabuse.gov/news-events/nida-notes/2016/09/reg...
Brain damage in young adults.
> "Persistent cannabis users show neuropsychological decline from childhood to midlife"
Addressing this study, it was a N=1038, cohort study that seems to only have adjusted for education. Further, there's a link on your cited article to [1], which is a response that suggests that the determining factor may have been personality, rather than cannabis use.
There are other studies that indicate a similar conclusion, but I'm not clear how it's any different than any of a dozen socially accepted factors. The developing brain is very fragile. Playing football, or not getting enough exercise, can do similar damage.
[0] http://www.pnas.org/content/109/40/E2657.full [1] http://www.pnas.org/content/110/11/E979
There are so many substances that people can take that would impair their ability to drive. Many of them are available over the counter. Alcohol is the only one that's tested directly; it's the exception, not the norm.
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29487531
Case-in-point: me.
I'm still in favour of its legalisation but I'm not naive enough to believe there are no downsides to the substance.
I've experienced many of them myself by abusing it for years.
It's not a non-truth, its highly personal what smells good, or bad.