Daily marijuana use linked to increased risk of deadly head and neck cancers
cnn.com
cnn.com
Edit just to clarify: I'm generally in favor of legalization and I don't believe in restricting responsible use by adults. I've just noticed really strong reactions to this kind of discussion.
So yeah, some people are smoking the equivalent of 20-40
Functionality seems rather fluctuating bar. Some people are not functional even without any drugs and some manage well enough with drugs...
This is an important story that gets lost in public discussions of fentanyl. Street opiates are difficult to dose correctly and you don't know precisely what you're getting, so overdoses are high and people are dying. In prior time periods, longtime users were more able to dose correctly and survive.
there's headroom to fuck around while working. weed and other things (e.g. video games throughout the day)
Many people will functionally make use of marijuana throughout the day doing say, restaurant work, and if anything, will function better (YOU try putting up with hangry customers all day without something to take the edge off).
But bring that habit into another role where speed and precision are important and the amount of people who can excel starts to dwindle.
Studies suggest this isn't permanent for users over 25 (or at least there's not enough data to say that), but it apparently takes years for the effect to wear off after chronic use and it might be permanent if you are a young user.
This is not to say that I am against consenting adults using Marijuana, but the idea that there are no effects other than making you happy is ludicrous.
I did that search again just now and it seems like people say that's not a huge concern.
This is because we understand very well the harmful chemicals found in tobacco and cigarettes. We know that it is strongly physically addictive, and that it is the direct cause of hundreds of diseases millions of people die from every year. We even know very well its effects from second-hand smoke.
On the other hand, cannabis is not physically addictive. The chemicals it contains have been found helpful in treating several health conditions. Most importantly: there are very few, if any, deaths directly linked to cannabis use in all of recorded human history. This is not just many orders of magnitude less than currently legal drugs; it is within the margins of a statistical error.
Cannabis is not some miracle drug, of course. We desperately need more research into it, which has historically been difficult. But to compare it to tobacco is simply insane given what we know today.
As for the study mentioned in TFA, it's not clear whether the cancer link is due to smoke inhalation or cannabinoids. I did find the other mentioned study[1] that links certain cannabinoids to tumor growth more concerning. I'm glad that more research is coming out.
[1]: https://aacrjournals.org/clincancerres/article/26/11/2693/33...
https://mcwell.nd.edu/your-well-being/physical-well-being/dr...
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-medica...
The difference with tobacco is that nicotine is one of the most addictive chemicals on Earth, and it is toxic to humans. Cigarettes have been engineered to make them even more addicting, by boosting the amount of nicotine and adding many other harmful chemicals. The comparison to cannabis and THC is laughable in that sense.
The usage amount is also highly relevant. Even "heavy" cannabis users don't smoke more than a handful of joints a day. Meanwhile heavy tobacco use can mean smoking several packs a day. The difference in the average amount of tobacco vs cannabis consumption is staggering.
Besides, is THC itself addictive? What about other cannabinoids? There are many non-toxic components of cannabis that people have been benefiting from for centuries. In comparison, there are few, if any, such components and benefits from tobacco. More research is definitely needed, but to address the original post: this is why people are against tobacco smoke. There is a world of difference between these plants, and equating them is further promoting the myths about cannabis we've been fed for decades.
It's interesting that everyone acknowledges just how physically addictive alcohol is, and yet sugar, which is so closely related, is treated like an innocuous substance.
- I wonder if anyone considers smoking pot "totally healthy", or if this is just a straw man.
- Being exposed to second hand smoke is involuntary, whereas smoking weed is a personal choice. Probably makes a huge difference in how these are perceived.
- Tobacco contains tar and many other chemicals that are not present in weed and are mostly responsible for the harmful effects of smoking.
- Your comment is very polemic: "faintest second hand", "totally healthy". Not the best way to discuss the topic.
Most people won't use enough for this to be a problem, but no doubt it'll be used to push prohibition.
Meanwhile, alcohol and tobacco are at least as bad, but nobody's pushing to make those illegal any more.
As far as I'm concerned people have a right to be defensive when others want to make their personal life choices illegal.
My concerns are very similar to my concerns over alcohol and tobacco. It likely has benefits in small infrequent quantities but widespread regular use ("abuse" in any other drug) is a serious negative for society.
I do think it should be available but for use in private, with penalties for public consumption, DUI, child abandonment, and supplying children, that include losing retail access.
And for consistency, I do think tobacco smoking and drunkenness in public impinges on others' rights to go about their business. I'm far from a libertarian but I'm not against people doing their own thing as long as they're not putting others at risk.
1) Understanding the full impact marijuana use in its various forms has on one's health.
2) Deriving that understanding 100% from high quality evidence, because that is the only way we can form an accurate opinion.
3) There is no 3).
We don't figure out the right dose by wringing our hands over bad policy decisions in the 1930s. Or over anything else, really, if that thing isn't good medical evidence.
The problem with this pro-MJ bro brigade online is when any evidence which comes up that's even remotely critical of marijuana usage, they pile on and ruin the signal to noise ratio of the discussion. These guys are losers who detract from the goal of being dispassionate and objective and understanding how to be healthy. I mean I've been pro legalization my entire life, I'm cautiously pro both recreational and medicinal usage, but I hate these guys because they're clearly not interested in talking about evidence and being healthy, they're interested in justifying their habit to other people.
The next step seems to be justification which is often in the form of, "well, alcohol has negative side-effects too." Yup, there are a lot of parallels between the two drugs. Both of them do different things to you. For fun, let's throw caffeine in there too. All are legal in some fashion and are potentially addictive.
Which leads me to the next talking point, "well, I'm not addicted to weed so it's not addictive." What's missing is "to me" at the end of that. Some people definitely become addicted to it just like any other drug. Also, some people don't realize they are actually addicted, just like other addictions.
THC can be detected in urine for a month and is detectable in hair for much longer. I don't care what anyone says, if it's in your system for that long, it's affecting you (somehow) for that long.
--
What I really want is for there to be a ban on public use of the stuff. I'm quite tired of going places and having to transit through a cloud of marijuana smoke during my morning run. Keep that crap in your home... just like alcohol.
Like anything else, if you enjoy it you might develop a psychological addiction. Like video games. Or running. But that is not addiction like your other examples of nicotine or caffeine.
> What I really want is for there to be a ban on public use of the stuff
Public intoxication laws exist. But it's legal to smoke cigarettes outside (in most places) so why should smoking legal cannabis be different?
No shade to any users, but this is a drug and it has the standard downsides of all drugs. The general misinformation is not helpful. It will neither turn you into a murderous zombie nor have zero effect.
Source?
That is not at all clear. By "affecting daily life", do you mean negatively? What is the effect and who is evaluating its positive or negative measurement?
It remains my understanding, and you have not contradicted it with your statement, that there is zero evidence of physical addictiveness of cannabis or THC.
There can certainly be a cannabis use disorder, but the same applies to any activity of choice. Some people definitely have addictive personalities and find things they like, and allow them to disrupt their lives.
> No shade to any users, but this is a drug and it has the standard downsides of all drugs
This does not make sense. Anything you ingest or inhale or inject is a drug, and there is no such thing as a standard downside.
"Drug" is not a magic word that makes a thing bad. You seem to have fallen into that semantic trap, which makes it impossible to reason about objectively.
I'm sure you would agree that lettuce and carrots are not drugs. It sounds to me more like you are trying to confuse the semantics because you don't like the conclusion.
Marijuana appears to be as bad for you as alcohol, tobacco, or excess sugar consumption. And yes, there is plenty of recent evidence of physical addiction. Here is the Canadian health department on the subject:
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-medica...
The ingestion of carrots causes a distinct biological reaction. Carrots are absolutely a drug, or a cocktail of drugs.
Lettuce is basically water and cellulose, so I'll mostly give you that one.
Chocolate? Absolutely a drug. Sugar? Yep. Coffee? Yep. ...for any meaningful definition of "drug".
> Marijuana appears to be as bad for you as alcohol, tobacco, or excess sugar consumption
You made that up. The personal and social harm index for alcohol is absurdly high and well beyond the rest. Tobacco is mostly personal harm, and reasonable to compare to smoked cannabis (so don't smoke cannabis). Sugar is an active area of research, but yeah it looks bad.
Cannabis (ingested) would index well below any of the above.
You can literally Google this and find studies on it. You can also look at the sources the Canadian health department linked to. My guess is that you did neither. The scholarship on this is actually mostly recent, so if your reading on the subject happened more than 5 years ago, you are behind the times. Also, Canada is pretty good on the subject of drugs - the US health department is hopelessly biased.
More broadly, this tactic of trying to demand higher and higher levels of proof is called "sealioning" and is a classic form of bad-faith argument. I understand it's common on the internet, but it's really a bad practice if you want to convince people of things.
> You made that up. The personal and social harm index for alcohol is absurdly high and well beyond the rest. Tobacco is mostly personal harm, and reasonable to compare to smoked cannabis (so don't smoke cannabis). Sugar is an active area of research, but yeah it looks bad.
You made all this up, too, especially the "comparative" nature of personal and social harms. Let's not forget the made-up fact that carrots are a drug, too. Who is to say that the loss of intellect that is well-documented to follow long-term cannabis use isn't a "social" harm?
But "food as drug" is not really controversial. What is a drug, except a substance that promotes a specific set of biological and biochemical reactions?
Some drugs are psychoactive (chocolate), some are exclusively active on the physical plane (aspirin). Not all drugs, and not even all illegal drugs, have "standard downsides", which was your assertion which I challenged.
As for comparative harm, I'm drawing from the results of a study summarized here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recreational_drug_use#Drug_harmfulness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HarmCausedByDrugsTable.svg
Is that all ya got?
I don't see chocolate or sugar on that chart at all, so they must not be "drugs" or they must not be harmful anywhere near the scale of cannabis. The source you are citing actually makes my point for me. This is a drug that has negative effects on the user and on others around the user, and no, those effects are not just about smoking of the drug - taking a mind-altering substance in edible form still alters your mind.
In terms of "harm to others" on that chart, your drug of choice rates worse than cocaine! That harm, by the way, is not about secondary smoke and does not magically go away when you eat the substance instead of inhaling it.
I'm honestly confused because the chart you are citing does not support your point at all. Drugs do have different scales of harm, but you can't honestly say that this study (or any evidence) shows that cannabis and carrots are both in the same universe of being "drugs." You aren't even showing that cannabis and sugar are on the same scale. I'm sure you would agree that anything whose impact on yourself and others is comparable to cocaine has the "standard" downsides of drug use.
To your other points -- the chart is for "recreational drugs" which chocolate is obviously not generally considered to be. It's not regulated, which is inherently disqualifying for this purpose. That doesn't mean it isn't psychoactive (it absolutely is, albeit to a significantly lesser degree, inviting the question of where to draw the line and why).
> This is a drug that has negative effects on the user and on others around the user, and no, those effects are not just about smoking of the drug - taking a mind-altering substance in edible form still alters your mind.
This is your assertion, but that doesn't make it a fact.
Altering your mind is not, for example, necessarily a negative effect. Short term or long term.
> In terms of "harm to others" on that chart, your drug of choice rates worse than cocaine! That harm, by the way, is not about secondary smoke and does not magically go away when you eat the substance instead of inhaling it.
OK and what is the harm of cocaine use to others? Crime? Note that cocaine (distinct from crack) is not a popular street crime drug in the last 40 years, but clearly there are social and medical impacts from its use, and trafficking is concomitant with all sorts of badness. Most of this does not apply to cannabis, and anyway, there are obvious solutions to those issues.
I do struggle to imagine the "harm to others" in cannabis use. Perhaps you have some ideas?
I would love to see an honest accounting of harm from cannabis. And sugar. I'm not too worried about carrots. I suspect the to-self and to-others harm from sugar is higher than that from cannabis, although not on a serving-to-serving comparison. I would suggest greater moderation with cannabis than sugar, but that is also the natural use pattern, and anyway it is not my place or yours to make that decision for any other competent adult.
My central position here is that, in moderation, cannabis is innocuous and doesn't deserve the fearful restrictions placed upon it for (mostly) bad reasons by (sometimes very) bad people. The ongoing legalization efforts are appropriate and reasonable, just extremely overdue and unevenly distributed, for now.
And not-in-moderation, cannabis is still less harmful than a lot of other options. And they are options, don't imagine that "not good for you" is a sufficient reason to dissuade the general population from doing a thing. So advantaging the less-harmful option is proper policy.
All of this "Weed isn't physically addictive" stuff is biochemically accurate and yet everyone who's been around enough smokers knows someone who smokes entirely too much for their own good and behaves like an addict to any other substance would.
This is one of the areas where the legalization movement's going to hang itself - if we can't have a serious conversation about the risks involved and the real actual effects it has on some people, we're going to cause a lot of harm both to the movement and to the people we keep telling this is harmless who wind up learning we're lying. Yes, it's not physically addictive; yes, overuse is a symptom of other mental health issues, but this country's got a mental health crisis with no effective treatment system and we're advocating for the widespread availability of a powerful psychoactive substance. We're going to get people hurt if we don't start acting like grownups.
And, to head off the obvious rebuttal: Yes, Alcohol is worse. That doesn't mean staying high all day is healthy behavior.
I don't care about cannabis either. I'm neither a user nor an advocate.
I do care a lot about the right of competent adults to make their own choices about private matters. And when I was a teenager and discovered the immense systemic dishonesty around several big bad drugs and the war thereon, I learned a lot about systems and means of control. This is my only interest in the matter here, but consequently I find myself defending drugs and drug users, sometimes.
Your points are reasonable. But they miss the fact that anything pleasurable can be psychologically addictive. Cannabis is not special. It should not be treated specially.
That said, cannabis is treated specially, because of its legacy of dishonest representation by bad or ignorant people. So I take your point that it's important to acknowledge the "risk" of cannabis being the indulgence of choice for a segment of the population who find pleasure in it, to excess and to the detriment of other parts of their lives.
See also: video games, sex, television, internet, wikipedia, partying, procrastination, etc. If we can treat cannabis as one of many possible diversions from a person's real priorities in life, I'm 100% in support. If we demonize it and pretend that it's different in some way, we are giving it magic powers that can never be properly treated, nor treated properly.
I'm not ignoring that, I'm just asking the question of why it's differentiating for this discussion.
Neither "psychoactive" nor "bioactive" are inherently bad. We spend billions of dollars creating substances for those exact effects.
You'll have to make the argument that cannabis causes psychological or physiological harm. The evidence for that argument is nonexistent, for the vast majority of peoples' usage patterns.
And in those usage patterns, both the psychoactivity and bioactivity are considered, by those who enjoy them, to be net beneficial. You may disagree, and you are invited to make your own decision, for your self.
By the time you get to the levels of usage where harm is objectively measurable, you're working with people who have lost control of their self-regulation mechanisms for an extended period of time. This can be due to an underlying issue, chronic or acute, that should be addressed. That's when the comparison to video games, sex, and HN become relevant.
You can lose jobs and relationships and economic security due to a psychological overdependence on any of the above. This is not a particularly controversial or interesting fact, and there are support mechanisms (therapy, drugs, etc) for them. I'm arguing that, in this way, cannabis is not different.
You are not a biologist, a medical practitioner, or a chemist. This statement is clearly incorrect.
Also, your hair is not your "system".
I don't need to be any of those things to follow common sense or ... WebMD [1].
[1] https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/addiction/how-avoid-high...
And that WebMD article doesn't even support your argument.
If you're actually curious about how this works, I'd be happy to explain. But you've previously asserted that you don't care what anyone says, so I'm loathe to extend myself.
For any other readers, the keywords are "metabolism" and "metabolite".
> In one study, peoples’ CB1R receptor density returned to normal levels after about 4 weeks of not using marijuana. The study showed how your brain uses the CB1R receptors to increase your cannabis tolerance.
That would be a difference that takes 4 weeks to normalize away from. Go ahead and explain how it's not; I enjoy watching mental gymnastics.
Another whole set of articles (go ahead and search for "long-term effects of THC use" and don't ignore things that simply go against your world-view) mention many unknowns and open questions with evidence to suggest long-term effects including psychological effects. Heck, even TFA talks about long-term issues with non-metabolites increasing the risk of certain kinds of cancer.
BTW, cancer is fatal without treatment which really puts a damper on one's cognitive abilities. :)
> I don't care what anyone says, if it's in your system for that long, it's affecting you (somehow) for that long.
My disagreement is that the drug is not in your system for that length of time.
It may cause a change of physiology that takes hours or days or weeks to revert to the mean, but the drug is long gone. The metabolites are detectable, but metabolites are not the drug, they are not psychoactive, and they are not affecting you in any known (or speculated) way.
You don't know what you're talking about here, and I apologize for being so blunt, but you are spreading misinformation in your "I don't care what anyone says". This is tantamount to "I'm not a scientist, but..." and it's toxic.
One not-blatantly-incorrect version of your (I think) intended statement would be "heavy users of the drug may have effects which linger for a few weeks". OK. But not what you said, at all.
More you:
> Of course the stuff affects you in ways that are not good. Everything on the planet has side-effects.
This is a non-statement, but it sets up your entire premise. You are not engaging with facts, but you're repeating vague assertions of belief. This is a waste of everyone's time.
That said, my original response was low-quality and evidence of the "defensiveness" mentioned in the thread origin.
TBH I have no interest in cannabis. But I intensely dislike the lazy propagation of bad information.
edit:// the reason for that is that in the 70s-90s hash was the dominant form of thc product here. because of marokko etc. and they did mix hash with tobacco… that habbit lasted and know people smoke weed with tobacco here…
Well yeah. More knowledge is good, but information that has great potential for being taken out of context and misused by dishonest people, can be bad.
Additionally, this study has obvious flaws that make it especially well-suited for abuse.
...
Acetaminophen has potential negative health effects. People can accept that news fairly calmly.
But acetaminophen wasn't made Schedule I by bad people to serve an evil agenda, with the side effect of many decades of immense social and economic harm.
The defensive people you're complaining about would welcome an honest and complete evaluation of cannabis. They just don't trust that one is forthcoming.
...
In related news today, FDA has declined to permit MDMA for PTSD therapy trials.
Also advertising drugs of all kinds should be illegal. Sports will have to find some other way to finance themselves.
I'm genuinely curious about what goes through people's minds when they propose these obviously flawed measures
What I see when someone proposed stuff like this is someone saying "my views on how you should behave should be forced on others through violence", a view that is flawed because by its very existence it fundamentally justifies the very opposite policy.
If you can force your views on others purely because you are in power, then others are also legitimate in forcing their views on you when they are in power... But somehow I suspect that when you look at how a country like Saudi Arabian treats your preferred group like women or LGBT, your first reaction is not to say "they are right in treating them this way".
Banning harmful substances, or their use in public (to lower the amount of people exposed to them, and to lower the chance of younger people taking them up isn't "cultural norms". It actually genuinely works, and has public health benefits.
Also generally effects with mild consumption aren't that pronounced:
https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2020/12/02/Canna...
Yeah we're not comparing it to driving under the influence of alcohol, we're comparing it to driving sober - as you should.
The problem is, determining if a driver is “high” is extremely crude. If you used weed at any point in a week, it’s very likely that if you’re tested for weed it’s gonna show positive which inflates all sorts of statistics.
Anyway the funny conclusion was driving while male was significantly more dangerous for the driver and society than driving while high.
What assertion, that you should drive sober? It is literally the only statement I've made in that comment.
So you shouldn't drive sober and there's not any research done to support that claim? lol.
I would bet that ingesting it other ways would but have this problem. In other words, this is not a cannabis problem, this is a smoking problem.
In other words, what percentage of daily MJ users do you think have diagnosed cannabis use disorder and how do you think those people's lives look compared to daily users who are not diagnosed with this label?
There are other meta-analyses on the same subject which suggest no correlation [[1](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00039...)] [[2](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00508-023-02303-3)].
The only really regular correlations I've seen in the literature are related to a type of testicular cancer (TGCT). I hope we can get higher quality research on this subject now that the legal issues are starting to be less onerous, it would be great for people to know the long term effects of MJ use.
Governments should have zero privileges concerning any human’s decisions about their own body. They should instead be vehemently upholding those rights. Funding education and scientific research to help people make those decisions and about the risks of their choices when exercising those rights is fine.
That’s it.
The right and the left are both historically terrible at this, but lately it’s been mostly the right. I swear the inmates are running the asylum over there now. I hope they can find their way back to sanity.
Many people defend cannabis so hard that they can't even entertain the idea that it might have negative consequences. That misinformation is damaging to them and it's damaging to the people around them.
Well thats pretty absurd since the entire point of a government is to limit peoples freedom in the name of improving society. What happens when you dont pay taxes?
The right does typically target drugs more (as well as abortion rights). The left tends to be the ones taking soda machines away, and much more okay with forced health measures otherwise.
Plenty of people seem to support banning cigarettes, but not cannabis (I don't much care, I use neither).
And I don't even just mean vapes; there's all the edibles and tinctures that have soared in popularity particularly with the rise of legalization.
Then there's the older use of water filtration in bongs and bubblers (and hookahs, on the tobacco side). Curious how much tar is removed by passing through cotton compared to passing through water.
Shouldn't be too surprising. But as others are pointing out, given the demonization campaigns we've seen over the last 90 years since the Mariuhuana Tax Act there's bound to be some knee jerking.
And in fairness, look at what happens any time you suggest coffee might not be an elixir of health...
> “While our study did not differentiate between methods of cannabis consumption, cannabis is most commonly consumed by smoking,” Kokot said in an email. “The association we found likely pertains mainly to smoked cannabis.”
Probably could be significantly reduced by vaping, and brought to zero by edibles.
That's one way of saying your study was useless.
Did you ever make a tube full of dryer sheets to blow smoke through to eliminate the smell? What did you call those? We called them smurfers.
I like regional slang a lot.
Those were a staple of the college dorm but didn't have a name for it until now!
If that's all the study says, then it does not add to existing knowledge, and really isn't about cannabis at all.
That's a kind of uselessness.
So why was the study conducted (this way), and why does CNN consider it newsworthy?
The answers to those questions might be more interesting than the study itself.
There is some, like [0], but it does seem to vary a good bit from brand to brand.
[0] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-06-14/the-dirt...
Spit your lung butter out whenever possible, goes for regular smoking and vaping. If your lungs are burning or tight, give them a break, smoke flower or do something different for a day or two.
One study that explored the trends in outcomes of cannabis use among patients with COPD that were hospitalized found that “Among hospitalized patients with a diagnosis of COPD, cannabis users had statistically significant lower odds of in-hospital mortality and pneumonia compared to non-cannabis users. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33998884/
A randomized controlled trial conducted in 2018 that explored the effects of vaporizing cannabis and COPD patients found that “single-dose inhalation of vaporized cannabis had no clinically meaningful positive or negative effect on airway function, exertional breathlessness, and exercise endurance in adults with advanced COPD.” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30049223/
Metastasizes, not metabolizes [0]. Shoddy "science" "journalism" like this is why I often just immediately click through to the actual study instead of trusting a journalist to adequately summarize it [1].
[0] https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/oralcav.html
[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaotolaryngology/fullarti...
Sure, smoke a little pot here and there get high whatever.
Smoke a ton of it and now you are getting harmful physical and mental effects.
Same with alcohol, food, sugary stuff even heavier drugs too.
There seems to be alot of people who the moment any harmful effects are identified in anything say "ban it! criminalize it!".
https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/can...
Here’s research as far back as the 1980s on the subject:
Luckily some LA times investigation spurred regulators to start caring a little bit.
I’m sure the smoke from weed itself isn’t great with regular exposure, but add partially combusted illegal pesticides and it sure sounds like a cancer soup. And black market weed has got to be even worse.
“While our study did not differentiate between methods of cannabis consumption, cannabis is most commonly consumed by smoking,” Kokot said in an email. “The association we found likely pertains mainly to smoked cannabis.”
That was kind of a “no shit, Sherlock” moment for me.
Why even conduct this study if there is no control for smoke vs edibles? This makes the entire study, effectively, useless.
I promise I’m not a weed apologist, by any means, just a casual user when I catch up with old friends. I actually want to know the answer to this question.
I veerrrrry rarely smoke. I’ve always hated it. I’ve smoked it maybe 10-15 times in my entire life, but I’ve eaten plenty of weed gummies. Them shits is delicious too. All it takes is one each for me and my friends, and we have a hell of a time talking shop about our various professions. Yet a couple of these comments still repeat the same tired argument that only stupid lazy people use it. Not saying you’re a racist, but you’re using the arguments racists used to lock up and murder tons of minorities, soooooo maybe you’re just sadly propagandized. It happens. Do better though, now that you know.
The people in the room, by the way: audio engineer, software engineer, head of logistics, car-t cell therapy something something, I forget.
Hell Feinman smoked weed.
People really need to get better about getting over their stubborn need to believe the propaganda they fell for.
Everyone falls for propaganda at some point. Figure out a process for yourself to undo the damage, once you realize you’ve been had. I really don’t understand why some folks just need to hold onto a hyper specific position that contradicts all evidence to the contrary.
Note that I vape weed several times a week, so I’m not passing judgement. Just seems odd to justify the use over several paragraphs and then ask that question.
Laziness is basically a myth/misunderstanding of the underlying cause. The use of the word is made in ignorance of the science.
Though I’ll admit, while high, my thinking is different, it isn’t dumber.
I don’t suddenly forget facts I knew beforehand. The speed at which I solve a puzzle would be slower, thus I wouldn’t operate heavy machinery, but that’s not because I have lost the knowledge of how to do so. It’s (partly) related to the altered state of the mechanisms that affect my perception of time (among other things).
For a supposedly pro-science website, there always so many (often proudly) ignorant takes on scientific research.
I think I’m just now starting to realize that by trying to avoid the arm chair quarterbacking amateurs that couldn’t perform anything they criticize people about (in athletics), I’ve just traded it for armchair quarterbacking of scientists about something they know nothing about. Yet here I am getting sucked into doing (almost) the same thing (with only a motivational difference of attempting to identify poorly constructed studies that will end up being fuel for the anti-bodily autonomy crowd.
So yeah if you inhale smoke that can cause cancers. Sure seems like a hit piece when you bury this sort of information.
So from almost zero percent to still almost zero percent.
I knew a lot of lifelong smokers. I believe only one got lung cancer, didn’t die of it, but all that lived long enough had oxygen tanks, at least periodically, later in their lives.
< 10% of all lung cancers are found in non smokers.
The risk isn't really comparable with smoking tobacco.
What matters more is lifetime risk though, which adds up. We’re probably talking going from a single digit percentage chance to something three to five times that.