Wierd take, given that they are completely different drugs, with completely different effects on the brain, with the only similarity being that they are both ingested via smoke.
Lots of things are unhealthy. Some of those are many degrees worse than others, and some only in certain context.
For me, though, some amount of harm is built-in to our condition.
We will eat junk sometimes, we will be sedentary sometimes- we might even overindulge sometimes.
For me, marijuana is recreational, like alcohol.
If a recreational session of marijuana is better for humans than a recreational session of alcohol, then I would actively promote that- since we are all keenly aware of how prohibiting all recreational unhealthy things goes in reality. “Perfect is the enemy of good”, in this case I might say that “perfect is the enemy of improvement”; maybe theres a better quote for exactly this.
Knowing that its better on your lungs than smoking, which was socially acceptable 20 years ago, goes a long way to helping.
Though I also agree with other commenters, its a low bar and the frequency of recreational drug use vs casual smoking is an apples to oranges comparison
It's bad practice to equate an offensive order with drug consumption.
(However in my adopted home we don't have public pensions like that. Your pension pot is yours, and if you keel over, your heirs get it. But smokers are still fiscally positive.
I brought up the NHS as a short-hand for any kind of healthcare system where the general taxpayer foots your medical bill.)
Additionally your statement about "any kind of smoke" while kind of true does not recognize the disproportionate concentration of carcinogens specific to cigarette smoke.
It also misses the disclaimer that nearly as many cannabis users vape and consume edibles (roughly 70%) as do smoke (only 79%) which is certainly better than smoke, even before you add the benefits of water filtration and cooling common for marijuana users.
I'm not saying it's nothing but I'm also not going to pretend it's any worse than, say, living in a wildfire state.
Are you saying that is comparable to a 800 degree ember 4 inches from your mouth?
Is that how you feel about drinking coffee and wine as well, or does it only apply to some other drugs? Is it the same for prescription drugs?
I lost my dad to alcohol and tobacco. The biggest cannabis users in college would often (not aleays) drop out of school. So I am not blind to the downsides of these drugs.
However, I also recognize that there are a zillion people out there that drink alcohol or consume cannabis in moderation, and feel no desire to lump them all into a category of "losers", nor treat them with contempt or disrespect. To each their own.
Any smoke (anything hot, even steam) will cause lung damage. They’re incredibly fragile organs. (biochemist)
Huh? Nicotine ain't addictive either. See https://gwern.net/nicotine for more than you wanted to know.
Just don't smoke. Get your fix (whether nicotine or marijuana) in other ways. Vape or chew gum or use edibles or stick on a nicotine plaster, etc.
Nicotine being the addictive part is also why many smokers are successfully able to make the switch to e-cigarettes.
Nicotine by itself is at most very lightly addictive.
> Nicotine being the addictive part is also why many smokers are successfully able to make the switch to e-cigarettes.
I don't think we can draw that conclusion. Just because something helps you get over an addiction doesn't mean it's the addictive part.
Compare and contrast the absolute ineffectiveness of nicotine plasters for getting people off their cigarette habit. (Even though they are a great nicotine delivery mechanism otherwise.)
Similarly, I don't think anyone ever got addicted to nicotine plasters.
I think it's horrible to tell people nicotine is not addictive. Quitting is very difficult.
A quick Google offers plenty of alternative study results.
I personally know people who were addicted to nicotine patches. One reason they are likely not as addictive as smoking is because they take much longer to reach noticeable concentrations in your bloodstream. Vaping also takes longer than smoking but not nearly as long as patches.
Compare this to oral vs IV drug use.
Edit: I will add that while I do strongly believe nicotine is addictive, I also believe smoking is more addictive and that it is primarily all the other chemicals in tobacco smoke that cause most physical harm to the body.
My brother is still addicted to his ecig despite numerous attempts to titrate down.
Yes. Once an addict, always an addict. ('Irreversible changes to a brain' are quite common. You remember having smoked, for example...) More importantly, this was something emphasized before, and so it is irrelevant to bring it up as a supposed counterexample.
I fail to understand how nicotine on its own would satisfy an addictive craving created by a different chemical or combination of chemicals, if it isn't addictive itself.
I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean about a previously emphasized counterexample either. Could you elaborate?
It's pretty hard to get addicted to nicotine patches, if you never smoked.
I don't see this as an argument that nicotine is not addictive - just that different routes of administration are more or less addictive, similar to IV vs. oral opiate use.
Then I found myself taking a one or two of these 1mg tablets during the day when driving as I want to increase good habits when driving. Then habitually whenever I felt like it, sometimes with a coffee and a book. They were the weakest mg you could get, and there was no direct feeling of their effect. I did feel increasing anxiety which lead to physical symptoms during this time, but the tablets didn't seem to make any direct effect on the anxiety, I didn't take the nicotine to calm down and I didn't connect the two together (its only now writing this comment that I'm thinking they may be connected)
So it was definitely addicting, however, when the box ran out, stopping seemed to be instantaneous and painless. I did quit because I realised I wasnt using it as I wanted to initially and it was becoming a habit. I do remember a couple of times looking for the tablets, checking to see if there wasn't some in the car. mild. The feeling of anxiety is gone now too.
So I'm not sure if I would say I was addicted, but maybe I was. It was certainly habit forming!
Nicotine isn't really absorbed well that way. That's also why Gwern's self experiment didn't really work.
In any case, yes, stimulants can cause anxiety in people. (Weirdly, they can also help with anxiety. The brain is weird.)
When you abstain from nicotine, you will get physical withdrawal symptoms. Nausea, headaches, heart racing, that type of thing. But you'll also get psychological symptoms - paranoia, anxiety, irritability.
I know for a fact it's the nicotine because:
1. Vaping contains a lot of nicotine, too, and it satisfies the craving.
2. You can actually feel the nicotine hitting your blood when you relapse.
3. Nicotine patches remove the withdrawal symptoms.
Nicotine patches aren't perfect, and the reason they might be less addicting is because there's no hit. It's a constant stream of nicotine which ends up feeling like no nicotine at all. Instead, it feels like it's just preventing the affects of a lack of nicotine, i.e. it's inhibiting withdrawal. But it's not giving you the effects of nicotine.
Like when you smoke a cigarette you immediately feel relaxed and happy and it's a very sudden effect. But with nicotine patches since there's no curves you don't get that.
Nope. I never smoked, but tried patches, and I certainly felt the effects. (And I didn't have any withdrawal that I needed to inhibit.) My non-smoking friends who tried had the same experience.
But, as a cessation tool, which is what they are, this has been my experience.
And, I would be hesitant about using nicotine patches or something like Zyn recreationally. Nicotine, even by itself, is harmful to the cardiovascular system over a long period of time.
What kills you is the tar in your lungs (and on the way there, like your throat). And you get that from burning stuff in general.
To illustrate: cannabis will not create gaping holes in your brain like mercury would, but although I'm convinced there are valid reasons to use cannabinoids for medical purposes, I'm also convinced that recreational use (especially at a young age) has a terrible impact on brain development and personnality developpment.
My personal take is that the proportion of people that subjectively enjoy cannabis at the cost of feeling okay with very bad life decisions is high enough to warrant extreme carefulness when decriminalizing it. The typical example is the stoner apathy that turns into amotivational syndrome.
Re reading your comment I see that it was mainly to get this off my chest. Hope you don't mind.
I just meant that the direct damage smoking either plant does to your brain pales in comparison to direct damage the tar causes to your lungs.
> I'm also convinced that recreational use (especially at a young age) has a terrible impact on brain development and personality development.
> [...] high enough to warrant extreme carefulness when decriminalizing it.
I suspect you can get most of the benefits of decriminalizing (like removing a funding source for organised crime) whilst avoiding most of the downside you mention, by slapping on an appropriately high tax on the stuff.
The main limit is that if your tax is too high, it encourages (too much of) a black market. But I'm fairly sure there's a tax that's high enough to keep the consumption of most youngsters and poor people low, whilst still avoiding much of a black market.
I explicitly mention youngsters and poor people, because as conceived the tax is a paternalistic instrument to protect people from themselves. Rich people don't need our protection, they can fend for themselves.
But I'm not sure there's not something better. Notably because a very high tax de facto creates a black market, but even a moderate tax is actually often high enough to create a black market for poor people, which in turn are already the one paying the highest price (health wise) of environnemental diseases (junk food, tobacco, alcohol, not exercising, and cannabis).
Compared to the cost of production, many countries have quite substantial taxes on alcohol and tobacco, but there's generally not that much of a black market for eg beer. (There might be more of a black market for distilled spirits, but those are also taxed more.)
I could imagine benefits of limiting strong cannabis strains until some later age. It also destroys the transgressive nature of the smoking act.
It actually starts at age 14 for some stuff. And if you are with your parents (and not in a restaurant), I think it's up on them to decide, even if you are younger than 14. At least in practice.
Where I grew up, it's a fairly common tradition to let even primary school kids have a sip of Eierlikör (German Egg Liqueur) for New Year's Eve.
Britain has some interesting rules, too. I think their legal drinking age for beer in a pub is lower, if you are also having a meal with your beer.