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Comment by pragone | Hacker News Reader

Pot itself has no known health detriments. Smoking marihuana, however, does impart some of the risks of smoking, but not nearly the same. I don't know if it's possible to reach the same level of damage to your lungs with pot as you would with cigarettes.

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> Pot itself has no known health detriments

You can't say this. There's a possibility that cannabis causes mental health problems in some people who don't have underlying disease. There's a stronger possibility that cannabis triggers mental illness in people who do have underlying disease but who would not otherwise have had an episode.

It is irresponsible to suggest that cannabis is harm free.

People like you do great harm to campaigns that aim to legalise drugs. Please stop.

Your response has the same logic that living gives you cancer. In all my years of medicine I have not seen this clear link you establish between mental illness and marijuana. I'd be very interested in learning more about it, if you have some resources for me to look at it.

I did not suggest that cannabis is harm free. I stated we cannot explicitly identified marijuana as the cause of illness.

How am I doing "great harm" to campaigns aiming to legalize drugs? (That's an honest question, I'm not quite processing your viewpoint on my argument, and am actually interested in your response.)

> I did not suggest that cannabis is harm free. I stated we cannot explicitly identified marijuana as the cause of illness.

Yes you did - using phrases like "there are no known health risks" you dismiss all the evidence we have that cannabis can cause harm.

Here's just one link, but there are many other reputable sources. This one discusses lung health.

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2012/06june/Pages/cannabis-lung-healt...

> The report says that the constituents of cannabis smoke are similar to those of tobacco smoke apart from the presence of THC (which is only in cannabis) or nicotine (which is only in tobacco). This means that cannabis smoke has the same carcinogens (substances that cause cancer) as tobacco smoke, although concentrations of these may be up to 50% higher. Like tobacco, cannabis also contains toxic carbon monoxide

Saying that this is equivalent to "no known health risks" is intellectually dishonest.

Unless he edited, he didn't use the phrase "there are no known health risks"

The phrase used was "no known health detriments", by which I believe he meant a direct causal link, such as with cigarettes and lung cancer.

I did not edit, and that is precisely what I meant. Thank you.

He did say "no known" detriments and from all I've read and heard, that remains true. There's correlations and linkage suggestions flung all around in the medical industry, but until proven, I think it's perfectly alright to say "no known" whatever.

Besides the patronizing of the parent post, I do think your argument is valid. Mostly since you use the phrases "stronger possibility." But again, without clinical proof, your argument is only as good as parent's.

In fact smoking marijuana causes extremely harmful effects in the brain:

http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2013/12/marij...

"Teens who were heavy marijuana users -- smoking it daily for about three years -- had abnormal changes in their brain structures related to working memory and performed poorly on memory tasks, reports a new Northwestern Medicine® study."

"The brain abnormalities and memory problems were observed during the individuals’ early twenties, two years after they stopped smoking marijuana, which could indicate the long-term effects of chronic use. Memory-related structures in their brains appeared to shrink and collapse inward, possibly reflecting a decrease in neurons."

> Smoking marihuana, however, does impart some of the risks of smoking, but not nearly the same. I don't know if it's possible to reach the same level of damage to your lungs with pot as you would with cigarettes.

Why not? Also, aren't marijuana cigarettes unfiltered, unlike tobacco?

The filters wouldn't make a difference here, since it's the toxins rather than the temperature doing the damage.

> The filters wouldn't make a difference here, since it's the toxins rather than the temperature doing the damage.

I'm confused by the answer: Cigarette filters don't filter toxins? And they do reduce temperature?

The toxins in cigarettes are the danger. Filters do little to stop the damage caused by toxins in cigarettes that simply don't exist in marijuana.

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