[DeathsHand]

Originally posted by jeepnut
Maybe he is one of those guys that has convinced himself that weed isn't a drug.

*sneeze*

http://paranoia.lycaeum.org/marijuan...arijuana-myths

Smoked marijuana contains about the same amount of carcinogens
as does an equivalent amount of tobacco. It should be remembered,
however, that a heavy tobacco smoker consumes much more tobacco
than a heavy marijuana smoker consumes marijuana. This is because
smoked tobacco, with a 90% addiction rate, is the most addictive of
all drugs while marijuana is less addictive than caffeine.

This is one of the more persistent myths. A real world
example of what happens when marijuana is readily available can be
found in Holland. The Dutch partially legalized marijuana in the
1970s. Since then, hard drug use -- heroin and cocaine -- have
DECLINED substantially. If marijuana really were a gateway drug,
one would have expected use of hard drugs to have gone up, not
down. This apparent "negative gateway" effect has also been
observed in the United States. Studies done in the early 1970s
showed a negative correlation between use of marijuana and use of
alcohol. A 1993 Rand Corporation study that compared drug use in
states that had decriminalized marijuana versus those that had not,
found that where marijuana was more available -- the states that
had decriminalized -- hard drug abuse as measured by emergency room
episodes decreased. In short, what science and actual experience
tell us is that marijuana tends to substitute for the much more
dangerous hard drugs like alcohol, cocaine, and heroin.

A recent survey by Dr. Patricia Morgan of the University of California at Berekeley found that a significant number of pot smokers and dealers switched to methamphetamine "ice" when Hawaii's marijuana eradication program created a shortage of pot. Dr. Morgan noted a similar phenomenon in California, where cocaine use soared in the wake of the CAMP helicopter eradication campaign.The one way in which marijuana does lead to other drugs is through its illegality: persons who deal in marijuana are likely to deal in other illicit drugs as well.

The most celebrated study that claims to show brain damage is
the rhesus monkey study of Dr. Robert Heath, done in the late
1970s. This study was reviewed by a distinguished panel of
scientists sponsored by the Institute of Medicine and the National
Academy of Sciences. Their results were published under the title,
Marijuana and Health in 1982. Heath's work was sharply criticized
for its insufficient sample size (only four monkeys), its failure
to control experimental bias, and the misidentification of normal
monkey brain structure as "damaged". Actual studies of human
populations of marijuana users have shown no evidence of brain
damage. For example, two studies from 1977, published in the
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) showed no
evidence of brain damage in heavy users of marijuana. That same
year, the American Medical Association (AMA) officially came out in
favor of decriminalizing marijuana. That's not the sort of thing
you'd expect if the AMA thought marijuana damaged the brain.

*cough*

http://paranoia.lycaeum.org/marijuan...mythology.html

... Now is anybody gonna even bother to read all that?

I could easily go find a billion more places that say the same things... so could drolldurham...

It is a drug, duh... But then again so is Alcohol and Cigarettes, really... And cigs are even more dangerous... hell, alcohol is just as bad, maybe even more dangerous... and yet Cigs and Alcohol are legal and Marijuana isn't? 'Zat make sense to you? And because people believe all these false things, they're stubborn to believe otherwise when they hear it... "Don't believe everything you read on the internet" well:

a: They get their information from various studies and medical books (which I would think got their information from research and studies) and even list the sources...

b: Don't believe everything the government crams down yer throat...

In the early 1970s, U.S. President Nixon appointed a
"National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse" (the
"Marijuana Commission") to study cannabis and its effects on
social and individual health. He may have expected it to report
back that marijuana was a deadly threat. Instead, it
recommended decriminalization: that users be fined but not
imprisoned. Nixon ignored the Commission's results and
instead declared a "total war on dangerous drugs".

http://paranoia.lycaeum.org/marijuan...ource-of-myths

I've only done it 4 times since August anyways...

G'day *tip of the hat*