Comments

1
Kerlikowske needs to be fired for the hack that he is, and all government medical and drug policy needs to be based on science alone.
2
* For what it's worth, Dom, you've got shit for brains.
compare the health effects of smoking the same number of cigarettes vs joints.
then get back to us, mKay?
3
If pot were smoked at the same rate cigarettes are (were), pot would be more harmful.

It's like saying that playing with dynamite is less harmful than playing with matches.
4
@2, I'm sure he'll get right on that, as soon as someone is able to locate representative samples of people who smoke 20 or 40 or 60 joints a day, like cigarette smokers typically do.

Perhaps your own obsession with shit stems from a problem you are having yourself in the place where your brain is supposed to be? Because your comment here is of a very low quality. Shit, you might say.
5
@2/3- Like Fnarf implies, the pot/cigarette comparison is apples to bicycle tires. You just don't use them the same way, which you need to take into account when you compare their health effects.
6
4
and you think repackaging the same insult in twice as many words improves it?
7
@4: "I'm sure he'll get right on that, as soon as someone is able to locate representative samples of people who smoke 20 or 40 or 60 joints a day"

He's at the offices of The Stranger. He just needs to get a show of hands in the lunchroom.
8
@6, no, what improves it is that it comes from me, and I'm a better human being than you are. You're a piece of garbage. And you're stupid, but a piece of shit above all. I pity the people who have to be around you.
9
* I'm not sure I'd let some teenager's bullshit detector be my gold standard for truth.
10
The US is 95% dominated by Assertion-based facts. I believe it, it is true, don't bother me with actual observations and research. It's the lever by which the majority of Americans (the ones who vote, at least) are controlled by their kleptocratic corporate masters.
11
I wasn't reading the unregistered.

I certainly understand that pot smoking and cigarette smoking are two different birds. Still, the major health issue is the same - inhaling smoke. I guess it's accurate to say that inhaling less smoke is "healthier" than inhaling more smoke.

The thing is, we won't really know the health problems with pot smoking until it's legalized. I know plenty of people who, if they could do so easily, cheaply, and legally, would smoke pot every day, pretty much all throughout the day. I don't know how many cigarettes that might compare to, but it's still inhaling a lot of smoke. It's an anecdote, yes, but is it far from what would happen in the general pot-smoking public? Who knows for sure?
12
8

you've been holding that in a long time Bnarf....
feel better now?
13

I keeping grinning when I think about what life will be like in 2050 when all the Baby Boomers have died off, and all the Gen M's who think they are going to inherit all the world's riches, find out they don't know how to run the generating plants and agri-business operations to heat and feed themselves.

dude...it's THAT switch...seriously...I'm telling you

yeah right...that's the switch MY DAD would throw cheesewad...it's this one...it's much cooler switch

BLLAMMM!
14
@11: "I don't know how many cigarettes that might compare to, but it's still inhaling a lot of smoke."

To be kinda high all day, smoking mediocre weed, you'd have to smoke at most five cigarette sized joints. So if marijuana was five times at bad for you as cigarettes, and if the average marijuana user was just as addictive in behavior as the average cigarette smoker, and if smoking was the only way to consume marijuana, then it'd be an even comparison. Since the first needs research and the second and third are known to be untrue it really doesn't make sense to complain about the health effects of smoking marijuana while cigarettes are legal.
15
It's just a fad.

Kids just think it's a sign of rebellion.

Soon those kids will graduate college, get real jobs, and the younger kids will rebel against them by refusing to get tattoos and refusing to smoke weed.
16
If you're smoking 20, 40, 60 joints a day, you were probably an idiot before you smoked the first one. That's the most wasteful and unpleasant way to smoke dope, short of dumping bails on a bonfire. A decent waterpipe, or even a vaporizer, makes a huge difference.

The point about keeping high school kids from daily smoking is critical. We know that those brains are still developing, and introducing all the harsh chemicals and carcinogens that come with smoked plant life can be detrimental to development. I, for one, am glad I didn't start until college.

The larger issue, of course, is kids learning about the causes of addiction. "Gateway drug" is bullshit. It's a behavioral problem first, a chemical dependency second.
17
I know plenty of people who, if they could do so easily, cheaply, and legally, would smoke pot every day, pretty much all throughout the day.

I and most of my friends have been doing that since the early 1970s. Also keep in mind that there are alternatives to smoking weed. For example you can put it into baked goods, or use a vaporizer.

With all due respect, and this is not a put-down so don't take it that way, it is pretty obvious to me that you smoke neither weed nor cigarettes. If you did then you would know why your statement "If pot were smoked at the same rate cigarettes are (were), pot would be more harmful." causes us pot heads to roll on the floor laughing.
18
Kids would care more about staying sober for their education if we cared more about their education. After learning about the Finnish school system I don't think I could ever in good conscience force the American public school system on a child, it would be criminal.
19
@17,
No offense taken.

I smoke cigarettes very infrequently (probably the equivalent of a half-pack a year). Weed has only ever given me a nauseaus-high, so after trying it in various forms and strains, I gave up.

And, I'm 100% in favor of legalizing it (or at least decriminalizing it) and also in favor of ending the idiotic and wasteful "war" on drugs (which drugs won hands down decades ago).

So all that aside... if comparing weed smoking to cigarette smoking is so ridiculous, according to pot heads, why do pot heads compare the two so often?
20
@19 they are both vices
21
@19 Cuz the dumber one is legal, and that's really annoying.
22
I think the obvious solution to the smoking issue is PSAs teaching teens how to cook with pot.
23
I think it important those those of us who want a sane drugs policy not whitewash their dangers. To do so does a disservice to both the people who might be misinformed thereby, and does our cause one as well: there are now a fair number of people who would call 'bullshit' on any assertion that marijuana is an inherently deadly drug, but they (and more conservatively-minded folks) would be well within their rights to call it on us were we to say (as some do, unfortunately) that it's 'harmless', often compounding the offence by linking its supposed harmlessness to its being 'natural', as if 1.) we hadn't been distorting its genetics severely the past few decades, and 2.) as if arsenic, lobelia, and cyanide in seeds _weren't_---"Nature" doesn't give a damn about you.

And claiming harmlessness sets the stage for disproval on the presentation of any harm at all; much better to point out that we permit adults to do all _sorts_ of potentially harmful things, for their liberty's sake and ours.
24
@23- No one is saying harmless. Everyone is saying "less harmful than things which are legal."
25
To the joker above talking about how marijuana is worse than tobacco....
First off, all you have to do is use a water bong and suddenly pot is WAY healthier than tobacco, gram for gram. Of course pot smokers only smoke maybe a tenth as much anyway, so it isn't a fair comparison to begin with, but....

More and more like me use pot without smoking it at all! They vaporize it, meaning there is NO smoke, NO nicotine, NO tar, NO carcinogens.

Now what?
26
To the joker above talking about how marijuana is worse than tobacco....
First off, all you have to do is use a water bong and suddenly pot is WAY healthier than tobacco, gram for gram. Of course pot smokers only smoke maybe a tenth as much anyway, so it isn't a fair comparison to begin with, but....

More and more like me use pot without smoking it at all! They vaporize it, meaning there is NO smoke, NO nicotine, NO tar, NO carcinogens.

Now what?

Please wait...

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