I concede. However, there is increasing evidence linking pot and mental illness. The pot of today and that of yesteryear are not the same. Occasional use may not be too bad (which goes for all drugs including alcohol), but I know of two people personally whose regular use has put one in an asylum and the other a hopeless dropout. This excludes those I hear about from psychologists in my professional milieu. A google search of this assertion will reveal learned institutions who have studied this.

Beware, beware.

Alright, cool. How about some of those other organs?

Maybe they can do a chemical composition of pot vs. cigarettes? Certainly aren't the industrial factory-made tobacco-sticks filled with extraneous chemicals like cyanide, etc. whereas marijuana's mostly just plant-matter?

I remember in grade school we had to sit through a film about smoking and maybe drugs in general.

There was one point in the film where they showed the dissected lungs of a cigarette smoker and a pot smoker (they also compared the brains as well). The pot smoker had less damage, and the film also stated that most of the residue and damage in the pot smoker's lungs would be repaired in about 6 months of time (obviously not for the cadaver in the film), whereas the tobacco smoker not only had more extensive damage, most of which was permanent (tar & other byproducts just stay in the lungs, and build over time).

I think the point of the film was to tell us not to use drugs, but the take home message that I got was that pot was the healthier choice of the two.

@1 Can you cite a study or two? When I googled your assertion, I got many many links that said the opposite, except maybe if the smokers in question had started smoking when they were young (like middle-school age). Certainly moderation in everything is good, and children shouldn't do drugs because it may hamper proper brain development, but I don't think there is much evidence, esp *causative* evidence, for what you're implying.

This website summarizes some of the most recent research.

http://ukcia.org/wordpress/?p=76

Also, could you define your terms? By "mental illness" are you including addictive behavior? Certainly pot is addicting to people susceptible to such things. If you mean "psychoses," I believe the evidence shows that you are wrong, despite anecdotes to the contrary.

I don't remember eating cigarette brownies, nope, not once.

Don't smoke anything.

That's not saying much.

But isn't this somewhat offset by that unfortunate link between pot smoking, cunnilingus, & HPV+ oral cancer that your podcast guest warned us of a few weeks ago?

Yeah, because no one ever smokes pot all day long or anything. I've never met someone who couldn't go more than two hours without getting high. Come on. Some people chain smoke regardless of what they're smoking and some people don't. Just because you smoke pot doesn't make you superior to people who smoke cigarettes.

And throat cancer, which apparently has become evidentially linked to pot smoking. There's no point in comparing pot smoking to tobacco smoking, that's just a exercise in "my addiction/ (or) recreational drug is so much less stupid than yours, so I'm obviously way cooler than you are". Picking bones that way drives me nuts. If you think your drug is the one that everyone should be doing all the time, vote for the marijuana party and see how it works out for us all.

I wish I could +1/like on slog, if so I would do just that @11 (secretchord)...
What people tend to miss out is that there are other forms of nicotine to get a hold of out there. Especially if you live in Northern Europe (and especially scandinavia): Snus!
Im trying to quit smoking by using snus instead. Its as addictive but its not harmful.

Do Americans smoke it green? In Australia it's the norm to mix tobacco and marijuana, which does more damage (to the lungs and other organs) than either on its own.

More and more pot smokers vaporize anyway. If only they'd let those e-cig people smoke in restaurants, everyone would be happy and we could end this destructive conflict.

@13: While that's not completely unheard-of here, yes, most Americans smoke it green.

@1, "linking". So some people who smoke pot are also mentally ill. Or, some people who are mentally ill also smoke pot. Do you know which way that goes? No, none of us do yet, because correlation is not causation.

The plural of anecdote is not data, of course, and all that, but I have smoked marijuana nearly every day for the past six years. In that time, I have excelled at every job I've held, progressively gaining more responsibility and higher pay despite sometimes working two at a time in excess of 60 hours per week, and this spring I will finish a bachelor's degree in computer science, near the top of my class. Granted, I go to a state school and the program isn't as competitive as the one at the UW, but still, I like to think I don't qualify as a "hopeless dropout".

How is it that nicotine addiction is pathetic and pot addiction not? That makes no sense. Is their some spectrum of addictions where some are a-ok and others are wicked bad?

It's pretty obvious that you've never smoked either one, @17. Pot isn't addictive. Sure, there can be a psychological dependency sometimes, but that's not addiction.

@18 You obviously don't know what the definition of addiction is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction

Specifically for the purposes of this discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_de…