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What are your views on marijuana for recreational use?

As long as you don’t smoke it, it’s a safe and healthy alternative to more dangerous recreational substances, like alcohol and tobacco. I fully support its use as a recreational substance for those over the age of 21.For the average consumer, there are no long-term negative health effects from consuming marijuana in a non-smoking fashion. It doesn’t make you lazy, it doesn’t have a deleterious effect on society by making consumers give up on their aspirations, it doesn’t cause brain damage, it doesn’t make you stupid, it doesn’t negatively impact one’s empathy, it doesn’t impair one’s immune system and it doesn’t stunt your growth. There’s no evidence it induces psychosis-related symptoms in those who don’t already have psychosis, it’s not any more addictive than tobacco, alcohol, caffeine or sugar, it’s not a gateway drug to worse substances, and no one in recorded history, for the last 10,000 years that humanity has cultivated cannabis, has anyone ever died from it.It makes you high. It makes people happy. It relieves pain, produces feelings of euphoria, and is currently being used to treat 268 medical conditions, including everything from acne to cancer. There are absolutely zero logical reasons it should be illegal when things like coffee aren't.I’ll break it all down. Prepare for a lot of reading.Negative Health Effects?For the average consumer, there are no long-term negative health effects from consuming cannabis in a non-smoking fashion.Consumers with debilitating heart conditions, bipolar disorders or any form of psychosis should consult their doctor before consuming any form of cannabis, as clinical evidence has shown cannabis and its compounds could make the symptoms associated with these conditions worse.Cannabis doesn’t cause a deleterious effect on society by making consumers passive, unproductive, apathetic and either unable or unwilling to fulfill their responsibilities, it doesn’t negatively impact one’s emotions, one’s ability to empathize or increase the likelihood of suicidal thoughts, it has no correlation with greater chances of lung cancer even if it’s smoked chronically for decades, it doesn’t cause brain cell damage, which in turn leads to long-term memory loss, cognitive impairment or difficulties in learning, it doesn’t impair the user’s immune system or make them more susceptible to other diseases, it doesn’t stunt growth, interfere with the production of hormones associated with reproduction, cause infertility among adult users or delay sexual development in adolescents, it doesn’t cause psychosis in those who don’t already have psychosis, it’s not any more addictive than caffeine, tobacco or alcohol and those who do form addictions do not suffer life-threatening withdrawal symptoms when quitting, and it’s not a gateway drug that will lead to more hardcore substances.Doesn’t it Make You Lazy?Many claims over the years have asserted that consuming marijuana frequently will cause a deleterious effect on society by making consumers passive, unproductive, apathetic and either unable or unwilling to fulfill their responsibilities. This stereotype is so ingrained in cannabis’ image that it’s nearly impossible to see a stoner stereotype in any media not have the lazy trait.Fact of the matter is, science does not support it. Coined as “amotivational syndrome,” the phrase was created in the late 1960s just as marijuana saw rapid use among the American youth. No studies corroborated this information at the time; it was pure hearsay and fear mongering. Studies in the following decades and recent years have concluded that consumers are actually, on average, more productive in work environments while high, and that there is no substantial link to marijuana and amotivational syndrome at all.Doesn’t it Impact Emotions?More recently than many of the other negative claims on cannabis use is the idea that frequent, chronic or long-term cannabis consumption negatively impacts one’s emotions, one’s ability to empathize or increase the likelihood of suicidal thoughts. This is a grossly stretched conclusion that implies much worse than what was ever observed. Studies conducted in 2007 and 2012 claiming to observe negative emotional impact both admitted in their studies that adjusting for confounding factors may eliminate this association. A further 2013 study claimed to observe an increase in the likelihood of depression among high school students who had consumed cannabis, examining 76 subjects. In their conclusion, they note that cannabis use appeared to have no effect on which subjects got depression later in life, and credited most of these observations to “other illicit drug use.”Another study to assert these claims came in 2016, led by Lucy Troup at Colorado State University who examined 70 individuals using an electroencephalogram (EEG) for 2 years. All volunteers were grouped into either chronic, moderate or non-consumers of cannabis. While hooked up to the EEG, the volunteers studied images of 4 different expressions: neutral, happy, fearful and angry. The cannabis consumers scored slightly lower than the control group in their ability to discern emotion just from looking at a face’s eyes. That’s all that was observed. Since this study, Dr. Troup has continued studies with essentially the same basis, though other psychologists have called into question the kind of conclusions she and other researchers have made based on these minor observances.Seemingly much more impactful, a meta-analysis of 11 studies conducted in February of 2019 examined a total of 23,317 adolescent individuals who had consumed cannabis, associating their use with an increased risk of developing depression and suicidal thoughts later into adulthood. The study completely overlooks any form of association between which adolescents who used cannabis were growing up in dysfunctional households, which ones were self-medicating for anxiety or depression, and which ones had been previously diagnosed with PTSD. The study accounts for no other emotional or social variables and yet makes the assertion that cannabis use leads to depression. Rather, the conclusion many make, including Dr. David Bearman, is that many of these adolescents were bound to develop depression and suicidal thoughts regardless of their cannabis use, and simply used cannabis to self medicate their own developing problems. Correlation, not causation.To date, no mood disorders or significant mood alterations have been shown to appear in those partaking in long-term cannabis consumption. The only concern is with those diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder, but if you don’t already have bipolar disorder, there’s no evidence cannabis can suddenly cause you to develop it.Doesn’t it Damage Your Brain?There are many reports of marijuana causing brain cell damage, which in turn leads to memory loss, cognitive impairment and difficulties in learning. There is no significant drop or increase in IQ points between twins when one consumes marijuana and another does not, mostly due to clinical measurements, but also in part because IQ is a meaningless and scientifically unsupported means of measuring intelligence due to being invented by French school teachers to figure out which of their students had autism, and was meant to be irrelevant after the age of 15. While some studies have claimed to observe a decrease in GPA scores among teenagers who consume marijuana, a 2015 study examining cannabis-consuming high school students took into account alcohol and tobacco usage, which other studies had not, and found those two substances to be the main cause of lower GPAs, not cannabis. Some longitudinal studies of college students, after controlling for other factors, actually found marijuana users to score higher on tests than their non-consumer peers. One study that found lower average grades for marijuana consumers failed to identify a causal relationship and concluded that both phenomena (consuming marijuana and having low grades) were part of complex, inter-related social and emotional problems. One wasn’t the cause or effect of another.The original study to make a claim on permanent brain impairment following cannabis consumption reported in postmortem examinations of rhesus monkeys exposed to high quantities of THC to have “abnormalities” in the hippocampus, a cortical brain region known to play an important role in learning and memory, and thus concluded there must be negative side effects. Abnormality sounds bad, but it just means a change in brain matter, which isn’t inherently negative (consuming caffeine changes the brain too). They further “confirmed” this study by finding similar brain changes in rodents, who were given up to 200 times the psychoactive dose in humans. For reference, this amount in rats to produce minor abnormalities is comparative to a human smoking 30,000 joints and being reported as having some lingering brain dysfunction. Further studies found no significant brain abnormalities in rodents with 100 times the psychoactive dose in humans.In 2006, the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research and the New York University School of Medicine scanned the brains of 10 individuals who consumed cannabis daily for one or more years in their adolescence, and 10 control subjects who had not, using MRI methods. There was no evidence of cerebral atrophy or loss of white matter integrity, and the researchers concluded that frequent cannabis use is unlikely to be neurotoxic to the normal developing brain. A similar study done in 2002 by the National Institute on Drug Abuse employed 4 patients who consumed at least 10 grams of THC per day for 30+ years, and were systematically examined throughout the process. Mild difficulties were noted in attention in regards to complex new verbal material, but without effect on higher level executive function. No significant differences were seen in MRI studies, and one of the subjects continues to serve at an executive level in an investment firm. Plenty of other studies have been conducted using similar methods and found no long-term negative health effects when looking at the patients’ brains.Dr. Lester Grinspoon, Associate Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the former Senior Psychiatrist at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston states, “If the brain produces its own cannabinoid-like substances, it doesn’t make much sense that it would produce a substance which is going to damage the brain. Indeed, long before it was discovered that there are endogenous cannabinoids, the empirical evidence did not demonstrate that cannabis damaged the brain.” He’s specifically speaking about endocannabinoids like AEA and 2AG, chemical compounds naturally produced in our bodies that serve the same purpose as the phytocannabinoids like THC and CBD that we consume from cannabis.More recent studies have been finding measurable differences in brain matter, particularly in the amygdala and hippocampus, among chronic cannabis users. Short-term memory impairment has been consistently observed in chronic users (consuming a few times a day), but disappears entirely after a weeks’ abstinence. There is no damaging effect on long-term memory. Among the hippocampal volume, changes caused by cannabis consumption were found to be reversible with CBD exposure or abstinence in a 2016 study. Clinical research has continually reaffirmed the opposite of these brain damage claims as well; the phytocannabinoids found inside cannabis actually have potent neurogenerative and neuroprotective properties. Compounds like THC and CBD play a role in helping the brain to build new neurons and then protect them from neurodegenerative diseases or injuries caused by stroke, concussions or head trauma.The issues with a lot of these negative claims is their inconsistency; no discernible pattern has been found in what kind of brain changes occur, whether or not these changes are inherently negative, positive or neutral, and how researchers define “chronic” cannabis use seems to differ drastically from study to study, with some considering “multiple times a day” to be chronic, and others considering “a few times a week” as chronic. Despite these inconsistencies, studies have continuously claimed to observe cannabis users having difficulty with attention, concentration, decision-making, risk-taking, impulsivity, inhibition, working memory and verbal fluency. Much of the medical world, and certainly much of the cannabis industry, sees these examples as outliers or victims of the very subjective experiences one can have from cannabis use. The majority of these studies use sample sizes of around 5 people, did not specify dosage amounts or lengths of abstinence and did not control for outlying factors. Some people can operate fine on cannabis, and some people just can’t.There is no consistent evidence that marijuana users, even those of decades or more and of any age, suffer permanent brain impairment in any regard. Numerous studies comparing chronic marijuana users with nonuser controls have found no significant differences in learning, memory recall or other cognitive functions when controlling for other factors.Doesn’t it Impair your Immune System?Claims in the 1970s and into the 1980s asserted that frequent marijuana use impairs the user’s immune system and makes them more susceptible to other diseases. The principal study fueling this claim of immune impairment involved preparations of white blood cells that had been removed from marijuana consumers and controls. After exposing the cells to immune activators, they reported a lower rate of transformation in cells taken from the marijuana consumers. The study was conducted by Gabriel Nahas, a scientist staunchly against the use of marijuana in all forms. He was eventually fired from the Walter Reed Medical Center, and publicly admitted to tampering with the results of every study he conducted. Numerous groups of scientists since have failed to confirm the original claims of his study in any way, and another study conducted in 1988 demonstrated an increase in responsiveness when white blood cells from marijuana consumers were exposed to immunological activators.Clinical studies conducted since have never shown an increase in bacterial, viral or parasitic infection among marijuana consumers, and have actually shown the opposite. Conclusive studies have shown it does not increase the risk of HIV infection, or increase the intensity of AIDS symptoms.Doesn’t it Stunt Your Growth?Claims have been made that marijuana consumption at early ages may stunt growth, interfere with the production of hormones associated with reproduction, cause infertility among adult users and delay sexual development in adolescents. Despite these claims, no significant difficulties in fertility or hormone levels have ever been reported. One peer-reviewed, longitudinal study found that when smoking high dosage THC 20 times a day for 30 days straight, there was a slight decrease in sperm count in males, but it was minuscule enough that it would not affect actual fertility. This decrease may be attributed to benzene, a carcinogen formed during the natural processes of combustion that has been shown to be damaging to the reproductive system when inhaled in large quantities. Using another consumption method of cannabis, such as vaporization, edibles or tinctures, produces no benzene or carcinogens of any kind.It Can Cause Psychosis, Right?There is no medical or psychiatric consensus on the relationship cannabis has with psychosis, and studies have pointed in numerous directions over the decades. The most agreed upon conclusion is that cannabis has a very low chance of worsening psychosis symptoms in people who already have psychosis, but there is no proven link between cannabis directly causing psychosis to develop on its own.To be as clear as possible; if you already have psychosis, there is a chance that cannabis can make your symptoms worse. If you do not have psychosis, there is no evidence that cannabis can cause psychosis to suddenly develop.Cannabis-Induced Psychosis (CIP) is a form of psychosis purportedly directly caused by cannabis; its confirmation as an existing disorder in of itself is heavily debated, and the psychology world seems split on whether to recognize it as a legitimate disorder or not. The term first appeared in 1987 after a Swedish research team determined that early cannabis consumers were more likely to develop psychosis later in their lives, going off of self-reported data. Research into cannabis’ relationship to psychosis skyrocketed, and in a few years, it became the most funded part of cannabis research as a whole. Unfortunately, many of these studies relied on poor data collection methods, such as cold-call surveys and singular cases, as well as poor control factors, as very, very few took environmental, social or prior psychological factors into account. This trend continued into the 2010s, when studies conducted by Benford 2011, Every-Palmer 2010, Muller 2010, Van Der Veer 2011 and Hurst 2011 all counted temporary anxiety, disorganization, paranoia, agitation, confusion, tachycardia or an increased heart rate, and hypokalemia or low potassium levels, as psychosis symptoms. Many psychologists, doctors and therapists disagreed with this notion, as these symptoms are neither severe nor do they last more than a few hours after consumption, at most.Evidence against a connection between cannabis and psychosis is rather prominent in the psychiatry and cannabis worlds as well. In 2015, Matthew Hill of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute at the University of Calgary said there is little evidence of a causal relationship between cannabis and psychosis, and went further to say there is evidence that cannabis use does not cause psychosis. His conclusion was similar to many others; cannabis can induce psychosis in individuals sooner by worsening their pre-existing psychosis. Dr. Romina Mizrahi, the director of the Focus on Youth Psychosis Prevention Clinic at The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto agreed that cannabis does not cause psychosis in individuals who do not already have psychosis, but could trigger an underlying condition. Other experts speculate that reverse causality may play a role in so many studies’ false positives, believing cannabis use to be a byproduct of mental illness, not the cause; those with psychotic episodes use cannabis to self-medicate before their diagnosis. Furthermore, and even more drastically contradictory to CIP, phytocannabinoids THCV and CBD, and the terpene myrcene have all been clinically shown to be active treaters of schizophrenia, a form of psychosis, and CBD was demonstrated to be as effective as amisulpride, a standard antipsychotic.Rather unfortunately, CIP’s ambiguous status was determined legally defensible in Canada under matters of assault in 2017. Mark Phillips, a personal injury lawyer from Ontario, attacked a family of immigrants in a parking lot mall because they were speaking Spanish, accusing them of being terrorists and members of ISIS. He crushed one of their ribs with a baseball bat. He plead guilty to assault, but claimed he was suffering from a cannabis-induced psychotic episode. He was granted a conditional discharge. After serving three years’ probation and community service, he will have no criminal record. This ruling was widely denounced, resparking the debate about cannabis’ relationship to psychosis. Paul Armentano, Deputy Director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML, made a great point that I agree with, “My presumption is that if someone knowingly engages in substance that alters mood or behaviour, how can it be excusable? That is like saying that, if I hadn’t consumed so much alcohol, I wouldn’t have done this — so my actions were excusable.” The issue with this case is that it legitimizes CIP as a mental disorder that anyone, at any time, can just develop from casual cannabis consumption; something that is not medically accurate. It now allows consumers to smoke weed, break the law, and later claim they were suffering from psychosis to get off on the charges. It’s equivalent to saying that you drove drunk and hit someone because you were suffering from alcohol-induced psychosis.Isn’t it Very Addictive?Yes, it is possible for someone to become addicted to marijuana, though this depends on how you define addiction. This dependency has a name; Marijuana Use Disorder (MUD), also sometimes called Cannabis Use Disorder (CUD). People can become dependent on any substance or action. It’s why you’ll read about people addicted to consuming drywall or eating nothing but cheesy potatoes. Nothing about drywall or cheesy potatoes is inherently addicting, it’s just the consumer’s brain that’s created a dependency. The same is true for cannabis. Cannabis itself is no more addicting than sugar, caffeine or gambling.Depending on what country you're in and who you ask, some claim that Marijuana Use Disorder only classifies as a mental dependency, not an addiction. A mental dependence is often defined as a dependence on a substance whose cessation involves emotional-motivational withdrawal symptoms, such as a state of unease or dissatisfaction, a reduced capacity to experience pleasure, or anxiety upon quitting. A physical dependence is defined as a compulsive desire to continue using a substance, despite harmful consequences, including physical withdrawal symptoms and a failure to meet work, social or family obligations. By older definitions, Marijuana Use Disorder doesn't classify as an addiction, as there are no life-threatening negative physical side effects after cessation. By more recent definitions, mental dependency and addiction are essentially the same thing, and the physical symptoms that do arise from marijuana withdrawal are enough to classify it as an addiction. There's not a general consensus on the two terms, so you can call it whatever you like, but the fact remains the same; marijuana can be habit-forming, as with anything, and it can be detrimental to people’s lives if it gets out of control.While physical symptoms may arise for those quitting marijuana who have a dependency, they’re not typically severe and never life-threatening. Common symptoms include decreased appetite, physical discomfort, irritability, headaches and sleep difficulties for up to 2 weeks after quitting, before subsiding entirely. For more chronic users, those typically over 2 or more years, these symptoms might last up to a month, but are still not comparable to the withdrawal symptoms of many, many other substances. Another common side effect worth mentioning is intensely vivid dreams. THC blocks many parts of REM sleep, the portion of sleep in which the brain dreams. As the brain is deprived of this REM sleep, it slowly begins to build up a sort of appetite for it, and following the cessation of THC consumption after a long period, it overcompensates during the REM sleep rebound effect, resulting in incredibly vivid dreams that last longer and can be considered more intense.The National Institute on Drug Abuse, for all the good that they do, gets this subject wrong quite frequently. They state that the reason they do not have proper estimates of the number of people addicted to marijuana is because of contradicting studies, but fail to acknowledge that their estimate of marijuana addiction being roughly 9% includes those who completed court-ordered addiction treatment for cannabis possession crimes in order to avoid stiff penalties. The best estimates the rest of the medical world has is that around 4% of people who use marijuana frequently will develop a mental dependency; compare this to 7% of caffeine consumers eventually developing a dependency, 29% of alcohol drinkers developing an addiction, and up to 34% of tobacco smokers. The national, presumed average of people with “addictive personalities” is roughly 10%, for any substance or action, though the scientific support for something like an “addictive personality” existing in the first place is not very prevalent.Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, Contingency Management and Motivational Enhancement Therapy have all shown promise in helping those with Marijuana Use Disorder. The FDA has not approved any medications for the treatment of this disorder, but CBD has shown to be a very effective treatment for those suffering cannabis withdrawal symptoms. Other substances such as N-acetylcysteine and fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) inhibiting chemicals may also help with treatment. In 2015, over 138,000 people in the US voluntarily sought treatment for their marijuana use. The vast majority were cleared from their programs or support groups after 3 weeks. Possible relapse data was not collected.Isn’t it a Gateway Drug?The majority of people who try marijuana for the first time don’t even continue smoking marijuana. There are a few studies that correlate links with marijuana consumption and the use of other addictive substances, such as alcohol and nicotine. However, more recent studies taking into account other factors besides biological mechanisms, such as a person’s social environment, have concluded that people who are more vulnerable to drug-taking are simply more likely to start with readily available substances such as marijuana, tobacco, or alcohol, and their subsequent social interactions with others who use drugs increases their chances of trying other drugs.A common claim against the legalization of marijuana is that consumption makes you more likely to commit crimes. The only reason this claim is technically true is because of a technicality. Smoking marijuana is itself a crime in many places, so choosing to smoke will obviously make you more likely to commit a crime; you’re committing a crime to smoke it in the first place. Aside from this, statistically speaking, the average marijuana consumer is no more or less likely to commit other, unrelated crimes.Furthermore, the popular school program D.A.R.E. has been, by all accounts, an utter failure. Despite its continued renewal in hundreds of school districts around the country, studies looking into its effectiveness have found it either making no significant impact on the use of drugs by underaged teens, or in some cases actually increasing the rate in which drugs are used at earlier ages. As of early 2019, even D.A.R.E. recognizes cannabis is not a gateway substance, and quietly removed it from their list in March.Hasn’t it Killed People Before?To answer this question, we will be excluding activities people engage in while high. Just as with alcohol, driving and other activities that could be considered dangerous should be avoided when under the influence of marijuana. We will also be excluding examples of polydrug use, in which the deceased were found dead with not only marijuana, but other, much more dangerous substances in their system.Counting death tolls per the substance alone (excluding crimes and accidents), tobacco kills over 480,000 people per year, alcohol kills over 125,000 people per year, over 25,000 people die from prescription overdoses, caffeine kills over 2,000, aspirin kills over 500, peanuts kill over 100, salt kills over 35, and there has never been a single, verified report of a death from cannabis consumption, ever.Marijuana users, on average, die no sooner than those who do not partake and have a similar life expectancy. A user would have to consume 20,000 to 40,000 times the amount of THC in a joint in order to risk dying from organ failure. For chronic marijuana consumers, there’s still no reason to worry. A study conducted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) calculates that a person would need to consume nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana within a 15 minute period to induce a lethal response, which shouldn’t surprise anyone to hear, is physically impossible to do. Additionally, there are no cannabinoid receptors found in the brain stem, the area of the brain responsible for respiratory health and most basic bodily functions. It is therefore physically impossible to die from an overdose on marijuana. In a more brutal, and very illegal study in 1974, 13 wild monkeys were captured and virtually suffocated in marijuana smoke over a period of 90 days. All captive primates fully recovered a week after the experiment concluded.There are 4 documented and reported cases of people dying from marijuana, but these cases have been disputed throughout the medical world since the day each was announced. What’s most interesting about these reports is the massive amount of focus they bring to the subject. Typically these stories are brought as arguments for the continued criminalization of marijuana, despite the death tolls of perfectly legal tobacco, alcohol and opioids frequently surpassing hundreds of thousands in a year. It’s also noteworthy that each time a report of a death from marijuana occurs, it becomes the new “first ever” case of a marijuana death, even from the same publications that have previously used the same titles on past victims.I can go over each of these cases and why they’re not true if you’d like.Sources, additional educational material, scholarly articles and academic studies are in the comments below.

What are the biggest misconceptions about marijuana/weed?

There's a lot.Indicas make you sleepy and sativas make you energetic.Indica strains are known for being physically sedating, perfect for relaxing with a movie or as a nightcap before bed. Sativas typically provide more invigorating, uplifting cerebral effects that pair well with physical activity, social gatherings and creative projects. Hybrids tend to fall somewhere in between the two, depending on the traits they inherit from their parent strains.Distinctions between the two main kinds, Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica, began in the eighteenth century when differences between their resin production were first noted. The hybrid category was adopted as growers began mixing genetics from both sativas and indicas.However, contrary to popular belief, growing evidence suggests that the major, categorical differences in indicas and sativas, as previously mentioned, are mostly, if not entirely attributed to placebo. Any dispensary will tell you that indica strains are sedating, sativa strains are stimulating and hybrids fall somewhere in the middle, but this simply isn’t the case. At least, not as a rule of thumb.The differences in sativa and indica strains, as a general rule, are purely morphological; as in, the plants themselves appear and behave differently, but there’s no general expectation for what their effects will be like. Some indica strains can leave you energetic and some sativas can knock you out. Each specific strain has its own effects, and are rarely, if ever, defined by the “type” of cannabis they come from. The trick to a dispenser telling you that this new indica strain will leave you tired and sleepy is expectation; while consuming that strain later that night, you expect to feel tired and sleepy, so you do.In addition to their origins, many differences between sativa and indica plants extend beyond their purposed effects. They look very distinct from one other, with pure indica plants sporting thick, bright purple leaves and buds, and pure sativa plants showing off thin, vibrant red and orange leaves. The characteristic green most commonly seen today is a result of interbreeding between indicas and sativas; pure strains of sativas or indicas are quite rare these days, and just about any strain you will ever encounter will be a hybrid with either indica- or sativa-dominant parts. Sativa plants also have a longer maturation cycle, indicas have a higher bud yield and the two can have very different flavor profiles.Marijuana causes perpetual laziness.Many claims over the years have asserted that consuming marijuana frequently will give you a deleterious effect on society by making consumers passive, unproductive, apathetic and either unable or unwilling to fulfill their responsibilities. This stereotype is so ingrained in cannabis’ image that it’s nearly impossible to see a stoner stereotype in any media not have the lazy trait.Fact of the matter is, science does not support it. Coined as “amotivational syndrome,” the phrase was created in the late 1960s just as marijuana saw rapid use among the American youth. No studies corroborated this information at the time; it was pure hearsay and fear mongering. Studies in the following decades and recent years have concluded that consumers are actually, on average, more productive in work environments while high, and that there is no substantial link to marijuana and amotivational syndrome at all.Marijuana kills brain cells and damages the brain.There are many reports of marijuana causing brain cell damage, which in turn leads to memory loss, cognitive impairment and difficulties in learning. There is no significant drop or increase in IQ points (which is an absolutely ridiculous, scientifically unsupported and inaccurate means of measuring intelligence to begin with) between twins when one consumes marijuana and another does not, and while some studies have claimed to observe a decrease in GPA scores among teenagers who consume marijuana, a 2015 study examining cannabis-consuming high school students took into account alcohol and tobacco usage, which other studies had not, and found those two substances to be the main cause of lower GPAs, not cannabis. Some longitudinal studies of college students, after controlling for other factors, actually found marijuana users to score higher on tests than their non-consumer peers. One study that found lower average grades for marijuana consumers failed to identify a causal relationship and concluded that both phenomena (consuming marijuana and having low grades) were part of complex, inter-related social and emotional problems. One wasn’t the cause or effect of another.The original study to make a claim on permanent brain impairment following cannabis consumption reported in postmortem examinations of rhesus monkeys exposed to high quantities of THC to have “abnormalities” in the hippocampus, a cortical brain region known to play an important role in learning and memory, and thus concluded there must be negative side effects. Abnormality sounds bad, but it just means a change in brain matter, which isn’t inherently negative (consuming caffeine changes the brain too). They further “confirmed” this study by finding similar brain changes in rodents, who were given up to 200 times the psychoactive dose in humans. For reference, this amount in rats to produce minor abnormalities is comparative to a human smoking 30,000 joints and being reported as having some lingering brain dysfunction. Further studies found no significant brain abnormalities in rodents with 100 times the psychoactive dose in humans.In 2006, the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research and the New York University School of Medicine scanned the brains of 10 individuals who consumed cannabis daily for one or more years in their adolescence, and 10 control subjects who had not, using MRI methods. There was no evidence of cerebral atrophy or loss of white matter integrity, and the researchers concluded that frequent cannabis use is unlikely to be neurotoxic to the normal developing brain. A similar study done in 2002 by the National Institute on Drug Abuse employed 4 patients who consumed at least 10 grams of THC per day for 30+ years, and were systematically examined throughout the process. Mild difficulties were noted in attention in regards to complex new verbal material, but without effect on higher level executive function. No significant differences were seen in MRI studies, and one of the subjects continues to serve at an executive level in an investment firm. Plenty of other studies have been conducted using similar methods and found no long-term negative health effects when looking at the patients’ brains.More recent studies have been finding measurable differences in brain matter, particularly in the amygdala and hippocampus, among chronic cannabis users. Short-term memory impairment has been consistently observed in chronic users (consuming a few times a day), but disappears entirely after a weeks’ abstinence. There is no damaging effect on long-term memory. Among the hippocampal volume, changes caused by cannabis consumption were found to be reversible with CBD exposure or abstinence in a 2016 study. Clinical research has continually reaffirmed the opposite of these brain damage claims as well; the phytocannabinoids found inside cannabis actually have potent neurogenerative and neuroprotective properties. Compounds like THC and CBD play a role in helping the brain to build new neurons and then protect them from neurodegenerative diseases or injuries caused by stroke, concussions or head trauma.The issues with a lot of these negative claims is their inconsistency; no discernible pattern has been found in what kind of brain changes occur, whether or not these changes are inherently negative, positive or neutral, and how researchers define “chronic” cannabis use seems to differ drastically from study to study, with some considering “multiple times a day” to be chronic, and others considering “a few times a week” as chronic. Despite these inconsistencies, studies have continuously claimed to observe cannabis users having difficulty with attention, concentration, decision-making, risk-taking, impulsivity, inhibition, working memory and verbal fluency. Much of the medical world, and certainly much of the cannabis industry, sees these examples as outliers or victims of the very subjective experiences one can have from cannabis use. The majority of these studies use sample sizes of around 5 people, did not specify dosage amounts or lengths of abstinence and did not control for outlying factors. Some people can operate fine on cannabis, and some people just can’t.There is no consistent evidence that marijuana users, even those of decades or more and of any age, suffer permanent brain impairment in any regard. Numerous studies comparing chronic marijuana users with nonuser controls have found no significant differences in learning, memory recall or other cognitive functions when controlling for other factors.Marijuana impairs the immune system.Similarly, claims in the 1970s and into the 1980s asserted that frequent marijuana use impairs the user’s immune system and makes them more susceptible to other diseases. The principal study fueling this claim of immune impairment involved preparations of white blood cells that had been removed from marijuana consumers and controls. After exposing the cells to immune activators, they reported a lower rate of transformation in cells taken from the marijuana consumers. The study was conducted by Gabriel Nahas, a scientist staunchly against the use of marijuana in all forms. He was eventually fired from the Water Reed Medical Center, publicly announced that all of his studies should be regarded as nonsense, and admitted to tampering with the results of every study he conducted. Numerous groups of scientists since have failed to confirm the original claims of his study in any way, and another study conducted in 1988 demonstrated an increase in responsiveness when white blood cells from marijuana consumers were exposed to immunological activators. Clinical studies conducted since have never shown an increase in bacterial, viral or parasitic infection among marijuana consumers. Conclusive studies showed it does not increase the risk of HIV infection, or increase the intensity of AIDS symptoms.Marijuana stunts your growth.Additional claims have been made that marijuana consumption at early ages may stunt growth, interfere with the production of hormones associated with reproduction, cause infertility among adult users and delay sexual development in adolescents. There is no evidence for any of this. No significant difficulties in fertility or hormone levels have ever been reported. One peer-reviewed, longitudinal study found that when smoking high dosage THC 20 times a day for 30 days straight, there was a slight decrease in sperm count, but it was minuscule enough that it would not affect actual fertility.Marijuana causes insanity / psychosis / schizophrenia.There is no medical or psychiatric consensus on the relationship cannabis has with psychosis, and studies have pointed in numerous directions over the decades. The most agreed upon answer conclusion is that cannabis has a very low chance of worsening psychosis symptoms in people who already have psychosis, but there is no proven link between cannabis directly causing psychosis to develop on its own.To be as clear as possible; if you already have psychosis, there is a chance cannabis can make your symptoms worse. If you do not have psychosis, there is no evidence that cannabis can cause psychosis to suddenly develop.Cannabis-Induced Psychosis, or CIP, is a form of psychosis purportedly directly caused by cannabis; its confirmation as an existing disorder in of itself is heavily debated, and the psychology world seems split on whether to recognize it as a legitimate disorder or not. The term first appeared in 1987 after a Swedish research team determined that early cannabis consumers were more likely to develop psychosis later in their lives, going off of self-reported data. Research into cannabis’ relationship to psychosis skyrocketed, and in a few years, it became the most funded part of cannabis research as a whole. Unfortunately, many of these studies relied on poor data collection methods, such as cold-call surveys and singular cases, as well as poor control factors, as very, very few took environmental, social or prior psychological factors into account. This trend continued into the 2010s, when studies conducted by Benford 2011, Every-Palmer 2010, Muller 2010, Van Der Veer 2011 and Hurst 2011 all counted temporary anxiety, disorganization, paranoia, agitation, confusion, tachycardia or an increased heart rate, and hypokalemia or low potassium levels, as psychosis symptoms. Many psychologists, doctors and therapists disagreed with this notion, as these symptoms are neither severe nor do they last more than a few hours after consumption, at most.Evidence against a connection between cannabis and psychosis is rather prominent in the psychiatry and cannabis worlds as well. In 2015, Matthew Hill of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute at the University of Calgary said there is little evidence of a causal relationship between cannabis and psychosis, and went further to say there is evidence that cannabis use does not cause psychosis. His conclusion was similar to many others; cannabis can induce psychosis in individuals sooner by worsening their pre-existing psychosis. Dr. Romina Mizrahi, the director of the Focus on Youth Psychosis Prevention Clinic at The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto agreed that cannabis does not cause psychosis in individuals who do not already have psychosis, but could trigger an underlying condition. Other experts speculate that reverse causality may play a role in so many studies’ false positives, believing cannabis use to be a byproduct of mental illness, not the cause; those with psychotic episodes use cannabis to self-medicate before their diagnosis. Furthermore, and even more drastically contradictory to CIP, THCV, CBD and the terpene myrcene have all been clinically shown to be active treaters of schizophrenia, a form of psychosis, and CBD was demonstrated to be as effective as amisulpride, a standard antipsychotic.Rather unfortunately, CIP’s ambiguous status was determined legally defensible in Canada under matters of assault in 2017. Mark Phillips, a personal injury lawyer from Ontario, attacked a family of immigrants in a parking lot mall because they were speaking Spanish, accusing them of being terrorists and members of ISIS. He crushed one of their ribs with a baseball bat. He plead guilty to assault, but claimed he was suffering from a cannabis-induced psychotic episode. He was granted a conditional discharge. After serving three years’ probation and community service, he will have no criminal record. This ruling was widely denounced, resparking the debate about cannabis’ relationship to psychosis. Paul Armentano, Deputy Director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML, made a great point that I agree with, “My presumption is that if someone knowingly engages in substance that alters mood or behaviour, how can it be excusable? That is like saying that, if I hadn’t consumed so much alcohol, I wouldn’t have done this — so my actions were excusable.” The issue with this case is that it legitimizes CIP as a mental disorder that anyone, at any time, can just develop from casual cannabis consumption; something that is not medically accurate. It now allows consumers to smoke weed, break the law, and later claim they were suffering from psychosis to get off on the charges. It’s equivalent to saying that you drove drunk and hit someone because you were suffering from alcohol-induced psychosis.Marijuana is more addictive than other drugs.Yes, it is possible for someone to become addicted to marijuana, though this depends on how you define addiction. This dependency has a name; Marijuana Use Disorder. People can become mentally dependent on any substance or action. It’s why you’ll read about people addicted to consuming drywall or eating nothing but cheesy potatoes. Nothing about drywall or cheesy potatoes is inherently addicting, it’s just the consumer’s brain that’s created a dependency. The same is true for cannabis. Cannabis itself is no more addicting than sugar, caffeine or gambling.Depending on what country you're in and who you ask, some claim that Marijuana Use Disorder only classifies as a mental dependency, not an addiction. A mental dependence is often defined as a dependence on a substance whose cessation involves emotional-motivational withdrawal symptoms, such as a state of unease or dissatisfaction, a reduced capacity to experience pleasure, or anxiety upon quitting. A physical dependence is defined as a compulsive desire to continue using a substance, despite harmful consequences, including physical withdrawal symptoms and a failure to meet work, social or family obligations. By traditional definition, Marijuana Use Disorder doesn't classify as an addiction, as there are no life-threatening negative physical side effects after cessation. By other, more recent definitions, mental dependency and addiction are the essentially same thing. There's not a general consensus on these two terms, so you can call it whatever you like, but the facts remain the same; marijuana can be habit-forming, as with anything, and it could be detrimental to people’s lives if they let it get out of control.While physical symptoms may arise for those quitting marijuana who have a dependency, they’re not typically life-threatening or severe. Common symptoms include decreased appetite, physical discomfort, irritability, headaches and sleep difficulties for up to two weeks after quitting, before subsiding entirely. For more chronic users, those typically over 2 or more years, these symptoms might last up to a month, but are still not comparable to the withdrawal symptoms of many, many other substances.The National Institute on Drug Abuse, for all the good that they do, gets this subject wrong quite frequently. They state that the reason they do not have proper estimates of the number of people addicted to marijuana is because of contradicting studies, but fail to acknowledge that their estimate of marijuana addiction being roughly 9% includes those who completed court-ordered addiction treatment for cannabis possession crimes in order to avoid stiff penalties. The best estimates the rest of the medical world has is that around 4% of people who use marijuana frequently will develop a mental dependency; compare this to 7% of caffeine consumers eventually developing a dependency, 29% of alcohol drinkers developing an addiction, and up to 34% of tobacco smokers. The national, presumed average of people with “addictive personalities” is roughly 10%, for any substance or action.Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, Contingency Management and Motivational Enhancement Therapy have all shown promise in helping those with Marijuana Use Disorder. The FDA has not approved any medications for the treatment of this disorder, but CBD has shown to be a very effective treatment for those suffering cannabis withdrawal symptoms. Other substances such as N-acetylcysteine and FAAH inhibiting chemicals may also help with treatment. In 2015, over 138,000 people in the US voluntarily sought treatment for their marijuana use. The vast majority were cleared from their programs or support groups after 3 weeks. Possible relapse data was not collected.Marijuana is a gateway drug.The majority of people who try marijuana for the first time don’t even continue smoking marijuana. There are a few studies that correlate links with marijuana consumption and the use of other addictive substances, such as alcohol and nicotine. However, more recent studies taking into account other factors besides biological mechanisms, such as a person’s social environment, have concluded that people who are more vulnerable to drug-taking are simply more likely to start with readily available substances such as marijuana, tobacco, or alcohol, and their subsequent social interactions with others who use drugs increases their chances of trying other drugs.A common claim against the legalization of marijuana is that consumption makes you more likely to commit crimes. The only reason this claim is technically true, is because of a technicality. Smoking marijuana is itself a crime in many places, so choosing to smoke will obviously make you more likely to commit a crime; you’re committing a crime to smoke it in the first place. Aside from this, statistically speaking, the average marijuana consumer is no more or less likely to commit other, unrelated crimes.Furthermore, the popular school program D.A.R.E. has been, by all accounts, an utter failure. Despite its continued renewal in hundreds of school districts around the country, studies looking into its effectiveness have found it either making no significant impact on the use of drugs by underaged teens, or in some cases actually increasing the rate in which drugs are used at earlier ages. As of early 2019, even D.A.R.E. recognizes cannabis is not a gateway substance, and quietly removed it from their list in March.People have died from marijuana use.Counting death tolls per the substance alone (excluding crimes and accidents), tobacco kills over 400,000 people per year, alcohol kills over 125,000 people per year, over 25,000 people die from prescription overdoses, caffeine kills over 2,000, aspirin kills over 500, peanuts kill over 100, salt kills over 35, and there has never been a single, verified report of a death from cannabis consumption, ever.Marijuana users, on average, die no sooner than those who do not partake and have a similar life expectancy. A user would have to consume 20,000 to 40,000 times the amount of THC in a joint in order to risk dying from organ failure. For chronic marijuana consumers, there’s still no reason to worry. A study conducted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse calculates that a person would need to consume nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana within a 15 minute period to induce a lethal response, which shouldn’t surprise anyone to hear, is physically impossible to do. Additionally, there are no cannabinoid receptors found in the brain stem, the area of the brain responsible for respiratory health and most basic bodily functions. It is therefore physically impossible to die from an overdose on marijuana. In a more brutal, and very illegal study in 1974, 13 wild monkeys were captured and virtually suffocated in marijuana smoke over a period of 90 days. All captive primates were fine within a week after the experiment concluded.

I have read studies that prove and disprove that marijuana has long term side effects, which side do you believe is true?

I’ve looked into this question for a number of years now and have compiled a large number of studies supporting both sides of the argument. The most agreed upon consensus that I’ve been able to find is that, for the average consumer, there are no long-term negative health effects from consuming marijuana in a non-smoking fashion.Consumers with debilitating heart conditions, bipolar disorders or any form of psychosis should consult their doctor before consuming any form of cannabis, as clinical evidence has shown cannabis and its compounds could make the symptoms associated with these conditions worse.Cannabis doesn’t cause a deleterious effect on society by making consumers passive, unproductive, apathetic and either unable or unwilling to fulfill their responsibilities, it doesn’t negatively impact one’s emotions, one’s ability to empathize or increase the likelihood of suicidal thoughts, it has no correlation with greater chances of lung cancer even if it’s smoked chronically for decades, it doesn’t cause brain cell damage, which in turn leads to long-term memory loss, cognitive impairment or difficulties in learning, it doesn’t impair the user’s immune system or make them more susceptible to other diseases, it doesn’t stunt growth, interfere with the production of hormones associated with reproduction, cause infertility among adult users or delay sexual development in adolescents, it doesn’t cause psychosis in those who don’t already have psychosis, it’s not any more addictive than caffeine, tobacco or alcohol and those who do form addictions do not suffer life-threatening withdrawal symptoms when quitting, and it’s not a gateway drug that will lead to more hardcore substances.LazinessMany claims over the years have asserted that consuming marijuana frequently will cause a deleterious effect on society by making consumers passive, unproductive, apathetic and either unable or unwilling to fulfill their responsibilities. This stereotype is so ingrained in cannabis’ image that it’s nearly impossible to see a stoner stereotype in any media not have the lazy trait.Fact of the matter is, science does not support it. Coined as “amotivational syndrome,” the phrase was created in the late 1960s just as marijuana saw rapid use among the American youth. No studies corroborated this information at the time; it was pure hearsay and fear mongering. Studies in the following decades and recent years have concluded that consumers are actually, on average, more productive in work environments while high, and that there is no substantial link to marijuana and amotivational syndrome at all.Emotional ImpactMore recently than many of the other negative claims on cannabis use is the idea that frequent, chronic or long-term cannabis consumption negatively impacts one’s emotions, one’s ability to empathize or increase the likelihood of suicidal thoughts. This is a grossly stretched conclusion that implies much worse than what was ever observed. Studies conducted in 2007 and 2012 claiming to observe negative emotional impact both admitted in their studies that adjusting for confounding factors may eliminate this association. A further 2013 study claimed to observe an increase in likelihood of depression among high school students who had consumed cannabis, examining 76 subjects. In their conclusion, they note that cannabis use appeared to have no effect on which subjects got depression later in life, and credited most of these observations to “other illicit drug use.”Another study to assert these claims came in 2016, led by Lucy Troup at Colorado State University who examined 70 individuals using an electroencephalogram (EEG) for 2 years. All volunteers were grouped into either chronic, moderate or non-consumers of cannabis. While hooked up to the EEG, the volunteers studied images of 4 different expressions: neutral, happy, fearful and angry. The cannabis consumers scored slightly lower than the control group in their ability to discern emotion just from looking at a face’s eyes. That’s all that was observed. Since this study, Dr. Troup has continued studies with essentially the same basis, though other psychologists have called into question the kind of conclusions she and other researchers have made based on these minor observances.To date, no mood disorders or significant mood alterations have been shown to appear in those partaking in long-term cannabis consumption. The only concern is with those diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder, but if you don’t already have bipolar disorder, there’s no evidence cannabis can suddenly cause you to develop it.Brain DamageThere are many reports of marijuana causing brain cell damage, which in turn leads to memory loss, cognitive impairment and difficulties in learning. There is no significant drop or increase in IQ points (which is an absolutely ridiculous, scientifically unsupported and inaccurate means of measuring intelligence to begin with) between twins when one consumes marijuana and another does not, and while some studies have claimed to observe a decrease in GPA scores among teenagers who consume marijuana, a 2015 study examining cannabis-consuming high school students took into account alcohol and tobacco usage, which other studies had not, and found those two substances to be the main cause of lower GPAs, not cannabis. Some longitudinal studies of college students, after controlling for other factors, actually found marijuana users to score higher on tests than their non-consumer peers. One study that found lower average grades for marijuana consumers failed to identify a causal relationship and concluded that both phenomena (consuming marijuana and having low grades) were part of complex, inter-related social and emotional problems. One wasn’t the cause or effect of another.The original study to make a claim on permanent brain impairment following cannabis consumption reported in postmortem examinations of rhesus monkeys exposed to high quantities of THC to have “abnormalities” in the hippocampus, a cortical brain region known to play an important role in learning and memory, and thus concluded there must be negative side effects. Abnormality sounds bad, but it just means a change in brain matter, which isn’t inherently negative (consuming caffeine changes the brain too). They further “confirmed” this study by finding similar brain changes in rodents, who were given up to 200 times the psychoactive dose in humans. For reference, this amount in rats to produce minor abnormalities is comparative to a human smoking 30,000 joints and being reported as having some lingering brain dysfunction. Further studies found no significant brain abnormalities in rodents with 100 times the psychoactive dose in humans.In 2006, the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research and the New York University School of Medicine scanned the brains of 10 individuals who consumed cannabis daily for one or more years in their adolescence, and 10 control subjects who had not, using MRI methods. There was no evidence of cerebral atrophy or loss of white matter integrity, and the researchers concluded that frequent cannabis use is unlikely to be neurotoxic to the normal developing brain. A similar study done in 2002 by the National Institute on Drug Abuse employed 4 patients who consumed at least 10 grams of THC per day for 30+ years, and were systematically examined throughout the process. Mild difficulties were noted in attention in regards to complex new verbal material, but without effect on higher level executive function. No significant differences were seen in MRI studies, and one of the subjects continues to serve at an executive level in an investment firm. Plenty of other studies have been conducted using similar methods and found no long-term negative health effects when looking at the patients’ brains.More recent studies have been finding measurable differences in brain matter, particularly in the amygdala and hippocampus, among chronic cannabis users. Short-term memory impairment has been consistently observed in chronic users (consuming a few times a day), but disappears entirely after a weeks’ abstinence. There is no damaging effect on long-term memory. Among the hippocampal volume, changes caused by cannabis consumption were found to be reversible with CBD exposure or abstinence in a 2016 study. Clinical research has continually reaffirmed the opposite of these brain damage claims as well; the phytocannabinoids found inside cannabis actually have potent neurogenerative and neuroprotective properties. Compounds like THC and CBD play a role in helping the brain to build new neurons and then protect them from neurodegenerative diseases or injuries caused by stroke, concussions or head trauma.The issues with a lot of these negative claims is their inconsistency; no discernible pattern has been found in what kind of brain changes occur, whether or not these changes are inherently negative, positive or neutral, and how researchers define “chronic” cannabis use seems to differ drastically from study to study, with some considering “multiple times a day” to be chronic, and others considering “a few times a week” as chronic. Despite these inconsistencies, studies have continuously claimed to observe cannabis users having difficulty with attention, concentration, decision-making, risk-taking, impulsivity, inhibition, working memory and verbal fluency. Much of the medical world, and certainly much of the cannabis industry, sees these examples as outliers or victims of the very subjective experiences one can have from cannabis use. The majority of these studies use sample sizes of around 5 people, did not specify dosage amounts or lengths of abstinence and did not control for outlying factors. Some people can operate fine on cannabis, and some people just can’t.There is no consistent evidence that marijuana users, even those of decades or more and of any age, suffer permanent brain impairment in any regard. Numerous studies comparing chronic marijuana users with nonuser controls have found no significant differences in learning, memory recall or other cognitive functions when controlling for other factors.Immune ImpairmentClaims in the 1970s and into the 1980s asserted that frequent marijuana use impairs the user’s immune system and makes them more susceptible to other diseases. The principal study fueling this claim of immune impairment involved preparations of white blood cells that had been removed from marijuana consumers and controls. After exposing the cells to immune activators, they reported a lower rate of transformation in cells taken from the marijuana consumers. The study was conducted by Gabriel Nahas, a scientist staunchly against the use of marijuana in all forms. He was eventually fired from the Walter Reed Medical Center, and publicly admitted to tampering with the results of every study he conducted. Numerous groups of scientists since have failed to confirm the original claims of his study in any way, and another study conducted in 1988 demonstrated an increase in responsiveness when white blood cells from marijuana consumers were exposed to immunological activators.Clinical studies conducted since have never shown an increase in bacterial, viral or parasitic infection among marijuana consumers, and have actually shown the opposite. Conclusive studies have shown it does not increase the risk of HIV infection, or increase the intensity of AIDS symptoms.Stunted GrowthClaims have been made that marijuana consumption at early ages may stunt growth, interfere with the production of hormones associated with reproduction, cause infertility among adult users and delay sexual development in adolescents. Despite these claims, no significant difficulties in fertility or hormone levels have ever been reported. One peer-reviewed, longitudinal study found that when smoking high dosage THC 20 times a day for 30 days straight, there was a slight decrease in sperm count in males, but it was minuscule enough that it would not affect actual fertility. This decrease may be attributed to benzene, a carcinogen formed during the natural processes of combustion that has been shown to be damaging to the reproductive system when inhaled in large quantities. Using another consumption method of cannabis, such as vaporization, edibles or tinctures, produces no benzene or carcinogens of any kind.Cannabinoid Hyperemesis SyndromeIn recent years, a strange disease known as Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome (CHS) has been developing in few individuals who consume marijuana frequently. Symptoms include extreme abdominal cramps and vomiting or nausea, which can last anywhere from a few days to numerous months. Temporary relief of these symptoms has shown a hot shower or bath to work fairly well, but of course stopping marijuana use altogether is a true cure. At the time of writing, there have been 103 confirmed and studied cases, with an average of 1 more appearing every month, and current academic speculation hints that those affected have a genetic predisposition to it.Beginning in early 2019, numerous media outlets began reporting on this rare disorder as though it were a common occurrence, with some outlandish articles even making the claim that if anyone has ever thrown up while high, they had CHS. This is not true and has never been true. CHS is an incredibly rare disorder that the average marijuana consumer never needs to realistically worry about.With the estimated 165 million current active users of marijuana, this gives the average marijuana consumer a 0.00000059% chance of developing this syndrome. Comparatively, you are 12 times more likely to be killed by lightning and about 2,000 times more likely to be killed in a car accident.AddictionYes, it is possible for someone to become addicted to marijuana, though this depends on how you define addiction. This dependency has a name; Marijuana Use Disorder. People can become mentally dependent on any substance or action. It’s why you’ll read about people addicted to consuming drywall or eating nothing but cheesy potatoes. Nothing about drywall or cheesy potatoes is inherently addicting, it’s just the consumer’s brain that’s created a dependency. The same is true for cannabis. Cannabis itself is no more addicting than sugar, caffeine or gambling.Depending on what country you're in and who you ask, some claim that Marijuana Use Disorder only classifies as a mental dependency, not an addiction. A mental dependence is often defined as a dependence on a substance whose cessation involves emotional-motivational withdrawal symptoms, such as a state of unease or dissatisfaction, a reduced capacity to experience pleasure, or anxiety upon quitting. A physical dependence is defined as a compulsive desire to continue using a substance, despite harmful consequences, including physical withdrawal symptoms and a failure to meet work, social or family obligations. By traditional definition, Marijuana Use Disorder doesn't classify as an addiction, as there are no life-threatening negative physical side effects after cessation. By other, more recent definitions, mental dependency and addiction are the essentially same thing. There's not a general consensus on these two terms, so you can call it whatever you like, but the facts remain the same; marijuana can be habit-forming, as with anything, and it could be detrimental to people’s lives if they let it get out of control.While physical symptoms may arise for those quitting marijuana who have a dependency, they’re not typically life-threatening or severe. Common symptoms include decreased appetite, physical discomfort, irritability, headaches and sleep difficulties for up to 2 weeks after quitting, before subsiding entirely. For more chronic users, those typically over 2 or more years, these symptoms might last up to a month, but are still not comparable to the withdrawal symptoms of many, many other substances.The National Institute on Drug Abuse, for all the good that they do, gets this subject wrong quite frequently. They state that the reason they do not have proper estimates of the number of people addicted to marijuana is because of contradicting studies, but fail to acknowledge that their estimate of marijuana addiction being roughly 9% includes those who completed court-ordered addiction treatment for cannabis possession crimes in order to avoid stiff penalties. The best estimates the rest of the medical world has is that around 4% of people who use marijuana frequently will develop a mental dependency; compare this to 7% of caffeine consumers eventually developing a dependency, 29% of alcohol drinkers developing an addiction, and up to 34% of tobacco smokers. The national, presumed average of people with “addictive personalities” is roughly 10%, for any substance or action.Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, Contingency Management and Motivational Enhancement Therapy have all shown promise in helping those with Marijuana Use Disorder. The FDA has not approved any medications for the treatment of this disorder, but CBD has shown to be a very effective treatment for those suffering cannabis withdrawal symptoms. Other substances such as N-acetylcysteine and FAAH inhibiting chemicals may also help with treatment. In 2015, over 138,000 people in the US voluntarily sought treatment for their marijuana use. The vast majority were cleared from their programs or support groups after 3 weeks. Possible relapse data was not collected.Gateway DrugThe majority of people who try marijuana for the first time don’t even continue smoking marijuana. There are a few studies that correlate links with marijuana consumption and the use of other addictive substances, such as alcohol and nicotine. However, more recent studies taking into account other factors besides biological mechanisms, such as a person’s social environment, have concluded that people who are more vulnerable to drug-taking are simply more likely to start with readily available substances such as marijuana, tobacco, or alcohol, and their subsequent social interactions with others who use drugs increases their chances of trying other drugs.A common claim against the legalization of marijuana is that consumption makes you more likely to commit crimes. The only reason this claim is technically true, is because of a technicality. Smoking marijuana is itself a crime in many places, so choosing to smoke will obviously make you more likely to commit a crime; you’re committing a crime to smoke it in the first place. Aside from this, statistically speaking, the average marijuana consumer is no more or less likely to commit other, unrelated crimes.Furthermore, the popular school program D.A.R.E. has been, by all accounts, an utter failure. Despite its continued renewal in hundreds of school districts around the country, studies looking into its effectiveness have found it either making no significant impact on the use of drugs by underaged teens, or in some cases actually increasing the rate in which drugs are used at earlier ages. As of early 2019, even D.A.R.E. recognizes cannabis is not a gateway substance, and quietly removed it from their list in March.DeathsTo answer this question, we will be excluding activities people engage in while high. Just as with alcohol, driving and other activities that could be considered dangerous should be avoided when under the influence of marijuana. We will also be excluding examples of polydrug use, in which the deceased were found dead with not only marijuana, but other, much more dangerous substances in their system.Counting death tolls per the substance alone (excluding crimes and accidents), tobacco kills over 480,000 people per year, alcohol kills over 125,000 people per year, over 25,000 people die from prescription overdoses, caffeine kills over 2,000, aspirin kills over 500, peanuts kill over 100, salt kills over 35, and there has never been a single, verified report of a death from cannabis consumption, ever.Marijuana users, on average, die no sooner than those who do not partake and have a similar life expectancy. A user would have to consume 20,000 to 40,000 times the amount of THC in a joint in order to risk dying from organ failure. For chronic marijuana consumers, there’s still no reason to worry. A study conducted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse calculates that a person would need to consume nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana within a 15 minute period to induce a lethal response, which shouldn’t surprise anyone to hear, is physically impossible to do. Additionally, there are no cannabinoid receptors found in the brain stem, the area of the brain responsible for respiratory health and most basic bodily functions. It is therefore physically impossible to die from an overdose on marijuana. In a more brutal, and very illegal study in 1974, 13 wild monkeys were captured and virtually suffocated in marijuana smoke over a period of 90 days. All captive primates were fine within a week after the experiment concluded.Sources, additional educational material, scholarly articles and academic studies are in the comments below.

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