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Though there is new research to work with, the claims we hear from people with an anti-cannabis agenda are the same ones that get dredged up every time someone needs to make the case against legalization. As always, the only way to make a case against full legalization is to claim that pot’s largely innocuous side effects are some kind of scourge on society.
Here are five recent media lies about marijuana:
1. Pot is addictive: In drugs with high rates of addiction, such as nicotine, coc aine and alcohol, we can see a clear pattern of abuse. The drug hijacks the brain’s reward system, so that a smoke, line, drink, etc. is treated with the same urgency and necessity as food and sex. On the behavioral level, there are clear signs of dependency and withdrawal. Marijuana opponents have spent decades trying to show analogous patterns in pot smokers, but the results simply aren’t there. The closest they can get is to show that some people have difficulty quitting, and show signs of anxiety, difficulty sleeping, and other disturbances when they try to quit, as was demonstrated in the Hall study. That does show a non-zero level of dependency in a minority of users, but even in these cases, marijuana has nowhere near the capacity to ruin or end lives the way alcohol and heroin can, and is less addictive than tobacco or even caffeine. As an earlier AlterNet article points out, "9 percent of people who use marijuana will develop dependence at some point in their lives, compared with 15 percent for alcohol, 17 percent for coc aine, 23 percent for
heroin, and 32 percent for tobacco."
2. High people cause car crashes
3. Marijuana causes brain damage.
4. The gateway effect. It’s 2014, and we’re still hearing about the gateway effect. People who use hard drugs are very likely to have tried cannabis first, but the suggestion that smoking pot causes hard drug use falls to the first lesson of any statistics class: correlation is not causality. Pot, being the most popular and available illicit drug, tends to be the one that people try first. Furthermore, gateway theory advocates consistently omit alcohol from their calculations, as if there could be no connection between legal and illegal drugs. Virtually everyone who has tried any recreational drug, marijuana included, has had a drink at some point in their life. Many of them have had a cigarette or two as well. So why is the gateway label never attached to alcohol? Because the people still making noise about the gateway theory have an agenda, and they are willing to ignore logic to push it.
5. Pot makes you stupid
originally posted by: Hoosierdaddy71
I'll agree to all of these being lies if you will agree that the whole pot legalization movement is just about people wanting to use it for recreation and get stoned.
originally posted by: OtherSideOfTheCoin
Well 2 and 3 are true.
and we could debate number 5
I personally am not against pot, I think if we keep Tabasco legal then it seems a bit daft to say that less harmless pot should be illegal.
Yet at the same time I am not going to deny that driving whilst high is dangerous for example or that it can do some funky stuff to kids brains.
originally posted by: Sabiduria
Though there is new research to work with, the claims we hear from people with an anti-cannabis agenda are the same ones that get dredged up every time someone needs to make the case against legalization. As always, the only way to make a case against full legalization is to claim that pot’s largely innocuous side effects are some kind of scourge on society.
Here are five recent media lies about marijuana:
1. Pot is addictive: In drugs with high rates of addiction, such as nicotine, coc aine and alcohol, we can see a clear pattern of abuse. The drug hijacks the brain’s reward system, so that a smoke, line, drink, etc. is treated with the same urgency and necessity as food and sex. On the behavioral level, there are clear signs of dependency and withdrawal. Marijuana opponents have spent decades trying to show analogous patterns in pot smokers, but the results simply aren’t there. The closest they can get is to show that some people have difficulty quitting, and show signs of anxiety, difficulty sleeping, and other disturbances when they try to quit, as was demonstrated in the Hall study. That does show a non-zero level of dependency in a minority of users, but even in these cases, marijuana has nowhere near the capacity to ruin or end lives the way alcohol and heroin can, and is less addictive than tobacco or even caffeine. As an earlier AlterNet article points out, "9 percent of people who use marijuana will develop dependence at some point in their lives, compared with 15 percent for alcohol, 17 percent for coc aine, 23 percent for
heroin, and 32 percent for tobacco."
2. High people cause car crashes
3. Marijuana causes brain damage.
4. The gateway effect. It’s 2014, and we’re still hearing about the gateway effect. People who use hard drugs are very likely to have tried cannabis first, but the suggestion that smoking pot causes hard drug use falls to the first lesson of any statistics class: correlation is not causality. Pot, being the most popular and available illicit drug, tends to be the one that people try first. Furthermore, gateway theory advocates consistently omit alcohol from their calculations, as if there could be no connection between legal and illegal drugs. Virtually everyone who has tried any recreational drug, marijuana included, has had a drink at some point in their life. Many of them have had a cigarette or two as well. So why is the gateway label never attached to alcohol? Because the people still making noise about the gateway theory have an agenda, and they are willing to ignore logic to push it.
5. Pot makes you stupid
5 lies about marijuana that won't die easy
If you read the full article you can find out the truth to these statements. I didn't want to quote the whole article so I only did two of them.
It is time people get informed of the truth and we forget all the lies we have been told.
originally posted by: Sabiduria
a reply to: Jennyfrenzy
You are right and this article shows that it is true. No one ever considers alcohol as a gateway drug