Pros and Cons of social drugs

[bipolarbear]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
You usually don't OD on cigs either, but that doesn't make it a good idea to smoke them. Your entire post is a giant strawman.

And your avatar is waffles.

Actually, you can't OD on cigarettes. Nicotine patches, and gum yes. But cigarettes, no. In the most non-confrontational way I would actually love it if you could find a fully documented case of someone ODig on Nicotine via only cigarettes.

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/units/addiction/drugs/overdose.cfm

Regarding the content of my post though...

To paraphrase, I heard you say, "Pot never killed anyone? B.S."

So I said, "Ok well look at it this way yes it's possible to die as a direct result of a toxic chemical reaction from marijuana but it's really friggen hard dare I say impossible. In light of this, alcohol is relatively easy to OD on. In the end the physical danger apparent in smoking marijuana comes from the tars present in the smoke. There are other methods of getting high that deliver THC and other cannabinoids without the tar. Thus not all use of marijuana is physically dangerous and by extension a threat to society."

So Yeah, I got distracted tackling the issue of marijuana's toxicity and missed the part about cancer. But I'm having trouble seeing how that makes the whole post a strawman fallacy. Maybe I'm missing something though, it wouldn't be the first time.

Yes inhaling combusted pot may well lead to cancer, but that is not the only method of ingesting pot. The physical danger in getting high arises from the method, not the end result. Given legalization it's quite a simple problem to remedy, for most stoners a vaporizer is considered a luxury item so it's not that hard to get them to switch. Thus I think pot can be Generally Regarded As Safe (Grass is GRAS )

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by bipolarbear
Actually, you can't OD on cigarettes. Nicotine patches, and gum yes. But cigarettes, no. In the most non-confrontational way I would actually love it if you could find a fully documented case of someone ODig on Nicotine via only cigarettes.

That was my point.

[Kuciwalker]

To paraphrase, I heard you say, "Pot never killed anyone? B.S."

So I said, "Ok well look at it this way yes it's possible to die as a direct result of a toxic chemical reaction from marijuana but it's really friggen hard dare I say impossible. In light of this, alcohol is relatively easy to OD on. In the end the physical danger apparent in smoking marijuana comes from the tars present in the smoke. There are other methods of getting high that deliver THC and other cannabinoids without the tar. Thus not all use of marijuana is physically dangerous and by extension a threat to society."

So you'd agree that "cigarettes never killed anyone"?

[bipolarbear]

To get technical...no. The tars in cigarette smoke blah blah blah.

What I'm trying to get at is that the health threat posed by marijuana pales in comparison to that of cigarettes or alcohol. There are ways of getting high which, by nature have no risk of OD, and are non-carcinogenic.

[Kuciwalker]

What I'm trying to get at is that the health threat posed by marijuana pales in comparison to that of cigarettes

BS.

[bipolarbear]

O.K., we disagree. There's not much I can do to change your mind, and likely not much you can do to change mine.

[Kuciwalker]

Do you have any justification for the fact that MJ is less harmful than tobacco? At all? You've already agreed that it's probably just as carcinogenic.

[bipolarbear]

Well even you are calling it a fact.

[Kuciwalker]

replace with "claim."

[Kuciwalker]

You don't have an argument, so you've fallen back on "well I'm just going to stick to my opinion" BS.

[Berzerker]

Berz, yeah, plus pot smokers don't smoke in chain, 40 joints a day.

Then you take casual weekend smokers, this just isn't comparable to normal tobacco smoking anymore, unless you ALSO smoke tobacco.

Pot smokers intentionally keep the smoke in their lungs longer, so a pot smoker gets far more tar per hit than a tobacco smoker. Obviously if you're puffing 30-40 cigs a day you're still getting more bad stuff in your lungs than even a somewhat heavy pot smoker. Of course much of the harm can be eliminated by other methods of introduction into the body.

Umm, that is scientifically. One of the issue with experimental evidence relating to pot smoke is that so many pot smokers also smoke tabacco, and the current politcal climate makes it difficult to do experimental tests of broad marijuana use.

Science is about making obersvations and experiments, forming a hypothesis, and testing it, and having a theory. This theory, which is scientific, in the case of smoking predicts that on a per smoke basis muarijuana is worst than cigs.

That aint science, you gotta back up what you have on paper - theory - with results. And the results are very very apparent - cemeteries are full of tobacco smokers, not pot smokers. So it doesn't matter if some researcher says pot smoke contains cancer causing chemicals, that has to translate into actual cases of cancer. And pumping rats genetically bred to be susceptible to cancer full of these chemicals does not translate. You cite the ambiguity of the case files, well, that ambiguity is created by the lack of pot smokers dying from cancer in numbers high enough to eliminate the ambiguity.

Tjhis whole "pot never killed anyone!" spiel reeks of BS to me. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and if what the Doctor says is true (MJ contains most or all of the same carcinogens as cigarettes) then it would be pretty implausible for MJ not to cause cancer.

Did someone die from pot? So what are the numbers? How many pot smokers got cancer? Oh, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence? Are all the dead tobacco smokers evidence of something? We just dont have the same evidence for pot smokers but that should be ignored because...?

Do you have any justification for the fact that MJ is less harmful than tobacco? At all? You've already agreed that it's probably just as carcinogenic.

Yeah, the obit page - thats all the evidence I need.

[MRT144]

id rather have alcoholics because with alcoholics they can function reasonably well and if they cant theyre close enough to death anyway to care.

potheads are barely functional and subsist and sub mediocre levels.

not everyone that smokes pot is a pothead. living in seattle makes you believe it though. what ever happened to people taking one hit of pot, or eating a small sliver of brownie.

personally i love eating thc, but i dont do it because it costs too much and i'd rather drink.

[Berzerker]

MRT, I'm close to being a scratch golfer - regardless of whether or not I smoke pot. If I start drinking my game suffers. If I'm drunk (as opposed to being high), my game becomes a joke. I'd be lucky to even hit the ball...

[MRT144]

Berzerker, I doubt you smoke an eighth of weed a day.

[Berzerker]

dont matter, I'm high regardless of what qualification you want to attach to "pothead". But if I'm drunk, well, it aint even a fair comparison. And I dont need to be an alcoholic to get drunk...