Also, you know the biggest criticism of weed, that it allegedly kills brain cells? Well, the science is surprisingly inconclusive on how true that is, probably because the brain is massively complex and difficult to study, not to mention it was outright illegal to rigorously study for a long time (and that’s saying nothing of the surprising amount of studies in all scientific disciplines that turn out to have been p-hacked to get the result they wanted, there would be absolutely no incentive to want to do that in a study about weed right?) Even so most of the adverse effects are observed in adolescents, not adults, but weed is not unique in this aspect because both alcohol and cigarettes also damage a developing brain much more than an adult brain (that’s why age restrictions exist). Even if it turns out to be true and that weed really does degrade brain function in all users, if being harmful to the brain warrants outlawing, shouldn’t American football be criminalised even more than weed is? We have extremely clear evidence that professional football players suffer brain damage and much more severely than weed. If we’re going by raw mortality rate, then alcohol, cigarettes, cars, and fast food all have a higher mortality rate if used regularly than weed does.
As always, humans are bad at assessing risk, especially long term risk where the effects are not obvious and take time to manifest, and a small risk from something unfamiliar will be blown way out of proportion while a large risk from something very familiar will be ignored.
Take cannabis for instance. They’ve ‘justified’ why it has been illegal, it’s just all the reasons were manipulated science and moral bullshit.
Also, you know the biggest criticism of weed, that it allegedly kills brain cells? Well, the science is surprisingly inconclusive on how true that is, probably because the brain is massively complex and difficult to study, not to mention it was outright illegal to rigorously study for a long time (and that’s saying nothing of the surprising amount of studies in all scientific disciplines that turn out to have been p-hacked to get the result they wanted, there would be absolutely no incentive to want to do that in a study about weed right?) Even so most of the adverse effects are observed in adolescents, not adults, but weed is not unique in this aspect because both alcohol and cigarettes also damage a developing brain much more than an adult brain (that’s why age restrictions exist). Even if it turns out to be true and that weed really does degrade brain function in all users, if being harmful to the brain warrants outlawing, shouldn’t American football be criminalised even more than weed is? We have extremely clear evidence that professional football players suffer brain damage and much more severely than weed. If we’re going by raw mortality rate, then alcohol, cigarettes, cars, and fast food all have a higher mortality rate if used regularly than weed does.
As always, humans are bad at assessing risk, especially long term risk where the effects are not obvious and take time to manifest, and a small risk from something unfamiliar will be blown way out of proportion while a large risk from something very familiar will be ignored.