Quote:
Originally posted by butthead
Please provide references for the former.
Marijuana is not as harmful as tobacco or alcohol.
As far as public safety, no.
Prove it.
I hope for arguments sake you have more than that up your sleeve.
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I have all sorts of things up my sleeve, thanks for taking an interest.
1) THC, the main active ingredient in marijuana, binds to and activates specific receptors, known as cannabinoid receptors. There are many of these receptors in parts of the brain that control memory, thought, concentration, time and depth perception, coordinated movement, learning and memory, higher cognitive functions such as judgment, and pleasure.
Marijuana's damage to short-term memory seems to occur because THC alters the way in which information is processed by the hippocampus, a brain area responsible for memory formation. Laboratory rats treated with THC displayed the same reduced ability to perform tasks requiring short-term memory as other rats showed after nerve cells in their hippocampus were destroyed.65 In addition, the THC-treated rats had the greatest difficulty with the tasks precisely during the time when the drug was interfering most with the normal functioning of cells in the hippocampus.
As people age, they normally lose neurons in the hippocampus, which decreases their ability to remember events. Chronic THC exposure may hasten the age-related loss of hippocampal neurons. In one series of studies, rats exposed to THC every day for 8 months (approximately 30 percent of their lifespan), when examined at 11 to 12 months of age, showed nerve cell loss equivalent to that of unexposed animals twice their age.
http://www.nida.nih.gov/ResearchRepo...arijuana3.html
Heishman SJ, et al. Comparative effects of alcoho...[PMID:9264076]
Sullivan JM Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory: Cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying learning and memory impairments produced by cannabinoids.
Misner DL: Mechanism of cannabinoid effects on long-term potentiation and depression in hippocampal CA1 neurons.
2) No, the merit lies within the it serving some sort of purpose; tax money. That's actually worth something, you can't tax marijuana if people grow their own, and if you try, it will be far more complicated then the current fight against drugs.
3) See 1.
4) There you go.