Alot of my friends will defend drugs to the death using biased sources (erowid, random internet sites), but everyone who has known them for a while has noticed the downward spiral they are in. After smokign for every day for the past 2-3 years they are much slower, dumber, and can only remember things that interest them.

of course you have to actually stop smoking for your brain to get back to normal, but it will - give it a few days

Re: my opinion
 

By that logic, breathing is bad for you.

I smoked alot of pot between the ages 15-18 and I can tell you that it DOES affect your brain. I have terrible memory and I often feel spaced out.

Permanently slurs your speech too, doesn't it? I wouldn't want to develop a speech impediment. I mean, I already sound funny enough. :)

Having something on fire hanging from your mouth cant be good.

Re: Re: my opinion
 

Umm, it is.... :(

Ever try breathing in and out real fast? I mean water can kill you. If you drink to much.

On topic though, two important points were brought up here. Hal brought up the fact that studies, wether they are about drugs or whatever, are always biased. Whoever paid for the study will get the result they wanted or it wont be published. Also Nisses mentioned that for every report stating that marijuana smoke is good there are atleast 2 if not 3 that says its bad. Which is probably true. But we also need to ask ourselves this, are there more people funding studies that want it to come out bad or more that want it to come out good? I would say that there is probably a higher then 3 to 1 ratio of people with money wanting to fund studies showing marijuana is bad vs good (or not good just... not bad so much) Anyway what it all boils down to is this, marijuana is bad for you. So are alot of legal things. Just because it is bad doesn't mean it should be illegal for adults to use it in their spare time. Alcohol is bad. Tobacco is bad. Fattening foods are bad. Cholesterol is bad. Caffeine is bad. All those things are just plain bad and serve no real purpose, yet all of them are legal. Now there are of course a number of legal things that are good, to a point, then when used in excess become bad. Vitamins for example. Or the aforementioned water. Sunlight. Most anything a doctor might give you. Salt. I could go on but the point is simply this, if you immerse yourself in something, no matter what it is, its going to turn out bad for you. In other words if you do nothing but smoke pot every day for a year then yea, duh, it will probably mess with your mind. Probably less so then if you were drunk a year or hopped up on legal pills for a year though.

As a matter of fact I breathe really fast when I run, when I play hoops, and when I ride my bike. Doesn't hurt a bit. The only way it'll hurt is if some lazy ass who never gets exercise tries to keep up with me. After a workout I've chugged a gallon of water in less than 30 seconds. That never hurt me either. :)

Comparing things like that to drug abuse is just ridiculous.

Well that was just an example. Beyond that drinking to much water can kill you. That is a scientific fact. Accept it.

And also Sixate, it's just a metaphor, people always talk about dying from old age which is really the point at which the oxygen has finally burned so much of your lungs they cannot function. Compaireing that to drugs use doesn't mean that I think breathing is as bad as drugs it just means that A) everything is a drug, B) Everything kills you, and that regardless you will die someday and C0 Everything in excess is bad.
Drug use is a choice, you chose not to, just as you choose atheistism(sp?) Everyone has there own morals and makes thier own choses. Pointing out the fact that this is an internet forum and things we say here really don't make a difference at all sort of takes away from the suspended disbelief that we need to post here, but every once and a while we should mention it, like right now, this topic really doesnt matter becuase regardless people are still going to smoke and people are still going to not smoke.

Heh... like I'm going to believe ANY study on pot that was conducted in San Diego by college students... let alone ones who work in the "medicinal cannabis research center".

I'm a pretty anti-pot kinda guy, but I generally try to avoid such arguments with a 10 foot pole, it's just such a waste of time. You can have the best statistics and facts in the world, but to someone who smokes it regularly, they still wouldn't believe you.

In soc class.... Smoking is can be a lot worse than pot in the long run... So why is smoking legal and pot not? Because Smoking doesn't impair the fuck outta you when you do it. The last guy I spoke with who was high.. I coulda gotton his credit card number if I tried.... and all the passwords needed.

as for the breathing thing? Phaenx just pointed out that by THAT kind of logic its bad. But then again.. have you ever breathed in SO MUCH AIR that your lungs exploded? No, but if you did, that'd be bad for you... ;) Have you ever drank so much liquid that you threw up? I almost have, and that "would fall in the bad things category." To follow that logic, Jumping would be bad for you.. Sure you jump alot, but have you ever jumped.. where the floor was 100 feet lower than where you left off?

See... all the debates about that is completely off-topic.

As for being ON-topic. There was a guy in my math class that did a lot of shit. Oh sure, he was still smart. He'd sit in the back of class and the prof would ask him if he was even paying attention, and there infront of him, he had everything done (and correctly I might add). Was this due to him doing pot? Fuck no. so Did pot impair him in math... probly not. How was he outside of this? VERY SPACED OUT. There are other accounts I have had with people who WERE NOT idiots before hand, but afterwords........ they weren't quite as smart as they used to be.

This is a direct contradiction of my experiences. I've seen hundreds of stupid stoners, and the few smart ones gradually become stupid over the years. Stopping for a few days doesn't cure them, years seems to be what it takes, and some will never recover from the self-inflicted damage.

I like marijuana and think the laws against it should be relaxed. That said, marijuana is, in my experience, a motivation-killer. You just stop caring about stuff. And it will make you quite forgetful and spaced out, at least while you're using it.

Just remember, scientists can be wrong too, in fact there is a lot of junk science out there.

We don't even know how memory WORKS, its very hard to judge brain damage if it isn't some gross defect.

Yes, most science is theory... as in later dates we sometimes are proved wrong, but as time stands now, what we get through science is the 99% chance answer. (leaving that 1% to appear in 100 years from now ;))

good

I knew a lot of kids who smoked a shitload of pot in highschool and there were definately effects from it.

I think the fact that they are long-term or not is really pointless, because te effects are there while your smoking, though I think this also depends on the person and how much you smoke pot.

And most of the kids I knew were very smart, and most of them were all honors students who did decent. But they for the most part all knew that it affected them.

You should see the difference in Gym=P the stoners were all pretty obvious. Most of them looked like they were in really good shape, but they would get winded so much faster than everyone else.. =)

Personally I never have and never plan to smoke.. I just dont see the point, I can have plenty of fun without doing it. (Though fucking with people who are wasted can be fun.. :D )