Thank you for your (name removed by moderator)ut. Would you say the exact same thing about alcohol consumption? It is a clear fact that it kills brain cells. I think living in a city and breathing the air does the same thing as smoking tobacco or any substance for that matter. Should a person move out of a city because it is harmful to breath in the air? Is it a sin if they choose to stay? Do you also think we should go back to the days of prohibition? Ed was reluctant to respond to that question. Will you honestly answer whether or not you consume alcohol?
I am not snidely trying to minimize your concerns or ideas. I totally agree that marijuana can have negative effects for some people (other than the lung issue). But I also don’t think there is an answer that one shoe fits all feet here either.
I’d say that killing brain cells is only one side effect - one that you seem to be focusing on to the exclusion of all other factors.
In terms of PHYSICAL effects of excessive drinking, they mainly seem to be confined mostly to two - cirrhosis of the liver and in infrequent cases liver cancer. Now the liver is a very highly resilient organ and often capable of repairing at least some damage done by drinking once it is ceased.
Pollution in most cities isn’t even really an issue, levels have been dropping significantly over the last few decades with the introduction of unleaded petrol for cars, among other things.
Smoking of all kinds, on the other hand - there are at least four different types of cancer alone, mouth, tongue, throat and lung. These can be given to others by your smoking as well - through their ingestion of your (unfiltered) smoke, called passive smoking.
Then there’s emphysema, irreversible lung damage, which pretty much every smoker has to at least some degree (unlike drinkers with any disease), and God alone knows what other damage the cocktail of chemicals in the smoke from a cigarette - or a joint - does to you. I’m only concentrating on diseases that will pretty much directly come from smoking or drinking as opposed to things like heart disease that can be exacerbated by both.
As for ingestion - well, we know that those who chew tobacco as opposed to smoking it also get tongue, throat and mouth cancer, so it doesn’t help them much healthwise. In a similar way I’d imagine ingestion of cannabis still has plenty of health impacts of its own.
The MAIN difference between alcohol and cannabis is that we in the West have had alcohol with and among us for at least three or four thousand years. We’ve had plenty of opportunity to gauge its effects and its health benefits as well - even the bible notes that, whilst drunkeness is a sin, wine in moderation ‘gladdens the heart’. The ‘safe’ levels of drinking are now pretty well established and it is simiarly well established that in moderation it IMPROVES rather than detracting from your health.
Cannabis? We don’t even KNOW for certain that there is a safe level, nor what that safe level is. But there certainly isn’t a safe level for smoking, so there’s no reason to believe that there IS a safe level for cannabis.
There are no production standards as there are for alcoholic drinks. Your pot won’t come with a label clearly telling you what amount of THC or other dangerous chemicals it has in it, unlike your bottle of beer or wine which tells you the percentage of alcohol and, in Australia, how many ‘standard drinks’ per bottle.
Cannabis simply hasn’t been studied enough, nor has its use been widespread long enough for experiential evidence to build up, for it to be studied as intensively as alcohol. Admittedly the illegality of it makes it even more difficult to study, people will be reluctant to report usage levels and so on.
The simple principle - if in doubt, don’t. There is no doubt at all that moderate drinking is safe. There IS doubt, or at least a lack of evidence, that consumption of cannabis, even at low levels, is safe. It certainly can’t be claimed or proven to have the general and widespread health benefits that moderate drinking does, however useful it might be for people with glaucoma or AIDS patients.