Pot Smokers Are Brain Damaged
I appreciate people who advocate non- politically correct opinions. Even this lady in the Del Norte Triplicate who urges us to consider the harm that would be brought about by legalizing pot:
"Furthermore, brain damage from smoking marijuana does not create personalities who become kind, decent, thoughtful, compassionate, responsible, upright citizens; rather, it results in the user becoming careless, inconsiderate, dishonest, stupid and often violent — just the kind of person you don’t want to be around."
Pretty bold to put that in print, huh?
I'll also give her credit for suggesting marijuana is three times more carcinogenic than tobacco. Not that I accept that, but at least she seems to be against both tobacco and pot. Too many want to outlaw tobacco while advocating for legal pot.
posted by Fred Mangels @ 12:42 PM
33 comments
33 Comments:
She is 100% right. And they become paranoid and plain evil as the drug makes them lose the ability to tell right from wrong and they end up having no conscience. If you want proof, look at all the bums around you hitting you up for handouts and money in Eureka and Willow Creek. I had a couple of them try to rob me for money to support their habit too.
I have absolutely no love or pity for a dope smoker.
Hopefully Darwin will take care of the problem.
Another benefit from legalization will be the exodus of "trimsiants" from the Plaza. Good riddance!
Those ard tweekers daily walker...learn the difference
Her description also fits those who slug back the beer and booze.
Fred, it's called the Del Norte Triplicate.
Thanx. Fixed.
Did Willy Nelson shun her again or something?
She offer opinions, but no real facts, just a lot of exaggerations. There are some reasonable arguments against smoking pot, but she doesn't offer any of them, just the usual Reefer Madness litany of tired old stereotypes and (at best) half-truths. Lame.
"I'll also give her credit for suggesting marijuana is three times more carcinogenic than tobacco."
So you're "giving her credit" for making a totally false claim that runs completely counter to the existing scientific evidence on the relative cancer risks of tobacco use vs. cannabis use? Why is that creditworthy?
"you're "giving her credit" for making a totally false claim that runs completely counter to the existing scientific evidence on the relative cancer risks of tobacco use vs. cannabis use?
My main point being some, like you apparently, think smoking pot is harmless. I appreciate her at least demonizing both weeds equally, unlike most pot promoters.
Pretty much everything I've read says smoke is smoke. It doesn't matter whether you're smoking dried carrots, or tobacco (heard on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now show). The bad stuff is still in there, with perhaps the exception of chemicals added to tobacco.
I'd advise against trying to pit tobacco vs. marijuana. You'll find, at least eventually, that the same people working for tobacco prohibition will be attacking marijuana the same way. It could be argued they already are.
"My main point being some, like you apparently, think smoking pot is harmless."
I did not say, nor intend to imply that pot smoking is harmless. It is not. But the truth is, it has not been shown to cause lung cancer like cigarettes do.
"Pretty much everything I've read says smoke is smoke. It doesn't matter whether you're smoking dried carrots, or tobacco"
Then "pretty much everything" you've read is wrong. The largest, best-controlled, longest lasting study done so far showed no increase of lung cancer among even heavy pot smokers.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/25/AR2006052501729.html
"I appreciate her at least demonizing both weeds equally"
That's ridiculous -- falsely equating the health risk of two substances that in reality have very *different* levels of health risk is not something to applaud.
CAnnabis, and in particular smoking cannabis, does involve health risks, including emphysema and bronchitis. But not, at least according to the best science out there, lung cancer. As I recall it has also not been shown to shorten lifespan, which cigarette smoking definitely has.
For me it's not a matter of "demonizing" anything. It's about sticking to the facts.
And in case you think that was just one erroneous study... http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.29036/abstract
The potential for pleading for pleading for higher & higher taxes exists, as long as they work it baby.
"Results from our pooled analyses provide little evidence for an increased risk of lung cancer among habitual or long-term cannabis smokers, although the possibility of potential adverse effect for heavy consumption cannot be excluded."
There has never been a smokers only disease. There have been a lot of smokers only cures though. (Viruses for one). Most smokers died from infections brought on by lack of proper diagnosis and care for their infections. Bias is the real killer.
Read the history behind the smoking bans. The scientists kept proving the opposite of what the dictators wanted to hear. They then turned to junk science for all their narcisstical fantasies. The Godber Blueprint is a huge eye opener. http://www.rampant-antismoking.com
An interesting & well written, fluid, essay of common sense, by Joe Jackson. https://www.heartland.org/sites/all/modules/custom/heartland_migration/files/pdfs/23216.pdf
Despite what the anti-tobacco, tax money sluts, say, not all smokers wish to quit smoking & most just want to be left alone to self govern. Forcing people to do anything against their will is the opposite of self autonomy.
"There has never been a smokers only disease."
So what? That does not change the fact that smoking tobacco cigarettes icreases your risk of developing lung cancer. emphysema, and a host of other serious health conditions.
Let me be clear -- I wouldn't support trying to make smoking illegal, I'm not crazy about increasing taxes on cigarettes further (at least not in the states that already have high tobacco taxes) because they are a very regressive tax, and I think some smoking bans (such as in non-crowded outside areas like parks, beaches, etc.) go too far. But let's not fool ourselves, the evidence is quite clear that smoking cigarettes is indeed quite "hazardous to your health."
Coincidentally, now that the appetite suppressor, aka tobacco, has been eliminated from many people, the cancer rate is expected to jump 40% due to obesity.
Tobacco held a remarkable 1% rate. Except China, who had the most smokers, their rate was 0.003%.
Tobacco doesn't kill. Anti-tobacco does. Anti-tobacconists constantly bombard the world with brainwashing sound bytes. Cancer! Heart Disease! Repetively. That's all we hear, see, think. Honey, do you want cancer or heart disease for dinner tonight?
"Coincidentally, now that the appetite suppressor, aka tobacco, has been eliminated from many people, the cancer rate is expected to jump 40% due to obesity."
"Expected" by whom?
"The alert came at the world's biggest conference on cancer, which sounded the warning that obesity is killing tens of thousands of people a year in Britain - and the West is about to see it replace tobacco as the leading preventable cause of the disease,"
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/uk/obesity-will-be-main-cancer-cause-31265521.html
(Not the first report I've seen but the latest)
Oh, by the way. Sweden held the lowest lung cancer rates of all. They are the ones who created Swedish Snus, a tobacco product. Did the EU celebrate? No. They banned it. http://www.ecigarettedirect.co.uk/ashtray-blog/2015/05/eu-tpd-e-cigs.html
Eat well, exercise a bit, and don't smoke, and you'll avoid the cancer-causing effects of both smoking and obesity.
Everything in moderation, is the key.
Lung cancer rises in non smokers: http://www.livescience.com/22896-lung-cancer-increases-in-non-smokers-women.html
Smoking helps protect against lung cancer: http://www.sott.net/article/226999-Smoking-Helps-Protect-Against-Lung-Cancer
Sweden with no smokers but who use tobacco products have lowest lung cancer rates.
China with highest amount of smokers had lowest lung cancer rates in comparison.
High, low, doesn't matter.
Yet they keep fear mongering, raising taxes, banning, stirring emotional distress which creates physical distress. One would think the anti-tobacco groups receive funding from big Pharma or something. Oh wait, they do.
"Smoking helps protect against lung cancer"
No, it doesn't.
If you want to believe crackpot claims from unreliable sources, with no evidence to back them up, go right ahead. Not only do I support your right to take decades off your lifespan, I support your right to delude yourself into thinking that smoking protects you from cancer. If that's the path you're determined to follow, don't bother to read any of the well-established facts you can find through this link, and definitely don't click through to see all the peer-reviewed scientific studies those conclusions are based on. Because crackpot websites and tobacco industry funded junk science are obviously much more reliable sources of information.
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/smoking-and-cancer/smoking-facts-and-evidence#smoking_facts0
"In 2011, Kentucky had the highest age-adjusted lung cancer incidence rates in both men (112.2 per 100,000) and women (79.3 per 100,000). Utah had the lowest age-adjusted cancer incidence rates in both men and women (34.5 per 100,000 and 25.0 per 100,000, respectively).4 These state-specific rates were parallel to smoking prevalence rates...
...Men who smoke are 23 times more likely to develop lung cancer. Women are 13 times more likely, compared to never smokers...8
...Nonsmoking asbestos workers are five times more likely to develop lung cancer than nonsmokers not exposed to asbestos; if they also smoke, the risk factor jumps to 50 or higher.11"
Science -- you're free to ignore it. After all "it's your funeral," so if you'd like to have it a decade or two earlier than your non-smoking friends, that's up to you.
I'm sure you won't bother, but just in case, here is the source for the above quotes, including footnotes that you can use to get to the original research backing up those statements: http://www.lung.org/lung-disease/lung-cancer/resources/facts-figures/lung-cancer-fact-sheet.html
Everybody's seen those epidemiology reports and machine generated random numbers for forever. Turn the page there's a different total every time. In fact, sometimes different randomized numbers are found on the same page.
It's impossible to rule one thing as a menace, until every other possible menace is subtracted from the environment. Lumping all people from all environments into one field of study is as fool hearted as lumping all chemicals as one.
You can report all you want, but those with eyes wide open know the reality. Smokers who worked in the dust bowl,coal mines, factories, are a different specimen from those born & raised in a completely sterilized test tube laboratory. Even then, their daily neccessities such as air, food, water, paper gowns, rubber gloves, must be completely controlled & their qualities either added to or subtracted from the equation.
Impress me much? No.
How many of those subjects used windex, air fresheners, Lysol sprays, hair sprays, spray Pam, spray butter, cooked inside their homes without proper exhaust fans, commuted in heavy traffic, used nose sprays, used breath sprays, lived by agricultural spraying, used raid, did all of the above and then some? "How many times have you been stuck in traffic during the re-TARing of the road?" "How many times has your apt or dwelling been fumigated?" Being of sound science, I'm sure all questions & answers were recorded. Surely the one & only question "Do you smoke or are you around smokers?" was just an aside, not the focus. Oh how I crack myself up sometimes! Who amongst us has ever been asked these other relevant questions?
There are more smokers paradox's than there are Carter's pills.
You are in deep, deep denial.
"It's impossible to rule one thing as a menace, until every other possible menace is subtracted from the environment.... Smokers who worked in the dust bowl,coal mines, factories, are a different specimen from those born & raised in a completely sterilized test tube laboratory. Even then, their daily necessities such as air, food, water, paper gowns, rubber gloves, must be completely controlled & their qualities either added to or subtracted from the equation."
Simply not true. Both smokers and non-smokers have these other factors in their lives, but only the smokers are showing, on average, 20-fold increases in lung cancer and decades-shorter lives.
If you were just looking at one smoker and one non-smoker and saw that the smoker got cancer and the non-smoker didn't, it would be meaningless because it might just as easily be some other factor. But when you're looking at HUGE random samples of people (as these studies do) then those other variables even out -- in other words you'll have roughly the same percentage of people who are smokers who have commuted in heavy traffic as you have for non-smokers who have commuted in heavy traffic. And when very similar results are found time after time, study after study, random sample after random sample, and the effects found are of such large magnitude, the chances that these findings are due to random chance are infinitesimally small.
Go ahead and smoke if you want to. Maybe you'll be one of the tiny percentage of long-term smokers who suffer no serious health effects. Or maybe you'll die in a car crash or from something else long before you would have developed cancer, emphysema, etc. If you really enjoy smoking that much, or if you really find it that hard to quit (and it can be, I know that all too well), or if you find that your stress levels without having the nicotine to help you cope are just too high to be tolerable, well, I certainly support your right to make the choice of continuing to smoke. I wouldn't even say that it's necessarily an irrational choice -- many of our choices involve some trade-off, and long life is not the only goal. But don't fool yourself, by making the choice to keep smoking you're assuming a substantial risk of causing not just a shorter lifespan, but great suffering for yourself in your later years.
Ah, ye old stigma continues. It'll be the death of all yet.
"Falzano is among one in five women who has lung cancer but has never smoked. She and others with the disease struggle with the stigma tied to lung cancer – when Falzano tells people about her disease, their first question is whether she smoked. "
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/health-wellness/articles/2013/11/15/a-medical-mystery-why-is-lung-cancer-rising-among-nonsmoking-women
There's a rightfully angry crowd out there who don't smoke.
No one is claiming that smoking causes all cases of lung cancers. And it's too bad that non-smokers who get lung cancer are annoyed by being asked if they were smokers, and even worse if they feel stigmatized. For that matter I don't think smokers who end up getting lung cancer ought to be shamed for it either. If they refused to heed the overwhelming evidence that smoking greatly increases one's chance of developing lung cancer, that makes me sad, not angry, and if they did understand and believe the warnings and wanted to quit but tried repeatedly and just couldn't quit, that's sad as well. On the other hand if someone understands the very substantial health risks of smoking, and chooses to keep smoking, I'm not necessarily sad about that -- it's their life to live as they see fit -- though I suspect that they may later come to regret their decision once the downsides of that decision start to catch up with them.
There's the slogan, get your disease while it's good and hot. No thanks. Commercials ain't my bag.
Try, just once, try researching the benefits of smoking, of nicotine. There you will find the genuine reasons why people continue to be naughty and rebellious. I'm on their side.
Force breeds emotional duress, which promotes disease. Promoting disease breeds disease. Stop spreading disease by stopping the promoting of it.
People lived happily for centuries, puffing away until the anti brigade came along. Now people are miserable, divided, hateful and fat. Those consequences are a thousand times worse than a gene who may or may not turn into a cancer.
Spending $4000 per casket on lung disease compared to $7000 for breast cancer, says it all. Stigma is real & needs to be addressed in order to find the genuine cures instead of funding the genuine hate campaigns.
"Try, just once, try researching the benefits of smoking, of nicotine."
I already have. There are a handful of well-documented health benefits, including a modest decrease in the risk of getting Parkinson's and a substantial role in appetite suppression, which has implications for avoiding obesity and all of its serious effects. However, the former is outweighed by far by the many well-documented and deadly health problems that smoking has been proven to increase your risk for, and the latter is accomplished by the nicotine, which you can get without smoking (gum, patches, e-cigarettes). Nicotine itself is not without downsides, but for people who really struggle to lose weight / keep the weight off, I do think nicotine could be a useful part of their weight loss strategy. But getting that nicotine through smoking cigarettes would be a very stupid way of going about it, as that would involve unnecessarily exposing yourself to all the health risks of smoking, when all you really need for the appetite suppression is the nicotine.
"People lived happily for centuries, puffing away until the anti brigade came along."
That's silly. First of all, plenty of smokers were getting lung cancer, emphysema, etc., long before anti-smoking campaigns got underway, and this is why health professionals and researchers began to document and publicize the risks of smoking. And, secondly, more smokers probably do end up with lung cancer, emphysema, etc today than say 200 years for the simple reason that nowadays fewer people die at a younger age from other causes, before they get the chance to develop lung cancer or emphysema, which are most common at older ages.
I've already stated quite clearly that I don't support stigmatizing smokers. Bt I also don't support people fooling themselves into believing that smoking is relatively harmless, or even more absurdly, beneficial. It's not.
I live with a semi-x pot smoker, married in fact. I love him, with all my heart! When he does get pot I still love him, but cannot stand to be around him! Annoying, stupid, and no sense of reality. Pot does so much more than one thinks.i hate it, it has no place in a real working class society. I will grant you that some people can handle it, but even if they handle it, it still fucks with the brain, emotions, and reason. Medicinal pot, in my opinion, is great as it has its uses. When you scratch your hand doing yard work does not qualify for a 215 card, that whole farce is a crock of shit. You want REAL medical pot, get the high cannabinoid low THC stuff, THC does nothing for health, just fucks up the brain.
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