• jpreston2005@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    amid increasing concerns that the lack of a ban on use is promoting drug abuse by young people.

    This fucking backwards ass notion of weed as a “gateway drug” needs to die. Their reasoning for calling it that shows their idiocy, in that it’s called that because it’s cheap and harmless, so they think it will lead to people believing other drugs are similar. Imagine branding something as dangerous because it’s (Checks Notes) cheap and harmless.

    Although from personal experience, I’d say that weed is a gateway drug of sorts, in that if you’re addicted to something far more dangerous (like alcohol), using weed can act like a “gateway” to sobriety.

    • krashmo@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      In my experience weed can be a gateway drug when you have to buy it from a drug dealer. As an analogy, lots of people end up buying something other than what they went into Target to buy.

      • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        Also a criminal record can fuck your life in a myriad of ways, if like me you fall in love with someone from another country and you both have weed charges neither country will let you live together even decades later destroying what’s probably your only chance at happiness.

        These rules are needlessly cruel and absurd.

    • Shard@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Welcome to Japan, where everything, especially their mentality is fatally stuck in the glory days of the 1970/1980s.

      Even today they still use fax and computer usage is the office middling and general computer literacy is abyssal.

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      It’s Japan. If anything is promoting drug abuse, it’s the work culture.

    • Maeve@kbin.earth
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      3 months ago

      It’s not entirely harmless, but more harmless than a lot of OTC medicines.

    • tatterdemalion@programming.dev
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      3 months ago

      It’s not harmless. It’s linked to mental illness and increased stress. People need to stop spreading this myth.

      EDIT: I know that people are down voting because weed is incredibly popular and rarely does harm, but that doesn’t mean you should propagate the myth that it’s harmless. Your personal experience should not speak for everyone.

      Weed can easily cause intense anxiety and paranoia if the user takes more than they can handle. This is just as true for someone who is trying it for the first time as it is for someone with a long history of use.

      If you have ever had panic attacks or heart palpitations, the combined increase in heart rate and anxiety may trigger a panic attack. It’s also habit-forming enough that people who’ve had panic attacks will keep using it despite knowing they are risking a really stressful experience.

      • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        You’ll need to cite your sources on that, though the APA style guide doesn’t have a citation format for “conservative grandparents with dementia.”

          • Dasus@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            “Someone’s asking for sources on wild claims, quick, let me google some correlations!”

            If you look at the link between alcohol and mental health disorders, cannabis is way safer, and there’s not even a direct causal link to what would cause these correlated issues with cannabis use, unlike with alcohol, where there’s a clear causality.

            • tatterdemalion@programming.dev
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              3 months ago

              Someone’s asking for sources on wild claims, quick, let me google some correlations

              You say that like it’s a bad thing. What else am I to do when someone asks for sources? I’ve read similar research in the past and went to find it again.

              If you look at the link between alcohol and mental health disorders

              That’s whataboutism.

              • Dasus@lemmy.world
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                3 months ago

                I’ve read similar research in the past and went to find it again.

                Correction, you’ve googled similar studies before. I’m pretty sure you haven’t read them. There’s literally nothing there except sampling bias and weak correlations.

                You can do that for literally anything

                That’s whataboutism

                No, it isn’t. It’s not “what about alcohol” as in “let’s not talk about cannabis, but talk about alcohol instead”.

                It’s a “you don’t understand the actual risks involved, you don’t understand that you’re linking things you think they prove something (even without reading them) that confirms the bias that has been programmed into you, so here’s some context to make it more understandable”

                The context being objective science not having found any causality with mental health disorders and cannabis, and honestly, not even proper correlations.

                If this was about the dangers to mental health, then those dangers would be objectified, and alcohol would be considered more dangerous and prohibited. If for some reason the prohibition of cannabis doesn’t come from objective science, but pure political shitcanery, then it wouldn’t care at all about the objective facts of any of the risks, but it would pretend toeven going so far as to completely make shit up

                Which is exactly what is happening here, and you’re perpetuating it. Probably without realising it, but you are.

                • tatterdemalion@programming.dev
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                  3 months ago

                  There’s clearly no convincing you. By all means, continue to spread the myth that cannabis can do no harm to anyone, and eventually the wrong person will believe you.

                  • Dasus@lemmy.world
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                    3 months ago

                    Remember when you were talking about whataboutism, trying to discredit my entire comment?

                    Well, now you’re doing what’s called “a strawman.” At no point have I said or even implied that cannabis is literally harmless.

      • jpreston2005@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        if you’re into that, just wait till you hear about alcohol and cigarettes! Anxiety, paranoia and panic attacks seem fine compared to Cirrhosis, COPD, Emphysema, Cancer, Stroke, Renal Failure, Kidney Failure, and Fatty Liver Disease. All of them painful, all of them deadly.

        But god forbid people smoke some weed 🙄 They might in very rare occasions get a temporary increase in anxiety!

        • tatterdemalion@programming.dev
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          3 months ago

          More whataboutism. We’re talking about weed. And I’m not making the blanket statement that no one should smoke weed. I’m saying it does have health risks that should not be ignored.

          Also it’s offensive that you would trivialize the suffering that people go through in a panic attack.