[lotusss]

But you're deflecting from a conversation that's just about enumerating the risks.

We don't know the risks from consuming marijuana (aside from anecdotes, but I've got a good sense of the risk from personal consumption and the effects on people close to me). The marijuana-legalization discussion is advocating that it doesn't have risks, and it's leading to people making uninformed choices. That's the discussion here.

What are the downsides?

[esahione]

But the conversation we should be having is legalization. Right now it is still illegal in most states, and people are going to jail on a daily basis because of it.

Tell me, how does an article like this improve the actual problem at hand at all? It doesn't, and by doing so, it shifts the conversation from what should be illegal to a conversation that is totally irrelevant.

I'm bringing it back to the core of the issue.

Prohibition is bad. It doesn't work. We fund drug cartels because of it. We fund drug dealers. And ultimately, it is up to the individual to make his own choices over what he should or should not do with his body.

[lotusss]

> Tell me, how does an article like this improve the actual problem at hand at all?

Arguably very few articles improve problems at hand, but for over a quarter of the US population, marijuana is legal recreationally. In Canada, marijuana is legal recreationally. And even where marijuana is illegal, it's often not terribly-well-enforced anymore. New York City, the city this publication is based around, has decriminalized the substance and is no longer arresting people for marijuana possession.

The question for this audience is "should I consume it?" and "should we societally start investing in understanding the downsides of consuming large quantities of THC?"

Those are the important questions for these people, who live in the post legalization (or heavily decriminalized) world. And we don't have good answers for those people.

> it shifts the conversation from what should be illegal to a conversation that is totally irrelevant.

The readership of the New Yorker, I would hazard, has already come down strongly on the side of "should not be illegal". It's a liberal publication in a liberal city that has decriminalized marijuana usage, and its readership, I'm almost certain, overlaps strongly with people who are in favor of legalization. Why is the conversation of "is this healthy" not relevant?