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Ok, I like your message and tone but I have to point out a couple of things where are not quite communicating. You are absolutely right that people can do worse than THC, e.g. alcohol and tobacco. (Although it is unclear if nicotine itself is worse. Worn as a patch it might be as harmless as caffeine.) The potential dangers of Tylenol/Paracet is not about liver damage. There is an unexplored correlation with behavioral disorders in pregnancy that is not entirely explained away by assuming that people with behavioral problems take more Tylenol. Yet in the widespread population Tylenol is basically considered completely safe, as safe as apple juice. My point is that drug education is not trivial and is full of unfinished threads, and there is plenty of room for abusing the messages. Lead in gasoline is my benchmark for how hard it is to know that a drug (atmospheric lead) is having a negative widespread effect in the population (violence and IQ reduction). In that case, it took decades before the data was there, and decades more to build political action on the issue. Yes, drug education is a good thing, but we also have to know that messages can and must change when data comes back. At what point is the data strong enough to put in high school literature? For example, the research showing a correlation between chronic marijuana use and testicular cancer[1]; should we put that in the literature? It is impossible to say at this point whether that is causal or simply related to a behavior that occurs when using marijuana, or perhaps even hormonal (people that like marijuana have a body chemistry that also maybe produces testicular cancer)? We simply have no idea. So yes, drug education is good, and we need more research on the effects of marijuana, and I don't think we can really speak authoritatively on its risks relative to nicotine or even alcohol. (No, not everyone can lead a normal life while stoned. Learning is most certainly inhibited, and a normal life involves learning things.) [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4642772/ |