[nonstickcoating]

Cannabis can very well lead to dependency, I struggled with it for the majority of my adult life. I totally agree that illegalising it is laughable and it's by no means as dangerous or easy to get addicted to it as is the case with benzodiazepines, but it is also no joke. Of course I am talking about "recreational" use, not medical.

I really dislike the handwaving nature with which the very real and especially psychologically quite harmful side-effects of Cannabis are discussed for the most part. Mind you, I believed it to be harmless for the longest time, too.

[mandmandam]

> Cannabis can very well lead to dependency

My eyes near roll through my head when I hear people say this.

Anything can lead to dependency. ANYTHING. Sex, judo, farting for attention. Scratching your sack. Making shitty tik-toks.

The withdrawal symptoms for cannabis are so, so, so so far from that of opiates or nicotine; or benzos, as you mention, that yeah, you can basically say there are no withdrawal symptoms.

Some people are prone to dependence on things, due to their physiology or psychological make-up. Those people are far, far, far better off using cannabis than benzos or opiates. Look at how much deaths from overdoses go down in legalized areas. That applies in both medicinal and recreational contexts.

> ...very real and especially psychologically quite harmful side-effects of Cannabis

Wut. Quite harmful compared to what - water? Water kills more people than cannabis does.

On balance, far more people find psychological benefit than harm from cannabis. Same with physical health. Handwave that away.

Compare the side-effects from cannabis to ibuprofen. Come on man, let's keep some perspective here.

[sph]

> Anything can lead to dependency. ANYTHING.

So, who cares, right? Withdrawal symptoms of sugar are nothing compared to opiates, yet it's a bigger epidemic than opiate addiction. But since it doesn't make your skin crawl and hallucinate, it doesn't matter?

Cannabis is quite benign in the grand scheme of things, but let's stop saying it's the cure to all problems and that it has no downsides. Like GP I have been through the marijuana addiction phase and it wasn't fun. I'm prone to get addicted to stuff, so that's on me, my quitting my 5 joints a day was almost as hard as quitting my pack a day smoking habit. The difference is that smoking didn't turn me into an idiot pot-head that burned away a big part of his teenage years, of which I can't remember much. Certainly nicotine didn't trigger my anxiety which almost turned into psychosis like THC did. Talking just about dependency and the physical withdrawal means ignoring a big part of what marijuana smoking actually does, something stoners really do not want to talk about.

[mandmandam]

> So, who cares, right?

Right. I don't like sugar being in everything, but I don't cry about evil sugar making me buy pop rocks and ice cream. I don't want sugar to be banned, or to force rehab on people guzzling too much cola. Ending the crazy ass subsidies for corn syrup would be nice though...

> let's stop saying it's the cure to all problems and that it has no downsides.

For every time I've heard someone say that cannabis is a pancea, I've heard 100 people say people need to stop calling it a panacea. It's so tiresome.

> turn me into an idiot pot-head that burned away a big part of his teenage years

Pfft, you did that, not cannabis. Cannabis didn't hold a gun to your head and say smoke me, like heroin or nicotine. Yeah, under 18yos shouldn't smoke. That point gets lost in all the nonsense left over from decades of misinformation. Making it illegal makes that issue far worse, through increased availability to teenagers, and awful contaminants.

And yeah, THC has a (poorly understood and far from straightforward) link with psychosis. So if you're feeling that, then get a high CBD strain, or don't smoke. That's common knowledge and not something to twist your pants over.