[nyarlathotep_]

In my teens/20s, I would have advocated for legalization of marijuana and thought any argument against it was some antiquated, puritanical nonsense.

In the decade+ since, there's no way I'd do so.

I know three personal friends that are long time (allegedly not addicted) heavy marijuana users that all suffer from Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome to the extent that it's effected their daily lives substantially.

Two of the aforementioned are roughly my age, and are half as bright as they were as teens. Neither of them can follow a train of thought particularly well and are difficult to hold conversations with.

How much of this is attributable to how much more powerful "modern" strains (or whatever the geo-engineered differences are) is unknown, but I can't imagine it's not a factor. This is not the dopey "get stoned and play XBox and eat a whole pizza" stuff we had in the 00s.

I'm sure there's plenty of counterexamples or something, but my perspective on this has completely changed, influenced by examples like this.

[ProjectArcturis]

Do you think their lives would be substantially better if they had been arrested and sentenced to lengthy prison terms?

Alcohol can have a well-documented destructive effect on people's lives. Should it also be made illegal?

[handedness]

I don't know, but I think your comment would be substantially better without false dilemmas and manipulative appeals to emotion.

[tuesdaynight]

They were both appealing to emotion, though.

[handedness]

Arguably yes, arguably no.

I don't know either of them and have never noticed comments by either until now, but it seems to me that one is speaking autobiographically, describing how their view changed after personal experience they detailed, while explicitly admitting the ultimate rational insufficiency of such a position, even stating there may be sufficient counterexamples to contradict their experience. If that's an appeal to emotion it's either a highly insidious or a pretty impotent one. It doesn't read either way to me, but in either case I'm content to give them the benefit of the doubt, based on the general tone of their comment.

The other is simultaneously purely argumentative and fallacious in every regard, and lacks any evidence of even a shred of self-awareness, unlike its parent comment. It's shabby argumentative rhetoric lacking any insight or particular substance. There's a much better argument to be made from their viewpoint, but they didn't make anything resembling it.

Their other comment in the thread is similar in tone and form. People expressing concerns about marijuana potency increasing over time were summarily 'refuted' as actually arguing for smoking more material to achieve the same high. It's very r/iamverysmart, and it also checks off another fallacy box.

Like their other comment, there's a worthwhile point to be made there, but that wasn't it. Every useful argument has to acknowledge its own weakness (because every argument has one). One of them did, one of them didn't even attempt to.

I care less about what particular positions people hold and a lot more about how they hold them. I'd rather read high-minded debate between people who've arrived at their opinions after grappling with contradiction, than pithy dismissals of worthwhile comments.

And if one notes that I am guilty of the same, while fair, please consider that the comment to which I originally replied was far from worthwhile.