[SarahSchilling]

But to dismiss the increasing evidence supporting the effect on some people from extended cannabis usage mainly because you don't want to believe it, to someone my age, is reminiscent of the days when evidence was accruing that, yes, smoking tobacco is bad for you, will give you (pick one or more) of cancer, congestive heart failure, emphysema, chronic bronchitis etc, and _still_ people would say "oh no, all my friends and their parents smoke and they are perfectly fit and healthy".

Fair enough, I suppose I'm more suspicious of the motives behind the studies than doubting that marijuana could have adverse effects on some percentage of the public.

I also think that personal habits take more blame than they deserve when it comes to cancer. People that don't smoke or drink get the assoiciated cancers as well, at ever increasing rates.

But getting into radiation, GMOs, chemtrails, and water flouridation is a whole other thread.

[SarahSchilling]

Anyway-I think the real "reefer madness" is actually Global Warming/Climate Change/Climate Disruption/(another fancy name for weather) no appreciable warming now for 15 years, yet the UK government wants companies to tender for a £1billion contract to find a way to pump CO2 into the ground. This in order to satisfy a legal commitment to make a gesture, a drop in the ocean compared to China and India (with its space program, and whom we still give £00,000s every year for their "development") and we have a deficit of trillions to pay! Madness or what?

But that's a different story/rant ...

B.

Yeah, it's amazing that some people have been convinced that the substance plants breathe in is killing our planet. Even after the news came out that the sun is heating up....of course that particular study seems to have been all but buried.

I'm pretty sure it's just to limit industrialization in the developing world by levying a global carbon tax, which people would never go for without some sort of psyop.



You're as rational as I thought you were before today lol..and we are far offtopic.

[AnnieBL]

To come back on topic, just Googling "cannabis gynecomastia" produces loads of material. Clearly the question of whether weed causes gyno is controversial but there doesn't seem to be any evidence that it inhibits it.

On whether weed is too risky to smoke regularly, this like so many other things in life, is a matter of personal risk assessment, which may have a very different result from public risk assessment. With countless millions of pot smokers around, even a very low incidence of adverse events can reasonably be seen as a serious public health problem. Similar considerations apply for example to conventional HRT. Bryony is right to say that one should be aware of the risks but it is your personal assessment that counts for you. For the record, I have only smoked it once, but since I gave up smoking the much more dangerous tobacco a long, long time ago, I have been scared to smoke anything in case I get hooked again; the act of smoking seemed to me almost as compulsive as nicotine is addictive. Serious obsessions or addictions are much more dangerous since personal risk assessment goes out of the window

AP

"Experience is what you have just after you needed it most".

[bryony]

To come back on topic, just Googling "cannabis gynecomastia" produces loads of material. Clearly the question of whether weed causes gyno is controversial but there doesn't seem to be any evidence that it inhibits it.

On whether weed is too risky to smoke regularly, this like so many other things in life, is a matter of personal risk assessment, which may have a very different result from public risk assessment. With countless millions of pot smokers around, even a very low incidence of adverse events can reasonably be seen as a serious public health problem. Similar considerations apply for example to conventional HRT. Bryony is right to say that one should be aware of the risks but it is your personal assessment that counts for you. For the record, I have only smoked it once, but since I gave up smoking the much more dangerous tobacco a long, long time ago, I have been scared to smoke anything in case I get hooked again; the act of smoking seemed to me almost as compulsive as nicotine is addictive. Serious obsessions or addictions are much more dangerous since personal risk assessment goes out of the window

AP

"Experience is what you have just after you needed it most".

Hi AP,

In general, I agree with your point about personal risk assessment, but only for people who are loners

In my humble opinion, modern society (since I was a kid in the 60s) has been a relentless brainwash in the form of, to quote Aleister Crowley, "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law".

It is not true, as long as what you do to yourself harms others, directly, or indirectly.

If you look back through the logs, you'll see that I have strong opinions about wives and loved ones. When you harm yourself, you harm them. If you go through life thinking to yourself "I have to be true to myself and bugger all others", then you quickly wind up on your own, sad and lonely, possible losing your mind.

I loathe and detest the cult of "me, me, me". What pot smokers, along with married men who want the full gender reassignment surgery should think to themselves is: "what about the people who love me? What is it going to do to them? Do I care about them? Do I love them enough not to do this thing?"

Nothing else matters to me; as an agnostic (too confusing to use the correct word, atheist) I have no absolute moral reference; but I do have a code to live by, and the very first line of that code is: do no harm to others who love you.
(Flag: major off-topic rant.)

That first line is why I have no time for men who are FF have kids and a wife and they all love each other going for the GRS operation. I am perfectly happy and would encourage single transsexuals, particularly those with no interest in penetration to go for it. (I might advise them to consider Facial Fem. surgery first though)

(But to have your penis cut off and deny your partner the ultimate act of love and bonding for what is, essentially, a hobby, a whim, a conceit, a sham, a masquerade, is to my mind, an absolute disgrace.
I believe that there are some unfortunate people who find it impossible not to be as completely female as possible, but I am convinced that such people would never be able marry and have children successfully. Such people should be content with expressing their feminity in ways that were never available to us before.)

The second line of my moral code is: do no harm to others, unless they deserve it by having wronged you or someone you care for.

That rules out pot smoking for loners too, in my opinion. As I live in a country that has a national health service, that takes a huge percentage of the massive amount of tax that I pay/have paid, it p**** me off to have to pay out for repairing the damage that some thoughtless, feckless morons do to themselves in the form of drug/tobacco/alcohol/food abuse. Yes, they may have assessed the personal risk, but do they give a s**t about who has to carry the can for their indulgence?

If we had a society where we provided freedom AND responsibility, so that people that screw themselves up have to live on some kind of work farm under controlled conditions until they have paid back the cost of their rehabilitation in full, but the kind of liberal attitude that preaches personal freedom somehow always seems to include joint responsibility!

Anyway.... rant off! (no offense intended - just feel strongly!)

B.

[AnnieBL]

Bryony,

When I entered my last post I wondered whether I should have further defined 'personal'. Yes, of course, your personal risk assessments should take account of your responsibilities to others and to society, and your own conscience, but they are still based on your own perceptions. These responsibilities include not abusing ones indulgences ("Moderation in most things!"). In the case of tobacco and hard drugs, most people once hooked have the greatest difficulty in exercising moderation. Without your background knowledge I am inclined to believe that moderate or occasional pot smoking is a low risk recreation (and possibly even beneficial at least for NBE and chronic pain relief, although its illegality may increase its social risks), and that many or most of the health and social risks may be laid at the door of abuse (as with alcohol). I am also not fully convinced by the economic assessment of the costs to government of smoking. We are all going to die of something, and I am not persuaded that smokers necessarily sicken and die more expensively than others, but they often cease sooner to be a drain on government health and pension resources, and certainly contribute additional taxes while they still smoke.

I personally distinguish between my perceived duties to society, and my duties to various levels of government administration. I don't react well to governments and bureaucracies which take the attitude that rather than being there to serve us, we are their indentured servants with a duty to them to maximize our ability to generate taxes and minimize demands on their services, nor to government departments and professionals who take the attitude that their services are good for us so more of their services will be better for us (my rant )

AP

"Experience is what you have just after you needed it most"

[bryony]

...
I personally distinguish between my perceived duties to society, and my duties to various levels of government administration. I don't react well to governments and bureaucracies which take the attitude that rather than being there to serve us, we are their indentured servants with a duty to them to maximize our ability to generate taxes and minimize demands on their services, nor to government departments and professionals who take the attitude that their services are good for us so more of their services will be better for us (my rant )

AP

"Experience is what you have just after you needed it most"

I have no time for politicians of any persuasion and dislike any form of big government, so we are in full agreement there.

Unfortunately, they have effectively taken over control of scientific orthodoxy, much like the church in the time of Galileo, so it is very difficult to make decisions on the basis of informed choice. There are so many conflicting opinions put forward by vested interests(including governments) on what is safe or not.

e.g.#1 It is not safe to diet by restricting carbohydrates.
For me, anyway, it is much safer than anything else.

e.g.#2 The world is warming and it is all due to mankind over producing CO2
but. The world hasn't warmed measurably for over 10 years but CO2 has been ramping continuously

On the other hand, I get a flu vaccination every year, as recommended, because I am in an "at-risk" category.

Also, I make sure that meat is pasteurised before I eat it, to avoid dangerous pathogens.

So, I have four examples of government orthodoxy. Two I find reliable, two not so much. What clue does that give you on the safety of pot?

If it helps, or confuses even more, there are factions in the UK government parties who want to legalise it - but only so they don't have to bother with the criminal aspects of it, i.e. saving the cost of detection, imprisonment and so on. And of course there is the opportunity to tax the sale of it. But how does this help the victim?

B.