Do you smoke?

Without seeing the source material, and in particular, the recency of the source material, I can't really comment. Those stats have always been what's been out there, but the most recent materials I've heard discussed indicate that it isn't as harmless as was previously thought. Is heroin or methamphetamine more addictive? Sure. Are amphetamines likely to cause more physical harm to the body? Yes. But that doesn't make weed safe. I'm not talking relative terms here... I'm trying to give accurate information to the many young teens that read EC and may be inappropriately influenced by the dated and inaccurate information that's being conveyed.

Again, not arguing this point. Alcohol is bad.

I can't really disagree with the above statement. Throwing people in jail for smoking weed doesn't serve anyone's interests, and clearly there's an inconsistency in the way we treat weed and the way we treat alcohol, and that makes no sense for a variety of reasons.

Additionally, we are finally, slowly, starting to move to a place in society (at least in the US) where there's a conversation about treating addiction and drug abuse as a medical problem rather than a criminal one. And that is a huge, huge change that has long been needed. We don't fix this sort of problem in society by throwing someone in jail, in part because drugs are available in jail, and even if someone gets clean while in jail, if they do not get treatment, they'll simply relapse on getting out.

My main point is that when we look at making the problem worse by legalizing something that is increasingly addictive due to the higher potency, we are missing the bigger point and at best kicking the can down the road and at worst making the situation substantially worse.

At the very least, the last thing we should be doing in a community that includes a lot of young people is giving them misinformation about the downside of even the so-called "harmless" drugs because that's likely to lead someone down a very negative path that, for a significant number of them, could be a lifetime of difficulty.

 

This thread has gone a little off topic, but more importantly the staff have had to remove multiple posts which were just recounting the times they got high. As Empty Closets is a support community for people as young as 13+, we have to make sure that our posts are suitable for people within that age range. That means that we have to be careful not to glorify drug use, especially when sharing an environment impressionable young people.