That part is a bit of a bad joke, but I've known people who have lost chunks of their lives to WoW, and the criticisms you outline for cannabis seem to mirror my perception of WoW very closely—"addictive", "causes them to be extremely unmotivated", and "a lot of people end up really trapped by it".

To be honest, when I was in college, I was more worried about the potential dangers of WoW than I was worried about cannabis or other recreational drugs, chief among them alcohol and caffeine, but also cannabis. I had a "just say no to WoW" attitude.

As a user myself, I tend to agree. It can be very easy to go overboard if you aren't careful. For many people, weed can completely sap motivation if abused. The exact risks are really unknown though, since research into marijuana has been stifled for decades.

These threads can easily get out of hand when people think that other people are misinterpreting other people, a kind of chain of misinterpretation.

>At least three people have died playing online games for days without rest. People have lost their spouses, jobs, and children to World of Warcraft. If people have the right to play video games - and it's hard to imagine a more fundamental right - then the market is going to respond by supplying the most engaging video games that can be sold, to the point that exceptionally engaged consumers are removed from the gene pool.

Oftentimes drug use is a symptom of a greater psychological problem/issue. Perhaps the underlying issues are causing the negative behaviors and the drugs are only enabling it.

I also know and lived with roommates for whom marijuana was a real problem. The kind of person who would smoke every day, even coming home on their lunch break and taking some bong hits. I've seen them get fired from work. I've seem them completely disregard the things that need need done. I've seem how irritable they can be when they're not blazed. They may not be chemically addicted, but they surely feel as though they need to smoke for whatever reason.

None of this is to argue for or against, but the "harmless marijuana" trope is a little much. Any substance will be abused by some and will cause harm to some.

Sure, I might be happier if my past self saved even more money, lived a vegan lifestyle, or learned to play an instrument. But, I don't think it's a problem that I have failed to optimize for making this second of my life be the best it could be.

(Many people into meditation had at some point used drugs, but eventually decided they were at best a distraction and at worst actively harmful).

Thank you for this reframing! I believe that it is useful and will likely use it in the future.

More often than not, the 'relaxed lifestyle smokers', myself included, did so primarily to numb the stress in their head, whether caused by work stress, personal issues, social anxiety, etc.

Basically, it's often more to cope than to relax, at least in my experience and that of my surroundings.

But exceptions always exist, of course. I just think it's good to be cautious with anything that seems to offer a quick solution to a difficult problem (being at peace / relaxed).

So, if parity is not enough and everyone must be a net contributer, well that's a cog.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acedia

Kathleen Norris wrote a book titled with the same name, and one of the things you notice about monastic life is that it's very spiritually dangerous, and often leads to a lot of abuses.

I was talking with a co-worker about US laws in general and he mentioned something I'd never thought of. Many of the laws we pass, speed limits, alcohol tax, prohibition, .08 legal driving limit, etc are designed for the lowest common denominator. Meaning, we pass laws based on the worst case scenario. It seems like it's illegal to do just about anything these days.

Let's fix the potholes before we go after the pot users.

This is a symptom of this:

>> They may not be chemically addicted

When people who smoke weed on a regular basis stop, the effects are similar to nicotine withdrawal - irritability, anxiety, fatigue and difficulty concentrating.

>> but the "harmless marijuana" trope is a little much.

I agree and would also add that when people are forced to consider statistics of people driving while high has increased dramatically in places like Washington and Colorado, their only response is, "Well drunk drivers kill way more people than people driving high." as some way to justify that it's ok.

What roles, in what areas, have they risen to in this time?

Of course, I've seen other daily marijuana users remain stationed at the front counters of gas stations, but that's my point. I don't think that daily marijuana use is the factor that accounts for the relative successes or failures of these individuals. There are many more variables.

If Joe Gas Station stopped smoking pot, he wouldn't suddenly develop killer business instinct, or the motivation to build a company in his off time.

Do you think it's a significant factor for some?

I'm interested in where you live, well what society - you've listed 7+ professions, each as a multiple, of people you personally know who you consider successful, who you also know to be daily pot smokers. I don't even know the daily routines of 7 people outside my family ... let's say 50% of people (you know) are using pot and they're split evenly between smokers, vapers, eaters, others ... that means you know the daily routine of over 100 people. That's, erm, impressive.

[Ah, just realised, do you deal, that would explain it! Sorry, is still early for me.]

I know a handful of people who smoke pot, but that's likely my demographic - but I couldn't tell you if they smoke once a day or once a week, or less.

Any chance you're exaggerating your personal knowledge?

In the UK site workers, like carpenters, will often be tested for drug use. Your engineer, teacher friends - do they use on the job, like when taking responsibility for multiples of other people? Are you content with that.

Appreciate your responses as potentially they'd suggest a vast change in my ideas of the prevalence of daily pot use (depending on your geography, social context).

The teachers, principals, and business professionals whom I've known to partake in this ritual, generally do not do so at work. Just as many workers drink alcohol during their off time, most do not come to work drunk.

I don't know many people's daily routines. I really only know my wife's. But, knowing that someone is a daily marijuana user is different from knowing their daily routine.

I can say this: I was very surprised to discover that some people, who otherwise cultivate an image of wholesomeness, are longtime marijuana users. Not everybody who uses marijuana wears tie-dyed t-shirts. Likewise, some people who wear tie-dyed t-shirts have never used marijuana.

Of course, things might be different where you live, but I doubt it.

I believe it is fairly well established that addictive behavior runs in families.

smoking definitely affects brain, all the body, it has no positive effect

No, major banks don't all drug test. And in general you are given some warning about drug tests (at least at the several companies I was at). All you have to do is get off drugs for a week or so, and youre fine.

I also knew many who smoked it regularly without major issues, so I'm not saying it inevitably causes problems, but I am 99.99% certain that if you already suffer problems with motivation or life direction, marijuana can majorly f... you up.

I used to smoke it occasionally myself and I definitely saw its positive effects - for computer scientists, it's a fascinating springboard into understanding consciousness and meta-cognition. It makes good music and art even more enjoyable.

It's also one of the most seductive drugs out there. Alcohol leads to very painful hangovers, which is a clear signal for people to slow down. Psychedelics are too mind-blowing and the trips last too long to be used regularly. Heroin, crack, meth etc are widely seen as dangerous. Cocaine is expensive.

Cannabis is affordable, and can be enjoyed on a weekday evening without strong next-morning effects. So some people end up integrating it into their routine: surfing the internet stoned, listening to music stoned, playing video games stoned, chatting to friends stoned.

If you have your s... more or less together, you can probably use weed semi-regularly without too much damage. But if there are one or more real problems in your life, things which would take real effort and motivation to fix (poor social life / grades slipping / lack career direction / etc), weed will tempt you to chill out and ignore said problems. You concoct wild rationalisations about why you don't really want X, why people who chase X are manipulated by the system, etc, etc.

Long-term, you run the risk of becoming paranoid and demotivated, struggling to make everyday decisions or to get a grip on your own thinking. Given that this isn't a universal consequence of weed usage, it might not be solely due to the weed but also certain personality traits which weed amplifies.

I rarely smoke it at all any more - personally, I found training myself to enjoy good art, and reading deep philosophy/literature gave me access to much more profound pleasures and insights than weed ever did.

Then to tie this in nicely which the argument that people with issues will ignore them - I went through court during school for restraining orders, I worked a full-time job while in school, and started a small profitable business. All of that is insanely stressful and I would argue if weed would have caused issues, I would have had larger problems.

All that being said, I think people who smoke weed (or tobacco for that matter) are more likely to get into the "drug culture" of partying, carnivals / festival, climbing, etc. It's really no different than people who become alcoholics. It's probably a symptom of a larger issue when people abuse drugs and attempt to "opt-out" of society. That being said, perhaps some people want this, and it should be an option. I don't care one bit if people want to waste their life on drugs. I only care that I have to pay for them via tax dollars, so remove social welfare for them and I'm all for it!

I'd even expand my argument, and say any vice including videogames, cars, etc. Anything can get out of hand if people are trying to avoid a problem. Just like you can't blame a gun for murder, you can't blame a vice for a wasted life. At some point, if a person had choice, and knew what they were getting into it's their fault.

Let's not forget that it can also be a symptom of society itself. In a scenario where the majority is insane, behaving sanely makes you look crazy.

I understand the disgust for supporting human beings who are inert, but I suspect it's largely irrational. The idea that we should "all do our share" is becoming more and more impractical as technology progresses. There simply isn't a big enough share to keep everyone occupied, and the majority of jobs are completely unnecessary, if not detrimental to our collective welfare.

Let's face it: most of it is just status games and posturing. Anecdotally, cannabis dissolves the desire to participate in status games. My personal theory is that it tends to increase the creativity of people who find meaning in their work and the desire to "opt out" in those who don't. Unfortunately, out current economic system creates a surplus of the latter, because we are stuck with a system of health distribution that is based on human labor, which is increasingly irrelevant.

    All of that is insanely stressful and I would argue if weed would have caused issues, I would have had larger problems.

    I'd even expand my argument, and say any vice including videogames, cars, etc. Anything can get out of hand if people are trying to avoid a problem.

I'd be careful not to say it's bad, until that research is overwhelming. I say this because a large number of people I know who smoke(d) regularly end up in prison for it - which of course makes them way less productive.

It's just hard without a ton of evidence whether or not it is more dangerous inherently or if we make it more dangerous with our society.

     I think people who smoke weed (or tobacco for that matter) are more likely to get into the "drug culture" of partying, carnivals / festival, climbing, etc

> If you have your s... more or less together, you can probably use weed semi-regularly without too much damage. But if there are one or more real problems in your life, things which would take real effort and motivation to fix (poor social life / grades slipping / lack career direction / etc), weed will tempt you to chill out and ignore said problems. You concoct wild rationalisations about why you don't really want X, why people who chase X are manipulated by the system, etc, etc.

As a counterexample to your 99.99% certainty, I had more or less the opposite reaction. I was in a pretty terrible place about a year and a half ago, and I found myself coming home after work and getting high almost every weekday evening. Not only did it serve the intended purpose of getting me through the day-to-day of a pretty horrible and anxiety-inducing time in my life, the fact that I noticed myself using so much more was one of the clearest signals that made me realize that something was wrong in the first place (without the health costs and potential physical dependency that most other drugs would've imposed). In most measurable ways, I was still pretty functional (e.g., still very productive at work, etc), but the place I was in mentally was absolutely unsustainable.

That signal made me take a look at what might be wrong and start thinking about fixing it. As soon as I took the first step towards fixing everything I needed to, my marijuana usage dropped off a cliff (even though I had quit my job and had far, far more free time). A year after quitting, I'm better off in almost every way. AFAICT, marijuana is more or less like junk food (except physically better for you): the costs aren't as dramatic as other drugs but if you're doing it what you perceive as too often you should at least consider that there's an underlying reason (much as I would conclude I was stress eating or had a poorly balanced diet if I was eating junk food once a week or more).

There are quite a few people who go overboard with it, and I'm not arguing complete unfettered access for all, but I think the reason it's dangers are trivialized is in reaction to how trivialized alcohol is in our culture. Every show you watch, and people are drinking alcohol left and right. In entertainment it's just something you do. Costco is willing to sell you gallons of it cheaply and of high quality.

And yet the dangers of alcohol both short and long term are taken as "things we just put up with" from a societal perspective.

I think when people compare the dangers of long term apathy, malaise and possible overeating (which also just sound like responses to getting older ;) to people who get drunk and murder other people and end up killing themselves, short or long term, one set does seem kind of trivial.

*Note: I am not meaning to make it sound like I'm anti-alcohol or pro-cannabis. I think responsible people can handle each one responsibly, and that instead of prohibiting everyone, we do what we do with bad drivers: we help them get better or forbid them from doing that activity any more and provide safe alternatives.

That is: I am not opposed to a small amount of "nanny-state" to force heavy users into a better path (and that is very illiberal, I know) but I wonder if it is possible to do it in a fashion that has minimal "illiberal side effects".

Multiplayer games... the drug of nerd generation X?

> Multiplayer games... the drug of nerd generation X?

MUDs, MUSHes, Doom, Quake, Starcraft, shit posting on Reddit, dropping knowledge bombs on HN[1] ... the venue changes but it's all the same waste of time. Not necessarily a bad thing either.

[1]: Feel free to swap HN and Reddit.

This is my progression as well :^)

I never said that list was arbitrary or randomly generated :D

This a fallacy I see all the time... when someone makes an unusual choice and something bad happens, people blame the decision. If someone makes the typical choice, people blame the circumstances.

If someone has an open relationship and it breaks up, people blame the openness. When a monogamous relationship breaks up, no one ever blames monogamy.

If someone breaks their leg while rock climbing, people think climbing is dangerous. If someone breaks their leg while painting, it was just an accident.

When someone cooks some terrible vegan food, lots of people think "vegan food tastes bad". But if someone wrecks a piece of meat, no one ever thinks "meat tastes bad".

Edit: also wanted to add that the humanity of the world views of many of the people commenting here is a source of great hope for the future for me. You all are thinking hard about how to improve the way we think of each other, and it's really moving to see it evolve each day on this site and elsewhere.

When it comes to weed, the Dutch approach seems to be pretty effective at allowing it's use while simultaneously keeping it from being a cultural mainstay, and I think that's a good thing.

It also seems to work with smoking. It's amazing to see how many people quit smoking as price increases and as the cultural values change. As a chain-smoker who wishes he never started, I think that's great.

In my ideal world it would be legal to drink, but it wouldn't be such an integral component of our social world. For many people, and perhaps especially those who struggle with dependence on alcohol, the relative difficulty of avoiding 'drinking culture' and the stigma attached (being boring) is a major pain in the ass.

Children should hear a realistic profile of effects for different substances, among other things.

Anecdotal evidence: John Smith, from a lower-income family, grows up a small rural community, 30 minutes outside a mill town with a population of 13k. He's around 13 years old, a computer nerd in the 90s and doesn't really fit in with the rest of the folks in his small school (grade K-8, Total pop 190 pupils). Alcohol has already introduced itself to John as it was common for kids of his age to consume stolen booze.

His next door neighbour's son visits, he's a few years older than John and introduces John to marijuana. John begins smoking it occasionally at the early age of 13. Through his newfound interest in marijuana, he starts visiting alternative websites, listening to the Doors, reading books by writers like Hunter S. Thompson, and eventual Aldous Huxley. John continues smoking weed, increasing to daily, as he finds it opens his mind to being more creative and understanding the content better.

At 15, John moves to a city 3 hours away that has a university. He looks into University courses and sneaks his way into the larger seminars after high school, on topics such as the existence of UFOs and quantum mechanics. He begins smoking pot with university students after seminars and has rich discussions with them. This leads to joining the local anime club and computer science club. Pot still remains the social lubricant for John and his social circle.

Flash forward: John has moved to the other side of his large country, is an IT manager at a world-class organization as well as a private contractor, lives a comfortable middle-class life with a long term partner. He visits home every year and helps family with their business. He still consumes marijuana daily.

True story.

Here's an n = 1 study. A few years ago, I used a Pax to vaporize cannabis nearly every night for a year. I quit altogether after moving to an area where it was harder to buy.

After a month or two, I unexpectedly noticed a fog had lifted. It was easier to summon the right word to my tongue. It was easier to reason through difficult abstract problems. It was easier to start working on things.

If you are reading this and are thinking "yeah, but n = 1, man," you're right. I must be the exception. Being an egregious stoner doesn't decrease anyone's IQ or motivation, "studies" and "your lying eyes" be damned. YOU are not experiencing any deficits from smoking herb. Cannabis is NOTHING like soma, and in fact has no negative side effects at all. And you are certainly not rationalizing self-destructive behavior.

Maybe I'm putting too fine a point on it, but using cannabis for even one day will make you stupider and lazier the next day.

Using cannabis daily will make you stupider and lazier in general.

People who deny this are lying to themselves.

When I was a regular cannabis smoker, I had a high-paying, high-status job and was commended for my work. But I could have learned more and done more in that yearlong period - with no psychic cost. Stoners (and I certainly was one) concoct amazing rationalizations for the newly tighter bounds on their motivation.

The idea should be that "it's your choice if you want to use it, but people shouldn't be mass-brain washed by ads into believing it's the best thing ever that they should buy."

if your objection is to "mass-brain washing", I think you're gonna have a lot of 1st amendment trouble arguing that case legally.

What were the arguments used to regulate the display and advertising of tobacco? Those might be a model for the advertising of other potentially harmful substances. Certainly how beer is advertised is no model to follow.

in any case, regardless of whether or not beer advertising is a good "model for society" is kinda irrelevant from the constitutional law perspective. the legal rulings have repeatedly found that commercial marketing is, with a few exceptions, free speech and that the government is limited in its ability to regulate that type of expression.

from an ethical perspective, I think that people living in a free society have an ethical responsibility to educate ourselves and our communities about drugs (of all kinds, including alcohol and tobacco) independently of the commercial promotion of those products. at some point you have to just let people be responsible from themselves. trying to enforce health and safety through prohibition or censorship is not a good strategy.

Not any different that tens of different ways to do that: from videogame addiction (someone mentioned it already), to depression (and in fact marijuana can help fight that), not knowing what to do with yourself, to accidental pregnancy, to drinking, to studying for a liberal arts degree (couldn't resist the joke), ...

Besides most people don't go to the university and don't have any particular "big plans" anyway, marijuana or not.

Hell, I know people who eat far too much and have lost aspects of their lives - but nobody is talking about outlawing food or alcohol.

Just because you know people who are lazy and use cannabis, proves very little I'm afraid. Do they drink beer also?

Not attacking you, but it's comments and attitudes like this that help politicians justify silly things, such as, "The war on drugs". The war on drugs is one of the most destructive, wasteful, pathetic ideals of our time.

They usually never drink alcohol I find - or very little.

I know about 5 people who fell into this trap and when (some) of them packed it in have enormous regret. My point is that this isn't talked about with cannabis.

It sounds to me like some of your friends have been using a substance to fill a void in their lives or avoid facing some issues, this is really terrible and I understand.

Truth is, there are just so many ways people can use and abuse things and it's wrong to blame anything in particular. If people sniff glue to mask a problem, you wouldn't say glue has a dark side. Yes glue is can be toxic and extremely harmful, but it doesn't have any intentions or predispositions.

Don't get me wrong, I've had similar views in the past, it's just where I'm at now from my own life experience.

I agree that, being stoned every minute of the day is not a good idea, maybe you're trying to say cannabis is more toxic than people think?

Who said productivity and ambition are absolute values? Are there some tablets of stone somewhere?

Bonus points for the pun in the last sentence, since we're talking about drug prohibition which LITERALLY "traps" people in jail for possessing a plant...

I wait for the day, drugs are unbanned, medicine cant be patented, religion is banned, and the world has one common global goal, space exploration! I'd stop smoking cannabis for that. ;-)

I'm not just meaning careers - often they never go on vacation abroad/travelling (past maybe Amsterdam). They look around and see their friends who have been all over the world after university, when they've done really nothing.

This is bullshit. Most travel is leisure, just like cannabis, and not at all mind expanding.

This is just a game of "my hobby is better than yours".

(also not saying anything was better, i like it all, including wasting some hours a week on a videogame)

Traveling opened my mind and gave me much larger perspective on things. Sometimes it is leisurely, other times it is not (I have foreign family and not a lot of resources and no background in this country).

Let me tell you the truth... addiction is not about the drug. Addiction is about the environment. So if these students were apathetic, it was because they had deeper-rooted issues that they were attempting to mask via some drug.

And cannabis is not physically addictive. Psychologically addictive as I pointed-out but not physically. Even coffee is more addicting.

There are a lot of benign addictions, which we call habits. We should be a bit more careful in casually classifying marijuana as benign on grounds that is not as bad as heroin.

Edit. "Classifying" in educational sense, not in legal sense.

Maybe Schedule 4 or 5 might be more appropriate? i.e Xanax, Tramadol, less than 200mg codeine, etc.

> We should be a bit more careful in casually classifying marijuana as benign on grounds that is not as bad as heroin.

Yes, definitely. I'm strongly in favour of legalisation, but I recognise that for some people cannabis will be harmful.

The truth, as usual, is somewhere in between.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/pot-pains-why-marijuana-can-bec...

This is just like alcoholism, except it won't kill you and it won't make you do stupid/dangerous things and it's not physiologically addictive. And like alcoholism, it's only really attractive to people who meet certain preconditions. If you feel a lot better about your life while smoking hemp, and you don't have to give up anything you care about to smoke it all day, consider setting restrictions for yourself on when you smoke it. I think there's a place for escapism, but maybe restrict it to after 9pm, for instance.

How do you attribute that to marijuana smoking? Correlation isn't causation; perhaps they would have been apathetic over that time period, regardless.

For the many years it was illegal and I smoked it anyway, sticky cannabis aka 'dank' was always preferred. I believe CBD cannabis is more popular than it seems.

Here in Florida I think CBD oils were recently legalized and I think a single strain of marijuana (with negligible THC and high CBD) had been permitted for epilepsy patients. To be honest I haven't followed to closely after the last medical marijuana bill didn't pass.

Anyway, is the CBD/THC ratios interdependent? Meaning as one goes up, the others go down? Or are there some strains with significant amounts of each and others with low amounts of each?

"However, modern growing techniques have also affected these chemical levels. For example, illegal growers have turned to indoor marijuana farms to avoid detection. Growing cannabis locally in such farms also circumvents the need to import the drug, and guarantees a more reliable harvest. However, the 24-hour lighting used in these farms inadvertently reduces CBD levels in the plant."[0]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/jan/17/cannabi...