As more and more people become advocates of legalizing marijuana, the “Ant-Weed” people are getting desperate. Really desperate, in fact, to the point where it is getting to be comical. Here are a few arguments that I have found recently that show you just how thin the argument against marijuana is getting. Sit back, and enjoy.
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1. It’s a Gateway Drug
Saying that smoking pot leads to doing other drugs makes about as much sense as saying that because you have swum in the ocean you are likely to develop gills. As far back as 1990 researchers have been blowing holes in the “gateway drug” theory. Even more research has shown that alcohol is actually the gateway substance.
2. It’s Bad For You Because You Smoke It
Again, this is false. The “Anti-Weed” crowd loves to compare weed to cigarettes based on the principle of ingestion. Again, this is like saying skittles are bad for you because you can pop them in your mouth one at a time just like a Percocet pill. Not only has research shown that smoking weed doesn’t damage lung tissue, it actually suppresses the development of cancer cells.
3. It’s Addictive
In the year 2012 alone, The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) reported that 957,000 people age 12 and over sought treatment for marijuana. That seems liek a lot, but how many of those people do you think “sought counseling” as part of legal intervention? The same theory applies to people who are convicted of an alcohol-related offense being court-ordered to attend AA meetings.
Read: Researchers prove marijuana doesn’t affect your intelligence
4. It’s Dangerous
Ant-drug people claim that marijuana is just as dangerous as harder drugs like LSD or heroin. That’s funny, because even Obama said it isn’t, but I bet the anti-drug agencies that answer to him won’t agree. According to the DEA, schedule 1 drugs – of which marijuana is one of: “are the most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules with potentially severe psychological or physical dependence”. They are also said to have “no currently accepted medical use.” Yet anytime someone asks the DEA about the damaging effects of weed, they refuse to answer the question. Rep. Earl Blumenauer explains why that is a problem in his eyes,”Being unable to answer something clearly and definitively when there is unquestioned evidence to the contrary is why young people don’t believe the propaganda, why they think [marijuana is] benign. If a professional like you [DEA Administrator Michelle Leonhart] can’t answer clearly that meth is more dangerous than marijuana — which every kid on the street knows, which every parent knows — if you can’t answer that, maybe that’s why we’re failing to educate people about the dangers. If the deputy director of the office of drug policy can’t answer that question, how do you expect high school kids to take you seriously?” Hey, Blumenauer – did you ever think that they can’t answer the question because they know it contradicts everything else they say about weed?
Read: Cannabis Oil Helps 6-Year-Old Girl Take Her First Steps
Last but certainly not least, they best/worst argument against marijuana legalization EVER…
5. Stoned Attack Bunnies
I wish I was kidding about this one, but it’s true. As Utah was considering legalizing weed like Colorado and Washington, Matt Fairbanks, a DEA agent, told a harrowing tale of his experiences with the state’s “cannabis eradication” team. He started his story by saying that, “I deal in facts. I deal in science.” He explained that while his team was destroying marijuana crops, they found that “rabbits that had cultivated a taste for the marijuana. One of them refused to leave us, and we took all the marijuana around him, but his natural instincts to run were somehow gone.” Yep, fearless, stoned attack rabbits. That’s how thin the argument is getting…
