san francisco raises smoking age to 21

[Schildog]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/san-francisco-raises-smoking-age_us_56d7abede4b0000de4036921

 

i don't smoke but this is lame.

[Adam]

Progress

[the dude abides]

Yeah, that's pretty lame.

[mtangelsfan]

They will be making it illegal to smoke in the "City" before you know it.

[Stradling]

Yet as you walk around the city you'll smell pot all day every day

[mtangelsfan]

Yeah, well that's different.

[Amazing Larry]

I'm sure smoking pole is still encouraged in the Castro (not that there's anything wrong with that.)

[ABC]

I'd love to see smoking made illegal in public. And recreational maryjane (and many other drugs) completely legal, in private.

 

Maybe even get rid of drinking age.

[Angelsjunky]

Yeah, well that's different.

 

It is, substantially so. Smoking tobacco kills six million people a year worldwide, or 480,000 in the US alone--42,000 of which are related to secondhand smoke. Marijuana kills zero. OK, maybe one or two, or maybe none at all.

 

So yeah, freedom.

[Adam]

How many people does Obama kill every year?

[Angelsjunky]

Not sure what that has to do with smoking, except that Obama smokes.

 

But my guess would be somewhere between a few dozen to several hundred.

[ABC]

I'd like to see pre-rolled cigarettes outlawed entirely. 

 

Cigarettes being legal invalidates every person in jail for a drug related crime. As long as cigarettes are legal we might as well legalize heroin and meth. But we won't because heroin and meth aren't on the stock market(but the pharmaceutical companies are).

 

Also people always talk about the tax money cigarettes bring in, you know the majority of that money goes directly to the tobacco companies to help inflate their stock prices errrrrrr cut smoking. One big tax on the poor. Think about it, how many drug addicts could get through their life if dope was sold in every liquor store, gas station, and grocery store? It's ridiculous we'll spend 40k on trying and jailing a drug addict, ruining their life, but we'll allow the tobacco companies to continue making their billions.

 

Meth and heroin need lobbying groups. 

 

EDIT: Pot has lobbying groups

 

They already do. They're employed by pharma cos and prison unions because they want to corner the market and keep jails overflowing.

[nate]

Meh, whatever.  Smoking is a huge burden on healthcare costs in this country.  Especially with Obamacare and all the other socialist shit going on I really don't want to be stuck paying for dipshits that smoke.

[Adam]

And it turns people into socialists, which slowly kills all of us

[Angelsjunky]

It makes me crazy when stoners say shit like this.

Habitual smokers of anything will get cancer. Smoke itself is carcinogenic. Smoking weed kills many people every year.

 

No it doesn't. You have no idea what you're talking about - please do some research.

 

And yes smoke is carcinogenic. But it is very, very difficult to smoke enough pot to have the same carcinogenic effect that smoking even a pack a day of cigarettes has. Plus, marijuana usually doesn't include chemicals.

 

Excessive marijuana use does have negative side-effects, but nowhere near that of legal drugs like tobacco, alcohol, sugar, or caffeine - not to mention prescription drugs.

[JAHV76]

[mrwicked]

They will be making it illegal to smoke in the "City" before you know it.

 

good.

[Angelsjunky]

Weak, calscuf. I already agreed that it is carcinogenic and you wasted your time by finding a quote to prove that it is carcinogenic. OK, we agreed. But how dangerous is it? How many deaths are there per year that are directly related to marijuana? ZERO. Or maybe one or two. How many from tobacco? 480,000. Look it up.

[HaloMagic]

How many deaths are people who use wood-burning stoves and fireplaces experiencing every year?

[Angelsjunky]

Ok so let's break this down:

Marijuana smoke is carcinogenic. You, I and the ALA agree on this.

Carcinogenic literally means "cancer causing". Therefore, marijuana smoke causes cancer.

Cancer often causes death.

Yet somehow, marijuana smoke is not causing any deaths, except "maybe one or two" per year.

Do you see the logical problem here?

 

Why are you avoiding the actual data?

 

Check this out:

 

http://blog.sfgate.com/smellthetruth/2015/06/09/worth-repeating-marijuana-decreases-risk-of-lung-cancer/

 

Or this:

 

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/01/22/3614459/new-pot-research/

 

The bottom line: It is unclear how dangerous long-term marijuana use is as there have been no clear causal links between it and serious diseases, but what is clear is that whatever negative impact it may (or may not) have, it is FAR, FAR LOWER than tobacco. And this isn't even touching up its therapeutic uses or how much money the government wastes on

[HaloMagic]

How dangerous is it though cals? More dangerous than fatty foods or fast cars? Dangerous is both absolute but also very relative. The fact that marijuana smoke is dangerous to one's health doesn't mean that it has actually endagered anyone's health.

[nate]

Maybe we should be directing tobacco taxes towards medicare rather than the corporations pockets.

Cigarettes are as addicting as any drug on earth. These people aren't dipshits, they're addicted. Most started when they were kids. You're a dick Nate.

There are so many ways to quit now. These people don't want to. Just another excuse.

[Angelsjunky]

We weren't arguing over actual deaths. We were arguing over the safety of inhaling smoke of any kind and, in particular, marijuana smoke.

 

 

Do you realize how ridiculous this sentence is? Safety and deaths are directly related! The FACT of the matter is that almost half a million people die per year from tobacco smoking, and NONE from marijuana. I'm not sure if you really are so willfully ignorant, or if you just want to disagree with me.

 

But if your whole argument is that smoking pot might be somewhat dangerous to your health because it involves inhaling smoke, sure - but I agreed to that a long time ago. Again, I didn't say inhaling marijuana smoke wasn't potentially harmful. But the question is, how harmful? Studies are limited but so far the bottom line is that it is FAR LESS dangerous than smoking tobacco. The quote you mention didn't say anything about how harmful. What we DO know is that it is far less harmful than smoking tobacco or drinking alcohol.

 

And while there are a lot more cigarette smokers than regular pot users, the numbers aren't as drastically different as you might think. There are 40 million cigarette smokers in the US and 14 million regular marijuana smokers. That's a lot of stoners! If marijuana was anywhere near as dangerous as you seem to want to make it out to be, don't you think we'd be seeing tens or even hundreds of thousands of marijuana related deaths? I means, at least a few? The only known marijuana-related death that I'm aware of was from edibles.

 

And again, just to be clear: I have no disagreement that inhalation of smoke of any kind is unhealthy, nor do I even disagree with the supposition that long-term and heavy marijuana smoking could lead to lung cancer. But again, we're talking orders of difference - at least based on the actual proof. My guess is that the difference is something like that of riding a bicycle (marijuana) and riding a motorcycle (tobacco). Both are potentially dangerous, both can be abused, but one is far more likely to involve a life-threatening accident than the other.

Edited March 4, 2016 by Angelsjunky

[Angelsjunky]

The simple fact is that inhaling smoke is dangerous and there are many heavy marijuana smokers that die from lung cancer.

 

Please support this with actual facts. Come on, calscuf, let's see a link. How many is "many"?

[HaloMagic]

I got the impression that he won this argument.

He did look stupid in the process, though.