7 'Controversies' That Are Total Bullsh*t
1. Medical Marijuana Legalisation
Any suggestion that the campaign to legalise medical marijuana is bullsh*it is a surefire way to attract a swarm of commenters armed with an anecdote and an ad hominem attack, so I'll just say this: The campaign to legalise medical marijuana is bullsh*it .
The thing is about the "marijuana revolution" that we're currently seeing, particularly in the States, is that it is not, by and large, borne out of a concern for children with epilepsy or people living in chronic pain, and finds most of its support from the recreational community, crouching behind a veil of scientific legitimacy.
Put it this way, whether or not marijuana contains active ingredients that can help manage pain or seizures or alleviate some of the unpleasantness of chemotherapy (it's efficacy in any medical capacity is still yet to achieve scientific consensus), getting your doctor to prescribe you spliffs is just not how drug development works.
Treating pain by sparking up a joint is like sucking on willow bark to get the aspirin out. If cannabinoids are found to be effective, they need to be isolated, subjected to rigorous randomized clinical trials, properly regulated and processed to reduce its undesirable side effects (like, you know, getting high). You wanted medicalisation? You got it, complete with the tedious bureaucracy. Be careful what you wish for.
As it stands, we barely know enough about the effectiveness and the dangers of marijuana to go to human trial, let alone outright legalisation, but it is, for some reason, getting special treatment - and that reason is that people enjoy taking it.
You can guarantee that if we found a way to manage these conditions that marijuana supposedly treats, and it wasn't a substance that also happens to give you the warm fuzzies and the capacity to laugh at Adam Sandler movies, we wouldn't be seeing anything like this "revolutionary spirit".
If you want to smoke weed recreationally, that is a completely different issue and there are many good arguments for legalisation, but by pushing your pot habit through behind a medical smokescreen, you put people's lives at risk.
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