Based on what, your personal experience talking to stoners in college? Plenty of people smoke socially, and among people who smoke cannabis, only a small fraction "lock themselves into apartments and smoke weed all day". In fact, that fraction is much smaller than the fraction of people who drink alcohol who lock themselves in their apartments drinking all day. And I don't know if you've spent any time with those people, but they all have cognitive issues too. As do people who do speed all day. As do people who do heroin all day.
Cannabis can be a wonderful social drug, as can amphetamine or cocaine, and I'm sure even opioids, though I don't touch those because I have significant genetic risk for opioid addiction.
I don't think judging a drug by its most addicted users is fair. Especially since you're doing that for weed, and then comparing that to the most reasonable alcohol users.
All that being said, I absolutely agree that cannabis is not good for you in large quantities. It's absolutely bad for cognitive ability, working memory, and long term memory when used chronically. But the only people I've met who would disagree with that are cannabis addicts, and usually young ones at that(the older ones tend to figure it out unless they stay stoned for their entire lives, which does happen). Most people I talk to are well aware of these things. And at least from my own experience, these effects will generally pass once you cut down.
> Based on what, your personal experience talking to stoners in college? Plenty of people smoke socially
Yep. And plenty smoke privately, too. People see the public spectacles and incorrectly conclude it as wholly representative.
Many professionals use cannabis but choose to not advertise it since misinformation is still so rampant, originating from the "Reefer Madness" propaganda days. The tradeoff of potential career damage just isn't worth it.
Based on what, your personal experience talking to stoners in college? Plenty of people smoke socially, and among people who smoke cannabis, only a small fraction "lock themselves into apartments and smoke weed all day". In fact, that fraction is much smaller than the fraction of people who drink alcohol who lock themselves in their apartments drinking all day. And I don't know if you've spent any time with those people, but they all have cognitive issues too. As do people who do speed all day. As do people who do heroin all day.
Cannabis can be a wonderful social drug, as can amphetamine or cocaine, and I'm sure even opioids, though I don't touch those because I have significant genetic risk for opioid addiction.
I don't think judging a drug by its most addicted users is fair. Especially since you're doing that for weed, and then comparing that to the most reasonable alcohol users.
All that being said, I absolutely agree that cannabis is not good for you in large quantities. It's absolutely bad for cognitive ability, working memory, and long term memory when used chronically. But the only people I've met who would disagree with that are cannabis addicts, and usually young ones at that(the older ones tend to figure it out unless they stay stoned for their entire lives, which does happen). Most people I talk to are well aware of these things. And at least from my own experience, these effects will generally pass once you cut down.