** This thread discusses the content article:
Marijuana (It's Risky!) **
A lot of people don't have a good understanding of health or of research. Many people say, "Well, I've done pot and it didn't do anything bad to me" or "Well, I know someone who does it all the time, and he's fine" or "My friend only does it once in a while, it's not addictive." They don't realize that people react to things in different ways, and there may be consequences that are not immediately obvious.
Marijuana doesn't seem to be directly addictive. But that doesn't mean people don't get addicted to it. People can get addicted to anything that makes them feel good such as pot, video games, sex, food, etc. So whether someone gets addicted to pot or not usually depends on just how good pot makes them feel and just how prone they are to addiction.
Side effects can vary from person to person as well. Maybe Uncle Jim and your friend Steve seem fine after smoking, but that doesn't mean they are fine or that you'll be fine. Marijuana is linked to a wide variety of health problems, a lot of which are rather subtle, things that might not show up right away, things your friends and family members might not what to admit to you (impotence), or things they might not even notice (low sperm count).
We don't know a lot about the effects of marijuana on unborn babies. Why? Because it's a hard thing to study. We certainly can't tell women to smoke pot during pregnancy so that we can study their babies later. And we try to study women who admit to smoking or who are caught smoking. But the problem is that a lot of them do other things too, such as have a bad diet, drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, do other drugs, etc. So it gets hard to determine for sure whether the marijuana has the ill effects or something else. But so far it does look like marijuana is certainly not good for babies and is also probably linked to a wide variety of health and developmental issues, some of which might not be apparent for years (such as social disorders and learning delays).
So don't risk it.
