Common Misconceptions and Pseudo Facts of Marijuana

Common Misconceptions and Pseudo Facts of Marijuana - Cannabis White Noise

cannabis white noise

Every now and then I read “smart sounding articles” that make outlandish claims about cannabis. While it’s true that we still don’t have the full picture about the effects of marijuana use, we do have a few thousand years of empirical data suggesting that it’s “not as dangerous as we thought”.

However, this doesn’t stop “intellectuals” from talking about a substance that the vast majority of them never tried. If you’ve ever spoken to someone who is passionately against a certain thing, in all likeliness, that person is simply speaking from a point of opinion and has zero experience on the matter.

Today, in order to help my readers to identify when people are talking bullshit when it comes to cannabis, I decided to round of some of the more common misconceptions and pseudo facts used by anti-marijuana activists to convince you that smoking weed is bad.

Cannabis is WAY stronger than it was in the past

I recently read an article that started off with the following sentence;

“Marijuana has been used for reported medical purposes for thousands of years when the plant had THC content of 0.5 to 3%.”

This is a common misconception about cannabis. The idea here is to say that weed has become infinitely more potent over the years. And while it’s true that you can now more consistently find higher potency strains, it doesn’t mean that cannabis was at 3% THC since the dawn of time.

For anyone who smoked weed in the 1970s, they knew that certain strains were more potent than others. For instance, “Acapulco Gold” was a very sought after strain because it got you higher than the ditch weed most people smoked.

Acapulco Gold is a sativa land strain that no longer exists. While we don’t have exact measurements for the THC found within the strain, it was definitely higher than 3%.

3% THC is almost smoking hemp and people didn’t smoke hemp to get high. In fact, you would hardly ever feel high if you smoked 3% THC. If we go even further back, a few thousand years, you’ll find numerous examples of civilizations utilizing cannabis for its psychoactive properties.

Trust me when I say that 3% won’t send you off into a hallucinatory state as was depicted by the Byzantines, Vedas and so forth. Weed has always come in different potencies…it’s just that lately we have gotten really good at consistently getting them potent.

Cannabis Increases the Odds of doing other drugs.

Within the same article I quoted above, another common misconception and logical fallacy was mentioned;

“More than 90% of heroin users report a prior history of marijuana use compared to a prior history of painkiller use (47%)”

In other words, the author is trying to make a link that “smoking weed gives you a greater chance of doing other drugs”. And while it may be true that 90% of heroin users report a prior history to cannabis, I’m almost certain that the same could be said of alcohol.

Hell, under that reasoning, 100% of Rapists drank milk as babies. Does that mean that milk increases the likeliness of someone raping someone else?

While the article was pointing out that marijuana won’t solve the opioid epidemic, it does attempt to make a link that if you smoke weed, you’re more likely to do heroin.

Now, cannabis users tend to be more experimental in nature than non-cannabis users. This is partly due to prohibition and human curiosity. When a cannabis user first smokes weed, and personally feels that the plant is “not as bad as they said it was”, it opens up the door to , “What else have they been lying about?”

Secondly, a person who experiments with their own consciousness would be more open to implore other mind-bending substances within their search for introspection. This doesn’t mean they will get “hooked on it” but rather their disposition to push their own perceptive boundaries.

The point here folks is that marijuana is the most used illegal drug in the world. Of course a lot of heroin addicts started smoking weed. But all heroin addicts started drinking milk too.

Marijuana Increases Violence

This is not a new misconception. In fact, this was around since the dawn of prohibition. “Don’t smoke the devil weed because it will make you kill people!”

Today, the argument is a bit more nuanced. “Cannabis increases the risk of psychosis. Psychotic episodes can be violent. Cannabis leads to violence.”

Of course, this line of reason takes huge leaps to justify itself. But the truth of the matter is that only a fringe group of cannabis users could become psychotic with weed. I’m talking about less than 1%. The vast majority of users never have psychotic episodes, nor do they trigger things like schizophrenia.

We claim we need more research prior to legalizing, however for some reason major publications can simply accept this “pseudo-fact” as truth, while simultaneously claiming we need more research.

There is no definitive proof that marijuana actually increases the likeliness of psychosis. Anyone who tells you otherwise are either ignorant on the research, or willfully trying to fool you.

We’ll be updating these misconceptions in the future. What are other misconceptions you have heard about cannabis, let us know and we’ll write about it.