Where can I find non-biased marijuana information?!
Question:
Where can I find non-biased marijuana information?
I don't want a government source skewing facts and telling me it's an addictive brain killing cancer causing drug, and I don't want some hippie stoner telling me it's the holy grail.
Any suggestions?
Answers: On a whim, I guess you could get my opinion, since I'm fairly unbiased. Truth be told, every source you find is going to be biased to some extent :| My background is...I know a lot of people in the medical marajuanna crowd that treat it like it's "the holy grail," I also know a lot of pot addicts that are messed up, I'm familiar with useful information being suppressed (especially in regards to health), and I personally do not (nor have ever) smoked weed (for random health reasons).
Anyhow, the most unbiased answer is that "Pot is not unhealthy for you, unless you smoke a lot in short periods or being psychologically addicted to it (meaning you need it to be happy, and value it too highly...I know a lot of people like that whom I basically consider failures at life)" or plainer, it will not have any negative effects if you smoke it infrequently (or are one of the rare people to be allergic).
To be more accurate, THC at least is pretty much non toxic, to the point, I do not believe an LD50 has been established for it. One of the most frustrating things cited by members of the medical marajuanna movement is the fact that many really unhealthy things are allowed on store shelves and drugs, yet pot is banned (when it's toxicity is negligable).
The only medical benefits I am sure of are, increasing apetite and being a pain killer. When people get high, they often get "the munchies." Suprisingly enough with a lot of conditions, losing appetite is a hard condition to treat, and using pot to give someone the munchies is one of the best treatments available (although if you think about it, it is rather...sad). Also, it's a very good painkiller that doesn't mess your body up as much as the convential options.
Saynig more about it falls into questionable territory. I personally believe there is good basis for pot to be used medically, but at the same time 90% of the people that advocate it for that reasons are simply doing it because they want to be able to legally smoke pot, and have nothing to do with caring about the medical applications (although I also think pot should not be illegal). The net result of the premises in these paragraphs, is that the entire point gets really ucky and debately and subjective, and difficult to find any valid sources on.
To try to put this in a better context, from what I have seen, this is what happened. Marijuanna is a "miracle plant." It has hundreds of applications, and is about the best fuel, paper and raw materials (like cotton) crop that can be grown (if mass hemp farming were to be legalized a lot of fuel and economic shortages would go away). A few major industries felt the plant was a threat to them (primarily the cotton and tree farming ones), and decided to make a propoganda campaign portraying pot out to be the devils drug, responsible for all the worlds evil, and in need of being outlawed.
The end result of this was quite simple....that's exactly what happened, it became illegal and ever since then the topic has been politicized and had lots of BS injected into it.
One of the many "random" uses of pot lay in the fact that it had many medical applications. In the old days hemp was a common medicine used successfully for a variety of conditions. This fact was picked up by some liberal groups and used as the basis for making a campaign puporting hemps medical necesity. I believe many of these applications are true, but at the same time I have not seen any consistent proof (although I know the state of hawaii invested a lot of money into medical research on it until the federal government came down on them).
Thus, while I cannot answer your question directly, I've tried to provide you with the context to be able to answer it. There are a lot of things I am not positive about (hence I did not state them as fact, or flat out ommitted them), but once you have a slightly better perspective on the matter, it makes it much easier to evaluate the plethora of literature available on the subject online. I really hope this helped!
*I noticed I was not consistent with my terms hemp/pot/weed etc., treat them all as having the same meaning. Sadly, that information isn't as easy to find as you would think- most web info is either dedicated to legalizing it, obtaining it for medical purposes, or government websites telling you that smoking pot makes the baby jesus cry.
This website, while admittedly biased, has a great deal of unemotional and scientific information.
http://www.erowid.org/plants/cannabis/ca... I'd say erowid.com is pretty unbiased, even though it's a site about drugs it gives you real information and ALL of it. Just Google "non-biased (or scientific) information about marijuana" and you should find something that doesn't lean to far to one side or another.