By Manav Garg:
1. Smoking weed is believed to have significant medical value.
This is a fact.
According to this research on canasol: One of the 50 fundamental herbs of traditional Chinese medicine, cannabis-based drugs are expected to prove useful in treating adrenal disease, inflammatory bowel disease, migraines, fibromyalgia, and related conditions. Other forms has also been found to relieve certain symptoms of multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injuries by exhibiting antispasmodic and muscle-relaxant properties as well as stimulating appetite.
2. Smoking marijuana is healthy because it’s a plant, not a drug
This is a myth.
There are many poisonous and hallucinogenic plants, whose products are unhealthy for human consumption as in the case of weed, heroin, cocaine, magic mushrooms etc. The dangers or the advantages associated with marijuana are independent of it being a part of the plant family.
3. Legalizing marijuana helps to reduce its usage.
History says this is a myth.
Legalizing the consumption of marijuana has often been considered the best solution to control and reduce the smoking of pot. As in the case of some nations in Europe, this experiment has normally backfired. Consider the experience of the Netherlands, where the government reconsidered its legalization measures in light of that country’s experience. After marijuana use became legal, consumption nearly tripled among 18- to 20-year-olds.
As per the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration: In 1987, Swiss officials permitted drug use and sales in a Zurich park, which was soon dubbed Needle Park, and Switzerland became a magnet for drug users the world over. Within five years, the number of regular drug users at the park had reportedly swelled from a few hundred to 20,000. The area around the park became crime-ridden to the point that the park had to be shut down and the experiment terminated.
4. Marijuana is a gateway drug.
Numbers show this is a myth.
It’s almost taken for granted that marijuana is the stepping-stone to bigger drugs. Getting into smoking pot is normally believed to be followed by users moving to cocaine and heroin, and a lot of hard drug addicts certify this hypothesis. But look at the numbers in reverse. In 2008, some 15.2 million Americans admitted being past-month users of marijuana, but only 1.9 million were past-month cocaine users and 200,000 past-month users of heroin.
In 2010, past-month marijuana use had gone up (to 17.4 million), but cocaine use had gone down (to 1.5 million) while heroin use was unchanged. If marijuana were a gateway drug, number of hard drug users would have probably showed the same trend as Marijuana users, but that is not the case.
A 1999 study by the California-based Institute of Medicine concludes, “There is no evidence that marijuana serves as a stepping-stone on the basis of its particular physiological effect.”
5. Marijuana is 10 times more potent and dangerous now than in the sixties.
This notion of increasingly more dangerous pot is a myth caused mainly by biased data and statistics, as shown by a recent “NORML” report by Dr. John Morgan.
As per this report, the samples used from the early ‘70s came from the pot left in Mexican Police lockers etc — whose potency had deteriorated to sub standard levels of less than 0.5%. When compared to fresh domestic samples of average quality, one would naturally interpret a skyrocketing potency.
In fact, there is nothing new about high-potency pot. During the sixties, it was available in premium varieties such as Acapulco Gold, Panama Red, etc, as well as in the form of hashish and hash oil, which were every bit as strong as today’s sinsemilla, but were ignored in government potency statistics.
6. There are over a 100 chemicals in marijuana smoke and that is why it is harmful
This is true. But very misleading.
There are over 1500 chemicals present in roasted coffee!
 Only 21 of those have been tested on animals, and 16 of those cause cancer in rodents. Rat poison however, contains only 30 chemicals.
In short, everything depends on the type of chemical involved. The sheer number of chemicals is often used to scare people into believing that Marijuana causes cancer.
The truth is the number of chemicals has absolutely nothing to do with how dangerous pot is.