"President Barack Obama says smoking pot isn’t “more dangerous” than drinking alcohol.
“As has been well-documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life,” Obama said....Obama also told Remnick that he is troubled that “middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do. And African-American kids and Latino kids are more likely to be poor and less likely to have the resources and the support to avoid unduly harsh penalties.”
“Those who argue that legalizing marijuana is a panacea and it solves all these social problems I think are probably overstating the case,” he said “There is a lot of hair on that policy. And the experiment that’s going to be taking place in Colorado and Washington is going to be, I think, a challenge.” NBC
What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you,
which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?
1 Corinthians 6:19
P.S. - - "Researchers at Northwestern Medicine have found that the developing teenage brain may be particularly vulnerable to excessive marijuana use. In a new study—published on December 16, 2013—scientists report that teens who smoked marijuana daily for about three years had abnormal
changes in their brain structures related to working memory and performed poorly on memory tasks.
It is common sense that being a heavy cannabis user might make someone more spaced-out and less likely to perform well on memory tasks. Excessive chronic use of any type of drug is going to have detrimental mental and physical side effects.
Alarmingly, the brain abnormalities and memory problems were observed during the individuals' early twenties, two years after they stopped smoking marijuana. The researchers found that memory-related structures in their brains appeared to shrink and collapse inward, reflecting a possible decrease in neuron volume. These findings could indicate long-term detriments of chronic marijuana use as a teenager.
The younger the individuals were when they started chronically using marijuana, the more abnormally their brain regions were shaped, the study reports.
John Csernansky, M.D. and co-senior author on the Northwestern study concluded, "The abuse of popular street drugs, such as marijuana, may have dangerous implications for young people who are developing or have developed mental disorders.
Legalizing marijuana has led to more widespread use. In the United States, marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug and young adults have the highest—and growing—prevalence of use."
