I don’t think I’m disagreeing with your broadest point, but I am disagreeing with some of the sub aspects of your argument. Yes, marijuana’s largest side effect is that it negatively impacts mental health.
Your strongest claim is the word brain damage. Those studies don’t talk about brain damage, they talk about mental health outcomes.
That is your phrase, not mine. I said ‘damage to the brain’.
Going from a base state to ‘anxious, depressed, having less working memory, etc’ is something I would call ‘damage to the brain’. In particular, the reduction in working memory capacity is an unambiguous deleterious change to the makeup of the brain. Any other permanent mental health effects I would also be comfortable referring to as ‘damage to the brain’. Remarkably enough that’s what mental health is all about. For what it is worth I’d also refer to breathing in large amounts of smoke as either ‘damage to the lungs’ or ‘negative impact on physical health’.
I wouldn’t use the term ‘brain damage’ because that seems to have a specialized meaning.
I don’t think I’m disagreeing with your broadest point, but I am disagreeing with some of the sub aspects of your argument. Yes, marijuana’s largest side effect is that it negatively impacts mental health.
Your strongest claim is the word brain damage. Those studies don’t talk about brain damage, they talk about mental health outcomes.
That is your phrase, not mine. I said ‘damage to the brain’.
Going from a base state to ‘anxious, depressed, having less working memory, etc’ is something I would call ‘damage to the brain’. In particular, the reduction in working memory capacity is an unambiguous deleterious change to the makeup of the brain. Any other permanent mental health effects I would also be comfortable referring to as ‘damage to the brain’. Remarkably enough that’s what mental health is all about. For what it is worth I’d also refer to breathing in large amounts of smoke as either ‘damage to the lungs’ or ‘negative impact on physical health’.
I wouldn’t use the term ‘brain damage’ because that seems to have a specialized meaning.
The reduction in working memory capacity is not permanent except in heavy users and even heavy users can recover their memories after quitting.
Whatever damage to the brain cannabis does can mostly be repaired by the brain.