Oh dear. I haven't heard that rhetoric yet but I dispare at the idea. Can you cite examples?

Should I choose strawberry or raspberry jam to put on my cream tea scone? Would using apricot be utterly sacrilegious?

Does anyone sincerely use the argument that it's not a drug? I thought that was just a joke about hippies being stupid or something.

>>7553
It's just something I hear many of my friends say. It's usually the undereducated, underworked or underpaid kind. Maybe I should examine my own programming after referring to some of my friends like that. Anyway, in looking for an image, I did find something a friend recycled earlier this week.

>>7555
If you socialise a lot on image boards like this and only keep the company of educated people, you'll naturally assume that society is a lot smarter than it really is.

>To reconcile this dissonance

Personally I tend to avoid pills, powders and potions because unless you have access to a chemical lab you have no way of telling if you're taking MDMA or bath salts. Weed can have vastly different strengths and effects based on its type and how it was grown and prepared but at least you have a good idea it's not a completely different drug.

>>7558
I had the chance to wipe the floor with a Canadian English Lit graduate who was trying to analyse some poetry in tinychat the other day. Some dickhead with an affected upper class English accent. He didn't know how to pronounce pallor or pall or orisons or what any of those words meant, he didn't even know that Wilfred Owen had actually fought in the first world war. A small victory but it did feel good.

>>7559

unless it is a completely different plant which there is recorded case law of, or it is laced with something, which is also know to happen. So not at all.

>>7561
I've been told by a dealer that a lot of street level weed sold in the UK is sprayed or dusted with synthetic cannabinoids or similar additives to bump up its potency, though I have no idea how accurate these claims are.

>>7562
Me too. If we think of what happens to pills and powders, we should probably stop kidding ourselves that it doesn't also happen with weed.

>>7557

Idiots will be idiots. Your example looks like the same unfunny joke that I have seen recycled a 1000 times before, for a hundred different things.

If they genuinely believe it I guess it is either a failure of the education system or a sucess, depending on if you think it's role is to make people more informed or if it's role is to instill a world view without the tools to change it.

>>7564
Which do you believe?

I don't pretend to have any knowledge of the context of this debate, but have you considered that by 'weed is not a drug', they might mean that cannabis is a plant/herb, and the drug itself is THC?

That's certainly a valid if pedantic argument to make. For instance there are strains of cannabis with no THC that are legal to grow, so it would seem silly to refer to those plants as 'drugs'. Also cannabis contains many different chemicals that all have different effects and interactions, so without isolating each one how can you refer to them collectively as a single drug? We don't do that with ecstasy, or cocaine, or heroin. These are molecules, essentially immutable.

Analogously: 'tobacco is not a drug', but nicotine is.

And speaking of tobacco, comparing its Wikipedia article with cannabis is striking. 'Cannabis is a preparation of the Cannabis plant intended for use as a psychoactive drug or medicine'. Meanwhile, 'Tobacco is a product prepared from the leaves of the tobacco plant by curing them'. While the word 'drug' features throughout the cannabis article, it is not used at all throughout the tobacco article, except for in the name of the Food and Drug Administration, and when it discusses the study by David Nutt on comparative harm.

With this kind of attitude, no wonder the stoners are pissed off.

>>7567
I've sat in a room filled with friends and their friends watching a YouTube video of historical people juxtaposed with current celebrities that looked very similar. This was offered as evidence of long-standing government-sanctioned human cloning. When I expressed scepticism I was mocked with disbelief and found myself the lone voice of mainstream reality. In articulating this it makes me question whether it was all a prank. It wasn't a prank.

>>7568
When it comes to drugs that are purely for psychoactive use we clearly draw a line between the extent to which how active a drug is in the brain.

>>7570
But the OP isn't talking about stoners who say 'weed is not a psychoactive drug'.

>>7571
I didn't say he did.

I haven't actually read OP. Oh well.

>>7569
Link us the video.

>>7573
I can't find it right now. I'll ask someone if they remember anything I can use as better search terms.

>>7552
If I was less self-absorbed I might be able to explain how weed is viewed differently among certain Afro-Caribbean groups, but er, at least I've offered an alternative though vague explanation besides "idiots will be idiots".

>>7573

I imagine it is all this sort of crap. http://metro.co.uk/2011/09/20/man-claims-140-year-old-photo-proves-nicolas-cage-is-a-vampire-158465/

>>7577
Or this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlNQMmEX1f8

>>7568

See also the widely used phrase "drugs and alcohol".

>>7560
Which Tiny chat is that? Does Brita.GS have It's own Tinychat?

>>7580
It doesn't, and furthermore, shouldn't.

>>7580
It was just a temporary one. gs has had its own in the past, but mostly just temporarily people from the IRC (back when it was busy) having a chat.