Reply #8: One must remember that we've been innundated with such 'scientific' nonsense for decades

[Mythsaje]

regarding the drug and its alleged effects. Everything from impotence to amotivational syndrome, the vast majority of which were easily countered in the minds of those they were attempting to fool by simple personal experience or observation. It's hard to believe pot makes one stupid when one has known plenty of intelligent users. It's hard to believe that pot makes people lazy when one knows plenty of people who work hard and would rather smoke a joint after a hard day than slug down a beer. It's hard to believe it makes one impotent when one is surrounded by ones own kids.

Skepticism on this subject is just a normal and healthy response to decades of deliberately crafted bullshit. It's not hard, given the motivation, to perform a scientific study that proves just about anything one sets out to prove. It's especially interesting that something like this comes out at a time when so much other research suggests that cannabis can help with a whole host of other ailments. It's almost a necessity to point to something, anything, negative given how much it might be able to help with so many illnesses from cancer to Alzheimers. There's an awful lot of money wrapped up in the war on marijuana and legalization or decriminalization would cost a lot of people a lot of money.

Considering how many people in the United States, for example, admit to using the drug regularly, it begs the question why schizophrenia isn't more wide-spread if this is indeed the case. When reading something like this, every pothead in the world is going to think "do I know any schizophrenics?" And if the answer is "no," they are most likely to conclude "yet another bullshit scientific 'study' much like all the ones that have come before."

Smoking pot doesn't make one stupid or gullible. In fact, from what I've noticed, all but the most brain-dead stoners tend to have quite well developed bullshit detectors.

Given government's history with this sort of thing, the most reasonable response IS "oh, bullshit." It has, after all, been the general trend for as long as any of us can remember. Most people would be far likely to buy it if it were sponsored by a government with no political axe to grind. Somehow I get the feeling that's not going to happen.