Post by Bruce Watsonhttp://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/Mobile/article.aspx?articleid=1151016
I am highly intelligent, yet I still had trouble digesting that
gawd-awful article. And though I hate tobacco and the crackeads who use
it (and pollute my air), I feel the authors started their "study" with
an inherent bias against tobacco, then manipulated numbers to reflect
the results they wanted.
From my own informal observations, tobacco users tend to be stoopid.
One can see this trend in the percentage of dropouts, criminals,
lunatics, etc. who smoke tobacco. Nicotine probably doesn't cause
anti-social behavior, but most anti-social types consume nicotine (this
is often attributed to "self-medicating" behavior).
I have to admit I am anti-social myself, but have never been attracted
to nicotine because the drug makes me violently ill. I love marijuana,
however. But then I find myself one of the few potheads who does not
also smoke tobacco. And, unlike tobaccoheads, I can go twenty minutes
or more without dosing. I mean, I'd like to get high right now, but I
don't have any weed, and I'm surviving just fine without it. I still
want to get high, but there is no physical dependency as you see with
nicotine.
What really bugs me is that for all my life I've had to scrounge for
weed on the black market, often making deals with shady psychos in dark
alleys, all while tobacco is openly sold in supermarkets. And when I do
procure a bag of weed, I make sure to consume it where nobody can catch
of whiff of it. Yes, I know smoking pot probably isn't good for you,
but neither is tobacco, yet one is treated like a felony while the other
gets you a citizen of the fuckin' year award. Hell, we've had countless
presidents who smoked tobacco, and our current one receives a continuous
dose of nicotine via an arm patch: his finger is on the nuclear button,
so why is his preferred narcotic of choice permitted while other
narcotics are verboten?