Weird question about drugs?

Question

I live in a small town. And here drugs aren't a big deal. Basically it's hard to find someone who hasn't at least smoked weed a couple of times. But it seems like everyone who moves here are anti-drugs. So I'm wondering is my town weird or are the people that move here weird?

Answer 1

Drugs are everywhere, kids love them. It isn't weird, it is human nature to notice the oddities and believe they are more common than they actually are.

Answer 2

They must have more sense than most!!

Marijuana potency has grown steeply over the past decade with serious implications for users with the average amount of THC having more than doubled.

In the same period the number of admissions to psychiatric hospital caused by the drug soared by 85 per cent due to the fact that those who smoke the drug regularly are more than twice as likely to suffer illnesses such as schizophrenia, hallucinations and delusions later in life.

Teens using marijuana to alleviate feelings of depression just compound the problem.

As well as psychotic illness cannabis can cause affective disorders such as depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.  Even worse it is linked to cancers.

Cannabis users display neuropsychological dysfunction (relative frontal lobe functioning deficits, cognitive inhibition) and attentional deficits similar to those found in schizotypal or schizophrenia patients.

Regular use can shrink the parts of the brain which control memory, emotion and aggression. The hippocampus, which is thought to govern emotion and memory averages 12 percent smaller and the amygdala, which has a part in controlling fear and aggression, 7 percent  smaller.  This suggests that heavy daily use may be toxic to human brain tissue.

Blood flow velocity is significantly higher in users and they have higher values on the pulsatility index (PI), which measures the amount of resistance to blood flow. This is thought to be due to narrowing of the blood vessels that occurs when the circulation system's ability to regulate itself is impaired.  This leads to abnormalities in the small blood vessels in the brain.

The active chemical in MJ called delta-9-tetrahyrdocannabinol (THC) binds to cannabinoid (CB) receptors located on several cell types in various organs.  This greatly increases the risk for heart attacks and strokes in addition to impaired learning and memory.

It can also effect physical health.  Three to four cannabis cigarettes a day cause the same amount of damage to the lungs as 20 or more tobacco cigarettes a day. Thus there are rising levels of lung diseases such as emphysema.

In comparison to cigarettes marijuana smoke has significantly higher levels of toxic compounds, including ammonia and hydrogen cyanide.    Ammonia levels are 20 times higher while hydrogen cyanide, nitric oxide and certain aromatic amines occurred at levels 3-5 times higher.

It can also effect the unborn child. Scientists have identified that endogenous cannabinoids, molecules naturally produced by our brains are functionally similar to THC from cannabis and play significant roles in establishing how certain nerve cells connect to each other.  Maternal cannabis use allows THC to travel through the placenta and impair fetal brain development and impose life-long cognitive, social, and motor deficits in affected offspring.

Low doses of Ä-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), equivalent to that in the bloodstream of an average marijuana smoker facilitate infection of skin cells and can cause these cells to turn into malignant sarcoma.

Answer 3

Because your small town probably has only seen marijuana.  While I am sure you can find other drugs, you arent watching your neighborhood getting ripped apart by dealers and addicts..  Marijuana is happy drug.  But cocain and meth and pills and acid...  They arent.  They are bad hard drugs that destroy people and families and neighborhoods and cities.

The area I grew up in used to be one of those such small towns.  Everyone has smoked pot atleast once, half the town grew it in their back yard.  No big deal.  Marijuana is a happy drug.  

But then harder drugs started coming in.  A lot of cocaine.  Meth became popular because you could make it at home and sell it for a premium, and in a town with a very poor economy, over the last few years meth has become that areas number one source of cash.  

That means there are a LOT of meth addicts.  

I live in a bigger metro area now, and its really bad here.  Not so much meth and cocaine, but rx meds and designer drugs like x.  Its the higher class versions, but its still just as bad.

Bottom line is, us folks who live in the big towns have seen things the small towns havent had yet.