I think many of these listed side effects were a given, like impact on lung health, those on developmental health of children, to to the fetus of women who are pregnant. There are those very specific lesser know issue that might be worth considering.
I had a friend who would take mammoth doses of CBD, largely considered inert, and I forget the specifics, but either due to his consumption of the CBD itself, or in combination with his other medications, it led to a dangerously low levels of vitamin E within his system, so he had to supplement to get them back to normal levels. Worth noting he's a pale redheaded freckled devil (he likes to poke at his being a ginger for fun), but he's told me the ginger genes typically come with certain drug resistances or fast metabolizing or whatever that essentially shortens drugs therapeutive durations, and thus why he takes as much as he does and more frequently and it being seemingly harmless. But yeah, this is something I wouldn't have expected.
All vices come with inherent risks, from drinking, which I feel overall is a far more detrimental drug to people, there interpersonal relationships, and society, but again, not problematic for those who can moderate consumption. As someone like myself who always downplayed the relative risk of cannabis (relative compared to alcohol), I am rather tame myself in my consumption, which is despite my ability to have it at any time, despite there being countless dispensaries around my home to get it at any time, I don't really do it that often.
Worth noting when I was younger I felt I lived in a relative safer age to experiment with illegal drugs. Through friends of the past, I had opportunities to dabble in little of this and that in relative safety, relative because today nearly everything seems laced with fentanyl and people are dying left and right because of it. I'm glad I was able to sow my oats in a different world than we have today.
Drug education in health needs to take a new approach. When I was a kid it was just showing us the worst of drug abuse like people on PCP doing crazy shit and being like "that's all drugs, don't do drugs". Instead, take the sex education approach, like you shouldn't be doing this at your age but some of you are likely going to anyways so here's what you need to know. My experience with drug education was like what abstinence only sex education was to sex education, otherwise, irresponsible.
Someone I knew worked at a law firm representing the family of a kid who ended up in a coma because he and his friends snuck off at school to smoke crushed pills out of a pipe behind the stadium, family was blaming the school for failing to monitor the kids' safety on campus. I'm not sure I fully support the school is to blame there entirely, but in the larger scope, the education systems needs to focus on drug education in a pragmatic fashion, and that should include the types of common drugs, way they're administered, known side effects, knowledge of street drugs, issues of how they're cut and tainted with those risks. For instance, MDMA is supposedly relatively safe, with a wide therapeutic vs lethal ratio of of 1 to 100+, but that being said, most ecstacy sold on streets isn't MDMA but some concoction mixed of anything from ketamine, methamphetamine, caffeine, probably fentanyl too these days, in other words, not MDMA.
I guess right now as far as drug experimentation goes, it's like health food nuts, go for natural. Cannabis flower doesn't pose same risks, most in my state is sold sealed and tested. Hallucinogenic mushrooms are now going through a slow decriminalization phase in some states, perhaps it will be where weed was a decade ago. MDMA appears to be possibly entering itself back to a possible prescribed drugs for treating things like depression and anxiety and PTSD. Psilocybin too but not as advanced in that regard but again it is going to a decriminalization phase. Those all have their risks, but relatively speaking, smaller than the risks of drugs that fentanyl get cut with.
LSD would be an interesting drug to have legalized, but not a good idea simply for lack of quality control, and it's sensitive chemical breakdown in storage from anything from its temperature fluctuations, sensitivity to light, kinetic motion. From my experience it's very similar to effects of certain mushrooms, and longterm since it's a derivative of ergot fungi, it has a vasoconstricting effect which limits blood flow to extremedies, also a know side effect of pharmaceutical drugs which use ergot alkaloids, and something patients have to concern themselves with age, or health issues like diabetes, something an American population with a diabetes epidemic might want to avoid.
There seems a natural inclination to downplay effect of drugs but it seems more prompted by their status being monitored and enforced in the criminal justice system, which is essentially zero tolerance and heavy handed. So, the downplay seems predicated on the widespread social belief of injustice around its prohibition. Perhaps people will take the health implications of drug use more seriously when its regulation and enforcement enters into the control and monitoring of public institutions centered around healthcare and drug safety, focused on regulation, consumer education, and health monitoring.
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