Cannabis Causes Brain Damage (Controversy from My Vegan Blog, etc.).

lay your head on my pillow sweet pain
hold your warm and tender body close to my high on the internet it's always hard to say how much the world has changed as opposed to the little part of the world that you interact with through the internet back when I was on tumblr I interacted with a very different scene within veganism and this article in vote to read you was one of the most controversial things I ever published one of the most scandalous if you want to make everything to a scandal that I ever published on my old tumblr blog vegan matrix title is brain damage caused by cannabis adult and infant no mystery vegans are generally people who have questioned and rejected the premise that yogurt was essential to their health who have questioned many things that they were told by parents teachers doctors and marketing agencies vegans are generally people who have been willing to question cultural assumptions of what the word healthy really means why would it be any harder for us to question the myths surrounding cannabis it causes brain damage there is proof marijuana is not an armless herb neither is nicotine or cocaine they're all natural plant leaves that doesn't mean there any more harmless than nightshade on the contrary all three have proven negative effects on the adult brain and lamentably on the unborn fetus as well with time data doesn't just accumulate methods improve the explosion of MRI research in particular has presented us with evidence that's impossible to deny and ever more nuanced information about the type of brain damage involved it isn't just brain damage shared by consenting adults it is also brain damage that pregnant mothers can inflict on the next generation back in 1989 we already had a sad warning that infant brain development was impaired by mothers smoking weed marijuana impacted infants don't cry in the same way that healthy babies do and that fact can be scientifically demonstrated another important proxy indicating harm for the infant is reduced birth weight note that for a long time we didn't know about specific health damage caused by maternal cigarette smoking but we did have evidence of reduced birth weight as an indication that something was wrong with smoking during pregnancy in a separate study published at the same time 1989 it was already clear that cannabis interrupts fetal development and causes lower birth weights now if you guys are just listening to this and you're not paying attention text on screen you might not notice they provided throughout this article links that the reader who click on to get to peer-reviewed articles in real scientific journals so when I say that something is obvious because it was proved in 1989 that's followed by a little word click with an underlying those were links that the reader could click on to draw their own conclusions and can call to consult the real scientific research in themselves you've probably heard about fetal alcohol syndrome FAS d well has anyone told you that the effects of smoking weed and the baby may be worse quote women use marijuana during pregnancy were five times more likely to deliver infants with features considered compatible with the fetal alcohol syndrome close quote this was already known in 1981 click for the source but it remains much more taboo than the frank prohibition of expectant mothers drinking alcohol in more recent years the explosion of MRI evidence has made it very clear the cannabis does cause brain damage to adults who smoke it want to consult a few medical journals on the subject source one source to source three source for source five source six I could go on so all six of those are articles in peer-reviewed medical journals the reader could click on see for themselves etc I'm not an expert to know all of this you don't need to be an expert what you need to do is the same thing that all vegans already have done set aside convenient excuses for culturally familiar habits and question the underlying facts this post is an in-depth in indirect result of my happening to read a vegan blog by a pregnant mother who offered various excuses for smoking weed during her pregnancy I was struck by how similar her excuses were to those offered for eating meat very often meat-eaters want to pretend that nutrition remains a very mysterious science in fact it has become much less mysterious in the last 50 years the same is true of the effects of recreational drugs they're real they can be proven and in the case of cannabis they have been proven the information is instantly available if you can read English is that information available if the only language you can read is Lao or Cambodian no it is worthwhile to reflect on just how easy it is for native English speakers to figure this stuff out and reciprocally just how difficult it is for native speakers of the innumerable other languages if you can read this article in English you don't have much of an excuse and if you're vegan you're probably already accustomed to rejecting excuses of exactly the kind that are offered to justify weed smoking I banos yen but sadly this was not the most controversial article ever had on tumblr the most hatred I ever got was for a few very brief comments in passing that just said that I felt that playing video games or was a waste of time and these were not articles on the subject these were not insults directed towards other people but I made a couple of comments that I do not play video games as a grown man I didn't reflecting back on my own youth or whatever um you know why do I feel that it was a waste of my time when I was younger too and in response to that several people became diehard devoted haters of my blog tried to get my blog cancelled and shut down all this other nonsense I you know these are vegans these are my fellow vegans but who decided that because I was against video games uh I should be kicked off of the website I should be punished to the greatest extent possible because I dared to question their hobby what they did with their spare time wasn't even pleasure wasn't even point they were at them points finger myself saying I don't play video games and when I did play video games and I was a kid I look back on that now let's haven't been a a regrettable thing in a waste of time um you know so now of course it is laughable to me and I do laughs that some people are trying to dig up articles from that blog my old blog to construe them as somehow scandalous or embarrassing them to me not there's nothing embarrassing or scandalous with well you take a look at it if I had more time to kill I could start it up again now we have the return of vegan mind tricks on tumblr um I said one time it was actually a really popular blog that really had a steady following of people who appreciated it tremendously and who wrote into me to let me know that and so on um I was as successful as I could possibly be within the digital vegan demi-monde on uh on tumblr um like among the different ways to try to make it seem that and look the only thing you need to do to refute the ridiculous characterizations of what's on that blog is look at it you just click on the link below this video you can scroll through and look at some of the articles articles on different topics several on you know an attempt in Sri Lanka to try to make the slaughter of cows illegal all kinds of different issues in veganism just wrote articles about and I did have some debates with other other vegans on there and so on but I mean the game specifically the durianrider has been playing and trying to defame me with this it's just as laughable as what he did with my couchsurfing profile I don't you guys remember that but he tried to construe my couchsurfing profile as being tremendously scandalous and scintillating and sexy and embarrassing to me and all I didn't reply was get on camera and read what the profile actually says that's still a hilarious video it's just me sitting there laughing saying how can you think this is a scandal how can you think this is something I'd be embarrassed about I'd feel ashamed about and I can say exactly the same thing now about this blog that I had in the past of veganism how could anyone possibly think I would be ashamed of it are scandalized by it and if you want to see the reality behind this totally phony scandal that he's invented you can look at pretty much any article on the blog at random you can read any of them that are about topics that might interest you and you can draw your own conclusions about the type of guy who wrote that blog aah buh new CN so you wanna know what's funny it's funny that night I've lost weight and I've become vegan our people be like nah I be careful now be careful about your protein make sure you're getting protein but when I was fat is healing about the bus nobody said be careful you look like you about to have a heart attack or a stroke [ __ ] nobody said that but once you start eating healthy people want me to be careful about my protein ain't that amazing how about that I have a heart attack or stroke nobody's there be careful you look like you're about to have a heart attack naked but as soon as I start eating healthy lose weight be careful Nick you know you need protein hell out of here