That's the word, stoner. Big difference. I know several people who seldom smoke pot and they're fine, it's the stoners that get me. Most of the time they end up being stoners, however. Don't see too many people who just smoke every once in a while.
And they were perfectly "smart" people who got dragged in and didn't realize how dumb it made them.
If I read what you wrote correctly, you just said that you "know several people who seldom smoke pot and they're fine", and then you just turned around and contradicted yourself by saying that you "don't see too many people who just smoke every once in a while"...
In my experiences anyways, I know lots of people who just smoke every once in a while and they stay that way.
Tbh, yeah, some people turn to the stoner lifestyle and it makes them incredibly stupid and they end up having no real goals in life. Their priorities are fucked since they rely on marijuana for nearly every aspect of their life. I've seen it happen numerous times.
I'm
not saying people who are smart are somehow immune to being dragged into being a stereotypical stoner, but I
am saying that some people seem to handle it just fine with seemingly no negative consequences. Why is that? What I'm seeing is that a certain level of intelligence/responsibility/self-control plays a big role.
Scenario 1: If a person has great grades and is more or less a school "smart" student, then turns to the stoner life after smoking pot and starts failing school, that student obviously doesn't have any amount of self-control or has made any sort of responsible decisions by deciding to push school to the side and begin to act dumb (since that's what the stoner stereotype portrays). [
This is apparently what you are seeing, right?]
Scenario 2: On the other hand, a person who could be a smart student tries pot, and he can still be intelligent enough and be responsible enough to realize that pot isn't everything in life and that school is still priority #1 - that said student can still smoke pot seldom and continue to be smart. [
I see this play out way more often than I see the other scenario]
The student in scenario #1 is obviously lacking in something - whether that's intelligence, level of responsibility, or amount of selfcontrol, I really don't know for sure. Marijuana can lead to that path that leads nowhere, but so can other things too, right? Like too much gaming, or too much spending time with your friends and not doing school work. More times than not I see people virtually unaffected by their smoking behaviours.
I don't know what it's like down under (the US), but I know that around here in high school pretty much everybody has atleast tried it, and I'd say a solid 60% or more do it atleast once a month or more. It's quite prevalent here and is pretty much considered accepted. Sure, there's a handful of stoners, but for the most part everybody is pretty smart and normal despite this fact. Hence, marijuana doesn't necessarily make you "dumb".
A few years back the government was actually very close to legalizing it, but another government was put into power since there was a lack of confidence vote and the government was a minority government. If it comes to experience on how marijuana might effect people or cause them to act, I have plenty of it. Perhaps different communities/people react differently to marijuana, I don't really know what your situation is like.