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Quote by: Fonceai  I would think that spending money to intentionally break the law so that you can get a temporary effect by lighting some plants on fire and then sucking on them is rather silly, don't you? |
I don't think the intention is to break the law. That's more of a side-effect. Maybe some people really get a thrill out of breaking the law, but those people I would venture to say are few and far between. The primary intention is, as you say, to get a temporary effect by lighting some plants and inhaling. And no, it's not really that silly. People do all kinds of various things to get a "high", like running, or going to church, or beating up other people, or maybe even breaking the law (though I would think you get a much bigger thrill out of vandalism or theft than smoking some dope in a private area). It's quite normal and natural to seek out different mental states. Some avenues are a bit more damaging than others, but it's pretty much proven that marijuana use does not harm others and has little to no debilitating long-term effects on the user's cognitive capacities.
The notion that drugs can somehow enslave users against their will, radically and permanently altering their various personality or mental traits, is called "voodoo pharmacology". Sure, practically anyone in the depths of a binge can do some pretty stupid things, but you have to ask yourself what kind of person would allow themselves to be put in such a situation. Responsible people use drugs responsibly, while irresponsible people use them irresponsibly (deep, I know :)) if they use them at all. If someone claims that some drug or other has made them irreversibly stupid, I would have to question the state of their intelligence before they ever tried the drug, as any reasonable person would naturally do anyhow.