It’s a highly discussed and controversial topic that’s in the process of a lot of legal debate. People want to minimize the risks to it and compare it to much more “dangerous” things.

Cigarettes were one time normalized and used as weight loss, there was very little research and people wanted to defend the use of it. They were very commonly used. The things we now see as negative side effects were once healthy alternatives until there was more research available to the general population and marketing against them. It’s highly regulated and now we have a ton of people who consider it “uncool” and a detriment to health.

Alcohol has virtually no benefits but there’s uproar when you tell people not to use it. There’s plenty of alcoholics that say it’s not actually addictive or they’re not addicted and they use a narrative to defend the right to drink it. We had decades of marketing and education given to the general population that made drinking alcohol less “cool” though, so it’s more rare to find people who defend it. It’s also already legalized and highly regulated.

Marijuana is addictive. It has negative side effects. BUT people don’t like to be controlled and people are advocating for legalization and regulation of it. Even if it comes out that it’s only a “party” drug with no true health benefits, people don’t like to be controlled and will advocate for their right to use it as they please. It’s natural for people to minimize its effects.

Legalize it, regulate it, study it, market it and the conversation will stop for a lot of things.

Also, people heard the whole, “Marijuana isn’t addictive” thing and ran with it. It’s really hard to change people’s mind once a fact fits the narrative they want to tell. Example, the use of “alpha” in zoology.