and learning about the psuedo-scientific studies and spokesmen and ad campaigns that took place in the 40's, 50's, and 60's to promote cigarettes as not only not bad for you, but actually good for you. As a child of the 80's & 90's, and with extended family members who smoked, I could somewhat understand the logic behind "Yeah, I know its bad for me, but I don't really care because I like to smoke..." Still, I just couldn't wrap my head around the idea that within the not-too-distant past, people were actually promoting cigarettes as part of an overall healthful lifestyle. I figured that with modern regulatory structure like the FDA, and with increased medical knowledge, and with more channels of informaiton, we'd be unlikely to ever see something like that again.

Now, however, with medical marijuana, those assumptions have been challenged. I'm not going to pretend I know anything about the effects of medical marijuana, or how its better than opioids or synthetic opioids for pain management And I'm pretty firmly in the camp that whatever harms exist, the enforcement of restrictions on marijuana are likely more harmful, net-net. So this isn't about legalization. But there's a small part of me that is still genuinely surprised by the sheer volume and (what appears to me) to be the absurdity of the purported benefits of marijuana. Like I said, I am by no means an expert, but I would be zero percent surprised if in 20-30 years we start to see more data on the harmful effects of marijuana and things like mental health, schizophrenia, depression, etc. And that any purported benefits were the result of the placebo effect and/or just made up.