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Notes -
My understanding was that no one really thought smoking marijuana was better for you than smoking tobacco, possibly even worse, if you smoked the same amount. But tobacco smokers smoke way, way more than marijuana smokers, so in practice marijuana is a lot less dangerous. And edibles exist.
I have encountered this exact view a couple of times "in the wild," as it were. Specifically, based in the earnest belief that, while tobacco causes cancer, marijuana cures cancer — and that the reason it's been kept illegal for so long is because "they" don't want you to know that, so that Big Pharma can keep people endlessly paying for their overpriced "treatments" rather than the true cures Nature provides us.
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Cigarette smokers smoke way more than potheads. Pipe and cigar smokers probably smoke about the same. It makes sense to regulate cigarettes as a highly addictive substance with ruinous health consequences(because that's what they are for the majority of users) while treating marijuana more leniently on the basis of less-addictive. But pipe tobacco and cigars don't fall in the same category.
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