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Is it proper to date a girl who smokes pot?

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JacobGalt

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Clearly only downers and hallucinogens are immoral...stimulants are just dandy! Whew!

<chugs some tea and energy drinks while puffing a cigar>

From what I understand, Rand used dextroamphetamine, tobacco, and coffee nearly all of her life.

I have personally tried dextroamphetamine and it immensely improved my ability to be productive and get stuff done. My mind felt like a laser.

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As for the cigarette smoking issue, I think the word "cause" needs to be clarified. It's probably better to move to the use of "a causal factor" in this case. Cigarette smoking may be a causal factor in the development of lung cancer in Americans.

There are a lot of things to keep in mind, for example, that the Japanese in the 1960s smoked much more than American men and had more male smokers in general yet had half of the lung cancer rate of American men. Iceland is another country that has low rates of lung cancer yet more smokers than America.

Then there's the Kitavans of Papua New Guinea. 80% of their men smoke and they have been under the supervision of medical researchers for decades yet no cases of lung cancer have been reported. My speculation is that because they eat a Paleolithic diet (a pre-agricultural diet that humans evolved eating and was not invented and introduced within the past 2000 years) their tissues may be more resistant to damage from environmental triggers. For example, they eat way less omega-6 polyunsaturated seed oils (almost zero) than Americans do. Americans eat a lot of these foods that are evolutionary exceptional: they were introduced to our food chain in the 1960s despite the fact that we did not eat them for our entire evolution. These polyunsaturated seed oils are highly prone to oxidation and they can compose our cell membranes.

Tobacco use also has correlations with specific positive health effects such as a dramatically lower rate of Parkinson's disease, and also lower rates of dementia and Alzheimer's. And then there are alternative ways to ingest tobacco which do not seem to cause cancer either.

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Since marijuana is not a moral issue (some sort of evasion of reality is), it becomes a personal desire or preference. If, as others have stated, under any form she is mentally evading, then you have a case for some sort of moral argument against her (yet once again, you have to put everything on context--which means, learn as much about her as you can). If you cannot find a moral problem, then you simply have to decide how attached you are to your preferences or how repugned you are by hers. This is not to say that preferences are not important--just trying to sort the situation out into something contextually comprehensible.

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As for the cigarette smoking issue, I think the word "cause" needs to be clarified. It's probably better to move to the use of "a causal factor" in this case. Cigarette smoking may be a causal factor in the development of lung cancer in Americans.

Let's not mud the waters. This is not a disputed fact that smoking is the major cause of lung cancer in America. There are no other "causal factors" of similar causal significance. The most important thing a person can do to prevent lung cancer is to not start smoking.

My speculation is that because they eat a Paleolithic diet.....

<h4 class="introduction"></h4>It has been reported that, for example, Increasing intakes of vitamin E may decrease the risk of lung cancer. That being said any effect diet may have on lung cancer risk is small compared with the

risk from smoking.

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