Physical effects of marijuana

[The youth in Americca] must be persuaded to desist from taking drugs, for they are harmful physically, mentally and spiritually. – Meher Baba, God in a Pill?

There are some things that many if not most Baba lovers in America do not agree with Baba about. One of these is Baba's statement that drugs are bad for you mentally, physically, and spiritually. Most specifically we know they do not agree that it is harmful physically for adolescence. We know this for certain, because the adult children of Baba followers report that their parents said they needed to decide for themselves if marijuana was right for them -- implying they needed to do their own experimenting.

Now no parent would ever fail to tell their child to avoid something that was physically harmful for them. We would not tell our children, for instance, that substances under the kitchen sink could be harmful, but they need to try them for themselves and come to their own conclusion. That would render the decision for the child too late to protect them.

Yet this is precisely what Baba parents have done with their children. Hence we can rationally interpret that omission of Baba's warning about the physical harm of taking drugs when advising their kids as a tacit admission that they disagree with Baba on this particular point.

Here I wish to show that Baba in fact is right, in spite of what Baba lovers choose to believe. The following comes from an article by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, dated September 10, 2012.

We repeatedly hear the myth that marijuana is a benign drug—that it is not addictive (which it is) or that it does not pose a threat to the user’s health or brain (which it does). A major new study published last week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (and funded partly by NIDA and other NIH institutes) provides objective evidence that, at least for adolescents, marijuana is harmful to the brain.

The new research is part of a large-scale study of health and development conducted in New Zealand. Researchers administered IQ tests to over 1,000 individuals at age 13 (born in 1972 and 1973) and assessed their patterns of cannabis use at several points as they aged. Participants were again tested for IQ at age 38, and their two scores were compared as a function of their marijuana use. The results were striking: Participants who used cannabis heavily in their teens and continued through adulthood showed a significant drop in IQ between the ages of 13 and 38—an average of 8 points for those who met criteria for cannabis dependence. (For context, a loss of 8 IQ points could drop a person of average intelligence into the lowest third of the intelligence range.) Those who started using marijuana regularly or heavily after age 18 showed minor declines. By comparison, those who never used marijuana showed no declines in IQ.

Other studies have shown a link between prolonged marijuana use and cognitive or neural impairment. A recent report in Brain, for example, reveals neural-connectivity impairment in some brain regions following prolonged cannabis use initiated in adolescence or young adulthood. But the New Zealand study is the first prospective study to test young people before their first use of marijuana and again after long-term use (as much as 20+ years later). Indeed, the ruling out of a pre-existing difference in IQ makes the study particularly valuable. Also, and strikingly, those who used marijuana heavily before age 18 showed mental decline even after they quit taking the drug. This finding is consistent with the notion that drug use during adolescence—when the brain is still rewiring, pruning, and organizing itself—can have negative and long-lasting effects on the brain.

(source)

The above articcle deals only with the brain. What about other health effects of marijuana?
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in additions to risks to brain health marijuana has adverse effects on heart health, lung health, mental health, and a person's risk of cancer. See article here: https://www.cdc.gov/marijuana/health-effects.htm

Finding scientific articles on the negative physical and mental effects of marijuana, corroborating Baba's own statements about hallucinogenic drugs (including marijuana), is easy to do if one simply searches.

Naturally, marijuana apologists will argue this is a government conspiracy. Interestingly paranoia and self-justification are themselves symptoms of marijuana use.

See also The Marijuana Issue: Secular Considerations with a Spiritual Twist and Teenage cannabis use linked to bipolar disorder in later life.