Why Are Stoners Typically Depicted as Stupid?

[neilsaccount]

I think it varies from person to person and that it is really hard to recieve a straight answer.

 

[Blitzkreg]

Because in order to have to get pleasure, you have to abuse your body and break the law. A stronger and smarter person would understand that there are better ways than to both risk being caught and hurting yourself. Theres nothing more to it.

 

[Iampringles]

I read on Wikipedia that if you smoke less than 5 joints a week your IQ increases.

 

[Susan Arendt]

Publicly admitting to committing a crime really isn't in your best interests.

Did I say that I smoke weed?

Because I don't, I'm merely asking if anyone here does and it didn't seem like that much of a problem before. I've seen people here admit it.

And yet that doesn't change the fact that it's not a wise move.

No, I can agree that it isn't smart to come out and admit that you do illegal substances but back on that last thing you said something along the lines of "You act stupid when you smoke pot" (excuse my paraphrasing there). This is not always the case.

Some people actually use pot as a creative and intellectual stimulate and if it works for them, it's not hurting anybody, I say let them do it.

This isn't about my personal opinion about whether or not someone smokes pot. This is about whether or not it's smart to publicly admit committing a crime. Which, whether it should be or not, smoking weed is.

If you disagree with a law isn't the best course of action to publicly break it? I don't know if it's fair to draw a cross between famous political revoloutionists e.g Martin Luther King, but wouldn't this kinda fall towards that tendancy if you are pro marijuana?

If you're ok with potential employers and the like finding this kind of information about you online, knock yourself out. It's a longshot, certainly, but I would've said the same thing about people being fired for pictures on their Facebook pages, too.

Also, note that I said nothing about actually breaking the law, I said admitting to it publicly was the bad idea.

 

[Kragg]

It's all about perspective. If you're an idiot, the people around you will seem smart. If you're smart, the people around you seem like idiots.

You're 16 years old and have nearly twenty thousand posts on a single forum... somehow it doesn't surprise me that you would be confused about this.

hah nice one, cheeky too !

 

[Fwee]

Oh yeah plus the only people who are opposed to drugs fall into two categories: People Who Have Never Done Drugs And Don't Know What They're Talking About, and the People Who Sucked At Doing Drugs And Ruined It For Everyone Else. <- Thanks Doug!

Just please arm yourself with knowledge before getting into anything new and possibly risky, alright? The only person that can save you is ultimately You!!! And that's only for as long as your body holds up.

 

[s0denone]

Neither directly kill brain cells, but that's not to say that they both can't lead to problems.

Except, you know, that alcohol is proven to cause problems, and indirectly kill braincells.
Cannabis/Marijuana/Weed isn't. (Yet.)

So we have alcohol, proven to be damaging to your body, with a regular amount of completely(solely) alcohol-caused deaths each year, not mentioning something alcohol-related, like drunk driving, and a growing number of people suffering from alcoholism.

Saying "[...]That's not to say that they both can't lead to problems" is just silly, given that they're not at all similar enough for such a statement, and also one is significantly worse than the other, from what we know at this point in time.

 

[Angel_0A]

Because succumbing to the temptation of drugs is a sure sign of a weak mind and will.

And because people aren't exactly in their most clever state when they are high:

This.
Can't people just be happy without shoving poison in their blood 24/7?

Why is it weak minded to challenge the moral barriers created by goverments?
IMO, its weaker just to accept what you're told.

Its not weak minded to challenge the standards of society. I'm a gay rights activist, a Libertarian, and an Atheist myself.
Drugs are for weak minded fools because most people do them to be more popular, to be rebellious, or to escape reality. Drugs, including Pot, have serious side effects and damage your health and/or mental capacity. Pot causes cancer, kills many brain cells, and is addicting.
Drugs hurt you so they are bad

That is one incredibly weak argument against drugs. They hurt you so they are bad? Therefore any contact sport like rugby, football, boxing, ultimate fighting competition etc should be banned as well yeah? Weak-minded fools playing a sport that could potentially injure them for life, possibly kill them, just for the sheer pleasure of playing their preferred sport. Why is there no choice? If people were allowed to smoke pot there would be nothing forcing you to start smoking it, so why are you so against others getting high?

Cutting yourself also has its uses. But its bad because it hurts you. Same with suicide and seeing how long you can hold your hand on a hot stove

Yes and i'm saying I see no difference in playing sport or cutting yourself. Not that i'm going to run off and start cutting myself, i'm fairly certain I wouldn't enjoy that. But others might, who knows? There are some strange people in the world. I find it slightly ridiculous though that just because you don't enjoy something that's bad for you, it somehow gives you an imaginary right to tell people that they are not allowed to do it.

You also misunderstand the concept of "bad". It's not specifically things that hurt you but things that hurt you when you don't intend them to hurt you. In that sense, being run over when you don't notice the car coming, yes that's bad. Pumping drugs into your system when fully aware of the concequences, that's fine by me.

Because you don't try to get hurt in sports. Thats why we have shoulder pads and helmets for football, helmets for baseball, and gloves and tooth guards for boxing. With drugs and cutting yourself, there's no way to avoid physical damage.
Drugs can and will hurt people when they use them. Thats why its bad.

My best friend is in remission after leukemia. He never smoked before hand.
The only thing which stops him being physically sick every few hours is cannabis.
Just like anything else, weed has good and bad properties and side effects.
Studies show that dosing weed in moderation once a week will actually extend your lifespan due to lower stress levels.

People who do drugs aren't any more evil than you or I.
The bad people are the ones who produce drugs and sell them to fund organised crime.

Also... marijuanna directly hasn't killed anyone. Ever.

 

[MorsePacific]

All of the people I know who claim to be "stoners" are ridiculously stupid. I know people who don't identify with the label who still smoke weed quite often and are brilliant people.

So stoner is kind of just a label, yeah?

 

[Red Right Hand]

Because succumbing to the temptation of drugs is a sure sign of a weak mind and will.

And because people aren't exactly in their most clever state when they are high:

This.
Can't people just be happy without shoving poison in their blood 24/7?

Why is it weak minded to challenge the moral barriers created by goverments?
IMO, its weaker just to accept what you're told.

Its not weak minded to challenge the standards of society. I'm a gay rights activist, a Libertarian, and an Atheist myself.
Drugs are for weak minded fools because most people do them to be more popular, to be rebellious, or to escape reality. Drugs, including Pot, have serious side effects and damage your health and/or mental capacity. Pot causes cancer, kills many brain cells, and is addicting.
Drugs hurt you so they are bad

That is one incredibly weak argument against drugs. They hurt you so they are bad? Therefore any contact sport like rugby, football, boxing, ultimate fighting competition etc should be banned as well yeah? Weak-minded fools playing a sport that could potentially injure them for life, possibly kill them, just for the sheer pleasure of playing their preferred sport. Why is there no choice? If people were allowed to smoke pot there would be nothing forcing you to start smoking it, so why are you so against others getting high?

Cutting yourself also has its uses. But its bad because it hurts you. Same with suicide and seeing how long you can hold your hand on a hot stove

Yes and i'm saying I see no difference in playing sport or cutting yourself. Not that i'm going to run off and start cutting myself, i'm fairly certain I wouldn't enjoy that. But others might, who knows? There are some strange people in the world. I find it slightly ridiculous though that just because you don't enjoy something that's bad for you, it somehow gives you an imaginary right to tell people that they are not allowed to do it.

You also misunderstand the concept of "bad". It's not specifically things that hurt you but things that hurt you when you don't intend them to hurt you. In that sense, being run over when you don't notice the car coming, yes that's bad. Pumping drugs into your system when fully aware of the concequences, that's fine by me.

Because you don't try to get hurt in sports. Thats why we have shoulder pads and helmets for football, helmets for baseball, and gloves and tooth guards for boxing. With drugs and cutting yourself, there's no way to avoid physical damage.
Drugs can and will hurt people when they use them. Thats why its bad.

What? You don't try and hurt yourself when you smoke weed and smoking weed consistently still doesn't mean a certainty of damage from the drug, merely raises your chances of harm. Much like sport where the more you play, the more likely you are to get injured.

Also, in rugby there is no padding, in UFC there is no padding, should we ban those?

 

[Blue_vision]

That is one incredibly weak argument against drugs. They hurt you so they are bad? Therefore any contact sport like rugby, football, boxing, ultimate fighting competition etc should be banned as well yeah? Weak-minded fools playing a sport that could potentially injure them for life, possibly kill them, just for the sheer pleasure of playing their preferred sport. Why is there no choice? If people were allowed to smoke pot there would be nothing forcing you to start smoking it, so why are you so against others getting high?

Not speaking for the last poster, but I'm against other people getting high because there's a lot more useful and/or fulfilling things that people can do than getting high. If someone wants to spend their days slouched on the couch and not doing shit because they're stoned, I think that's a pretty fucking big waste of your life. I consider those things harmful to your health actually living life. I don't consider turning your brain off to really be living it.
By doing drugs, you're skipping the real point in living. Sure, boxing or playing football might release those same chemicals into your brain, but when you're just sticking them into yourself, life becomes utterly meaningless.

I'm sorry but that's bullshit. I'm not going to make the assumption that youy have or have not smoked weed before, so i'll say this: I am so glad I started smoking weed because since then i've become a lot more mellow and happier. I used to be fairly aggressive and tense all of the time but weed, plus a tiny bit of acid, has made me realise that I don't have to be like that. Granted not everyone is going to be the same as me, however, you point that you would spend all day doing nothing is totally invalid as you can still function when you're high. I've spent about 2 years smoking weed and i'm going to study a science degree at a good university. I'm still gonna smoke weed when i'm there. I'm determined to succeed. So smoking pot is ruined for me by all of the other lazy stoners? Hmmmm, that seems fair to me.......

And smoking pot is the only way for you to loosen up? Sorry, but I'm calling bullshit on that. You have problems with being tense and and angry? Try meditating, or yoga, or martial arts. Trust me when I say that the high is WAY better than smoking pot all the time.

 

[keithdrover]

The only guy in my high school who received a perfect score on his S.A.T. test was high on LSD at the time of the exam, and was a major stoner in general. In my own social experiences, the people who smoked the most weed in school were the people who were bored stiff with how easy classes were for them, and therefore smoked (or did several other drugs) to cure their boredom. That isn't to say everyone who does drugs is intelligent, but it certainly implies that they're not ALL idiots, whether or not taking drugs in the first place is a bad call or not.

 

[teknoarcanist]

The majority of the stoners I know are artsy types, who can be a little spacey on the day-to-day, but are far more intelligent in the realm of abstracts and philosophy.

 

[heavy-metal-ink]

Definitely varies from person to person, i couldn't sleep before my GCSE English Exam last year so i lit up a joint, woke up the following morning still stoned and went off to do the test.
Passed with an A. (i was only predicted a B)
On the other hand i have a friend who lost his job, girlfriend and custody of his child because he enjoyed his pot a bit too much.

EDIT: i should probably note im more of an artsy/philosophical type, if i was taking a science/maths test i would've failed miserably...

 

[xAnarchysAngelx]

I think it's some sort of anti-weed propaganda.
And no, I know plenty of stoners and none of them are unintelligent.
(this comes from being in highschool.) But non of them have ever got under a C- in a class.

 

[Sparecash]

Because smoking weed frequently for a long time makes you fucking slow. My sister has been through it, and so have I to some degree. Also, it may also originate in that many stoners are jobless, lazy morons.

A little harsher than i would have put it, but this pretty much sums up my opinion on the matter.

Smoking for any amount of time has been proven to slow your reflexes considerably and severely hamper your decision making process (that's why in movies they show stoners taking forever to make up their mind). It honestly doesn't matter if you "think" this isn't happening to you because it is, regardless of how you feel. Why? Because it's effing' science.

And yeah, as a consequence, stoners are often depicted as jobless, lazy, slow, and generally unintelligent. Is this always 100% accurate to how stoners turn out? Probably not. But if the movie can convince just one teen to not smoke, it's accomplished it's job.

 

[Red Right Hand]

That is one incredibly weak argument against drugs. They hurt you so they are bad? Therefore any contact sport like rugby, football, boxing, ultimate fighting competition etc should be banned as well yeah? Weak-minded fools playing a sport that could potentially injure them for life, possibly kill them, just for the sheer pleasure of playing their preferred sport. Why is there no choice? If people were allowed to smoke pot there would be nothing forcing you to start smoking it, so why are you so against others getting high?

Not speaking for the last poster, but I'm against other people getting high because there's a lot more useful and/or fulfilling things that people can do than getting high. If someone wants to spend their days slouched on the couch and not doing shit because they're stoned, I think that's a pretty fucking big waste of your life. I consider those things harmful to your health actually living life. I don't consider turning your brain off to really be living it.
By doing drugs, you're skipping the real point in living. Sure, boxing or playing football might release those same chemicals into your brain, but when you're just sticking them into yourself, life becomes utterly meaningless.

I'm sorry but that's bullshit. I'm not going to make the assumption that youy have or have not smoked weed before, so i'll say this: I am so glad I started smoking weed because since then i've become a lot more mellow and happier. I used to be fairly aggressive and tense all of the time but weed, plus a tiny bit of acid, has made me realise that I don't have to be like that. Granted not everyone is going to be the same as me, however, you point that you would spend all day doing nothing is totally invalid as you can still function when you're high. I've spent about 2 years smoking weed and i'm going to study a science degree at a good university. I'm still gonna smoke weed when i'm there. I'm determined to succeed. So smoking pot is ruined for me by all of the other lazy stoners? Hmmmm, that seems fair to me.......

And smoking pot is the only way for you to loosen up? Sorry, but I'm calling bullshit on that. You have problems with being tense and and angry? Try meditating, or yoga, or martial arts. Trust me when I say that the high is WAY better than smoking pot all the time.

I never said it was the only way. Yes, those other things may be just as effective or even more so, however, that's no reason to stop getting high. I also never said that that was the only reason I smoked it. I enjoy smoking weed, it calms me down, it makes me happy, it makes me laugh, it makes me buzzed, so it may eventually come back to harm me? I accept that, just as the sportsmen who step into the boxing ring, the rugby field, the football field, all accept that their bodies may be destroyed beyond use.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Neither directly kill brain cells, but that's not to say that they both can't lead to problems.

Except, you know, that alcohol is proven to cause problems, and indirectly kill braincells.
Cannabis/Marijuana/Weed isn't. (Yet.)

So we have alcohol, proven to be damaging to your body, with a regular amount of completely(solely) alcohol-caused deaths each year, not mentioning something alcohol-related, like drunk driving, and a growing number of people suffering from alcoholism.

Saying "[...]That's not to say that they both can't lead to problems" is just silly, given that they're not at all similar enough for such a statement, and also one is significantly worse than the other, from what we know at this point in time.

You read way too far into that, needlessly defensive I would say.

But anyway, I'll play. Weed smoke contains many of the same cancer causing compounds that tobacco smoke does, often in higher concentrations. This is a pointless argument seeing as I didn't actually pick a side, and we're only conversing now because you are tetchy, defensive, and seemingly looking to be offended...but if you think it isn't harmful you're lying to yourself.

 

[Denizen]

To quote 1000 ways to die (which has somewhat amusing play on words), "Thats why they call dope dope dope," as it finishes a story of stoners finding a way to kill themselves while high.

Quick reference for light amusement:

http://listverse.com/2009/01/26/top-10-common-myths-about-cannabis/

 

[Yoshemo]

Because succumbing to the temptation of drugs is a sure sign of a weak mind and will.

And because people aren't exactly in their most clever state when they are high:

This.
Can't people just be happy without shoving poison in their blood 24/7?

Why is it weak minded to challenge the moral barriers created by goverments?
IMO, its weaker just to accept what you're told.

Its not weak minded to challenge the standards of society. I'm a gay rights activist, a Libertarian, and an Atheist myself.
Drugs are for weak minded fools because most people do them to be more popular, to be rebellious, or to escape reality. Drugs, including Pot, have serious side effects and damage your health and/or mental capacity. Pot causes cancer, kills many brain cells, and is addicting.
Drugs hurt you so they are bad

That is one incredibly weak argument against drugs. They hurt you so they are bad? Therefore any contact sport like rugby, football, boxing, ultimate fighting competition etc should be banned as well yeah? Weak-minded fools playing a sport that could potentially injure them for life, possibly kill them, just for the sheer pleasure of playing their preferred sport. Why is there no choice? If people were allowed to smoke pot there would be nothing forcing you to start smoking it, so why are you so against others getting high?

Cutting yourself also has its uses. But its bad because it hurts you. Same with suicide and seeing how long you can hold your hand on a hot stove

Yes and i'm saying I see no difference in playing sport or cutting yourself. Not that i'm going to run off and start cutting myself, i'm fairly certain I wouldn't enjoy that. But others might, who knows? There are some strange people in the world. I find it slightly ridiculous though that just because you don't enjoy something that's bad for you, it somehow gives you an imaginary right to tell people that they are not allowed to do it.

You also misunderstand the concept of "bad". It's not specifically things that hurt you but things that hurt you when you don't intend them to hurt you. In that sense, being run over when you don't notice the car coming, yes that's bad. Pumping drugs into your system when fully aware of the concequences, that's fine by me.

Because you don't try to get hurt in sports. Thats why we have shoulder pads and helmets for football, helmets for baseball, and gloves and tooth guards for boxing. With drugs and cutting yourself, there's no way to avoid physical damage.
Drugs can and will hurt people when they use them. Thats why its bad.

My best friend is in remission after leukemia. He never smoked before hand.
The only thing which stops him being physically sick every few hours is cannabis.
Just like anything else, weed has good and bad properties and side effects.
Studies show that dosing weed in moderation once a week will actually extend your lifespan due to lower stress levels.

People who do drugs aren't any more evil than you or I.
The bad people are the ones who produce drugs and sell them to fund organised crime.

Also... marijuanna directly hasn't killed anyone. Ever.

Medical Marijuana is different from recreational use.
And my 2nd cousin died last year of a brain tumor. The doctors told us it was caused by him smoking weed so much. So yes, weed has directly killed somebody