While I’ve been conducting an extensive amount of research for my series on the morality of cannabis investing, I’ve been continually amazed by the sheer number of names that a single plant can be called.
Marijuana, weed, and pot are by far the most common, but the list of terms describing cannabis goes on and on…
Our parents or grandparents might be more familiar with some of the older nicknames like muggle or reefer (from the iconic anti-marijuana propaganda film of the 1930s, Reefer Madness). Some of the more modern slang terms include sticky, chronic, and ganja.
Still other names (mostly names of specific strains) focus on illustrating the effects that the drug has on the user, such as:
- Trainwreck
- Laughing Buddha
- Cannatonic (a play on the catatonic state it puts the user in)
And it’s those effects of marijuana that I want to begin focusing on today. No review on the morality of cannabis investing would be complete without a thorough look into the inebriating effects that cannabis has on its users, and the dangers and problems that it can cause.
Opponents of cannabis legalization often point to the intoxicating effects of the drug as a big reason why it should not be legal and readily available. People on that side of the fence would likely be big fans of the cannabis nickname (perhaps the most hilarious one I’ve come across), The Devil’s Lettuce.
By whatever name marijuana goes by, it does have a psychoactive component in delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), and that chemical causes motor skill and cognitive impairment. The next two articles in our series on the morality of investing in pot stocks will look at the safety issues and societal costs of impaired driving. This is such an important (and interesting) part of the equation, we’ll take a look at this issue in two parts – the first will look at impaired driving from an enforcement perspective – the second will review the data about how legalization has changed driving safety and arrests.
But first, let’s step back and look at how all this digging will lead us to a conclusion on the morality of pot investing. My goal is to take a balanced look at all of the issues we’ve outlined in earlier articles and weigh the societal costs vs. the societal benefits.
An overlay of spiritual and philosophical issues will round out the discussion and help us draw some conclusions.
