How come cannabis abuse is more tolerated in the west than anabolic steroids abuse?

[Make Anime Illegal]

I like steroids being illegal because it gives a physical advantage to people who are willing to disobey the government.

 

[Secret Messages]

drug laws don’t regulate according to how dangerous they are for you, and trying to make any rational explanation for why they would regulate one thing harsher than another is a pointless task. It’s that way because that’s the way it is, there is no logic.

 

[Idiotron]

Weed just makes you lazy.
Anabolic steroids can cause a heart attack.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

The main reason is that the west had literally 2 decades of shilling for weed use while demonizing Alcohol and Tobacco to an insane degree. Plus Weed is the modern Soma and you usually smoke it by yourself, Alcohol you drink with friends and might cause people to have some "interesting unlawful ideas". Finally with weed I'm pretty sure there are a lot of money to be had and invested by big pharma and agricultural monopolies, while Beer you need to compete with the whole world.

 

[Absolutego]

Because roid rage is a thing and weed rage isn't outside of hilariously unrealistic documentaries like reefer madness.
Your average pothead is going to sit on a couch and eat too much food. Your average steroid addict is one implied slight away from breaking someone's jaw.

 

[Ultrapenguin]

The main issue is that cycling is a lot more complicated than hitting the bong. Besides all the risks of the steroids themselves, you have to monitor your blood levels and potentially need to take e-blockers as you finish a cycle to deal with estrogen overproduction. There's no way any western society is going to allow people to self-manage this class of drugs without medical oversight, and very very few doctors are going to sign off on prescribing patients something with as many dangerous side effects as anabolic steroids for what is essentially a cosmetic benefit, and the kind of doctors who will are the reason there's an opiod addiction crisis.

I think Dynastia's mainly right here.
Ultimately the capacity for people to hurt themselves with weed is pretty minimal. It might not be the greatest lifestyle choice in a lot of cases, but it isn't terribly physically hazardous.

With steroids you have cardiovascular issues, liver issues, kidney issues; in order for a person to juice even somewhat "responsibly" they have to really know what they're doing and have to engage in active measures to counter the potential damage of the original drug.

Actually think about it: you know if you just handed steroids out to the public that there would be tons of trailer park trash guys who don't know shit about it, pump themselves full of completely irresponsible levels of growth hormones and PEDs because they think it'll help them fight and get laid, and wind up keeling over or freaking out and killing someone.

Insecure teenage guys all over the place would be destroying their body irreparably now that steroids are legal, available, and accepted.

People justifiably are horrified at the idea of kids being exposed to extreme gender ideology and being made available of HRT; I don't see how it would be more acceptable to expose them to vapid social media culture then make androgens available just because they're fucking with their body for a different reason.

The reality is that steroids are a far more potent drug, and at least in the context of western culture steroids being legal and available to laymen would be a disaster.

 

[Übertroon]

There's a lot of suggestions that steroids will lead to men killing themselves with steroids or becoming violent criminals.
I get the health argument, plenty of examples of steroid junkies dying an early death, but I don't know about the violence part, do people think it would be favorable to weed if we compared abusers of each respective drug and criminal behaviour?
I also think it's interesting how decriminalisation of weed has been happening simultaneously with the introduction of variants of the drug with insane THC levels that have ended up with users throwing up for hours.
Do you think steroids being legal would lead to "super steroids" with even worse adverse effects?

 

[Dyn]

I don't know about the violence part

Steroids unbalance your hormones. Unbalanced hormones make you unpredictable, emotional and irrational. Weed users might commit violent, criminal acts because many of them are already violent criminals, but the drug itself doesn't turn them into hysterical violent babies who have explosive meltdowns because they're sick of eating eggs.

 

[Shidoen]

Cannibas makes you smelly and stupid, anabolic steroids makes you aggressive and hot headed. Guess which one a government would prefer as a tax payer.

 

[Übertroon]

Steroids unbalance your hormones. Unbalanced hormones make you unpredictable, emotional and irrational. Weed users might commit violent, criminal acts because many of them are already violent criminals, but the drug itself doesn't turn them into hysterical violent babies who have explosive meltdowns because they're sick of eating eggs.

I get that it makes people have violent or other unstable moods. But I was questioning if violent criminal behaviour is actually that common, especially as it is legal in several low crime nations

 

[BikeLock]

For example claiming it's better than cigarettes while inhaling smoke from a joint that is 50% tobacco

I can assure you as a marijuana enjoyer that I have never mixed weed with tobacco at a higher percentage than what a blunt wrap would provide, and that most who partake do not mix tobacco with weed, either.

Making blended j's like that is a boomer activity, and even they don't do that anymore, because weed is legit cheaper than cigarettes now.

If anything weed is only better than cigarettes in the amount of plant material you have to inhale as smoke to feel its effects. My brother grows weed and was a cancer patient, and he can't even smoke enough weed plant material per day to make up what would be the equivalent of a half pack of smokes. You would literally get too high to smoke weed at that point.

There is no doubt in my mind that there is nasty shit in weed smoke, because if there wasn't I would never have to clean my bong. The point is that I smoke less of it by volume, so there is less of that shit in my lungs, in theory.

Recreational steroids are most likely banned due to sportsball, professional and amateur, but man the '90s were fukin' lit for baseball when they were kinda allowed.

 

[Dyn]

I get that it makes people have violent or other unstable moods. But I was questioning if violent criminal behaviour is actually that common, especially as it is legal in several low crime nations

Somewhat. It's a cultural thing, Steroid abuse among career criminals is pretty widespread in a lot of places, especially criminals who control nightlife areas where most of the muscle act as doormen and security, and in gang areas wherever conflicts are still settled with fists and metal bars sometimes, and haven't gotten so serious that shooting at the opps on sight is always the first resort.

 

[Apochrypha]

Weed can absolutely be addictive, at least in the mental sense. As far as we know there isn't a physical component to weed addiction, you just get in a habit of using it and it's weird going without it for so long. But steroids cause long term damage both physically and mentally and it's just not worth it.

I may be a pothead but I disagree with anyone who says it isn't addictive. It's a gateway drug and not for anyone that doesn't have self control and cannot pace themselves. Having said that though I still believe it should be legal federally, if not recreationally then for medicinal use. People abuse perscription drugs and opioids all the time and that's somehow accepted, but god forbid you eat an edible.

 

[std::string]

Recreational steroids are most likely banned due to sportsball, professional and amateur, but man the '90s were fukin' lit for baseball when they were kinda allowed.

Barry Bonds was on so much gear the man's head was growing. The whole steroid era was awesome though. I think everyone kinda knew McGwire, Sosa and Bonds were juiced to the gills but nobody wanted to say anything about it.

One negative effect from steroid use in professional sports though is that it's filtering down to the high school level. Chances of going pro are pretty slim and it's not a great idea to be messing around with your hormones at that age.

 

[Ewan McGregor]

Ultimately the capacity for people to hurt themselves with weed is pretty minimal. It might not be the greatest lifestyle choice in a lot of cases, but it isn't terribly physically hazardous.

Having seen the effects of both weed and steroids abuse, I wouldn't say that weed abuse has a minimal capacity for harm or isn't terribly physically hazardous.

Long time effects of weed abuse are quite terrifying. What they are, however, is much less spectacular than roid abuse effects.

If I had to choose one, I guess I'd choose roids. I'd die a jacked, physically attractive chad gunned down by several policemen as I mace my way around a local Walmart while screaming at the top of my lungs when my dick finally dies and my insides start to fucking rot as opposed to die a filthy slob on a perpetual brain fog who is so mentally broken he finds Marvel movies funny and entertaining.

But that's just me.

 

[BikeLock]

Barry Bonds was on so much gear the man's head was growing. The whole steroid era was awesome though. I think everyone kinda knew McGwire, Sosa and Bonds were juiced to the gills but nobody wanted to say anything about it.

One negative effect from steroid use in professional sports though is that it's filtering down to the high school level. Chances of going pro are pretty slim and it's not a great idea to be messing around with your hormones at that age.

I have a Sammy Sosa rookie card currently in my hand (1990 Topps #692) He is listed 6'0", 165.

heh.

I have that whole set, Barry Bonds was small during that time, too. 6'1", 185 (1990 Topps #220)

 

[Jeff_the_Thriller]

That's interesting. I never thought about that. I'm a weed smoker but far from a pothead. A couple times a month because I have a job and I'm not 16.

To the original question, I think the reason being, steroids are seen as cheating. It creates an uneven playing field for athletes. Weed is definitely more tolerated with athletes now, unless you're fucking stupid enough to bring it into Russia, because it definitely has medical benefits. If you look a just a little over 10 years ago, Michael Phelps almost had his career destroyed over a picture of him ripping a bong.

It really all comes down to, steroids are seen as cheating and marijuana is seen as medical.

 

[VeteranOfTheRetardWars]

Drug laws are gay
Roid rage is real
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk

 

[Syaoran Li]

I think it's mainly because TPTB realized that trying to fight weed the same way they do hard drugs is a losing proposal and if they can't beat 'em, they might as well join 'em.

The War on Drugs was a failure on all fronts but the form that it took during the Reagan/Bush Sr. and Clinton years did the most damage in the long run, to the point that even their schoolyard propaganda just ended up making an entire generation of potheads.

The D.A.R.E program was a big part of the school experience for so many American Millennials growing up in the 90's and early 2000's and in more conservative areas, it persisted well into the 2000's and so a lot of the Early Zoomers got exposed to the rhetoric as well.

Stuff like D.A.R.E and all those anti-drug PSA's from the Ad Council and similar groups used rhetoric about marijuana that was only one or two steps down from the full-on "Reefer Madness" retardation of the Pre-Boomer years. They equated it to harder drugs like heroin, meth, or cocaine and it all came off as ridiculous.

All those kids started to smoke weed as a major sign of rebellion and so many realized it wasn't as horrifying as all those PSA's made it out to be, and they went overboard with it.

Weed is far from harmless, but it's not the extreme hard drug that a lot of the anti-drug rhetoric of the 80's and 90's made it out to be.

Meanwhile, corporate elites started seeing the money within weed and started advocating more for legalization at the state level. Part of me thinks that Big Tobacco is one of the culprits behind this pro-weed campaign as a way to recuperate lost profits from the decline of cigarette smoking.

Oddly enough, I don't think marijuana was that much of a gateway drug until after the 90's when all those kids became teenagers and twenty-somethings and started smoking weed to rebel against the fundies, neocons, and Karens of their youths.

Then they moved onto other drugs because they realized D.A.R.E, the Ad Council, the DEA, and Nancy Reagan were wrong about weed. And they wrongly assumed they were wrong about all the other street drugs as well.

Our corporate oligarchs have realized this and now promote weed as a way to make more money and gain support from the younger generations.

 

[Ser Prize]

Having seen the effects of both weed and steroids abuse, I wouldn't say that weed abuse has a minimal capacity for harm or isn't terribly physically hazardous.

Long time effects of weed abuse are quite terrifying. What they are, however, is much less spectacular than roid abuse effects.

If I had to choose one, I guess I'd choose roids. I'd die a jacked, physically attractive chad gunned down by several policemen as I mace my way around a local Walmart while screaming at the top of my lungs when my dick finally dies and my insides start to fucking rot as opposed to die a filthy slob on a perpetual brain fog who is so mentally broken he finds Marvel movies funny and entertaining.

But that's just me.

If juicing was legal the people who juice could admit it rather than try pretending you can get a body like Dwayne Johnson by regular lifting.

I've been lifting regularly and I look more pudgy, not less.