You've long been correct.
This article emphasizes the long-term neurologic effects of marijuana on young people
Speaking of counterproductive: young people have for years, well before any state legalized, been reporting that they can get illegal-for-all pot more easily than legal-for-adults-only beer or cigarettes - which is to be expected, since dealers in legal substances typically card for age, whereas dealers in illegal substances never do. The available evidence indicates that the best way to keep pot from youths is to legalize it for adults.
We are at the beginning of epigenetics as a study. Everything we do may potentially affect our genes. Here ya go Lanarck, you discredited old bastard, you were right all along, and Darwin took all the glory.
So to say that smoking marijuana will affect your genes and potentially your offspring is a total trick. All of your chemical exposure will potentially do the same. Your water. Your food. Your laundry products. Your time on gas fumes spewing highways. Your lotion. Your cigar. Your medications. Everything you do might potentially affect you genetically. And mostly there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.
Personally, the epidemics of neurodegenerative conditions in old and young, the increase in sexual and identity brain dysfunction, all have me scared as to what we are doing wrong. We should live as clean a life as we can, but we don’t always know until it is too late what we have done wrong. I suspect both plastics and pesticides, as we have only recently begun to learn that these things outside us get right into our bloodstreams. Bisphenol A found in the unused uteri of young women?? That’s scary.
You want legal THC? How about a zero tolerance law for driving: no behind the wheel if under the toke - 24 hour ban?
It works for pilots and liquer. The liquer is still legal.
I do not want to be a statistic to the rising vehicular mayhem unleashed by ersatz libertarians and real libertines.
Driving is not a right.
Re: “May be at increased risk for mental illness and addiction.”
Re: “Changes in gene expression and behavior, even across generations.”
Tort lawyers are preparing the ground for massive class action lawsuits against marijuana entrepreneurs.