Are these drugs "bad" because people abuse them, or inherently bad? Are they worse than caffeine or alcohol?
If the epidemiological jury is still out, how do you know whether its equally bad, less bad, or better?
Coach had an "adverse reaction" to what was in all likelihood a large dose, something like five or more coffees or drinks for a person with no experience of these drugs.
1) The human body has a tolerance for just about every substance we put into it. It can handle low levels of even arsenic, for example. Any substance we ingest has potential for harm but it depends on the concentration as to how badly it affects you. For example, nicotine is tolerable in low levels in tobacco yet a single drop of pure nicotine will kill you. A teaspoon of pure caffeine will cause death, guaranteed. In coffee, it is so dilute it is tolerable. To extract the active ingredients in marijuana automatically concentrates them, with reactions still being determined in the population as a whole. So "bad" is a function of concentration.
2) To assume that something is innocuous at the outset is a dangerous approach. We must always assume that substances we ingest are not safe, unless proven otherwise. For foods, most are just fine or else we would all be dead. But any additive not normally present or available in high dose form is always suspect. That is why the GRAS list was created by the FDA. It reads: "
any substance that is intentionally added to food is a food additive, that is subject to premarket review and approval by FDA, unless the substance is generally recognized, among qualified experts, as having been adequately shown to be safe under the conditions of its intended use, or unless the use of the substance is otherwise excepted from the definition of a food additive. "
3) I agree. It is dose dependent. But the variation in dose tolerance among humans is so great that limits have to be set to protect the outliers from harm. This obviously has not been done, to my knowledge, for marijuana derived additives .
