If you enjoy it, do it. It's helluva better than drinking. Just keep it light.Truer words have never been spoken.You receive heat because your position is hysteria.
Whenever you hear about the supposed “long-term” effects of marijuana, you should bear in mind that “long-term” is less than six weeks. Marijuana obviously impairs memory and cognition while someone is blitzed out of their mind, but in the morning and the days after those lingering effects are minimal, if barely noticeable, and are effectively gone by six weeks. There is no neurotoxicity. In fact, a person who has practiced a skill while stoned will actually perform exactly the same, if not a little better, on skills tests, because stoners learn to compensate. In college, stoners score slightly higher grades and earn more money in their careers than non-stoners; it’s only in high school where there is an association with delinquency.
The studies which prohibitionists cite of brain damage are always lab rats based on synthetic marijuana, studying some isolated chemical interaction, but not real marijuana with real people, which places into question the relevance of the studies even if true. The context of lab rats in drug research, usually by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, is to extrapolate the findings to children—it certainly may be true the cerebral development of children and young teenagers may become permanently impaired, in memory and cognition, but we're all adults here. There's simply no compelling evidence of lasting cognitive deficiencies in adults. For fück sake, Cheech Marin of Cheech & Chong beat Anderson Cooper at Jeopardy!