UPDATED: Next YUGE Scandal, Malia Obama smoking pot at Lollapalooza

[Warren DeMontague]

84. here's a science experiment

try smoking a few joints of weed a day, every day, for a year. Then stop. See what happens.

Then try drinking a fifth of scotch a day, every day, for a year. Stop. See what happens.

One will quite possibly put you in the hospital with life-threatening withdrawal symptoms, dangerous heart palpitations, sweats, hallucinations, etc. Guess what? It's not the weed.

Now, part of the issue is that the word "addiction" is ill-defined once you get beyond the physiological syndrome outlined above, and we have broadened the word to include all sorts of things and behaviors, like Christian fundamentalists who masturbate occasionally- "addicted" because despite massive guilt trips they still do what is essentially normal behavior. So the term doesn't mean all that much. Certainly people can become habituated to all sorts of things, and smoking pot is undoubtedly one of them.

But the fact remains that in the pantheon of physiological addiction to the actual substance, marijuana is a relative cakewalk.