Although certainly any combusted plant will produce tar, and this is well known to cause pulmonary issues which will indeed place more stress upon the heart.
Lack of guidance and cultural context leads to abuse of all sorts of substances. For all the ills of alcohol, there is at least (in the west) a degree of "acceptable usage" existing in society, something which almost every other recreational substance is currently missing.
True, but this was for tobacco, and the ban was mainly to protect non-smoking workers (and more recently the patrons) in restaurants and bars who started suffering with long term health complications usually attributed to smokers. The lawsuits would have crippled the industry, so the change was largely financial in nature, such is the basis of most public health legislation.
For controls on residential buildings, we would need better standards in shared housing construction and perhaps also we could take a look at better airflow and particulate filtration methods. I expect it will be some time (and perhaps another airborne pandemic?) for that to be addressed seriously.
>I have a strong worries that our current generation will have a similar huge reckoning with marijuana.
I think "Cannabis" is the prefered term nowadays. The word "Marijuana" has negative cultural connotations which we would do well to escape when discussing this issue.
The problem is that the research into the risks of exposure to both of these substances was/is not exactly at the top of the list due to various factors.
That said, I'd take my chances with a bong over a car exhaust *or drinking water pipe. At least you have some choice over what goes into (and, consequently comes out) of the former.
To take this idea one step further, each of those options could be attributed to a colour value. Then, instead of "greying out" the resulting comment would be an amalgam of the received votes, giving an indication of exactly what it was in particular that caused the comment to be downvoted. The stronger hues would then indicate a degree of consensus among the audience.
Of course, the same should be applied the other way, so when upvoting, one could also choose to assign a value for "this is good but could be improved", "I have a different opinion, but the above comment is worthy of consideration", "this is simply a correct take" and "this comment is pleasing to me".
And for the sake of readability, maybe instead of the whole comment being coloured, a marker could be applied before or after unadulterated text so that it remained accessible during the course of this process!
The challenge would be in deciding which colors represent what sentiment, as these days even our visible light spectrum seems to be corrupted by political/moral/tribal prejudgements. So perhaps it would do more harm than good. It may make for an interesting experiment, all the same.
"All art is propaganda; on the other hand, not all propaganda is art."
History judges which is which by virtue of whether or not it succeeds in its objective(s). But history is itself another form of propaganda, so alas, we are all once again stuck here in this mess we call "today".
What does this vapid and emotive statement actually serve to achieve, given the fact that you could say the same about literally any country engaged in warfare throughout the entire history of civilisation?
Are all human beings not worthy of the same respect, regardless of ethnicity or nationality?
The Guardian has been comprimised as a news outlet for some time, after they tried to report on the Snowden case. They are just flypaper for for the left nowadays.