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There are destined to be many "consider this" calls in response to Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. John Fetterman and more than a dozen of his Democratic colleagues' calls for ending the federal ban on marijuana.
The senators are supporting the reintroduction of the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, which, according to Fetterman, would remove cannabis from the list of federally controlled substances and, thus, empower states to prepare and pass their own marijuana-legalization measures, if they choose to do so.
According to an article published in the Mirror's July 24 edition, 24 states already have legalized recreational marijuana; meanwhile,
35 have passed legislation permitting the medicinal use of cannabis.
"I've always been very pro-weed," Fetterman said, in response to the reintroduction of the legalization proposal.
He said, "I'm not going to judge anyone for using it to knock the edge off of life. I think your path to wellness should be without judgment or punishment -- legal, safe and regulated."
Millions of Americans embrace the same thinking; whether the "consider this" mentioned above causes many to rethink their pro-marijuana stance won't be immediately known, but there is likely to be at least some shifting-of-positions.
There probably should be, with the basis for that being a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- a report that was the subject of an Aug. 10 Mirror article, "Nausea cases in marijuana users on the rise."
According to that article, U.S. hospitals, over the past year, have witnessed a significant increase in frequent-marijuana-users seeking treatment for a nausea and vomiting condition that has been named cannabis hyperemesis syndrome.
Between last October and May of this year, federal researchers have found, hospital emergency room diagnoses of the condition rose 16% -- a statistic that certainly should not be pooh-poohed.
Excruciating abdominal pain is accompanying the recurring nausea and uncontrollable vomiting that are characteristics of the condition.
Experts believe available statistical information about the condition could be understating the condition's prevalence because they believe that the syndrome probably has been underdiagnosed.
"The abruptness and sustained magnitude of the increase" is largely due to the condition getting its own diagnosis code last fall, authors of the CDC report wrote.
The authors said the code is providing a more accurate picture of what had been an underrecognized problem.
According to the authors, the largest increases were seen in people aged 15 to 24, in teenage girls and women, in Black Americans, and in American Indian and Alaska Natives.
But the drumbeat for federal legalization is destined to go on, with most marijuana users believing that the syndrome "won't happen to me," even though there's a good chance that it might.
Consider how the identified dangers surrounding vaping are being ignored.
In the Mirror's July 24 article, Fetterman listed ways in which he believes marijuana legalization would protect public health. If that legalization were to come about through Congressional action, there apparently would be at least two provisions of the law that even opponents could support.
Those provisions would require the Department of Transportation to create standards for cannabis-impaired driving and incentivize states to adopt cannabis open-container prohibitions.
Warnings about the potential long-term negative health impacts of vaping are not new. Now, recreational marijuana is carving another niche in the "avenue of concern" that people need to consider.
The important question that lies ahead has only two words: "Will they?"