I assume the bleeding stems from being a derivative of aspirin? Probably the allergies too.

So, I’m trying to pick those two details apart (side effects & pain relief). If ibuprofen doesn’t cause any of the negative side effects for a particular patient, would it then be the preferred OTC pain reliever in almost all cases? I can imagine there are a few outliers who find Tylenol works better than aspirin or ibuprofen, but is it a significant number? As I said, I’ve never met anyone who felt Tylenol (without codeine) worked for them. I know it’s a total waste of dosage for me. Not even the slightest reduction of any type of pain. As far as I can tell, that seems to be the norm, not the exception.

One of the reasons I’m certain I don’t really understand this is because paracetamol seems to be the painkiller of choice in Britain, rather than ibuprofen. Are they so different from people in the US? (short answer: no)

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but your anti-marijuana remarks have been handily refuted by other commenters.  Why on earth would anyone continue to repeat the “gateway drug” canard, when it is really a “gateway law” that is the problem?

I’ve done my share of “legal heroin” (for medical reasons, I swear! lol!) while smoking green and really, it made no difference, except the next day when I felt really cracked out and the weed totally helped. But, I’m a long-term smoker, which I think makes a big difference.

If pot smoking is consider as boringly normal as having a beer, no one raises an eyebrow.  Among my friends, in a liberal state where the penalty for possession is a firm finger waggling from the cops, someone pulling out a joint or hitter and offering it up will get a handful of takers, a handful of passes, and not a single raised eyebrow.  It is like offering beer.  Some take, some pass, no one cares either way.  Pull out a heroine needle in the company of my friends or offer up some meth, and folks will respond with the appropriate ”holy shit dude”.

Safe drugs should be legal and socially acceptable.  This keeps healthy pressure on people to not do unsafe drugs.  It starves cartels of funding.  It prevents people from developing the (currently accurate) perception that the authorities are blatantly lying to you about the safety and dangers of drugs to further their own selfish and harmful ends.

I think the explanation is that recreational use of marijuana has essentially become socially acceptable despite its illegality whereas there is still a social stigma on use of harder drugs.

Pot is a wussy drug. The mind altering effects are minimal, and you can’t overdose. Alcohol on the other hand has the potential for extreme mind alteration and you absolutely can overdose, and yet it isn’t a gate way drug. Why?

The gate way isn’t taking mind altering substances. Nearly every adult does this with alcohol. The gate way is the illegality. The gate way is buying a perfectly harmless drug from a drug dealer. It is pretty easy to buy some pot, the Devils drug, see first hand that you were blatantly lied to and are now persecuted for something that should clearly be legal.

People die from food allergies all the time. Peanuts aren’t evil.

Except for that creepy top-hat-and-monocle-wearing guy on the Planters can. What a dick, selling out his own people just to make a buck.

So instead of continuing with the antiquated rhetoric of, “Marihuana is bad, mmmkayyyy?” it would behoove us as a society to take a more enlightened look at cannabis instead of being continually afraid of it.

In case anyone is confused, as robuluz points out, in this case correlation and causation doesn’t work. I know many a cannabis enthusiast who haven’t gone on to become full-blown junkies. The “gateway drug” idea is quaint, but not solid to base policy on.

No they’re not. Ask the Dutch. Their own government has said that cannabis is what keeps their kids away from harder drugs. A certain percentage will try anything they can get their hands on, of course.

I’m pretty sure most recreational users of marijuana accept that marijuana use is not for everyone and don’t push it on people who aren’t interested.  That’s certainly been my experience.

Suppose we look at drug statistics and see use of “hard drugs” had gone down but use of marijuana had gone up.  Would that be enough to kill this stupid zombie “gateway drug” myth?

Here.

http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/nationwide-trends

Highlights:

Marijuana use has increased since 2007. In 2011, there were 18.1 million current (past-month) users—about 7.0 percent of people aged 12 or older—up from 14.4 million (5.8 percent) in 2007.

Use of most drugs other than marijuana has not changed appreciably over the past decade or has declined.
In 2011, 6.1 million Americans aged 12 or older (or 2.4 percent) had used psycho-therapeutic prescription drugs nonmedically (without a prescription or in a manner or for a purpose not prescribed) in the past month—a decrease from 2010. And 972,000 Americans (0.4 percent) had used hallucinogens (a category that includes Ecstasy and LSD) in the past month—a decline from 2010.

Does the fact that more people are using marijuana and fewer people are using other drugs indicate that use of marijuana does not tend to lead to use of other drugs?  Elementary logic would say “yes.”  What do you say, eldritch?

It’s not my intent to pedantic

Whether or not it’s your intent it’s exactly what you’re doing.  I don’t think there’s any mystery to what Xeni was arguing in the passage in question.

Under what situation does acetaminophen/paracetamol work better than ibuprofen?

I understand that A/P is considered “safer” (for only some values of safe, obviously) because it is less likely to react with other drugs than ibuprofen is, but I’ve never met anyone who felt it actually WORKED well….i.e., eased their pain sufficiently.

So for people who are careful about dosage, etc., what would be the reason to ever choose A/P over ibuprofen?

“I’m out of cannabis right now but I do have x,y,z”.