This is fresh in my mind because I just saw the documentary
“Grass.” Most of it I knew already, from friends or snippets I read from “The Emperor Wears No Clothes” by Jack Herer. I thought this might be an interesting question to pose to this list, however, because of the very diverse political affiliation on the list.
Does anyone believe that marijuana is worse than alcohol or cigarettes?
Is anyone against marijuana being legalized and being treated the same way alcohol is? (no minors, no driving UI, no going to work UI, etc.)
Does anyone believe that the medicinal benefits of marijuana and the environmental benefits of hemp are made up by stoners trying to get legalization passed?
Does anyone believe that marijuana is inherently a gateway drug?
Does anyone believe that marijuana is physically addictive?
If so, I’d love to hear why (with details and cites of course).
I hope this isn’t considered a poll, because I really want to get to the issues behind people’s answers to my questions. I just don’t want to bust into the issues right away because it may turn out that the vast majority is with me on this.
I know the DEA might mind when it suddenly has no need for a third of the workers who specialize in marijuana issues. Well, they might not mind, but those people will.
And since the effect of marijuana lasts after the high is gone, it seems that it’s more likely for someone to get in a car while no completely coherant.
Thirdly, cigarettes do not allow the user to become a potential danger to others/the enviroment. Alcohol does, but for less time, and more visibly.
Even if marijuana is still illegal in obvious no-brainer cases(the minors/driving issue), the extra punishments for possession help discourage these things from being repeat instances.
I might think of something else later, but I’m a bit too stoned to write a good argument as it stands.
Showing that tobacco, which is legal, is more dangerous than marijuana, which is illegal, does not constitute an argument that marijuana should be legal.
If I could make tobacco illegal, and enforce it, I would.
Even if you could show that marijuana is sometimes beneficial (perhaps as a painkiller), that would not constitute an argument that is should be a legal non-prescription over-the-counter drug. Demeral (a morphene derivitive) is a good painkiller, but rightly requires a prescription from a medical doctor.
Even if you show that marijuana is a good treatment for certain ailments, it should not be proscribed to patients unless it is the best treatment available. Is it? In then end, that should be a medical question, not a political one. I am not familiar with the issues here and don’t know the answer, but I would imagine that its hard to find unbiased research on the subject.
Hash has major long-term effects, however - having smoked lots and lots of it I’m unable to cite right now.
I don’t think it’s a gateway drug. As for cigarettes, I think pot is worse than fags from this pov: It’s fine to smoke a fag and drive a car (or white van. Actually - I think white vans won’t even run unless the driver has a fag in his gob) but try a freeway after a few joints and whoa, hey, it’s like, this feels real fast…
After a year and a half as a volunteer police officer, I can say that while I have responded to dozens of alcohol-related incidents, I have yet to see a case where a husband smoked a joint and then beat his wife, or a mother sparked up and locked her 2-year old in a closet for a few days.
I do not smoke pot, nor do I drink. But the hypocricy of allowing and even encouraging alcohol consumption while have zero-tolerance for marijuana makes no sense.
Which is strange, because I would say of the 10 or so pot smokers I know, 8 of them all think they are the smartest, most educated people in the KC area. LOL
I appreciated WSL’s comment about weed being a painkiller. It is also an anti-inflammatory and for those with joint problems, it reduces the inflammation, allowing the person to more fully use the joint which then produces more synovial fluid and the joint remains less painful and more mobile for several days.
Well, where to you draw the line? How can you say you can make it legal, and then allow only certain people to use it. I know I wouldn’t want my doctor using it, especially if he’s about to operate on me. I wouldn’t want my co-workers to use it, one wrong button and half the state would be blown away. Every person is different, so what makes one person high for a short time, may have a more lasting effect on another.
There seems to be a lot more to consider than just make it legal or keep it illegal.
I personally despise excessive users of any drug. I would darn well ban Tobacco and limit everybody to no more than 2 drinks of alchoholic beverages per day. This, of course, is ludicrously impossibe, witness the Prohobition era. So there really isn’t a good way to do it.
That doesn’t seem like a huge problem to me. Anything I don’t want someone doing while high, I certainly don’t want them doing drunk.
The medicinal thing is a smokescreen. Why can’t you say that you just want to get high? See- there, I said it. I’m imagining people during prohibition going on and on about the antiseptic properties of alcohol, or its efficacy as a fuel. Gimme a break.
In short, I can see no negatives to legal marijuana use that we don’t already deal with daily in the realm of alcohol. We essentially have a regulatory system in place already.
I guess you could make a slippery slope argument, that legalizing marijuana would make legalizing opiates and heroin easier. I can’t think of too many people who believe that legal heroin is a good idea.
Here’s one! I firmly believe that this entire “war on drugs” is nonsence. There is very little difference ibetween dealing with a drunk and a cokehead - both have nasty dispositions regardless of what drug they use to get high.
To keep drugs illegal simple means that we get to feed drug dealers, and this baloney war machine. The sencible thing to do is legalize, regulate/control, and provide plenty of information on effects of all drugs. Now the silly twits who abuse them are no less likely to engage in other destructive behavior, legal or not.
Mary jane cannot possible be worse than alcohol. Though I do believe it’s addictive, so is alcohol, and the effects seem to be less distressful on the users.
(I don’t use drugs other than alcohol, last joint I smoked must have been ten years ago, and the only destructive behavior I engaged in was to eat the last of the twinkies in the house. I no longer stock twinkies.)
Now to the several posters who said they’d make tobacco illegal, my question is what the heck for? Please justify your stance.
So, you would have no problem with your surgeon being drunk? (Sorry, but you opened yourself up for that?)
I personally am for the legalization of Mary Jane, but I can offer an argument or two against it.
Is there anyone out there who thinks we need MORE brain-dead, inebraited people running around out there?
Do we need another tobacco-like lobby machine out there putting money in politicians’ pockets to keep them legal and talking out of the side of their mouth about how they don’t want kids to smoke, then purposely marketing to them?
Do you want to be the one to lay off all the people who the War on Drugs gives jobs to?
I think the prohibition era showed that you can try to make drugs illegal, but they will never go away. People want to get high. Anyone remember what it was like before LSD came along? How about Ecstasy? There are people who have found that if you drink gallons and gallons of water, you get a buzz. What, is the government going to ban H2O now?
Whatever happened to “the pursuit of happiness”? Maybe I’m only happy when I’m baked out of my skull. Who’s is morally allowed to take that away from me? I’m not hurting you, your children, or anyone you know. It’s not like I don’t know that it’s bad for me. McDonald’s is bad for me, too. Is the government going to create a National Department of Big Mac Control?
Anyway, I just wanted to get my $0.02 in on this. Have a nice day everyone. I know I will as soon as I get home and open my stash!
Pot’s medical superiority is for people who are dying and want a painkiller that wont make them nauseous. Most prefer it to the other painkillers out there.
As far as driving: pot smokers have actually been found to be safer than SOBER drivers, because they’re ridiculously careful and slow. At worst, this would be a nuisance (already rivaled by elderly drivers!): nothing on the scale of agressive drunk or coked up drivers. Of course, this shouldn’t be used to justify driving while toked, which should still be a crime; but the dangers just aren’t the same with pot as they are with booze.
—Is there anyone out there who thinks we need MORE brain-dead, inebraited people running around out there?—
Personally, neither drinking nor smoking myself, I’d LOVE it if many people switched from booze to hash.
—Do you want to be the one to lay off all the people who the War on Drugs gives jobs to?—
Yes. They cost us far more than they produce in benefits: the money we save on them would go back into the economy and come out again as jobs that actually produce some real economic benefits.
